Stefan Savage, speaking in a segment on March 13’s On The Media, asked:

The question I like to ask people is, what are you going to do to the highway system to reduce crime. And when you put it that way, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, because while criminals do use the highway, no rational person is suggesting that if only we could change the transportation architecture that crime would go away.

Savage was speaking on the matter of internet security, and his comment was a counterpoint to a number of commentators who suggested the only way to secure the internet would be to replace the internet. This notion that we need a smarter internet has been around for a while, but its proponents have forgotten that the basic dumbness of the internet is the foundation of its success.

Mike Neuenschwander, for one, was ecstatic that the On The Media segment didn’t “slide into a futile discussion on the merits of world peace,” and followed Savage’s point with considerable discussion about the difference between the network and the social structure of trust. (In contemplating a recent NY Times story on this subject, Computing Community Consortium also quoted Savage on this point. The Coolest part: Savage commented to explain more.)

Near the end of the piece, Jonathan Zittrain explains why attempts to impose more limitations on the internet are so dangerous to the future viability of the internet:

so much of the code we now think of as central and crucial and cool and revolutionary is code for which, when most rational people first see it, their reaction is, what’s the point?

Zittrain offers Twitter as an example, but Ray Tomlinson offers an even better one. According to the legend, the man who invented email told his friend “Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on,” as he first demonstrated the application that would eventually become the internet’s first killer app.

Matt started talking up the weird issues developing around multiplayer online games a few weeks ago. Then soon after he blogged it, a story appeared in On the Media (listen, transcript)

Short story: online gaming is huge — one developer claims four million paying customers. More significantly, the interplay between real and virtual worlds might create new challenges for this real world legal system. “Theft” of in-game money and equipment among players in the online world is possible, but it’s lead to the real-world arrest of at least one person and the murder of another when authorities refused to act.

One argument is that these games occupy players time and cost money, so in-game theft results in real-life loss. Baloney. Chess and Monopoly occupy great deals of time, but try telling the cops I rooked your knight. Money? A huge number of Americans invest time and money on building and racing cars on the approximately 1800 racetracks around the country. Real time and and hard-earned money are lost when cars crash, but the track has its own rules “rubin’s racin, Cole” — and none of us would excuse a driver for off-track violence against a competitor.

tags: crime, game, game money, game world, game worlds, law, loss, mmo, mmorpg, multiplayer online games, murder, online games, real world, real world violence, role playing game, story world, theft, video games, video game, virtual, virtual economy, virtual world, virtual worlds, weird issues

Though we imagine the Dutch to be a rather unexcitable lot, I did anyway, it turns out they have a history of getting rowdy at football games (yes, if this all happened back in the States I be calling it “soccer”). So it can’t be so much of a surprise that fans rioted again in April. What is surprising is that mobile phone companies got involved in the investigation. This AP report tells the story:

Phone companies voluntarily handed over the mobile phone numbers of people who were in or around Feyenoord’s Kuip stadium on the day of the match — traceable using broadcasting masts in the area.

So that’s what the aGPS sticker on our cellphones is about.

Via Engadget.

tags: 5-0, agps, cell phone, cellphone, crime, engadget, feyenoord, football, gps, hooliganism, location aware, location aware technology, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phone companies, mobile phone numbers, police, police investigation, riot, rioting, rioters, sms, sms message, sms messaging, soccer

I’m entirely captivated by Mark Michaelson’s collection of mug shots on Flickr. It’s titled “Least Wanted” and he notes with little fanfare that they’re “Nobody famous.”

Some of the photos contain little histories, like this set from the 40s and 50s that includes conviction details — “30 days W. H.” for “selling obscene literature.” Another image shows rapid aging over a three year period starting in 1943. It’s part of a small collection of recidivist women of the 1940s.

For most of Michaelson’s images, however, there’s little to describe who these people are or why their photos became a part of public record. Each is its own little mystery, and it’s hard not to want to look at all 422.

tags: 1940s, accused criminal, arrest, crime, criminology, history, law enforcement, mug shot, mug shots, photos, police, police photo, police photos, recidivism, recidivist