net.wars columns, published Fridays at News Wireless Net and at the net.wars blog:

• Bogus (5/15/09) - The British Chiropractic Association v. science writer Simon Singh. Amid all the hurt feelings, where's the truth? (also here)
• Automated systems all the way down (5/8/09) - Users see security as damage, and route around it. (also here)
• Twit crit (5/1/09) - Twitter: where the online party is this week. (also here)
• The way we were (4/24/09) - Four days, twelve perfect screenings. Yes, it's Roger Ebert's Film Festival. (also here)
• I think we're all pirates on this bus (4/17/09) - The Pirate Bay loses in court. Shouting nyah, nyah, nyah may not have been the best legal strategy. also here)
• Statebook of the art (4/10/09) - Government surveillance recast as an easy-to-use social network. If that scares you, help support the Open Rights Group. (also here)
• Copyright encounters of the third dimension (4/3/09) - The pending let's-get-physical version of the copyright wars. (also here)
• The view (3/27/09) - The question of the week: "Am I in it?" The complaint of the week: "I don't want to be in it." It's Google's Street View UK. (also here)
• The untweetable Xeroxness of being (3/20/09) - On the Internet, no one knows you're a fake, fictional Xerox machine. (also here)
• Threat model (3/13/09) - The House of Lords hears testimony about why deep packet inspektion is a really bad idea, and not just for advertising purposes. (also here)
• The camcorder conundrum (3/7/09) - Theft by camcorder or file-sharing? And is the latter really such a bad thing for the broader economy? (also here)
• Modern liberty (2/28/09) - The Modern Liberty Convention. (also here)
• Control freaks (2/20/09) - Facebook discovers democracy. Sort of. (also here)
• The Gattaca in Gossip Girl (2/13/09) - The privacy-less society. (also here)
• Forty-five years (2/6/09) - EU: term extension in sound recordings. (also here)
• Looking backward (1/30/09) - Governments move slowly; technology moves fast. (also here)
• Will tweet for food (1/23/09) - What Twitter users want. (also here)
• Health watch (1/16/09) - Steve Jobs' health problems. (also here)
• All change (1/9/09) - Newspaper death watch. (also here)
• No rest for 2009 (1/2/09) - Digital rights issues for 2009. (also here)

2008

• Apologies not accepted (26/12/08) - Why should staff apologise for their management's mistakes? (also here)
• Backbone (19/12/08) - The British Chiropractic Association sues Simon Singh for libel. (also here)
• Watching the Net (12/12/08) - IWF vs. Wikipedia. (also here)
• Saving seeds (12/5/08) - The UK's DNA database violates the European Convention on Human Rights. (also here)
• Mother love (11/28/08) - The Lori Drew cyberbullying case. (also here)
• The art of the impossible (11/21/08) - From the Convergence (un)conference. (also here)
• The USB stick in the men's room (11/14/08) - Involving people in an experience to reduce piracy's impact. (also here)
• Reality TV (11/7/08) - Persuading people to watch live TV. (also here)
• Machine dreams (10/31/08) - Defining artificial intelligence. (also here)
• Living by numbers (10/24/08) - Mining your own personal data. (also here)
• Mind the gap (10/17/08) - "80 years is just about exactly the right length of time for a given culture to recreate its past mistakes". (also here)
• Data mining snake oil (10/10/08) - Dataveillance won't prevent terrorism. (also here)
• Deprave and corrupt (10/3/08) - The Darryn Walker case. (also here)
• Wimsey's whimsy (9/26/08) - GikIII asks quirky questions that illuminate serious issues. (also here)
• Going places (9/19/08) - Dopplr. (also here)
• Slow news (9/12/08) - How a 6-year-old news story knocked 75% off the price of United Airlines shares in under an hour. (also here)
