Mitch Wagner's Blog

Biden's Record Is Inconsistent On Cyber-Rights Issues

My latest InformationWeek story:

Joe Biden has a mixed record on privacy and Internet civil liberties issues. He often votes with the FBI and media companies against consumers and citizens. He sponsored legislation designed to make it illegal to circumvent copy-protection -- even on content and devices you legally own. He also sought to weaken encryption, and introduce a bill like the controversial PATRIOT Act long before 9/11. But in other areas he's defended privacy rights.

Days after Barack Obama named Biden as his pick for VP, political and technology bloggers examined Biden's record and found no clear trend. On some issues he votes with big government and big business. Other times, he stands up for privacy.

Biden sponsored a bill in 2002 that would make it a felony to hack some devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs, according to CNET's Declan McCullagh. The legislation had the backing of media companies including News Corp., but died when Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.

McCullagh writes:

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits. Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans' ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.) All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)

Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and introduced the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act in the 90s, requiring carriers of encrypted communications to turn the keys over to law enforcement, according to McCullagh.

Biden's bill spurred Philip Zimmerman to invent the PGP algorithm and publish it for free, McCullagh notes.

However, Zimmerman defends Biden. "Declan seems to be trying to draft me in his opposition to Biden, and, by extension, makes it seem as if I am against the Democratic ticket. I take issue with this," Zimmerman wrote Tuesday on Slashdot.

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'Mad Men' Characters Get Twitter Accounts

My latest InformationWeek story:

Characters on the prime-time soap opera Mad Men are getting accounts at Twitter, where they post in-character comments about the goings-on at the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, sexed-up Sterling Cooper ad agency. However, the characters are at war with Twitter management who are suspending accounts for copyright violations.

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Old Media Gets The Scoop On Obama's VP Pick

My latest InformationWeek story:

When I woke up Saturday morning, I found a text message waiting on my iPhone from the Barack Obama campaign, informing me that the candidate named Joe Biden as running-mate. But I already knew that, because I'd already gotten the news the night before -- from newspapers. Old-fashioned journalism -- wordslingers working contacts inside the Obama campaign -- leaked the story in advance of your new-fangled text messaging. Score one for the old school.

The Obama campaign had planned to get the news out to supporters via text messaging before it was reported through other channels. So, in that respect, the text-messaging project was a failure. But it succeeded in another way, according to John Dunbar, writing for the Associated Press: The campaign collected huge numbers of e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, which it can use to drum up support between now and Election Day.

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About the movies "Dazed and Confused" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Scalzi says his daughter starts school Monday, which makes this the last Saturday of summer. He posts a music video from a teen band that, he says, "looks like the last house party on the last Saturday of summer - i.e., trying to jam in as much “fun” as humanly possible to make up for the fact the next nine months will be spent in class."'

Then Scalzi adds:

Also, I suspect strongly that this video looks markedly different at 39 than it does at, say, seventeen. As well it should. That Matthew McConaughey character in Dazed and Confused was fun to watch, but you wouldn’t want to be him.

Oh, boy, Dazed and Confused. I have a special connection to that movie — I was the same age as the main character of that movie in the year the movie is set. In other words, I was, like the main character of that movie, 14 years old (or however old he is) in 1975 (or whatever year the movie is set in).

Yes, that makes me 47 now. I’m as old as the Cryptkeeper. But it’s even weirder to think that he’s also 47 now. Well, he would be if he wasn’t fictional.

His name is Mitch, too.

I have high school memories like Dazed and Confused, but I’m afraid the character in that movie that I probably most resembled was the one played by Adam Goldberg. I took things way too seriously.

I saw the movie again recently — yes, the Matthew McConaughey character looks different when you’re a middle-aged man watching the movie than it does if you’re a teen-ager. The character looks creepy and a little scary. I can envision him at age 30: Doughy, fat, desperately trying to comb over his mostly bald scalp. Still hitting on the high school girls, eventually appearing on Dateline: To Catch a Predator. Yeah, his story isn't going to end well.

Likewise, I saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off recently, and felt a certain sympathy with Ed Rooney, a middle-aged lower-middle-class civil servant getting punked by a couple of rich, spoiled kids.

Seeing those things doesn’t make me enjoy either movie less, or make me incapable of seeing the more innocent interpretation in addition to the more cynical one.

About the movie "Enchanted"

Julie is giving me crap because I liked "Enchanted" more than she did. She says she's going to buy me a princess dress. If you're not an 11-year-old girl, or don't live with one, you probably missed it. It's the story of a princess from a Disney animated movie who is cast by her evil witch soon-to-be-stepmother into a hostile, faraway city: Present-day real-life New York. It's a Disney movie, and the entire thing is a big Disney self-parody. I'm surprised it got made.

Amy Adams plays the princess. I love her in just about everything. She played Tom Hanks's assistant in "Charlie Wilson's War," a very different role in a very different movie. She played the pregnant sister in "Junebug," another very different role in a very different movie. Here, she does a great job playing a cartoon character that's come to life. She sings her dialogue breathlessly and she moves and uses her hands like dance. James Marsden plays Prince Edward, looking and acting like a rubber-faced cartoon handsome prince. Patrick Dempsey plays the grouchy New York divorce lawyer that the princess meets on her first day in New York.

