“A senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, presented his organisation’s plans to evolve to a new, more secure ‘intelligent document’ from today’s paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance’s Government Conference and Expo conference last week.

‘Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004,’ Moss announced.” The Register

This, from Cory Doctorow, sounds interesting and important enough to repost in its entirety. First, the part about his terrific-sounding experience at the retreat, which I envy and hope will result in some wonderful new ‘product’ from him; next, the plug for Schneier’s book, especially as Ashcroft debuts his dog-and-pony show defending the USA Patriot Act (to which, following the lead of some of its critics, I will stop referring in that offensive way and just call by its acronym UPA from now on) in truly Orwellian overtones:

“I’ve spent the past week at a writers’ retreat in an undisclosed location (I’m still here!). It’s been insanely productive. I’ve written a 21,000-word novella, rewritten two partial novels, worked on my latest collaboration with Charlie Stross, critiqued about 20 stories, read a friend’s book and critiqued it, and caught up on some reading (and I’ve still got three days left, and still to come: nonfiction book proposal, rewrite the new novella, and catch up on other projects and projectlets).

One of the books I’m delighted to have had the chance to read here is Bruce Schneier’s latest, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. I reviewed three or four drafts of this while Bruce was working on it, and I am completely delighted with how it turned out.

In Beyond Fear, Schneier has utterly demystified the idea of security with a text aimed squarely at nontechnical individuals. He takes his legendary skill at applying common sense and lucidity to information-security problems and applies it to all the bogeymen of the post-9/11 world, and asks the vital question: What are we getting in exchange for the liberties that the Ashcroftian authorities have taken away from us in the name of security?

This is possibly the most important question of this decade, and that makes Schenier’s book one of the most important texts of the decade. This should be required reading for every American, and the world would be a better place if anyone venturing an opinion on electronic voting, airline security, roving wiretaps, or any other modern horror absorbed this book’s lessons first.”

The Gender Genie: “Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more about the algorithm at nature.com.”

I pasted some FmH passages of significant length into the algorithm; sometimes it gets my gender right but at times it tells me I “write like a girl.” The algorithm’s authors say it ought to be able to predict the gender of the author of a passage 80% of the time but Genie is candid enough to tell us that her cumulative accuracy is only 50.77% as of when I write this. [I don’t have to tell you that’s about as close to random as you can come in the real world…]

The algorithm depends on the difference between so-called ‘informational’ (categorizing) and ‘involved’ (personalizing) modes, essentially, which are thought of as quintessentially male and female, respectively (they are also thought of as quintessentially ‘nonfictional’ and ‘fictional’, which makes sense). It does a weighted count of what it considers “male keywords” (articles, “some”, numbers, and “it”) vs. “female keywords” (possessive pronouns and ” ‘s”, “for”, and “not” and “n’t”) and gives the passage a “male” or “female” score. Why would the online Gender Genie have break-even success when the original scientific paper gives the algorithm on which it is based an 80% success rate (when tried on over 500 English-language texts in a variety of genres)? Perhaps someone is messing with Genie’s mind (giving incorrect feedback) and/or the passages submitted so far are highly atypical. If it is being fed with largely web-based writing rather than text imported from meatspace, the material is probably overwhelmngly nonfiction or ‘informational’. Moreover perhaps even female writers on the web, being in general more technically and technologically adept, are more ‘informational’ than the norm. Having read more about the algorithm, I can now spot passages in my own writing it is more likely to think ‘girlish’. Try it out yourself.

“This makes Sobig.F the fastest growing virus ever, surpassing the infamous LoveBug, Klez and Kournikova viruses. All initial copies originated from the United States, where the virus is currently most prevalent. As Sobig.F continues its rapid spread today businesses are also advised to be on high-level alert. Sobig.F, first detected on 18th August, is the sixth variant issued in the Sobig virus series and appears to be the most sophisticated to date. Since the first Sobig virus was issued on January 9th 2003, MessageLabs has intercepted almost three million copies of Sobig variants.

‘Yesterday marked an unprecedented new level in virus propagation and demonstrated the growing ability of virus writers to disrupt business around the globe,’ said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs. ‘The Sobig virus writer’s use of an inbuilt expiry date indicates that he is committed to inventing new and improved versions. Each variant released so far has exceeded the previous one in growth and impact during the critical initial window of vulnerability.”

Sobig is a mass-emailing virus that can spoof the sender’s address, fooling the user into believing the email is from a legitimate source and then opening the email. The email often contains the following header: “Subject: Re:details” and the text “Please see the attached file for details”. The attachment names may include: your_document.pif, details.pif, your_details.pif, thank_you.pif, movie0045.pifm, document_Fall.pif, application.pif, docment_9446.pif.

Once the virus has infected your machine it attempts to connect to a website to download a backdoor Trojan, leaving your computer vulnerable to security breaches by hackers or other viruses. The current Sobig virus to email ratio is approximately 1 in 17 and the virus is spreading at such a rate it is expected to continue to stay at high-level status for the next few weeks. However, like past Sobig viruses, the Sobig.F virus has an expiry date and is set to deactivate on September 10th, which will effectively stop this variant from spreading further after that date. ” MessageLabs

I was aware of the news that the virus had an inborn expiration date and wondered about the significance of that. Now I know it has ominous implications. By now, I’m sure you have received emails with the virus. Symantec has a downloadable removal tool which scans your hard drive for traces of Sobig.F and expunges them.

She who must be obeyed: “the words are enough to send a shiver down the spine of many a married man.

Now museum curators have discovered that it was a Scots adventurer’s awe-struck account of a powerful American Indian ‘chieftainess’ that gave birth to the iconic image of a domineering woman.

Hardened 19th-century explorer Robert Campbell – the first westerner to explore the vast wilderness of Canada’s Yukon Territory – told how he owed his life to the woman when she furiously confronted members of her tribe as they prepared to shoot him and his companion, a man called McLeod.

Campbell’s friend, the writer Rider Haggard, was so impressed by the story he wrote the book She, which was made into a 1965 film starring Ursula Andress. Haggard’s description of his African queen as ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ became a byword for the wives of under-the-thumb husbands.

But Campbell was nothing but grateful after his encounter with the Tahltan Indian woman, whose name is not known, on the shores of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia while on a fur trading mission in the 1880s. ” Scotland on Sunday

Jessica Stern: “Yesterday’s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.

Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created — not through malevolence but through negligence — precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens’ rudimentary needs.” NY Times op-ed