• Return of the browser wars (9/5/08) - Google Chrome and software as a Net service. (also here)
• Bannedwidth (8/29/08) - "ISPs should be wary of signing onto the rightsholders' bandwagon when their concern is user demand for bandwidth". (also here)
• Intimate Exchanges (8/22/08) - Live performance is uncopiable, but DVDs would still be nice.... (also here)
• License to Kill (8/15/08) - Patent claims, free licences and model trains. (also here)
• Broadcast of the Rings (8/8/08) - "There's a certain irony in the International Olympic Committee's choice of YouTube as its broadcast platform for the Beijing Olympics". (also here)
• All paid up (8/1/08) - Amazon Checkout, Paypal and anti-fraud algorithms. (also here)
• Who? (7/25/08) - Un-anonymizing data can be surprisingly easy. (also here)
• Ninety-five (7/18/08) - The EC extends rights in sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. (also here)
• Voters for sale (7/11/08) - The DMA opposes the withdrawal of the edited electoral register. (also here)
• The new normal (7/4/08) - "'Our way of life' is a moving target". (also here)
• Mistakes were made (6/27/08) - How HMRC managed to lose 25 million households' personal data. (also here)
• Print rules (6/20/08) - Why electronic newsletters can't replace printed ones. (also here)
• Naked in plain sight (6/13/08) - How easy it is for moderately capable Windows users to leave themselves vulnerable. (also here)
• The Digital Revolution turns 15 (6/6/08) - The Internet is changing our world, and very few predictions of its effects have been anywhere near correct. (also here)
• Ten (5/30/08) - Happy 10th birthday, Foundation for Information Policy Research! (also here)
• The haystack conundrum (5/23/08) - The Home Office wants to create a giant database to store all UK comms. How will they identify the important stuff in it? (also here)
• Everything new is old again (5/16/08) - Why do we keep falling for sexy new technologies? (also here)
• Swings and roundabouts (5/10/08) - The Government wants us to love the ID card. (also here)
• Bet and sue (5/2/08) - Online gambling and the good name of tennis. (also here)
• The shape of the mushroom (4/25/08) - When the world's data outgrows its storage... (also here)
• Like a Virgin (4/18/08) - Will Virgin try to charge providers for faster streaming? (also here)
• My IP address, my self (4/11/08) - Has the EU become the world's data protection policeman? (also here)
• Million Dollar Baby (4/4/08) - James Randi and his Million Dollar Challenge. Get in quick, it ends in 2010! (also here)
• Leaving Las Vegas (3/28/08) - Technology and the gaming industry. (also here)
• Copywrongs (3/21/08) - Discussions about music copyright rarely include musicians. (also here)
• Uninformed consent (3/14/08) - Surveillance and secrecy. (also here)
• Techitics (3/7/08) - Can technology reform politics? (also here)
• Phormal ware (2/29/08) - Spyware or privacy-friendly advertising? (also here)
• Strikeout (2/22/08) - Filesharing isn't going away, and the latest proposals are badly thought-out and unfair. (also here)
• Greedbay? (2/16/08) - eBay's change to its rating system displeases some users. (also here)
• If you have ID cards, drink alcohol (2/8/08) - "ID cards, though the heavens fall!" (also here)
• Microhoo! (2/1/08) - Or should that be Yahsoft? (also here)
• Scientology: Xenu strikes again (1/25/08) - The DDOS attacks on Sceintology sites. (also here)
• Harmony, where is thy sting? (1/18/08) - The EU wants to harmonize the national laws that apply to online content. (also here)
• Beyond biology (1/11/08) - Cryonics and its possible consequences. (also here)
• If God had meant us to vote... (1/4/08) - Let the tallest man win! (also here)

