Tech-related news items

[unixronin]

• 2004:  Bill Gates promises Windows Vista will support RSA SecurID tokens and other two-factor authorization methods, predicts "death of the password".  2006:  Another promised Vista feature bites the dust.  Vista is "expected to include a password management system called InfoCards".  Wonder if it'll be as successful as MS Passport and MS Wallet?

• It transpires the US Government has been exploiting a loophole in the Privacy Act by buying up consumer data from commercial vendors like ChoicePoint, which are allowed to collect data that the government is forbidden from collecting for its own use.  This raises a very cogent question:  If the Government is not allowed to accumulate databases of this information for Government use that's at least assumed to be important to the nation, why in nineteen purple iridescent hells are commercial interests allowed to collect it to sell for profit?!?

• A newly discovered asteroid, designated 2006 HZ51, is estimated to be about 800m in diameter and could hit the Earth as soon as June 21, 2008, the earliest of 165 possible impact chances.  However, so far there are only only 24 hours of observations on which to base the orbit calculations, so there's a very wide margin of error.

• A new study of the ozone layer predicts recovery by 2050, but notes that its composition may be subtly different, and this may affect how much protection it offers from solar UV radiation.

• NASA Administrator Michael Griffin blames the inefficiency of US industry for space program failures.  Well, that's his theory; personally, I'd blame government inefficiency and pork-barrel-driven engineering.

• And in a probably-futile move, 10 US states (California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont) have sued the Federal Government over fuel-efficiency standards, saying that current CAFE standards "create incentives to build larger, less fuel-efficient models" that result in energy shortages and increase air pollution.  Several environmental groups have filed or plan to file similar lawsuits.

Comments

[koyote.livejournal.com]

your second and fifth point as stated are fairly obviously related. and yet another argument against incompetently regulated and enforced oligarchal 'free markets'

the fifth point especially, is interesting. the inefficiency he speaks of *IS* pork barrelling. and food troughing. companies don't want to *work* for the money when they can make $40k for free off of every warm body they assign to extra bean counting, and $400,000 extra for free off of every revision change.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

Microsoft promised an object oriented file system in 1993 to ship with Cairo (NT4?) in 1995. They have anounced that contrary to previous statements, it will not ship with Vista.