The news of the week was definitely Microsoft’s official announcement of Palladium in Steven Levy’s Newsweek article last week. Since the article went to print, the Internet has been abuzz with talk of the new platform, and the consensus seems to be that the untrusted person in this new computing paradigm is the person who actually uses the computer. If you’re not up to speed, here’s a list of resources that I’ve been able to scrape together:

• The Big Secret, Steven Levy’s original story on Palladium
• HP Engineer Speaks to TCPA Fears and Conspiracy Concerns (from the Interesting People mailing list)
• Ross Anderson’s TCPA/Palladium FAQ
• Robert X Cringely’s I Told You So column

Bear in mind that people are mostly discussing worst case scenarios at this point, but one thing I’ve learned is that when corporations are involved, they usually work to maximize exploitation. This is doubly true when it comes to the entertainment industry. One thing that looks like it’s going to happen is that any software that can be updated automatically is subject to being surreptitiously modified so that it enforces whatever new DRM scheme comes down the pike. The license agreement shipped with the latest update for Windows Media Player says as much. The license agreement says that future updates could not only affect the operation of WMP, but also other software as well (like third party tools for playing audio and video files, no doubt).

Howard J Bashman agrees with my take on the Supreme Court decision that allows schools to impose piss tests on basically everyone. Here’s the quote from How Appealing:

Justice Thomas’s majority opinion, standing alone, suggests to me that soon high schools will be allowed to conduct suspicionless drug testing of all students, not just students participating in competitive extracurricular activities.
…
What makes this ruling the day’s most important for me is that, as a result of this decision, countless school children will be desensitized to what the Fourth Amendment (at least in my view and in the views of four Justices) actually requires, which in this setting would be reasonable particularized suspicion.

I just like it when smart people agree with me.

David Greenbaum explains the historical context of the decision to add “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance back in 1954. Indeed, as I suspected, the decision was utterly and completely steepd in religion and was explicitly aimed at contrasting the fundamentally religious United States with the athiest communist leadership of the Soviet Union.

Ann Coulter’s Libels In Slander is a weblog devoted to fact checking Ann Coulter’s new novel.

I thought I was more or less shock-proof at this point, but some of these satirized propaganda posters by Micah Wright managed to make my jaw drop a little. That’s impressive! Interestingly, Wright is a veteran of the invasion of Panama, and a former member of the Second Ranger Battalion in the Army.

Mozilla users should check out Financial Institutions and Mozilla Operability, which lists banks that do and don’t support Mozilla with their online banking applications. My personal bank account is at Bank of America, and it’s never given me any trouble at all when I access it using Mozilla. (It’s listed as compatible on the list anyway.)

Here’s a priceless quote from Howard L Berman, a Democrat from California:

While p-to-p technology is free to innovate new and more efficient methods of distribution that further exacerbate the piracy problem, copyright owners are not equally free to craft technological responses. This is not fair.

A quick trip over to opensecrets.org illustrates exactly where Mr. Berman got his sense of fairness.

Once again manufacturer hype has been proven to be just that when facial recognition technology was tested in a real world trial.

Salon CEO Michael O’Donnel sent a concise statement to Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews rebutting the recent wire story talking about the magazine’s impending doom.

Paul Krugman’s latest is on corporate corruption. What else?