2007

• 2007 by numbers (12/28/07) - Looking back.... (also here)
• Enter password (12/21/07) - By their typing pattern will you know them. Maybe. (also here)
• Nativity plays (12/14/07) - Is faith so fragile that without school nativity plays it will cease to exist? (also here)
• Data hogs (12/7/07) - That great sucking sound you hear is Facebook swallowing you whole. (also here)
• Spam today and spam tomorrow (11/30/07) - Unfortunately, always spam today. (also here)
• Road block (11/23/07) - Information wants to be free, but data wants to leak. (also here)
• Strike (11/16/07) - net.wars supports the Writer's Guild. (also here)
• Watching you watching me (11/9/07) - What is CCTV for? Somehow, that debate never happens. (also here)
• Amateur hour (11/2/07) - Amateur, shamateur, hey, it's all "user-generated content" these days. (also here)
• Tomorrow's world (10/26/07) - Party in today's virtual worlds like it's 1999. (also here
• Money talks (10/19/07) - eBay comes clean about how much it overpaid for Skype. (also here)
• The permission-based society (10/12/07 - The TSA proposes to require advance clearance for all travelers in, above, or through US airspace. (also here)
• Back to high skool (10/5/07) - Facebook's big mistake: listing friends instead of enemies. (also here)
• Anything worth having is worth cheating for (9/28/07) - Floyd Landis, Mariano Puerta, and kangaroo courts. (also here)
• The summer of lost hats (9/21/07) - Energy, virtual worlds, security, and nanotechnology. It was quite a summer. (also here)
• Nothing to hide, no one to trust (9/14/07) - Everybody into the DNA database! (also here)
• Was that private? (9/7/07) - Why leave it to large organizations to invade our privacy when we can do it so effectively ourselves? (here)
• Snouting for bandwidtch (8/31/07) - Can the Internet industry really afford file-sharing? (also here)
• Game gods (8/24/07) - Virtual worlds were created to set people free, but they are the most controlled and data-logged online services of all. (also here)
• Welcome to Singapore (8/17/07) - For the want of a tiny plug, the kingdom was lost... (also here)
• Wall of sheep (8/10/07) - Dateline ignores real criminals to go after Defcon. (also here)
• The house always wins (8/3/07) - No matter how much security we bring to the table, there are always new risks. (also here)
• There ain't no such thing as a free Benidorm (7/27/07) - Deforming cyberspace to suit physical laws that don't exist. (also here)
• The cookie monster (7/20/07) - Google puts a Bandaid on its cookies. (also here)
• Constitutional convention (7/13/07) - A written constitution for Britain? (also here)
• Born digital (7/6/07) - Microsoft helps preserve British national archives. (also here)
• In search of the very, very small (6/29/07) - Exploring nanotechnology in Basel. (also here)
• Many hidden returns (6/22/07) - Heard the one about Britain's e-voting electoral trials? (also here)
• Six degrees of defamation (6/15/07) - How many links away do you have to be before it's safe to mention Michael Geist and Wayne Crookes? (also here)
• Beating galahrose (6/8/07) - It's a fight to the death over there on eBay. (also here)
• Britney Spears has good news for you (6/1/07) - Thoughts on the Google Developer day. (also here)
• Bent copyright (5/25/07) - Uri Geller takes on the EFF. (also here)
• Home improvement (5/18/07) - Building a computer: just like Legos. (also here)
The Blair we left behind (5/11/07) - Blair brought more surveillance and chewed away at civil liberties. New Labour, eh? (also here)
• Cryptanalysis (5/4/07) - Did Whitfield Diffie's work inventing public key cryptography protect our privacy - or invade it? (also here)
• My so-called second life (4/27/07) - More than a toy, these virtual worlds. (also here)
• Green spies (4/20/07) - Is the green movement being hijacked to serve the interests of mass surveillance? (also here)
• Let's make rules (4/13/07) - A code of conduct for the blogosphere? Get a grip, people. (also here)
• What's in a 2.0? (4/6/07) - The Web with rounded corners. (also here)
• Re-emerging technology (3/30/07) - New tech at etech, just like old tech except with knitting. (also here)
• Double the networks, double the neutralities (3/23/07) - Why do we care so much about network neutrality on the Internet and so little about it on the wireless networks? (also here)
• Going non-linear (3/16/07) - The BBC and the future of media. (also here)
• Your cheating heart (3/9/07) - If people lie about their credentials for volunteer jobs as Wikipedia editors, cheating just ain't what it used to be. (also here)
• Fusion cuisine and the Chamber of Legislative Horrors (3/2/07) - Looking for the worst of privacy-invasive legislation. Start with the UK and "data fusion". (also here)
• Equal prizes (2/23/07) - Frances Allen becomes the first woman ever to win the Alan M. Turing Award, and Wimbledon declares - at last - equal prize money. (also here)
• Quick fix (2/16/07) - Upgrade Quicken or die. (also here>)
• Getting out the vote (2/9/07) - Not even paper audit trails can save electronic voting. (also here)
• One copyright does not fit all (2/2/07) - Photographers' legitimate complaints about Gowers. (also here)
• Vote early, vote often... (1/26/07) - Just when you thought electronic voting was dead. (also here)
• Spineless (1/19/07) - Replacing knowledge with information: the problems with the NHS data spine. (also here)
• iPhone, schmiPhone (1/12/07) - Saying first what the world now agrees: the iPhone is very pretty, but who could stand to be tied to AT&T Wireless? (also here)
• Stonewalling (1/5/07) - Joel Stein fights reader feedback. (also here)

