I Think You Know Why I’m Calling You

John Gra­ham-Cum­ming recounts his suc­cess­ful efforts to have the British gov­ern­ment for­mal­ly apol­o­gize for its treat­ment of Alan Tur­ing: On the bus home I heard direct­ly that Alan Tur­ing’s nieces had many mem­o­ries of their Uncle Alan. They even still had his ted­dy bear. I hung up and sat at the back of the bus… Con­tin­ue read­ing I Think You Know Why I’m Call­ing You

So What Does Health Care Look Like in Other Countries?

So, what does health care and insur­ance look like in oth­er coun­tries? T.R. Reid answers five com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ings about oth­er coun­tries’ health care and insur­ance sys­tems: In many ways, for­eign health-care mod­els are not real­ly “for­eign” to Amer­i­ca, because our crazy-quilt health-care sys­tem uses ele­ments of all of them. For Native Amer­i­cans or vet­er­ans, we’re… Con­tin­ue read­ing So What Does Health Care Look Like in Oth­er Countries?

What It Says and What It Does

Ars Tech­ni­ca reports that the FCC asked the pub­lic how and if the term “broad­band” (as in inter­net con­nec­tion) should be defined, after it had pro­posed that “basic broad­band” as sim­ply 768kbps to 1.5Mbps (as in con­nec­tion speed). They also seemed to think that this should be based on the actu­al speed that providers have,… Con­tin­ue read­ing What It Says and What It Does

Nature Endorses Obama

Nature — One of the two lead­ing inter­na­tion­al sci­ence jour­nals — has an edi­to­r­i­al endors­ing Sen. Barack Oba­ma. Appar­ent­ly, this is the first time in the pres­ti­gious jour­nal’s 139 year his­to­ry that it has ever endorsed a can­di­date — for US pres­i­dent or oth­er­wise. a com­mit­ment to seek­ing good advice and tak­ing seri­ous­ly the find­ings… Con­tin­ue read­ing Nature Endors­es Obama

War on Photographers

Bruce Schneier on the cur­rent War on Pho­tog­ra­phers: …it’s non­sense. The 9/11 ter­ror­ists did­n’t pho­to­graph any­thing. Nor did the Lon­don trans­port bombers, the Madrid sub­way bombers, or the liq­uid bombers arrest­ed in 2006. Tim­o­thy McVeigh did­n’t pho­to­graph the Okla­homa City Fed­er­al Build­ing. The Unabomber did­n’t pho­to­graph any­thing; nei­ther did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Pho­tographs aren’t being… Con­tin­ue read­ing War on Photographers

RIAA Has Friends in Nashville

I sup­pose no one should be shocked that the state that calls “Music City” its cap­i­tal would end hav­ing clash­es between music fans and copy­right own­ers. Now, a state bill seeks to get state-fund­ed uni­ver­si­ties to do some of the dirty work. From ArsTech­ni­ca: A new bill pro­posed in the Ten­nessee state sen­ate aims to… Con­tin­ue read­ing RIAA Has Friends in Nashville

Yea, Sony?

Cable and tel­cos side with Com­cast in FCC Bit­Tor­rent dis­pute. From ArsTech­ni­ca: But oth­er parts of the pri­vate sec­tor have sent the FCC urgent requests for pro­tec­tion from poten­tial­ly unfair ISP behav­ior. Sony Elec­tron­ics, which now offers a wide vari­ety of legal con­tent for its web-enabled TV sets, wrote to the Com­mis­sion on Feb­ru­ary 13… Con­tin­ue read­ing Yea, Sony?