Letter From Norm
October/November 1999
Dear Casual Cartographers:
Again, we have missed a
month. My apologies to all Casual Cartographers.
I can offer no excuses other than we allowed our newsletter to slip
into fourth or fifth place on our priority list.
I have often said that I’m a good technician; but a lousy
businessman. I guess this
proves it (the second part anyway).
Last time I ranted about
privacy; this time I need to provide some additional information.
Casual Cartographer David
Babler provided some additional insight to the NSA key embedded in certain
versions of Microsoft Windows. It
appears that this may just have been a badly bungled effort by Microsoft to
generate more sales by a governmental customer which is rather picky about
security. For those interested,
the complete story can be found at:
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/microsof_nsa.htm
My apologies to Microsoft. However, I do take great comfort in that my little screw ups
pale compared the bungling of the largest cash cow that ever existed on the
planet. Certainly Microsoft can
afford to test and review their products better than they do.
Certainly much more so than the rest of us.
Ms. Judith Hand of US
West, a vice president no less, responded to my request that information
about my phone calls be kept private. She
assured me that the purpose of the ruling US West sought from the courts was
only to enable one division of US West to obtain information from other
divisions. Quite candidly,
which I found quite admirable, she indicated that this was to enhance the
ability of US West to market their products to existing users.
That is, US West would be able to limit their telemarketing programs
to customer and product combinations with a higher degree of success than
plain old cold calling. David
also noted that US West will also sell you call blocking to filter out
telemarketing calls from, among others of course, US West.
So I may have
overreacted. However, I suggest that this is acceptable when privacy and
liberty (one and the same?) are at stake.
Most everyone in business is paranoiac about being sued by some
lawyer who has an excess of time and/or a deficiency of funds.
With regard to privacy, I suggest that an overreaction or two may be
appropriate. That is, hopefully
business and government alike will become paranoiac about even a hint that
they are compromising the basic rights which we have been “endowed by our
creator”.
Till next time, which I
hope and pray will not be more then 30 days . . .
Norm
norm@rockware.com |