2006

• Resolutions for 2007 (12/29/06) - WIBNI.... (Not on newswireless.net)
• Thinking time (12/23/06) - Proposals for Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2007. (also here)
• I hear dead people (12/15/06) - Dead musicians share their opinion. (also here)
• In praise of Gowers (12/8/06) - Hooray! Let's hope the Government takes good sense on board. (also here)
• A SWIFT kick (12/1/06) - "Hidden, systematic, massive, and long-term" leakage of personal financial data to the US. (also here)
• Hadrian's Firewall (11/24/06) - Content blocking to be used by all UK ISPs by the end of 2007. (also here)
• Waiting for Gowers (11/17/06) - The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. (also here)
• ICANN dreams (11/10/06) - ICANN announces its three new board members. (also here)
• A fine and private place (11/3/06) - Which country to move to. (also here)
• Crossfire (10/27/06) - Freedom of speech does not mean condoning child abuse. (also here)
• Spam, spam, spam, and spam (10/20/06) - The Spamhaus court case. (also here)
• GoogTube (10/13/06) - Why Google bought YouTube. (also here)
• A different kind of poll tax (10/6/06) - A subtle way of controlling who votes. (also here)
• Doppelgangland (9/29/06) - Online impersonation. (also here)
• The last social mile (9/22/06) - Social entrepeneurism. (also here)
• Mobile key infrastructure (9/15/06) - Using mobile phones for authentication. (also here)
• Crossing the streams (9/8/06) - Streamed live tennis! (also here)
• The elephant in the dark (9/1/06) - Constructing common sense. (also here)
• Spamigation (8/25/06) - Litigation by webcrawler? (also here)
• Travel costs (8/18/06) - More thoughts on conspiracies and air travel restrictions. (also here)
• Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger (8/11/06) - Making air travel more unpleasant won't deter terrorists for long.... (also here)
• Hard times at the identity corral (8/4/06) - Amusing and unforeseen: the Government is having a hard time finding anyone willing to manufacture ID cards. (also here)
• Why I am standing for the ICANN board (7/28/06) - "Mr Kinnock, what do you say to people who accuse you of blatant electioneering?" "Vote for MEEE!" (also here)
• I blog, therefore I am (7/21/06) - Bloggers blog for many different reasons. (also here)
• Not too cheap to meter (7/14/06) - Bandwidth hogging could become ISPs' worst enemy. (also here)
• If it's Wimbledon it must be television (7/7/06) - Wimbledon's new video-on-demand service. (also here)
• Technical enough for government work (6/30/06) The future is sneaking up on us.... (also here)
• Survival of the piratest (6/23/06) - All the legal actions haven't even slowed down file-sharing. (also here)
• Security vs security, part II (6/16/06) - VoIP wiretapping - expensive, insecure and not likely to be much use. (also here)
• So long, and thanks for all the pink wishes (6/9/06) - The passing of a Usenet character. (also here)
• Boob job (6/2/06) - Livejournal bloggers turn their blogs off for a day in protest. (also here)
• Patent harmony (5/26/06) - European Community to ban software patents. (also here)
• Toll roads (5/19/06) - Will the telcos dominate the Internet? (also here)
• Map quest (5/12/06) - The future of GPS. (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, and Privacy XVI (5/5/06) - Conference zeitgeist. (also here)
• Who's afraid of the big, bad Google? (4/28/06) - Privacy concerns vs sheer usefulness. (also here)
• Adblogging (4/21/06) - Ads come to Livejournal. (also here)
• A question of balance (4/14/06) - The creators tend to be forgotten in the copyright business. (also here)
• Becoming virtual (4/7/06) - Dixons goes digital. (also here)
• Protect people, not data (3/31/06) - Finding the limits of the Information Commissioner's role. (also here)
• The IDs of March (3/24/06) - Ping-pong games...and the ID card wins. (also here)
• A fork in the code (3/17/06) - Which is harder, programming the code or reading the license? (also here)
• In search of clarity (3/10/06) - Is it clarity they want - or software patents? (also here)
• AOL's email tax (3/3/06) - Threat of AOL's introduction of fee-paid guaranteed email delivery probably exaggerated despite the EFF's fears. (also here)
• Digital magazines: still not ready for prime time (2/24/06) - You'd think Business Week would know better. (also here)
• Widows and orphans first (2/17/06) - Attributing copyrights. (also here)
• Security versus security (2/10/06) - Which security demand is more important: wiretapping VOIP or securing the Internet?(also here)
• Cubiclife (2/3/06) - Life in the office; unutterably anthropological. (also here)
• The revenge of the Digital Rights Manifesto (1/27/06) - Discussing the responses to last week's column. (also here)
• Digital Rights Manifesto (1/20/06) - the National Consumer Council has called for regulation of how DRM may be used. We present some handy suggestions for what that regulation should look like. (also here) Update (1/21/06): a lot of mail in response to this one. The most interesting one came from a games player who says that the copy protection embedded in some games renders his expensive debugging software inoperable. That's just nasty.
• How to be annoying and stay out of jail (1/13/06) - a new US law may (or may not) mean that anonymously posting annoying content is a crime (also here)
• A tempest in a Wikipedia (1/6/06) - Web contains inaccurate information; pictures at 11. (also here)

