In a move reeking of Orwellian irony, the Department of Homeland Security is appointing D. Reed Freeman to its Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. For the uninitiated, Mr. Freeman was the Chief Privacy Officer for Gator (recently renamed to Claria), a company that brought sleazy spyware to the forefront of Internet lore. Gator software has been notorious for surreptitiously inserting itself onto end-user computers. Its installation was frequently misrepresented to the user, and requires painfully-elaborate means to properly remove. The parent company uses Gator software to spam you with pop-up ads and collect — and resale — information about your computer use habits to various marketing groups. Now his job will be to assist the DHS surreptitiously gather information about folks with an eye towards not unduly intruding upon the privacy of the citizenry.

A ten-month stint working for Gator shouldn’t disqualify him outright from such a position, and his selection in 2004 was certainly intended to add credibility to Gator’s consumer privacy efforts. That said, Gator’s parent company is still rightly considered one of the sleaziest, over-litigious spyware-peddlers in the industry, which calls into question Mr. Freeman’s ability to affect substantive policy change in that environment.

Every once in a great while, one runs across a truly great, timeless game. Chess is one example. Hide & Go Seek is another. This past December, my gracious employer acquired an Ultracade machine for the break room. At 5 credits per quarter, this has been a big hit with the staff and tenants, but a recent motherboard failure resulted in something wonderous: an upgrade.

In addition to the several dozen cheesy 1980’s games, we got Robotron 2084. This 1982 stand-up video game uses two joysticks, one to move the hero on the playfield, the other to direct his lazer beams in any of eight directions. The graphics are remedial, the colors horribly garish, but the gameplay itself is superb. If you can’t afford your own stand-up machine, get a copy for Windows.

The folks at Wired magazine have published an article entitled The BitTorrent Effect, including an interesting interview and look at Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol (and official client). In typical Wired fashion, the article goes to great lengths to proclaim the death of the older, entrenched means of media distribution, which really isn’t what I was looking for in an article about BitTorrent and its creator. Give it a read anyway.

Oddly, no mention was made of the broad variety of user agents that utilize this protocol. From my personal experience, very few use Mr. Cohen’s original client, but some spinoff such as Bit Tornado or my personal client of choice, Azureus. The proliferation of such alternate interfaces speaks volumes to the success of the BitTorrent protocol and its perceived value amongst software developers and content-pirates alike.

Wired article: The BitTorrent Effect