Julie hated everything about this movie except the chipmunk.

We're not hardliners in our house when it comes to gender roles. Julie does the household repairs. I like chick flicks, at least some of them. I liked "The Devil Wears Prada." But I don't get the princess thing. I mean, anybody would want to be a fantasy character, anybody would want to be royalty, but why a princess in particular, as opposed to a beautiful sorceress or a dashing swordswoman or a queen or any other powerful fantasy thing a girl might dream of?

Please, Not The 'Mother's Basement' Joke Again

My latest InformationWeek story:

After reading how a John McCain staff blogger insulted Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts with a reference to living in their mothers' basements, I'd like to make a plea to mainstream America. This is on behalf of nerds everywhere: Will you please get some new jokes about us?

It's been twenty-one years since William Shatner made that wisecrack on Saturday Night Live, and we've had to listen to it over and over, ever since. It's like spending 21 years listening to kindergartners telling the same knock-knock joke.

In the skit, Shatner tells fans to "get a life." He asks one Trekkie if he's "ever kissed a girl." Shatner demands, "Move out of your parents' basements!" This is pretty big talk from a man who appears to have a badger asleep on his head. It was pretty funny -- then. But we've had to listen to the same three jokes ever since.

The latest iteration was this week, from McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb. Obama supporters questioned whether McCain was lying in one of his Vietnam stories, and Goldfarb shot back:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

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About William Gibson's novel "Spook Country"

I had trouble with this one. The premise is great, summed up in an ad slogan for the novel that I remember but can't locate on the Web -- the novel was published in 2007, but it's so futuristic that it could only take place in 2006.

Spook Country fleshes out famous quote Gibson made years earlier: The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

We see a lot of marvels using real-world cutting-edge technology from today. An artist creates "geolocative" art, using 3-D images overlaid over reality. Various mysterious figures are tracking a cargo container that moves from one ship to another in the ocean, never reaching land. A Chinese-Cuban illegal immigrant works in a family business in New York, practicing spycraft techniques that a Soviet agent taught his father.

Gibson makes perfectly mundane things like Wi-Fi and the chirpers that turn off car alarms seem exotic and science-fictional.

The problem with the novel is that it never really came alive. I was standing outside, looking in, throughout. The characters really have nothing at stake, nothing to lose that we or they care about, and so I didn't really get involved. Gibson said in an interview with the blog io9.com: "In Pynchon you're never allowed to believe in the characters. He's making moves all the way through to remind you that these are cartoons. I have a little bit of that. I don't want people to be completely sucked into the mechanism. They should remember that they're riding on a rollercoaster." That pretty much sums up my problem with Spook Country.

What Gadgets Help You Get In Shape?

My latest InformationWeek story:

If you're looking to get in shape, there's no shortage of gadgets you can spend your money on, including a $220 wrist-top computer, a sensor for your shoe, or a Wii Fit.

"What Gadgets Help You Get In Shape?""Our friends at Lifehacker want to know.

Four months ago, I set out on what is, for me, an enormous lifestyle change: I started an exercise routine, and I'm sticking with it. I did it with the aid of two gadgets: A treadmill and an iPhone. I recently added a third gadget to the toolbox: A pedometer.

I use the iPhone several different ways to help me get in shape.

I check e-mail on the iPhone while I'm warming up at a slow walk on the treadmill. I exercise first thing in the morning. I'm based in California, and I usually have a lot of e-mail piled up when I start the day from people from people on the East Coast.

I use the iPhone's built-in timer to keep track of how long I've been exercising.

And of course I listen to music on my iPhone while I work out. I've set up a couple of smart playlists in iTunes to help make sure I always have fresh music to listen to when I exercise, and to easily weed out the surprising number of crappy songs that have filtered into my music collection (could the number of crappy songs have something to do with my buying a Time-Life collection of 70s music CDs four years ago? Perhaps.)

On workdays, I can also use the iPhone to take emergency phone calls. I don't really get any calls that are all that urgent -- it's not like I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon and I need to be ready to rush to the operating room at any moment -- but it gives me peace of mind to know that people can reach me if they absolutely need to. And I have taken a couple of business calls while exercising; ironically enough, one of them was with an Apple PR person who recognized the sound of the iPhone alarm going off.

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Revealing The Laughably Low-Tech Video Set-Up At 'The Daily Show'

My latest InformationWeek story:

As technologists, we're prone to fall in love with the latest new technology. We think we require the most powerful PCs, the fastest networks, and the smartest smartphones to get our jobs done. But The Daily Show reminds us that we can achieve excellence even when our tools are woefully out-of-date.

The show specializes in intricate video reports that assemble footage of politicians behaving foolishly, often contradicting themselves many times over the course of years. You'd think the show must have some incredibly fancy high-tech video setup to accomplish all that, right? But you'd be wrong.

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Common-Sense Cybersecurity Recommendations For Our Next President

Our next President is going to have a big job securing our nation's IT against criminals and foreign enemies. Our data networks are an important part of the national infrastructure -- and therefore tempting military targets -- along with traditional infrastructure like dams, power plants, factories, and hospitals. Security expert Bruce Schneier has some short, sensible advice for what the next president will need to do.

Memo to Next President: How To Get Cybersecurity Right

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