2005

• It's 2006: do you know where your data is? (12/30/05) - backups, the least-fixed problem in the computer industry. Even given the existence of things like Norton Ghost. (also here)
• Rumors of spam's death: greatly exaggerated (12/23/05) - the FTC says CAN-Spam is working. HA! (also here)
• Civil liberties got run over by a reindeer (12/16/05) - they finally passed data retention. But the fight continues... (also here)
• My TV (12/9/05) - Personal TV should be the killer app of IPTV. (also here)
• Pass the policy (12/2/05) - how about setting up a database to track policies as they are proposed around the world to keep track of policy laundering? (also here)
• Copyrighting data retention (11/25/05) - the new Open Rights Group discovers a rightsholder attempt to hijack the EU data retention directive. Final vote: December 13. Write your MEP. (also here)
• Governing the Internet (11/18/05) - WSIS ends, ICANN lives on, same time five years hence. (also here)
• Selling by the page (11/11/05) - unbundling the book. (also here)
• Fighting software patents (11/4/05) - Florian Mueller runs for EV50 European of the Year. (The Inquirer and Newswireless.net columns were different this week - the newswireless.net one is below.)
• Sony got root (11/4/05) - big Japanese companies that make consumer electronics and own studios can't be hackers. Can they, George?
• Does he take PINs with his chips? (10/28/05) - it's not enough to be disabled, you have to fight your bank, too. (here)
• Biometrics for babies (10/21/05) - can you really get a baby to give you a fingerprint? One for next year's Ig Nobel awards, we think. (also here)
• Dumber people can run Linux (10/14/05) - tried Ubuntu yet? (also here)
• Spot the terrorist (10/7/05) - find the terrorists in a haystack of data. (also here)
• The new Scopes Monkey trials (9/30/05) - what do Intelligent Design and the Flying Spaghetti Monster have in common? (also here)
• Life license (9/23/05) - watch out for counterfeit babies. (also here)
• Ecommerce talks (9/16/05) - eBay buys Skype, everybody's gotta have a VoIP. (also here)
• e-Ostriches (9/9/05) - yet another conference about fixing the Internet. (also here)
• Unconvergence (9/2/05) - who the hell invented the SCART plug, anyway? (also here)
• Patent pending (8/26/05) - the kind of patent the European Patent Office grants these days. (also here)
• For sale: conferencing system, slightly used (8/19/05) - the WELL is for sale by Salon. (also here)
• The big, black bin bag of data retention (8/12/05) - it's back, and this time it's European. (also here)
• Time bandits (8/5/05) - let no ITU delegation steal your precious leap seconds. (also here) For more on this, see the excellent Future of Leap Seconds Page.
• Fifteen years on the electronic frontier (7/29/05) - the EFF at fifteen: do we need one in the UK? (also here)
• Officially irrelevant (but we want the ID card anyway) (7/22/05) - British government in shockingly rational post-explosion moment (can it last?). (also here)
• Ten (7/15/05) - if you're a pioneering Internet business either you're ten or you've succumbed to the alternative. Let's party! (also here)
• Got root? (7/8/05) - the Internet keeps working despite the US's recent decision to retain control of ICANN, the next step in ten years of fighting over Internet governance. (also here)
• Through an animation, darkly (7/1/05) - it probably wasn't wise to check on the progress of the ID cards bill and the Grokster decision while watching Wimbledon. (also here)
• If you build it, they will come (6/24/05) - smut: Tom Lehrer loved it. (also here)
• Restaurant mathematics (6/17/05) - Martin Gardner on CD! (also here)
• A chip off the old Apple (6/10/05) - Intel, Motorola... innards don't matter any more (also here)
• Breaking the kneecaps of email (6/3/05) - five and a half months after Verizon's inept email blocking policy was complained about...it's still going on. Just because I'm complaining loudly DOESN'T MEAN I'M A SPAMMER. (also here)
• Ybat yvir pelcgb (5/27/05) - dance on the grave of crypto regulation. While you can. (also here) Update (5/28/05): A reader points out a slight inaccuracy, in that in fact the online VAT filing service doesn't *require* you to use a digital certificate. You may either sign up for a user ID and password *or* use a digital certificate. I must say, this wasn't plain to me from looking at the site. In any event, the main point stands - that is, who offers digital certificates and on how limited a basis they are used.
• The Internet calls 911 (5/20/05) - well, it would if it could. (also here)
• Bloggers don't lie (5/13/05) - no, really. Only journalists lie. (also here)
• The robot in your phone (5/6/05) - "I can help you with that! Transferring your call..." (also here)
• Tax the iPod! (4/29/05) - a tax on all your storage media! (also here)
• Microsoft dezhurnaya 2.0 (4/22/05) - you think Microsoft runs on software and high-tech computers? No. Behind that geeky exterior the company runs on a network of receptionists. (also here)
• Pass the e-port (4/15/05) - RFID chips in passports. It would be a good joke if it were April Fool's. But...they're serious. (also here)
• You own your own 20th anniversary (4/8/05) - the WELL turns 20, complete with parties, splinter parties, and faction parties. (also here) Reader complaints: I forgot to mention BIX, and I forgot to say that WELL stands for "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link".
• The 4 Conspiracy (4/1/05) - mind the date. (also here) Thanks to dj Walker-Morgan for the original idea and many of the technical details, and to Ian Ridpath for general advice.
• Abort, RetrID, Fail? (3/25/05) - last chance for the ID card before Parliament disbands for the election? Or will it still be Out There? (also here) By the way, did you know you can watch the deliberations live over the Web?
• Are you now, or have you ever been...a journalist? (3/18/05) - well, have you? (also here) A day after this ran, I found out about Canadian blogger Jeremy Wright's run-in with a US immigration officer who was apparently unable to believe that a) blogging could be a real job or b) anyone would go to the US to meet people they'd never spoken to. Where *does* the US immigration service find staff who don't know about email and IM?
• Divided by a common television (3/11/05) - The BBC: the open source movement of the TV world? (also here)
• Protection management, copy control (3/4/05) - the DVB goes to copy-protect high-definition digital television. (also here)
• Shooting phish in a barrel (2/25/05) - Phishing gets smarter; consumers stay the same. (also here)
• Seven dirty indecencies (2/18/05) - Inflatable boob fines hit the FCC. Or maybe that's Fine inflatables hit the FCC boobs. We're still juggling. (also here)
• You can click, but you can't hide (2/14/05) - Torrent sites continue to disappear right and left. The latest: Lokitorrent, which had sworn to fight back in the courts.(also here)
• Verizon, heal thyself (2/4/05) - Yo, Verizon, I'm not just a non-person to your email system, I'm also a shareholder. (also here)
• The year September finally ended (1/28/05) - Of course, it never really will. But a person can dream. (also here)
• .net wars (1/21/05) - Meanwhile, back at ICANN they're redelegating .net. (also here)
• Speed traps (1/14/05) - Why is a raven like a writing desk? Why is file-sharing like speeding? (also here)
• A case of the torrents (1/7/05) - And then the MPAA came for BitTorrent... (also here)

