« Flickr 365 | Home | Christopher Walken IN SPACE »
Three cheers for Wired and crypto
By Sparky | April 4, 2006
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I still subscribe to some paper magazines. I realize that in this digital age it’s a waste of trees, and makes the information hard to consume, but for a few magazines I still dive right in. Most notable among these are National Geographic, and Wired Magazine.
National Geographic I get for obvious reasons: their online version is intended to supplement not replace their print edition. The beautiful photographs and explorations of far away places will always earn my yellow-spined friend a place on my bookshelf.
Wired on the other hand has a great offering online, and in fact provides more content online than in their print version. I subscribe to them simply to support the organization and ensure that they will be around to provide technical insight for years to come.
Of late I’ve been particularly impressed with Wired. They have been covering a lot of cryptography issues, and really exploring consumers rights concerning privacy, DRM, and fair use.
In the past week alone there have been two very interesting articles, one about Sun’s Open-Source DRM project, and the other about Zfone, a PGP-powered truly secure VOIP protocol. Obviously I’m against DRM in just about any form, but if it’s going to stick I hope that Sun’s DReaM is it, it seems friendly to consumers and to have all the right fair use provisions included.
Zfone on the other hand seems to be a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak big-brother view of the future. Hopefully secure cryptography will become an integrated part of our society and prevent tomorrows governments or terrorist organizations from spying on our day to day lives.
Topics: Open source, Technology, Web gems |