Posted by racingsnake
@ 09:56 AM GMT+00:00
29 Apr · Fri 2005
Sun Chairman's Awards 2005
This year's Chairman's Awards for Innovation have just been announced at Sun.
As (I hope) you would expect, it's a rich crop reflecting the importance of
innovation in Sun's culture.
Congratulations to all the award-winners.
There are two team awards which I think merit particular attention:
First, the Liberty team, who have achieved such ground-breaking work on
establishing and developing the Liberty Alliance. The team members were:
Rajeev Angal, Hellmuth Broda, Jacquelyn Decoster, Chris Hankin, Fulup ar Foll,
Eve Maler, Jamie Nelson, Simon Nicholson, Jonathan Nimer, Takashi Shitamichi,
Bill Smith and Yvonne Wilson. I am genuinely proud to have them as colleagues.
Second, the team without whom blogs.sun.com would not be here!
Tim Bray, Pat Chanezon, Danese Cooper, John Hoffmann, Dave Johnson,
Simon Phipps and Will Snow. Their work is described as "Humanizing Sun, Changing Perceptions and Re-Enlisting Champions".
I hope you agree!
Immigration... a sideways look
OK - just in case things are getting too heavy in my previous post
on immigration, it's time for a sideways look at the subject, courtesy of Andy Borowitz.
BORDER CONTROL JOBS OUTSOURCED TO MEXICO
Setback for Homeland Security, Critics Say
In what some critics of illegal immigration are calling a setback for homeland security, 500 border control agents hired just this week learned today that their jobs were being outsourced to Mexico.
“In a perfect world, it would be great to have American border control agents on the U.S. side of the border,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. “Having said that, we are going to save a bundle by having those same functions performed by Mexicans on the Mexican side of the border.”
Recognizing that the outsourcing decision will not endear him to critics of the Administration’s immigration policies, Mr. Chertoff said, “I fully expect Lou Dobbs to rip me a new one.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Chertoff said, starting Monday the U.S. will scrap traditional border patrols and replace them with what he called a “state of the art border-control calling center” located in a suburb of Guadalajara.
The plan calls for prospective illegal aliens to telephone the calling center with the approximate time and place they intend to sneak over the border to the U.S.
Hoping to silence criticism of the controversial plan, President Bush addressed the immigration issue head on today in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan: “To those who would illegally enter our country seeking jobs, let me say this: stay where you are, and eventually our jobs will come to you.”
Elsewhere, prosecutors will be allowed to introduce five more witnesses in the Michael Jackson trial but they will not be allowed to call them The Jackson Five.
©2004 The Borowitz Report
Many thanks to Michael Barrett for alerting me to the delights of the Borowitz Report.
Not sure if Michael has a blog, but there are some good posts about Michael and
his views on Identity at Phil Windley's fine site.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 09:42 AM GMT+00:00
28 Apr · Thu 2005
The Politics of Immigration...
As chrisg just noted,
we're days away from a General Election here in the UK, and as in so many other European countries,
the question of immigration is high on the list of contentious election issues.
Here's what has been taxing my thoughts (well, I'm being taxed on just about everything else, so why leave thoughts out of it!):
how acceptable is it for a country to set immigration quotas based on the desirable skills an applicant brings with them ?
Let's make a couple of assumptions explicit:
- That what I'm talking about here does not include that subset of immigration applicants who are seeking asylum;
- That the potential immigrant sees the UK as preferable to where they are coming from;
- That they have some skill which is'economically valuable'.
26 Apr · Tue 2005
Reply from Kim...
Just to follow on from my previous post; Kim has
posted a very kind acknowledgement,
and an apology that there was some context to his thoughts which didn't make it into type.
He generously assured me that no implicit swipe at Liberty was intended.
Many thanks, Kim - you're a true gent!
Posted by racingsnake
@ 01:23 PM GMT+00:00
22 Apr · Fri 2005
Kim Cameron on Liberty, Federation and the Law...
Kim Cameron has just posted here on Stephen Deadman's recent paper concerning the legal implications of establishing a Liberty Circle of Trust.
Having just returned from the Liberty Sponsors' meeting, I think I can safely say that coffee-break conversation did sometimes turn to the topic of Kim's blog, and even if there were some specifics on which people might disagree, there was also a general appreciation of the way in which Kim's work brings important topics into the public domain in a constructive way, allowing different views to be aired.
There were just two sentences in Kim's post on which I wanted to offer my own personal comment, and here they are:
1 "The legal complexities of this style of federation are significant, and they must all be considered."
I agree with the sentiment entirely... but not necessarily with the hint of an implication that there are other styles of federation which might be legally less complex.
Federation is one of the possible approaches to fixing the problem of trusted, interoperable authentication between multiple parties. My instinct is that relationships of that kind will give rise to pretty much the same legal complexity no matter which organisational and technical approach one adopts. It's just a tough (but not insoluble) problem. 2 "Now, perhaps I am just a man with a hammer who sees everything in the world as a nail, but the paper reinforced my thinking that the more our systems are built to guarantee that the user is the conscious agent of information release (rather than having this done on his behalf), the better privacy is served, and the simpler our lives become from a legal and policy point of view." Again, I agree with the basic statement but not the implication. In my view, the user can be "the conscious agent of information release" while still having that act performed on her behalf. For instance, when I write a cheque [check] I consciously act to make a payment, but I then rely on the clearing system to perform that payment on my behalf. In the online environment, I issue instructions to my bank to transfer funds to someone else; that's a process I trust a lot more than keeping my salary under the mattress! So this is a trust model which already works in both the real and the online worlds; I think it can be applied to online attribute exchange as well - not necessarily as the whole and only solution, but certainly as a valid architectural option. Thanks, Kim, and keep 'em coming.......