2004

• The 2005 wish list (12/31/04) - If only, if only.... (also here)
• Let us now praise famous Blunketts (12/24/04) - Farewell, Blunkett; yet ID cards are still with us. (also here)
• Skeptics 48, Marc Wootton 0 (12/17/04) - Trying to fool skeptics: a losing game. (also here)
• Papers, please (12/10/04) - Total surveillance draws closer. Even though Blunkett resigned five days later. (also here)
• Ubiq (12/3/04) - Does Japan lead the way to ubiquitous computing? aka, "Not the Lost in Translation tour". (also here)
• Every cloud has a Verizon lining (11/26/04) - Why *shouldn't* Philadelphia have its municipal wireless? (also here)
• Remote control (11/19/04) - TiVo turns to the dark side. (also here)
• Bushed (11/12/04) - Is it real or is it Diebold? Only their voting technologists know for sure. (also here)
• Chad's revenge (11/5/04). Chad wants PC salespeople to stop treating him like he's an idiot. Lose the Windows 98, pal. (also here)
• The unbearable Internet Explorerness of configuration - Oct 29, 2004. Why - why? - does equipment running Linux inside make its Web-based configurator only fully usable by Internet Explorer? Shurely shome mishtake. (also here)
• Securing flight - October 22, 2004. Ah, the madness of what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater". (also here)
• The empires strike back (10/15/04) - Decentralized sites, distributed law enforcement. (also here)
• Carbon-dating the Internet (10/8/04) - Jeez, the thing's inventors are still alive and no one can decide how old it is. (also here)
• The ideal home show (10/1/04) - Actually, I just want a house that lets my friends in when I'm not home. (also here)
• Security must be seen to be done (9/24/04) - What do Cat Stevens and John Gilmore have in common? (also here)
• Flight risk (9/17/04) - ah, US Airways, we knew it well. (also here)
• Fame and the Strange story of Susanna M (9/10/04) - How fame came to live with Susanna Clarke. (also here)
• The herd instinct (9/3/04) - cue CNBC's picture of stampeding bulls. (also here)
• Distrusted systems (8/27/04) - The EC, Microsoft, and antitrust. No, it's not Windows, it's ContentGuard. And this time, it's Time-Warner.
(also here)
• Somebody else's spam (8/20/04) - LINX joins the fray. (also here as "Spam-sensitive sunglasses")
• Morality plays (8/13/04) - Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make Olympic athletes. (also here)
• Worst PR sites of 2004 (8/6/04) - Ooops. Object Marketing got left out by mistake.(also here)
• Your domain name dollars at work (7/30/04) - ICANN-watching. (also here)
• Incitement to piracy (7/23/04) - Copy meee... cooopppy meee.... (also here)
• PIN the signature on the chip (7/16/04) - No need to sign here. (also here)
• Leaks from the top (7/9/04) - Fans, Friends and file-sharing. (also here)
• Video daze (7/2/04) - Video editing - don't try this at home, folks! (also here)
• Old enough to drink (6/25/04) - DNS is 21 years old. (also here)
• Never mind who I am, who are *you*? (6/18/04) - Authentication needs to be a two-way process. (also here)
• White hats, black hats, who's got the grey hat? (6/11/04) - Microsoft vs. Linux? Not really...more like "Five Guys Named Nick" (also here) Addendum (9/7/04): Microsoft's Nick McGrath (that would be the blue-flannel Nick) says about that "maybe our people" comment: "From the heart: our developers are the lifeblood of our company.")
• Think of the time you'll save (6/4/04) - Sometimes being a Luddite makes economic sense. (also here)
• The BBC's shagging marmots (5/28/04) - The BBC puts sex and violence online - its old wildlife documentaries, that is. (also here)
• Follow the database (5/21/04) - The draft ID card proposal is released. Comment while you can! (also here)
• Taxation with representation (5/14/04) - Encourage students to learn, not just consume. (also here)
• Buffetted by Google (5/7/04) - Financial punditry and the Google IPO. (also here)
• Can we? May we? Will we? (4/30/04) - The creator of the Internet Archive wants universal access to all of human knowledge. (also here)
• Scored: Who's watching the watchers (4/23/04) - From the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference 2004 (also here)
• Taking the stupidity out of "Stupid Patent Tricks" (4/16/04) - Time to revamp the patent system? (also here)
• Money makes the electrons go around (4/9/04) - So why *do* digital downloads cost as much as CDs? (also here)
• The message is the medium (4/2/04) - Dj, text home. (also here)
• A national database or 60,000 more policemen? (3/26/04) - Not that you're being *asked* which you'd prefer.... (also here)
• Ask not for whom the taxman tolls... (3/19/04) - The Inland Revenue turns its eye on non-resident tennis star Andre Agassi. (also here)
• A hundred lawyers at the bottom of a can of spam: a darn good start (3/12/04) - The big test for the CAN-SPAM legislation. (also here)
• Get thee behind me, Plaxo (3/5/04) - Just stop sending me those stupid messages. (also here) Update (2/7/05): A week or two ago Plaxo's new CEO, Ben Golub, called, saying he was interested in talking over with Plaxo's critics what could be done to make us less critical. In the course of the conversation, several ideas surfaced: 1) extend the company's privacy policy to its opt-out list, since one reason people keep getting annoyed is that they're reluctant to give their email addresses to a company that from their point of view is already violating their privacy; 2) (not a privacy issue per se, but an interesting feature idea) amending the software so that it can follow either the person whose details you have or that person's job - often what you're interested in is not the person but the role. It will be interesting to see if either of these ideas is adopted. Update 2 (5/1/05): Ben Golub tells me the service has now explicitly extended its privacy policy to those who sign up for the opt-out list, and has changed the defaults in the client software to discourage users from blanket-emailing their entire address book. Roger Clarke, whose concerns about social networking services of a variety of types were mentioned in this column, raised in his paper "Little Black Books" the question of what the business model of an outfit like Plaxo could be. Golub says the company makes its money from premium services, such as deduping and cleaning user address books, and also from commissions on products and offers relating to the information they already have - eg, you've entered someone's birthday into your contact book, and the service reminds you and offers you a link to send flowers. That kind of thing. Makes sense to me.
• eCrimes of the century (2/27/04) - Report from the eCrime 2004 congress. (also here)
• Broadcast quality, broadcast alienation (2/20/04) - Online ads promise to become even more intrusive and annoying. (also here)
• Everybody ought to have a Mouse (2/13/04) - Comcast casts its beady eye over Disney's charms. (also here)
• Identifying entitlement (2/6/04) - Finally: they admit it *is* a national ID card. It certainly quacks like one. (also here)
• The Deaning of America (1/30/04) - The Net as a political tool. (also here)
• Does he take electrons? (1/23/04) - The very difficult life of a blind Web surfer. (also here)
• The vanishing Post Office of Sandycombe Road, Kew (1/16/04) - If only the Royal Mail would get its act together.... (also here)
• The robot centurions (1/9/04) - Technology with a conscience? Or electronic snitches? (also here)
• The 2004 wish list (1/2/04) - What we *really* want for New Year's resolutions. (also here)

