This week, the House is conducting hearings on whether analyst research on stocks is biased. I hear that next week they’re inviting some witnesses up to Capitol Hill to determine whether the Pope is Catholic. The consensus seems to be that yes, in fact, the system of analyst research is horribly biased and corrupt, but then again, you’d have to be a fool to listen to analysts anyway, right? Fortunately, investment banks are working hard to restore their credibility by adopting a code of conduct and list of best practices for analysts to follow. Unfortunately, adherence to the code of conduct is voluntary. I imagine that will turn out about as well as those voluntary pollution regulations for power plants did in Texas.

Honeypots and the Honeypot Project: Bruce Schneier takes a look at the honeypot project, a network specifically designed to be hacked. The machines are monitored closely in order to gather data on how networks are attacked and what intruders do once they’ve broken in. The rate at which machines on the Internet are probed and attacked is just jaw-dropping.

D’oh!

Here’s a short list of questions I think the media should be asking about missile defense. If all of the questions can be answered affirmatively, then I say we should go for it:

1. Do we face a credible threat (or anticipate facing one in the near future) that a missile defense system can effectively protect us from?
2. Is a missile defense system the most cost-effective means of addressing that threat?
3. Is there any chance that we can develop an effective missile defense system before those countries we perceive as threats can build weapons that will thwart such a system?
4. If we scrap the ABM treaty in order to research and build a missile defense system, and fail to create an effective system, will the lack of the treaty and the defense system leave us worse off than before?

I have often heard, and indeed repeated, the “FDR knew” theory that FDR was aware that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. FDR is alleged to have intentionally kept the military in the dark so that the attack would be devestating and we would be forced to enter World War II. There’s a great article at Salon today by Judith Greer that examines the history behind this conspiracy theory, and evaluates the evidence used to promote it. After reading her article, I feel fairly confident that I’ll never be repeating that theory again. (The main reason I ever did is that Gore Vidal, who I respect, believes that “FDR knew.” Shame on me.)

Peter Molyneux’ post mortem for Black & White. I played the game a lot for a few days, but then kind of shelved it and haven’t been back to it in awhile (I’m awaiting the first patch, which will fix some problems I didn’t want to deal with). Anyway, when he lists the bad things about the project, he doesn’t include nearly working his dev team to death in the list. That’s kind of sad, if you ask me.

Is the New York Post the paper for stupid people? What sort of reader was this story written for? (From RRE.)

There’s been a huge upside to the whole Smart Tags argument that’s been going on on every mailing list I’m on for the past week or so: it’s led people to think about what the browser maker’s role should be in presenting Web content, and what power a company in a monopolistic position has over the world of Web publishing. Regardless of what Smart Tags turn out to be, and how they’re applied in Windows XP, I think these are discussions that are worth having. I’m also glad that it has riled people up. Do we, as people who publish on the Web, have any power over Microsoft? Let’s find out.

Yesterday, Dubya told reporters that we ought not execute the mentally retarded, even though he presided over several such executions himself as governor of Texas. One would think that Dubya would oppose the execution of the mentally retarded out of a simple sense of self preservation. (The interesting nugget of information in that article is that countries with the death penalty are not eligible for EU membership.)

Think Microsoft is troubled about the potential outcome of the government’s case against them? Andrew Leonard doesn’t, and he cites three things as proof: their crusade against free software, their fight with AOL over instant messaging, and their new anti-piracy and user registration measures in Office XP and Windows XP.