The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

As voted by PC World :

1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
10. dBASE IV (1988)
11. Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
12. PointCast (1996)
13. IBM PCjr. (1984)
14. Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
16. Comet Cursor (1997)
17. Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
19. OQO Model 1 (2004)
20. CueCat (2000)
21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
22. Apple Pippin @World (1996)
23. Free PCs (1999)
24. DigiScents iSmell (2001)
25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

Black Box Voting

It is important to understand that these attacks are permanent in nature, surviving through the election cycles. Therefore, the contamination can happen at any point of the device's life cycle and remain active and undetected from the point of contamination on through multiple election cycles and even software upgrade cycles.

These are the same machines that delivered the state of Ohio to Bush and decided the election. You may recall that Diebold was a heavy contributor to the Bush campaign. In a fall 2003 fundraising letter sent to Republicans, from Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell:

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."

Blue Security Quits

"When the company's founders first approached the broader anti-spam community and asked them what they thought of the idea, everyone said this was a terrible idea and that they would eventually cause a lot of collateral damage," Underwood said. "But it's also extremely unfortunate, because it shows how much the spammers are winning this battle."

Yes, this was a terrible idea -- one that should never have been launched. No one with half a clue would have considered these folks had even a remote chance of success. So what happened? The clueless spent their money and the bad guys won. Well, DUH! I can't call that "extremely unfortunate" -- it was a fore-gone, inevitable conclusion. And now it has concluded.

Who Owns Your Computer?

An excellent essay by Bruce Schneier:

Adware, software-as-a-service and Google Desktop search are all examples of some other company trying to own your computer. And Trusted Computing will only make the problem worse.

There is an inherent insecurity to technologies that try to own people's computers: They allow individuals other than the computers' legitimate owners to enforce policy on those machines. These systems invite attackers to assume the role of the third party and turn a user's device against him.

Codebreaking Colossus returns to Bletchley Park

Because it employed parallel processing to attack its problem, the Colossus machine was enormously powerful. Even today, a desktop PC would take a similar amount of time to crack a Lorenz key... It was the first ever programmable electronic computer, predating the American Eniac (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) by two years.

A forgotten piece of history, brought back to memory by the sale of an original Enigma on eBay today. Bidding is still open, but it's up to $48,700 now with over four hours left.

Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat

“For the past decade the risk and imminence of the use of biological agents by nonstate actors/terrorist organizations -- 'bioterrorism' -- has been systematically and deliberately exaggerated.” He immediately adds this practice “accelerated” after 9/11 and the mailings of powdered anthrax.

Because of the public and governmental perception that mitigation of allegedly catastrophic bioterrorism is of paramount importance , “the US biodefense research program appears to be drifting into violation” of the Biological Weapons Convention, an international arms control treaty which this country had an important role in building. It is a menacing development and has happened through a slippery evaluation process which justifies research into biological weapons threat capabilities and scenarios by repackaging what appears to be work with potential offensive application as defensive in nature.

BushCo. has been lying to us deliberately about the threat of "bioterrorism". This book, written by Milton Leitenberg for the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, accurately describes the lies and concocted movie plot threats. It would appear the motivation is simple: this country wants to develop CBW agents, but we signed a treaty saying we would not -- a treaty that we developed and pushed. By claiming instead to be working on cures and vaccines we can actually work to develop the very agents themselves. The difference between offensive and defensive development is only semantic.

The Founders Never Imagined a Bush Administration

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.