2003

• Only connect (12/26/03) - Comcast again: how to become a monopolist and lock down the Internet. (also here)
• Music roasting on an open fire (12/19/03) - Wal-Mart announces its own downloadable music store. (also here)
• Who's in charge of the Internet? (12/12/03) - The World Summit on the Information Society meets this week, achieving...what? (also here)
• Beware of geeks bearing gifts (12/5/03) - What Santa might bring if we're good little techies. (also here)
• Salute the flag (11/28/03) - The FCC allows broadcasters to insert a copy-blocking flag in HDD transmissions. (also here)
• This little light of mine (11/21/03) - Twinkle twinkle little LED. (also here)
• Cheaper by the exabyte (11/14/03) - The volume of information, on the Net and elsewhere, grows exponentially. (also here)
• Stealing bandwidth (11/7/03) - Free wireless broadband or a knotty moral problem? (also here)
• Two Martinas and one party-pooper (10/31/03) - Will the real Martina Navratilova please stand up? (also here)
• Yellow semen (10/24/03) - The glory motive treats athletic anti-doping programs as damage and routes around them. (also here)
• Who are you? (10/17/03) - ID cards. Blunkett still wants them. Blair sometimes wants them. Straw doesn't want them any more. We think. (also here)
• Eavesdropping (10/10/03) - From the Nielsen Norman User Experience event. And at last, some credit for me! (also here)
• Strangers on the Net (10/3/03) - Do you know who your computer's been talking to recently? (also here)
• Coming soon to a mobile phone near you (9/26/03) - Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam. And then there's Direct Marketing. That's not got much spam in it. (also here)
• Deja-vu all over again (9/19/03) - Bad public policies never die. (also here)
• The mills of Xenu grind exceeding slow (9/12/03) - Scientology - still slugging it out with the 'Net, 10 years on. (Check out the awe-inspiringly inappropriate ads on the Inq page!) - . (also here)
• Who killed Operation Ore? (9/5/03) - The problems of evidence in computer-related crimes. (also here)
• Six degrees of virus infection (8/29/03) - The Grand Convergence of spam and viruses looms.... (also here)
• It is preferable that the ears be exposed (8/22/03) - The hoops you have to jump through to get a US visa. (also here)
• Trivia pursuits (8/15/03) - Playing really stupid games on IRC. (also here)
• There will come soft sprinklers (8/8/03) - Visiting IBM's Smart House. (also here)
• Suspected terrorist (8/1/03) - Of course he's a terrorist, it says so on John Gilmore's button. (also here)
• Viral marketing is dead: tell all your friends (7/25/03) - There is no escape. (also here)
• The War on Some Files (7/18/03) - Electron-pushers; the new scourge of our youth! (also here)
• A highly organised minority (that can be safely ignored) (7/11/03) - Not only does Blunkett think you want an ID card; he thinks you'll pay £40 for the privilege. Make that £100. (also here)
• Gosford Perl (7/4/03) - A descent into the Underworld brings wisdom and spam-filtering. (also here)
• Eat, drink, and enjoy your cheap DVDs, for tomorrow we tax (6/27/03) - VAT comes to the Net. (also here)
• The unbearable fan-friendliness that is tennis (6/20/03) - Disintermediate tennis now! (also here)
• The new Mrs Thing (6/13/03) - At last, your very own robotic household slave! Well, within limits.... (also here) (Addendum (2/7/05): In answer to a reader's query, no, I wasn't sent the Roomba as a PR freebie; I bought it. Also, after a few months it became clear that it really doesn't like long hair. The hair gets tangled in the rollers and the thing stops functioning every few minutes and hides in a corner emitting piteous beeps. But when it works, it's wonderful.)
• New math (6/6/03) - In 1984, 2+2=5. In 2003, approximately 6000=1. According to the British government, that is. (also here)
• Shotgun truce (5/30/03) - Microsoft gives AOL money; AOL gives Microsoft even more market penetration. Assume the position! (also here)
• Crossing the streams (5/23/03) - US media may be summarily deregulated. Murdoch licks his chops in anticipation. (also here)
• Better feuding through email (5/16/03) - "Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." (also here)
• Data retainers unite! You have nothing to lose but your freedoms (5/9/03) - This may be your last chance to speak up... (also here)
• The big blue gap (5/2/03) - Bluetooth has conquered Europe, but not the USA. (also here)
• I ain't never seen no horses download it (4/25/03) - Will file-sharing destroy independent labels and artists? (also here)
• No deposit, no return (4/18/03) - The Legal Deposit Libraries Bill - how far should it go? (also here)
• By their numbers shall ye know them - not (4/11/03) - The ENUM proposals to migrate phone numbers onto the Internet. (also here)
• The land of the increasingly insecure (4/4/03) - Computers, Freedom & Privacy - 10 years on the frontlines. (also here)
• CFP special: US crime database doesn't have to be accurate. (4/2/03) - Life imitates Brazil. (also here)
• The museum-ready Internet (3/28/03) - How do you exhibit the Internet? The Tech Museum of Innovation is working on it.... (also here)
• What movie was that, anyway? (3/21/03) - The Conqueror, starring John Wayne, Susan Hayward and a blizzard of Nevada fallout? (also here)
• Disproportionate costs (3/14/03) - What are the costs of mismanaged Government IT projects? (also here)
• Surveillance by design (3/7/03) - Privacy - you don't know what you've got till it's gone. (also here)
• A snob's paradise (2/28/03) - Ignored by the bloggerati. (also here)
• Shoot the cryptographer (2/21/03) - What they don't want you to know... (also here)
• Don't mention the war (2/14/03) - A wish-list for aging techies. (also here)
• The alternative universe of stupid people (2/7/03) - Invading our reality with their pointless security measures! (also here)
• How to stop worrying and love data retention (1/31/03) - "I need to know everything! How else can I judge whether or not I need to know it?" (also here)
• The most dangerous hacks (1/24/03) - Hello Mitnick; goodbye Rosen. (also here)
• Of course, you know this means WAR (1/17/03) - Fight for your right to file-share! (also here)
• A resolution greatly to be wished (1/9/03) - A New Year wish-list. (also here)
• The view from afar (1/3/03) - Seeing cyberspace through others' eyes. (also here)

