ZenLinux Blog

Jeff Bezos demonstrates his business genius again with Kindle, their new eBook reader. Unfortunately, there are some other ramifications of proprietary eBook systems. Mark Pilgrim summarizes them well (and demonstrates some flip-flopping by Bezos) in this 5-act “play.”

Richard Stallman’s essay The Right to Read is referenced in this article and is definitely worth reading in and of itself.

Don’t get me wrong – I’d love a better platform for reading PDFs and web pages than my Nokia N770 web tablet. But Kindle is definitely not for me.

This blog post on Wired provides insight into the processes Hushmail uses to comply with court orders. Anyone with a Hushmail account – or users of similar privacy enforcement services – should read this article carefully. It turns out that a convenience feature of Hushmail has enabled the company to turn over unencrypted emails from users who take advantage of this “feature.” I agree with the author of the article that Hushmail should be praised for being so open regarding what is going on. Yet at the same time you have to wonder what other flaws may exist with other services that haven’t been revealed.

I’m not much of a paranoid, tinfoil-hat type, but I do encourage people to make use of privacy-enhancing services like Hushmail, in the hopes they will become more mainstream. I do this based on the philosophy that one’s right to privacy and security is only worth something when people choose to exercise those rights.