]
] ASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed
] spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential
] terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which
] anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting
] terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online
] futures market.
]
] Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads
] the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he
] had conferred with the program's director at the
] Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should
] be stopped.''

HAH! That was fast...

Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror

] "The practice of filing thousands of lawsuits is a game
] of chicken, and not a sustainable model for the industry
] or the courts," Mr. Zittrain said. "The overall puzzle
] for the industry is how to truly convince the public that
] this is in the public interest."

This is precisely the problem ... everyone knows that what the industry brings to the table isn't worth so much anymore ... and that there's no excuse for artists to *lose money* on albums (see the Negativland analysis/example) that sell for $20 and the middleman is making a killing on.

] He said there was no obvious historical analogue to the
] scattershot subpoenaing of individuals in copyright law
] enforcement, which has traditionally been aimed at
] businesses or people who are profiting from illegally
] copied material. He likened it instead to raids during
] Prohibition, or red-light cameras that catch drivers
] disobeying traffic laws when they think they are
] unobserved. Both have given rise to social outcry, Mr.
] Zittrain said, even though they were used simply to
] enforce the law.

Subpoenas Sent to File-Sharers Prompt Anger and Remorse

] They are called smart pills or brain boosters or, to use
] the preferred pharmaceutical term, cognitive enhancers.
]
] But whatever the name given to compounds created to
] prevent or treat memory loss, drug companies and
] supplement producers — eager to meet the demands of a
] rapidly growing market — are scrambling to exploit what
] they view as an enormous medical and economic
] opportunity.

Race Is On for a Pill to Save the Memory

] SCO's scheme is already unraveling. Now, after suing IBM
] when it refused to pay up or buy it out, hitting up
] Microsoft for a so called "license" for $10 million (that
] it probably didn't need) and mugging Sun for about $8
] million in "protection" (likely a wash versus the cost of
] a lawsuit), SCO has apparently run out of big Unix
] vendors. HP and SGI aren't saying but they must have told
] SCO to take a hike. As have the largest Japanese Unix and
] Linux vendors, Fujitsu and NEC. So SCO has threatened big
] Linux users with potential lawsuits in a desperate ploy
] to replace flatlining Unix revenues. But most IT pundits
] and the users aren't buying SCO's FUD act. And the reason
] for this is vocal grass roots Open Source opposition from
] the Linux developer community and thousands of individual
] users. It is not what SCO expected when it launched its
] license extortion scam.

Legal commentators weigh SCO's chances

] Members of the Linux community have labelled SCO Group
] plans to hit them with Unix licensing fees as extortion.

Bingo...

LinuxWorld | Linux resellers dismiss SCO licensing claims

] China is on course to become only the third nation ever
] to place a human in space, following press reports that
] the first crewed flight will take place in 100 days.

New Scientist

] Software flaws in a leading US electronic voting system
] could be used to subvert the outcome of an election,
] claim researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Rice
] University in the US.

Ack! ... the code for this stuff absolutely MUST be subject to public scrutiny. Computer experts have been screaming about this stuff for awhile now...

New Scientist

]
] ASHINGTON, July 23 — The House of Representatives
] overwhelmingly passed legislation today to block a new
] rule supported by the Bush administration that would
] permit the nation's largest television networks to grow
] bigger by owning more stations.

Yay!

F.C.C. Media Rule Blocked in House in a 400-to-21 Vote

] Disney and Movielink will make such films as "Monsters
] Inc.," "Chicago," "Gangs of New York," "The Recruit,"
] "25th Hour" and "The Jungle Book 2" available for
] download at prices ranging from $2.95 to $4.99. Users
] will need a broadband connection and a PC with
] Microsoft's (MSFT: news, chart, profile) Windows 98, ME,
] 2000 or XP operating systems, as well as the latest
] versions of either the Real Networks (RNWK: news, chart,
] profile) RealOne player or the Windows Media player.

Finally, someone with a clue! I don't like the propriatery formats but this is a start.

Disney allows movie downloads

] SCO's legal threats have prompted Gartner Group to
] recommend that companies delay deployment of critical
] Linux applications, determine "whether Unix or Windows
] will provide functions equivalent to those of Linux
] deployments", and take a "go-slow" approach to Linux in
] high-value or mission-critical production systems.

Who is this Gartner group, anyway??

The Register : More Gartner flak on SCO/Linux