] It is not uncommon, in the context of academic debates
] over computer science and Web standards topics, to see
] the publication of one or more "considered harmful"
] essays. These essays have existed in some form for more
] than three decades now, and it has become obvious that
] their time has passed. Because "considered harmful"
] essays are, by their nature, so incendiary, they are
] counter-productive both in terms of encouraging open and
] intelligent debate, and in gathering support for the view
] they promote. In other words, "considered harmful" essays
] cause more harm than they do good.

'Considered Harmful' Essays Considered Harmful

...show your support by printing these out as large as you can and posting them in public places (when no one's watching).

Patriotic Posters

] The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance
] in critical areas of science and innovation, according to
] federal and private experts who point to strong evidence
] like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers
] in major professional journals.

U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences

Has anyone else noticed that Yahoo seems to be having some
pretty serious problems for the past several days? As
far as I can tell, whoever is hosting their images (Akamai?)
is just plain dead ...

] Google, the popular Internet search engine company, filed with
] Securities and Exchange Commission today to raise as much as $2.72
] billion in its long-awaited stock market debut, and said it would
] seek to list its shares on either the Nasdaq market or the New
] York Stock Exchange.

Its official.

Google Files for IPO

Decius wrote:
] ] U.S. authorities charged four people in Detroit on
] ] Wednesday with e-mailing fraudulent sales pitches for
] ] weight-loss products, the first criminal prosecutions
] ] under the government's new "can spam" legislation.
]
] Turns out this is an FTC investigation for fraud and the Spam
] charges are just an add on. This probably doesn't mean they've
] actually started enforcing these laws in general.

Again, most of the spammers tactics probably already constitute
fraud ... why hasn't the FTC been prosecuting spammers under
existing fraud statutes?

RE: CNN.com - First four charged under 'can spam' law - Apr 28, 2004

] IBM plans today to announce new server computers that behave
] more like mainframes and are priced as low as $1,500. The
] servers will be able to run as many as 10 operating
] systems on a single machine. One processor can divvy up
] the workload - packing the capability of several machines
] into one - by building several virtual machines that run
] on the underlying hardware. It is a technology that has
] existed for decades in the mainframe market long ruled by
] I.B.M.

These are apparently going to be Power based.

I.B.M. Plans to Build Servers That Act Like Mainframes

] The ServerIron family of Layer 4-7 switches is the
] industry leader in load balancing servers, firewalls,
] caches, ISP links, and data centers with high-performance
] Layer 4-7 switching and integrated Layer 2/3
] functionalities. ServerIron switches enable network
] managers to build and secure mission-critical application
] infrastructure that is massively scalable and always
] available. Mission-critical applications are protected
] with IronShieldTM security against multiple forms of
] Denial of Service (DoS), Virus and Worm attacks. Many of
] the world

I don't think I'd heard of this company before.

Foundry Networks : Products : Layer 4-7 Switches : ServerIron

Diebold voting machines made the Daily Show tonight...

] More and more, it seems that the entertainment content
] businesses, including Microsoft, want to make sure no
] culture can be offered anywhere in the world by anyone
] except them and only by means of their one-way paid
] pipeline. They can't achieve that goal without killing
] free/open software. Of course, they also would have to
] shut down the openness of the internet. I begin to
] suspect they may hypocritically use "security" concerns
] to do so, and the Wall Street Journal [sub req'd] reports
] they are already asking the goverment to establish
] standards for security in software:

None of these things are happening in a vacuum ... the folks
on Groklaw are being a little alarmist here but not outrageously
so.

Groklaw on Sun/M$ settlement