Flux
War Is Peace, Ignorance Is Bliss: A reader faxed us a gem from The New Paper, a daily rag in Singapore. Next to a large picture of a smiling George Yeo, minister for information and the arts, is a headline proclaiming "Why We Censor." The text reads: "We continue to censor our films, books, magazines, and television programmes, not because censorship can ever be 100 percent effective, not even 20 percent effective, but because the act of censorship is itself symbolic and an affirmation to young and old of the values that we hold as a society." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Meanwhile, over in Canada: It's not just the government that has an "attitude" on permanent loan from France. The union representing Canadian actors is also hellbent on proving its ignorance. The group claims that satellite systems like RCA's DirecTV are threatening Canadian culture, and should therefore pay at least 10 percent of revenues into a fund that creates and promotes Canadian television and film work.
Not That the US Is Immune to Stupidity: You've heard the story of how the US government claims exporting cryptographic information in "machine-readable form" is akin to smuggling nuclear warheads. But, until now, you weren't sure how to test such an absurd notion. There's an easy way: wear a T-shirt emblazoned with the perl/RSA encryption code in a machine-readable font and a machine-readable bar code. Then try to fly to, say, Colombia. Do such T-shirts exist? They do indeed, and for US$12.36 - which covers cost only, no profit - one could have been yours (they are sold out for now). Conceived by Josh Osborne and marketed and produced by Joel Furr (majordomo@acpub.duke.edu), the shirts also feature the First, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments to the US Constitution - crossed out - and a comment about how the garment is a controlled munition. Non-US residents, however, cannot purchase the shirts - that would be illegal exportation. Want one? Make sure your papers are in order.
Publish This: A New York state judge recently held Prodigy to a higher standard of libel than other online services because of its practice of censoring naughty words. The case, involving a Prodigy member who used the service to accuse a financial firm of illegal practices, could well set an interesting precedent for free speech on online services: either you control everything, or you control nothing seems to be the motto.
Registration Wizard: A blurb that ran in a May edition of Information Week notes that the beta version of Windows 95 contains a "virus" called Registration Wizard - the program searches all the systems on a network, gets the lowdown on hardware and software configurations, and then uploads that information to Microsoft during an optional online registration process. A Microsoft official confirmed the existence of such a program, but said it is local only to the user's computer and that the user can easily opt out of sending the data. Registration Wizard simply automates the same questions found on the hard-copy registration card, the spokesperson said. True, the process does use The Microsoft Network to upload the information, and true again, Microsoft will use the data to market on a one-to-one basis. But if stuff like this really bothers you, just do what everyone else does with the paper version - choose not to fill out the card.
