I’ve just finished reading Denise Caruso’s book, Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet. I absolutely love it! As the book’s subtitle suggests, Denise recounts the tragedy of how hubris in the biotech industry — compounded by sub-standard risk assessment methods used by government regulators — has blinded […]

This post isn’t about Eliot Spitzer. Yes, of course I’m as outraged as anyone over how this scandal takes the wind out of Cathouse: the Musical. But something else about the Spitzer incident really hit home: The confirmation that my financial institution is a federal agent.
According to this USA Today article, financial institutions reported 17.6 […]

Last week, Melissa Lafsky cited some statistics on the rampant growth of click fraud and then punctuated the absurdity of the situation by questioning, rhetorically, whether everyone on the Internet is now a criminal for clicking with unlawful intent. Just who made it a fraud to click on a link, anyway? But to people whose […]

I got a comment on a blog post last week that was simple and to the point: “Interesting post. Thanks.” Reading between the lines of code accompanying the post I found this gem:
{sentby:program running on server}
Very cool! It seems I’ve become popular with the blog-spambot audience. It reminded me of Jemaine Clement’s introduction to “The […]

Gerry Gebel of Burton Group wrote an excellent post last week called “Moving Beyond Command and Control.” It’s the kind of thing I’d like to have written. It’s the kind of post everyone who cares about Internet security should read.
Gerry’s referring to the prevailing style of computer security, in which an administrator creates IDs and […]

Technologists have long admired the almighty algorithm: the piece of patentable code worth millions of dollars. While computer hardware has gone the way of commodity pricing, software and online services companies insist that consumers pay big bucks for use of their proprietary algorithms (when most consumers can’t even say “al-go-rhythm”), in the form of the […]

The juxtaposition of two events in the last week exemplified the growing tension of social trust on the Internet. First, the OpenID Foundation announced the additions of Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! to their board. A few days later, the New York Times reported on people’s frustrated attempts to delete their Facebook accounts.
It seems […]

When Denise Caruso asked me to become a regular contributor to the Hybrid Vigor blog, I jumped at the opportunity. Since late 2006, I’d been developing ideas for building social trust and reducing fraud on the Internet by way of a blog I started at Burton Group.
That blog holds a lot of sway with Burton […]