- RSA Encryption Algorithm Released into the public domain! Woo! They let it go early in order to create an opportunity to state the facts. Fine. I even read their statement.
- Amateur Webmaster Unveils Underworld Dealings is the Fox News profile of John Young, who runs Cryptome.
- Imagine a world without Amazon.com. I have. Especially given their
stated intention to sell the data they have on me. Technical books come
from Fatbrain.com or O'Reilly & Associates and just about everything
else comes via BookFinder.com. Amazon had me as a loyal customer
until they tried to enforce their Amazon One-Click patent. That turned
me off them and started me searching for alternatives. And now they've
told me they want to change their privacy policy so they can sell the data
they've collected on me*.
Well, to hell with 'em. I can't make them get rid of the information they've
already collected, but I can make damn sure they don't get any more.
Y'know it's trivially easy for me to add the following entry to my hosts
file in case I should even forget and try and access 'em:
www.amazon.com CNAME 127.0.0.1
but I'm probably not going to do that just yet, since I still use their database to get information on books that other vendors might not carry. - Amazon's new privacy regs may backfire is The Register's take on the situation. The Amazon manifesto is such a bald-faced, frontal assault on privacy that it confirms everyone's worst fears about the intentions of Internet marketeers, and is likely to have the ironic effect of finally inspiring Congress to pass at least one of the scores of privacy initiatives it has been dithering over during the past two years.