Fly The Flag
June 2, 2008
Shortly
after September 21st, 2001, more Americans
flags began to appear than ever --it was obviously a good idea. It always
feels good to ride through the small towns of America on a motorcycle and see
an American flag on every house and telephone pole. I decided to attach flags
to my motorcycles
and found some nice ones at a local hardware store. They lasted for quite a
while, but eventually the poor stitching and meager attachment to a wooden stick
were bound to fail. One day, I got off the bike and there was a flagpole, but
no flag.
(read more)
I looked around the web a number of times, but was not able to find anything
of good quality or correct size until one day when I made a renewed effort and
found a website called Pro Pad. They
have a wide range of after-market accessories for motorcycles. I was really
pleased to find a couple of flags mounted exactly the way I had in mind. The
flag posts look like chrome, but they are actually polished stainless steel
- and they look very professional. The flags are double-stitched, and attached
with a full loop of the flag material. I suspect these will last a very long
time.
Speaking of America, one of the many great
freedoms we have is the ability
to vote. We often don't think about it, perhaps, and some people don't take
the opportunity, but it is very powerful because it can enable us to determine
who our leaders will be and what policies will be followed. Recently it was
announced that there will be a pilot of 100,000 people who will be able to vote
over the Internet in 2004. This news is, in some respects, the ultimate empowerment
that the Internet has in store for us - both in America and around the world.
Many people do not vote because it is inconvenient to go out on a rainy day
or to drive to the polling place.
There is a system in America for absentee
ballots, but it is cumbersome. There are untold errors, delays, and costs
associated with this archaic process. We should embrace the Internet
voting approach, and urge our political leaders to accelerate testing and
investment in technology and implementation. It was very interesting to hear
all the naysayers who project the reasons why it will fail. The approach should
be to ensure it does not fail. The technology is available - all we need is
determination to do the implementation properly. The press today reported that
some academics had found flaws in the voting software being offered by one particular
company. Good! The headline was about the flaw but the headline should have
been that the openness of the Internet enabled researchers to find a flaw so
that the company can fix it.
There are always those who feel the glass is half full, and others who feel
the glass is half empty. This is certainly the case with digital IDs, digital
signatures, Internet voting, and even WiFi.
Stories in the Economist and the New York Times have talked about WiFi the same
way that many talked about the Web ten years ago. It won't work, they said.
It is insecure, unreliable, non scaleable, has no business model, and has numerous
technical "problems". It seems that some journalists are mostly interested
in pointing out the negatives and not the positives. A New York Times story
a few weeks ago pointed out that WiFi accesspoints have a security exposure;
meaning that if the security features of the WAP are not turned on that someone
could connect and potentially gain access to someone else's information. The
story failed to point out that it is a very simple matter to turn the security
features *on* so that this can't happen. It would be really helpful to see more
stories in the general and business media about the simple steps people can
take to protect themselves more effectively. Creating a sense of alarm and telling
the negative side of the story is not particularly helpful and in fact holds
back the potential of the technology.
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