Digital Copyright Canada

An essay by Doc Searls starts:

We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths.

Quarterly Keynote Discussion Series: Dealing with Spreadsheet Addiction

Guest Speaker: J. C. Nash, Professor, School of Management, University of Ottawa

No fee for admission.
3:00-4:00 p.m. Friday 18 November, 2005
Budge Crawley Theatre, Constitution Square Building, Main Floor
350 Albert Street, Ottawa

Many organizations and managers suffer a quiet addiction to spreadsheets. First turned on through easy availability, they typically get drawn into overuse through the attraction of cells that can be whatever they want them to be, designer macros, and charts in psychedelic colours. Yet all of these attractions hide the power of these uncontrolled programming environments to accidentally lose VERY large amounts of money, and to make it difficult or impossible to detect misreporting. Empirical studies demonstrate that the proportion of spreadsheets without serious errors is 0% (Yes ZERO %).

This eWeek security article by Ryan Naraine includes:

Dan Kaminsky, a security engineer for DoxPara Research, has already seen evidence of the Sony DRM rootkit installed in places it should not be.
...
Even more worrying, Kaminsky argued, is the fact that a legitimate company like Sony would attempt to legitimize the use of rootkits.

"It's no longer about detection and removal when the big companies with the big lawyers get involved. The difference between a good anti-spyware application and a bad one is whether your vendor will stand up to the lawyers. I don't know if we realistically can stand up to Sony's lawyers," Kaminsky said.

This InsideBayArea article by Ian Hoffman includes:

Beginning on Jan. 1, every e-voting machine in California will be required to produce a paper trail in a move that many believe signals the beginning of the end for paperless e-voting.

But in 2002, criticism arose from an unlikely quarter: Computer scientists who had written software for NASA moonshots and Star Wars missile-defense systems said computers were too subject to programming error and too unsecure to rely on them solely as arbiters of political power.

It isn't computer error that is the issue, but corruption of computer processes brought on by human error or deliberate political corruption.