Federation is one of the possible approaches to fixing the problem of trusted, interoperable authentication between multiple parties. My instinct is that relationships of that kind will give rise to pretty much the same legal complexity no matter which organisational and technical approach one adopts. It's just a tough (but not insoluble) problem. 2 "Now, perhaps I am just a man with a hammer who sees everything in the world as a nail, but the paper reinforced my thinking that the more our systems are built to guarantee that the user is the conscious agent of information release (rather than having this done on his behalf), the better privacy is served, and the simpler our lives become from a legal and policy point of view." Again, I agree with the basic statement but not the implication. In my view, the user can be "the conscious agent of information release" while still having that act performed on her behalf. For instance, when I write a cheque [check] I consciously act to make a payment, but I then rely on the clearing system to perform that payment on my behalf. In the online environment, I issue instructions to my bank to transfer funds to someone else; that's a process I trust a lot more than keeping my salary under the mattress! So this is a trust model which already works in both the real and the online worlds; I think it can be applied to online attribute exchange as well - not necessarily as the whole and only solution, but certainly as a valid architectural option. Thanks, Kim, and keep 'em coming.......
Posted by racingsnake
@ 01:57 PM GMT+00:00
Steve Mann (qv) has done it again...
Steve Mann (see my March 23rd blog entry here)
has come up with another brilliant subversion of consentless
privacy invasion.
At the CFP (Computers, Freedom and Privacy) conference, delegates were given conference knapsacks with a difference. Each bag sported a shiny black 'surveillance dome' referred to as a "maybecam". Some of the bags also contained webcams, but the idea was that no-one would know which ones.
Some of the delegates then roamed the nearby retail outlets to see which ones objected to having someone else's surveillance dome pointed at them for a change...
"How to make a maybecam"...
I'm indebted to Kim Cameron's blog and Wired News for alerting me to this.
At the CFP (Computers, Freedom and Privacy) conference, delegates were given conference knapsacks with a difference. Each bag sported a shiny black 'surveillance dome' referred to as a "maybecam". Some of the bags also contained webcams, but the idea was that no-one would know which ones.
Some of the delegates then roamed the nearby retail outlets to see which ones objected to having someone else's surveillance dome pointed at them for a change...
"How to make a maybecam"...
I'm indebted to Kim Cameron's blog and Wired News for alerting me to this.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 01:33 PM GMT+00:00
15 Apr · Fri 2005
Speaking of Prague...
... well, I was, but it was in a previous entry.
I was expecting there to be a lot of "Austro-Hungarian baroque" type
architecture, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much Art Deco
stuff there is to be seen too.
Nor had I realised that the Alphonse Mucha posters which
adorned my student walls all those years ago were actually Czech art.
(Though to be fair, he spent 17 years in Paris: b.1860 - d.1939, worked in Paris from 1887 to 1904)
Mucha Museum site
Here's the winged portico of the presidential offices in the Prazsky Hrad (Prague Citadel/Castle).
In case you're wondering... that's a leopard. Yes, it does have wings. No, I don't know.
I thought it too was Art Deco until I found out that it is actually the work of contemporary architect/artist Borek Sipek.
Sipek's winged portico
In case you're wondering... that's a leopard. Yes, it does have wings. No, I don't know.
I thought it too was Art Deco until I found out that it is actually the work of contemporary architect/artist Borek Sipek.
Sipek's winged portico
Posted by racingsnake
@ 12:04 PM GMT+00:00
06 Apr · Wed 2005
UK ID card plans dropped
BBC report on ID card demise
As Tony Blair sets the date (May 5th) for the next General Election,
over a dozen bills are to be dropped from the government's legislative programme,
including plans for a national ID card.
In what looks like a breathtaking piece of spin, the current Home Secretary,
Charles Clarke, lays the blame on the Conservative party,
saying that they had decided "to kill the bill".
A bizarre assertion from the man who had divisive and radical anti-terror
legislation rammed through parliament only a few weeks ago,
in the teeth of fierce opposition from the Upper Chamber.
If the Conservatives can "kill" a bill like this one,
it's odd that they didn't manage to scupper either the
anti-terror bill or the ban on fox-hunting,
to both of which they had far more deep-rooted objections.
Perhaps what Mr Clarke means is that he saw little point in persisting with a bill
which the Conservatives were almost certain to discard if they won the imminent election.
I wonder if his party colleagues know that he is so pessimistic.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 09:34 AM GMT+00:00
05 Apr · Tue 2005
Nappy-changing 101
Apparently this is not approved technique.
News to me... mind you, we never had twins, so maybe that changes everything.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 05:16 PM GMT+00:00
The Festival of Pure Brightness
I see from WikiPedia that today, April 5th 2005,
is Qing Ming Jie ( 清明節 ), the Pure Brightness Festival. The entry describes it as
"a traditional Chinese festival on the 106th day after the winter solstice".
It marks the middle of Spring, and for the Chinese, it is a day to remember and honour one's ancestors.
Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food and libation to the ancestors.
When you think about it, each of us owes a lot to our ancestors. Through all the generations of
humanity, our ancestors have been the most successful at ensuring that their genes get passed on.
That's quite a heritage for us to live up to. A couple of minutes in respectful contemplation
seems the least we can do...
Posted by racingsnake
@ 04:10 PM GMT+00:00
- Blogroll
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POSIWID
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