Benlog

Tim Berners-Lee has a brilliant summary of why Net Neutrality matters. Yes, it is regulation, but it’s the basic regulation necessary to maintain the fair play rules of the Internet, where any little guy can put up a web site that is just as good as the big guy. If you’re allergic to regulation, consider [...]

My thesis defense, aka “viva voce”, aka “soutenance” is next Thursday, 9am. It’s open to the public, so if you’re really interested in cryptographic voting systems, you can come on over to the Stata Center. Now back to my slides….

It turns out, I’m giving another presentation before my defense… well, sort of, I’m on a panel at the Harvard Berkman Center’s Identity Mashup Conference in 10 days. Lots of very interesting folks getting together to discuss online identity. It should be quite interesting.

Dear Boston Globe Editors, Jeff Jacoby, in his column on June 7th, takes issue with Senator Kennedy for calling proponents of the FMA “bigots.” Sometimes, however, some opinions are indeed proof of bigotry. Some laws, like the FMA. are indeed discriminatory. That religious leaders have signed on to the FMA, or that a majority of [...]

So I’ve found that the cross-domain AJAX meme just won’t die, with folks writing articles that seem to miss the issue of firewalled content, at least at first (in that article, a reader comment eventually brings it up, though the crux of the article is focused on far less important issues.) Somehow, the point is [...]

If this is true, then I am truly and deeply ashamed to be represented by this administration: The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Conventions that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” according to knowledgeable military officials. – Baltimore Sun, June 5, 2006 “The overall thinking,” [...]

I was shocked today to learn that Alan Kotok passed away. I knew Alan a bit from my work with the W3C. I only knew his latest accomplishments, like running W3C operations, including all web sites, repositories, member administration interfaces, and such. So I can’t help but feel like a petty idiot. A couple of [...]