Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century By Simson Garfinkel Unconfirmed error reports are from readers. They have not yet been approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the opinion of the reader. If you have any error reports or technical questions, you can send them to booktech@oreilly.com. (Please specify the printing date of your copy.) This page was last updated March 2, 2001. Here's a key to the markup: [page-number]: serious technical mistake {page-number}: minor technical mistake : important language/formatting problem (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification UNCONFIRMED errors and comments from readers: [16] At the end of the first paragraph the author refers to the Oklahoma City Bombing as "the most murderous act of terrorism in U.S.history." More people were actually killed in the Lockerbie bombing - 259 vs 168. Even if you wish to consider only Americans, Lockerbie is still more (189). It was certainly in American history - it was an American airline - in fact the US "flag carrier" (i.e., the default choice of the State Department). I do see that on p. 211 Simson says he feels that Lockerbie is more appropriately thought of as a military action even though the public does not see it that way. However, almost nobody sees it that way - not the press, not the US Government. It is not helpful to have an intelligent and generally reliable writer justify letting the Pan Am bombing go unmentioned - based on what is an almost private use of the language. (The Marine barrack bombing killed even more - but it is generally recognized that that was a military target - foreign soldiers in a quasi-occupation capacity - quite different from civilians). Simson also states on p. 211 that the Lockerbie bombing "was probably retaliation for the U.S.bombing of of Tripoli." There is simply not an iota of evidence for that. In fact all of the evidence - gathered in ways Simson would quite appreciate (i.e., NSA evesdropping on telecommunications) pointed to Iran as the instigator of the bombing. Yes, the US State department has found it politically expedient to repeat the "Libya revenge for Tripoli" story ad nauseum - but without any supporting evidence. If Simson is so inclined to accept at face value whatever the State Department says, why does he quibble with their endlessly-repeated description of Lockerbie as a "terrorist attack"? They sure are not buying the Simson view that it was a "military action." It's certain that none of this is germane to Simson's arguments - but accuracy is a virtue in itself. {18} Second paragraph: Simson and I are contemporaries (I worked with him on The Tech), but somehow he and I have a different historical memory. My first computer terminal was a Model 33 Teletype, and I clearly remember it as having 72 columns, not 80. Thanks to the wonderful web, I don't even need to rely on my memory: http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/ttybr-4.jpg is a scan of the relevant page of the product brochure, showing the 72 column width. Now, admittedly, this wasn't the first Teletype, which is what your aside makes its claim about. However, given that the earlier Teletypes were used for human-to-human communications, rather than computer terminals, and the Model 33 was the one that caught on in a big way as a computer terminal, I can't imagine that they reduced it from an earlier 80 column width to 72 in this model.