[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website, and it's also on CircleID]

In the last few weeks we’ve seen two very different approaches to the full disclosure of security flaws in large-scale computer systems.

Problems in the domain name system have been kept quiet long enough for vendors to find and fix their software, while details of how to hack Transport for London’s Oyster card will soon be available to anyone with a laptop computer and a desire to break the law.

These two cases highlight a major problem facing the computing industry, one that goes back many years and is still far from being resolved.  Given that there are inevitably bugs, flaws and unexpected interactions in complex systems, how much information about them should be made public by researchers when the details could be helpful to criminals or malicious hackers.

(more…)

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 17th and July 22nd:

• Matasano?s ?blunder? « Ars Militaria: Research Institute of Systematic Misanthropy - Outline of what is believed to be Dan Kaminsky's cache poisoning finding
• RANDOM.ORG - Coin Flipper - I really like this… especially the older coins
• Techdirt: A Detailed Explanation Of How The BSA Misleads With Piracy Stats - Excellent dissection of the dodgy stats used to overstate the financial impact of unlicensed software
• how carphone warehouse took my iphone & ruined my credit rating - I'm so glad I didn't try to get myself an iPhone. I don't think I ever will

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 13th and July 17th:

• iPhone problems - how carphone warehouse took my iphone & ruined my credit rating
• Mac vs PC - YouTube - Mac vs. PC - Halo Style
• Android - Google’s Android platform: not so open after all
• Schneier on Security: Man-in-the-Middle Attacks - We need a firefox extension to display certificate details in the address bar
• The fake-space race: Design and the future of travel - Excellent reflection on the failures of telepresence and what we could do instead
• EXTRA LIVES: INTERSECTIONS OF VIDEO GAMES AND FILM | AAIFF08 - Interesting event - planning something similar for the Cambridge Film Festival in September

[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website]

On Monday I went to see Clay Shirky talk at a lunchtime seminar hosted by the Demos think tank, travelling in to London earlier than I needed to on a crowded train, sitting on a slow bus across town and then squeezing into a bright but too warm room to sit on a hard seat in order to listen to something which was being recorded and will later be available as a podcast.

Clay was charming and intelligent and funny, and I got to hear him thinking out loud about the impact of social tools on international politics, which was fun, but I could have done all that by listening in online, or even by watching the stream of brief reports appearing on Twitter, the communications service that is currently taking the net by storm.

Instead I sat there offering my own online commentary on what he was saying while looking up references on the web as he talked.

(more…)

Jeff Jarvis has a great post over at Buzzmachine in which he argues that its time to ‘tear down the broadcast towers’:

My most striking realization since getting my iPhone (love it, thanks for asking) is that radio is doomed. Pandora is a wonder, creating my own radio station, live and on the fly without need for a broadcast tower.

I agree.  Here’s something I wrote over two years ago about television…

Rethinking Digital Television

Spending £700 million on digital switchover is perhaps the most foolish waste of public money since the Maginot Line, and will be as effective in stopping the tide of Internet-based programming that is about to sweep over Europe and the rest of the networked world.

Building a dedicated transmission network designed solely to distribute digitally-encoded television over a fixed set of frequencies, so that audio and video can be received by specialised aerials, decoded on single-purpose computers and displayed on screens is an absurd idea when cable companies are already making the switch to IPTV and a general-purpose data network – the Internet – can provide a suitable infrastructure for programme distribution.

(more…)

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 11th and July 12th:

• Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): Build the Open Shelves Classification -
• 2gether08 | Spirited Away - what next for 2gether - Call for ideas from Steve Moore for all at 2gether08
• Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Could Too Much Transparency Lead to Sunburn? - "As technology evolves, the same public information laws create novel and in some cases previously unimaginable levels of transparency"
• All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad - The INQUIRER - Nvidia chips seem to have a problem. A big problem

NESTA Event: Charlie Leadbeater Synecdoche

Originally uploaded by BillT.

Charlie was speaking at the NESTA-organised seminar with Tim Berners-Lee last week. I thought this captured his essence.

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 10th and July 11th:

• Lose Your Wikipedia Crutch: 100 Places to Go for Good Answers Online - Distance Degrees.com - Useful list of places to look
• BBC NEWS | Politics | Voters' data 'should not be sold' - Another sensible report to be ignored by the UK government…
• Personal Internet Security: follow-up report - Richard offers a clear-sighted view on the new personal internet security report from the House of Lords Science and Technology committee
• London Games Fringe - be there.

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between July 9th and July 10th:

• Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - Ecellent piece and one of the few that goes back to the psychology literature.
• Wordle - EU Telecoms Law -
• Tim Berners-Lee at NESTA on the Future of the Web « Perfect Path - Excellent critique from Lloyd.
• Understanding the Web browser threat by Stefan Frei - Important study of browser update patterns

[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website. There's another related piece about the proposals]

And here’s its Wordle…

Making laws in the European Union is a long, complicated and often tedious process that involves a delicate ballet featuring the Council of Ministers, the Parliament and the Commission. Before a Directive is passed there will be numerous committees, occasional votes, multitudinous amendments and many, many occasions for lobbyists, campaigning groups and special interests to try to influence things in their favour.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that a package of amendments to telecoms laws currently making its way through the European Parliament’s committee system has received careful scrutiny from those who worry that the interests of the music and film industry are being placed before freedom of expression or civil liberties.

(more…)