It turns out that anonymity is as hard to spell as it is to say. Can you say? Say it 3 times fast right now. When you call us to leave your question, be sure to say it for us. Don’t know what we’re talking about? Tune in and find out!
Topics this week:
Important Links:Wired News story on printing Human organs
I want to clone Brad and have him as my boss
I personally think that anonymity is great on the internet. Especially in some ways for children. I know I started out on the internet when I was 12 (5 years ago) that I knew nothing about computers or the realm of the internet. I began to join forums etc. and mainly did n00bish things like ask stupid questions (mainly stuff that were in answered in stickies). Anyway, people slowly started to help me out, 40 year olds etc. taught me all they knew about computing etc. Things went well for me online until one day I let slip that I was 13 years old. After then I was always talked down to, even by people that I far surpassed in maturity and knowledge.
My point is that anonymity gives kids a chance to learn and be at equal with adults. It also gives adults a chance to learn from children.
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Regards
As far as unique identifiers, IP6 will pretty much cover that. The one half of the IP address is the network address and the other half the MAC.
Concerns come in where:a) MAC addresses are spoofedb) Some vendors set a generic MAC address on the item and require you to run a driver to create a "unique" MAC (Asus Terminator boxes ware like this, which I found out when putting 4 on a network only to discover they all had the same MAC and thus wouldn't connect)
Podcasts are great. Keep the good work up.
We already have a choice to have "non-anonymous" (within the limits explained later) blogs/forums etc now if the systems were amended to require a personal digital certificate. Personal digital certificates are available for free and could be used to sign posts.
I would be entirely opposed to trying to force people to prove who they are as it will simply mean people would believe people are who they claim to be rather than assuming that people might be someone else in disguise. So, when the system is subverted, it would be much harder to argue that that is what had happened.
ANY system can be by-passed/subverted - we have to live with that and design systems and social convention to cope. Yes, it could be made more difficult, but it can not be prevented.
Even Biometrics can/will be by passed if the rewards are great enough to merit the effort involved - although it's fiction of course, watch Minority Report for some ideas of what might happen if proof of ID is based on biometrics ...the TPM is trivial to by pass/subvert in comparision and it can certainly be by-passed/subverted.
