Date: 10/21/2004 05:44 PM
From: Donald Severns (troglor@yahoo.com)
Subject: Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark
Just because he does not like TV, he wants to bother everybody else ("Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark," Oct. 19, 2004)! All you have to do is tape over the infrared lens on the TV and then it cannot be turned off.
If you do not want to watch TV, then sit where you cannot see it. Or you can just leave and stay home.
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Date: 10/21/2004 12:21 PM
From: david Myhre (axel_rod@adelphia.net)
Subject: Senate Wants Database Dragnet
A major problem with this type of legislation is that there are often no provisions for prosecution of individuals who misuse the powers granted by such bills ("Senate Wants Database Dragnet," Oct. 6, 2004). What is the penalty for a law-enforcement officer who is also a batterer who uses the search to find an escaping spouse or child? At minimum, that individual should be terminated from employment with any agency whose employees have permission to do such searches. Any "unrighteous" search should be a federal felony violation.
The best way to keep a tight rein on these kinds of invasive powers is to require that every individual whose search turns up no prosecutable evidence of wrongdoing be officially notified by the agency doing the search. Such notification would include a copy of all the data reviewed, identity of all sources searched, and a certification that no record of the search is retained by the agency.
Without serious controls, this is just another unconstitutional invasion of personal liberty.
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Date: 10/21/2004 12:35 PM
From Randy Zagar (randy.zagar@effaustin.org)
Subject: American Passports to Get Chipped
I can't think of a single security-relevant requirement for passports/ID that couldn't be handled by a magnetic strip ("American Passports to Get Chipped," Oct. 21, 2004).
Obviously, somebody wants to create demand for RFID so that his or her pet manufacturers get lucrative government contracts.
Another possibility, that requires a tin-foil hat, is that someone needs to mandate enough demand for RFID to drive the price down. Really, really cheap RFID makes certain Orwellian things feasible that are just too expensive to do right now.
I'm not wearing my tin-foil hat at the moment, but you have to ask yourself why the FDA needs to approve injectable RFID for hospital patients.... Couldn't those RFID things work just as well as part of a plastic bracelet or in an adhesive Band-Aid?
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Date: 10/21/2004 01:19 PM
From: william bains (william@rufus-scientific.com)
Subject: All Bio Systems Are Go
Very interesting article on the systems biology craze, but rather overoptimistic on three fronts, I think ("All Bio Systems Are Go," Oct. 21, 2004).
Firstly, most of what Lee Hood is doing is not really systems biology. It could be called systematic biology, I suppose -- the highly parallel analysis of molecular level changes in biological systems and the search for patterns in those changes rather than simple, one-on-one correlations with biological end points. This is a big advance, but is still working in a molecular reductionist mode.
Secondly, everyone forgets that we have been here before. In the 1930s and '40s, neuroscience started to identify the neurons in simple organisms, and some basic circuitry in the brain, which had specific functions. Slowly the idea grew that there was "a" neuron for every sufficiently simple behavior. The parody version of this was the idea of "the grandmother cell," the nerve cell that remembered your grandmother. Next to it was one that remembered your grandfather. And so on.
Lastly -- oh dear, oh dear. Did Lee Hood really say "within 10 to 20 years systems biology will have revolutionized medicine"? Then it is doomed to failure. Such sermons on the supremacy of a new approach to biology have been the hallmark of wild overenthusiasm, subsequently dashed by the realities of messy life, for the past 30 years. They are characterized by some version of the phrase "within 10 years XXX will have radically altered health care." In 1993 genomics was going to transform all of medicine within 10 to 20 years. Well, it has had an effect, but the stock price of genomics companies is the least of the casualties.
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