2002

• Defending your Net (12/27/02) - What is it we're really fighting to save? (also here)
• Let the Funk Brothers roll (12/20/02) - Session musicians; did the work, didn't get the royalties. (also here)
• Entitle that! (12/12/02) - UK identity cards "no threat to civil liberties". Ha. Ha. Ha. (also here)
• Doin' the DMCA rag (12/6/02) - Get creative with copyright law! (also here)
• How do you know it's me? (11/29/02) - Identity theft. (also here)
• Life in a double-wide (11/22/02) - The fun of dual monitors. (also here)
• The Poindexter-industrial complex (11/15/02) - The Homeland Security Act. Feel the fear. (also here)
• Reinvention of pens past (11/8/02) - The writing's already on the wall for the tablet PC. (also here)
• Out-of-print on demand (11/1/02) - In defence of us dead-tree collectors. (also here)
• Buy ten backhoes (10/25/02) - The attack on the root servers. (also here)
• Voters in, garbage out (10/18/02) - E-voting: why it's not a good idea. (also here)
• Playing God (10/11/02) - The convergence between games and movies. (also here)
• Freeing the Mouse (10/4/02) - More on the European Union Copyright Directive. Protest before it's too late! (also here)
• Satellite days (9/27/02) - A modest proposal - the tracked society. (also here)
• Weightlifting (9/20/02) - Travels with a laptop, a PDA, an MP3 player and such, plus all their associated batteries. (also here)
• Forbidden fruits (9/13/02) - Censorship on the Net, political and corporate. (also here)
• Pro-choice (9/6/02) - The gradual erosion of our privacy. (also here)
• The Undead (8/30/02) - Which medium is the perishable one? (also here)
• Stealing is stealing is stealing (8/23/02) - Hack Big Media! (also here)
• Remembrance of magazines past (8/16/02) - The death of print media? Not likely.... (also here)
• Sue...... this link (8/9/02) - Enforce this! (also here)
• By any other name the emperor would still be Monday (8/2/02) - Corporate rebranding and ICANN power struggles. (also here)
• Entitle this! (7/26/02) - The not-too-well-hidden costs of the "entitlement card". (also here)
• The me-ness of being (7/19/02) - Get your demented three-year-old here. My pictures. MY computer. MY NETWORK! (also here)
• Let them eat broadband (7/12/02) - Understanding (though not necessarily forgiving) BT. (also here)
• Disabling technologies (7/5/02) - Microsoft "gets security". In its own unique and much-loved way, no doubt. (also here)
• Get big fast, get small faster (6/28/02) - "I make an accounting error. You engage in creative accounting. They are WorldCom." (also here)
• Unwiring tennis (6/21/02) - Tennis journalists still in the pre-Information Age. (also here)
• Would you like spies with that? (6/14/02) - Privacy, retention, anti-circumvention and fun at NTK's Festival of Inappropriate Technology. (also here)
• The dataveillance society (6/7/02) - European Parliament decides to allow mass data retention. (also here)
• The tennis player that roared (5/31/02) - Steffi Graf vs Microsoft. Bizarrely, I'm in agreement with MS... here
• The gap (5/24/2002) - Like the generation gap, only with memory chips. (also here)
• A marker pen, tape, and a taste for Celine Dion (5/17/2002) - Copy protection technology plumbs new depths of stupidity. (also here)
• A money of our own (5/10/02) - Psst! Want to run your own monetary system? (also here)
• Geeks and bitches (5/3/02) - "Geek": offensive, or badge of honor? (also here)
• Computers, Freedom, Privacy, Mk XII (4/26/02) - CFP 2002. (also here)
• Fifty more sets of buggers (4/19/02) Extra! State survey of US wiretappers introduced.
• EFF awards Pioneer prizes (4/19/02) Extra! Electronic Frontier Foundation awards!
• The third estate (4/19/02) - Balancing digital rights among creators, distributors, and consumers. (also here)
• DTI off its shopping trolley (4/12/02) - DTI finally gets round to launching a consultation on the draft regulations to implement the EU ecommerce directive. Which was due to be fully implemented by Jan 17th. (also here)
• Dear Chairman Coble... (4/5/02) - Letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. (also here)
• The death wish (3/29/02) - why AT&T Wireless seems to hate pre-pay. (also here)
Update: this was before AT&T Wireless was swallowed up by Cingular.
• Let a million censors bloom (3/22/02) - ICRA launches Internet rating scheme. (also here)
• Ten things I hate about Flash (3/15/02) - Designers: the curse of the Web. Readers' letters. (Column also here)
• You can't make money on the Internet (3/8/02) - Murdoch's president of operations says there's no valid business model. (also here)
• Navigating the ICANN way (3/1/02) - Proposed ICANN reforms: more money, more power, more staff. Can we say, "central point of failure"?
• European patent tricks (2/22/02) - European Commission announces its proposals for software patenting directive.
• Watching the Internet watchers (2/15/02) - Internet Watch Foundation goes into the censorship business.
• Big Brothers (2/8/02) - National ID cards: a courageous decision?
• The Sound of Money (2/1/02) - Ah, Napsterwe hardly knew ye.
• Battle of the Titans (1/26/02) - AOL sues Microsoft.
• By any other name (1/18/02) - ICANN wranglings.
• Creative Accounting (1/11/02) - Sneaky accounting practices.
• Dumber people can run Windows (1/4/02) - Another leaked MS memo.

2001

• 2001 in review (12/28/01) - What the psychics didn't predict...
• Care in the community (12/21/01) - Online communities treated badly by their hosts.
• Remembrance of postings past (12/14/01) - The wonders of Usenet, now archived by Google.
• BT’s Stupid Patent Tricks (12/7/01) - BT still suing Prodigy over their infringement of alleged hyperlink patent.
• Preserving our freedoms (12/1/01) - Bad US and UK legislation in the wake of the WTC terrorist attack.
• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... (11/23/01) - "the state of ecommerce: desperate, unresponsive, inaccessible, and badly trained."
• Net is the mother of re-invention (11/16/01) - P2P and the once and future decentralized Internet.
• Save the Cookie (11/9/01) - Banning cookies and other idiotic pieces of legislation.
• Digital rights and the new era of world terrorism (11/2/01) - Antiterrorism doesn't justify banning strong cryptography.

And...

The full text, online of the 1998 book - or buy net.wars (1998)

or From Anarchy to Power (2001)

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