Stories by Scott Bradner

Can Facebook privacy be simple?

Facebook, according to its CEO, is built around the simple idea that people want to share things with "their friends and the people around them."  

ACTA: No longer secret but still plenty to worry about

It has been public knowledge for quite a while that many of the world's governments have been working on an "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but none of the details of what they were thinking was public knowledge, in spite of a few leaked documents. The people involved in the negotiations seem to have believed that a knowledgeable public would just get in their way.

Are your Web site's terms of service illusory?

You may have noticed that the terms of service agreements for many Web sites are a bit one-sided. The user gets to use the service but only at the deference of the Web site operator. In addition, operators reserve the right to change terms whenever they want to and users agree to abide by future versions even if they do not know there has been any change. 

Life at 10 years AG (after Google)

There were many ways to search the Internet before Google came along, but none of them turned into a verb. These days, a big deal is being made of Google's turning 10 by a lot of the media. Most of the coverage has had a bit of an edge to it, as if people do not want to accept the success that Google has enjoyed.

Microsoft: still a business of threats?

The obvious thought came to me while writing last week's column, that about the only folk (other than the deluded and amoral management of the SCO Group) that want the SCO Group effort attacking Linux and other open source initiatives to succeed is Microsoft. So I decided to explore that side in this follow-up column, but a bit of reading led me to the conclusion that things are not as simple as they appear.

Data centers: Green because you have to

So you work for a big company that has told you that it's your job to build a big data center in a big city. Good luck! More often than not your job may be impossible, and even where it might be possible today, the window is closing fast.

What will rule the 'new' Internet?

Josh Quittner, writing in Time recently, explored what vendor -- Google, Apple or Facebook -- will be the next great Internet platform. It is quite a good article, but Quittner only addresses part of the conflict that is determining what tomorrow's Internet will look like.

Bleak prospects for privacy

While Web surfing the other day I ran across a London Times story that described two shopping malls in England that individually track everyone who walks into their environs (as long as they have a mobile phone turned on).

A surfeit of US network neutrality legislation

Largely due to the continued dumb statements and actions of a few apparently PR-challenged carriers, the network neutrality issue is alive and well in the United States. Since any issue like this seems to create a legislative void that must be filled, we now have at least two network neutrality related bills for Congress to consider. If one liked legislation-based solutions, merging these bills and tossing out a bit of Federal Communications Commission make-work would not be too bad, but there would still be some questions left unanswered.

Online privacy: railing against the accepted

I frequently use this column to rail against threats to the privacy of Internet users, both from government and the private sector. I just found a survey published late last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that reports that people are coming to support, or at last not object too strongly to, some types of spying.

Telling Google and others to do less evil

Google, Yahoo and other search engine companies are in the data gathering business. The fact that they offer you and me the service of locating things on the Internet is a means to an end, and that end is data about what you and I do online. They are like the folks that hoard string - the more string they gather the better they feel even if there is little or no actual use for most of what they gather.

Irrelevant victories in the war on spam

On the surface it might look like there has been some real legal progress against spam of late. But don't be fooled; these victories, real as they may be for the people involved, don't mean much to you and me.

SCO Group: Prolonging death or what?

Earlier this year, it looked like The SCO Group was going down for the count. It had lost a key decision in its suit against Novell, declared bankruptcy and was quickly running out of money.

Apple's MacBook Air: evolution, not revolution

As I write this it's a little after noon Eastern Time on Jan. 15. I'm sitting in front of my computer (a Mac of course) watching two different live blogs coming from people watching the Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld 2008. I'm watching to see what, if any, "big" announcements Steve will make.

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