NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

There are still many questions that enshroud this discovery. Although other moons in our solar system contain icy crusts, the real discovery here is that liquid water is apparently just below the surface of the moon. Scientists will now beginning exploring the possibility that lifeforms could have existed at one point in this environment...

NASA - NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

One of our most laudable national goals is the export of free speech and free information, yet American companies are selling censorship. While some advocates of technology rights have proposed consumer boycotts and Congressional action to pressure these firms into responsible conduct, a good first step would be adding filtering technologies to the United States Munitions List, an index of products for which exporters have to file papers with the State Department.

Oh good greif. This should be a BIS controlled item and not a State Department controlled item.

Exporting Censorship - New York Times

The idea behind attention is very simple. I know, because it's my idea. Doc Searls introduced me to Dave Sifry at a party, and Dave and I sat in the corner for two hours and brainstormed how to turn that idea into reality. Later, I came down to Technorati's office and fleshed the idea out, describing what I do (did) with NetNewsWire and how I wanted to do it better. Dave sat there, taking notes, debriefing me in a classic deconstruction of what I did with RSS data, what I found important, and what the inforouter (my name for an aggregator on steroids) could do to improve information transfer.

Soon the outlines of a spec emerged; who, what, and for how long feed data was being consumed. I insisted that OPML be used as the first bootstrap of subscription data. Sifry, in the throes of establishing a business out of Technorati, seemed to sense the value of attention, but had to fit it in with many other priorities in allocating resources. In my role as a member of the Technorati Advisory board, I evangelized what I saw as attention's profound value proposition as RSS adoption accelerated the need to deal with a second order magnitude of information overload. I also surfaced the idea on a series of blogs, first at CRN, then at eWEEK, and lately at ZDNet/CNET.

» Waiting for Attention… or something like it | Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter | ZDNet.com

Similicio.us is a search engine that allows you to type in your favorite domain and receive suggestions of similar domains that might be of interest.

Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Six Degrees of Similiation

The proposed bill would allow the president to authorize wiretapping without seeking a warrant for up to 45 days if the communication under surveillance involved someone suspected of being a member of or a collaborator with a specified list of terrorist groups and if at least one party to the conversation was outside the United States.

At least one Republican Senator has balls:

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.

He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.

G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping - New York Times

So, my bosses boss walks into my lab today and asks if we have a contingency plan in the event of an outbreak of avian flu. I'm not kidding. I told him we didn't have an IP over Avian Carrier network, so we were probably fine. Turns out he wasn't kidding either. We have gotten requests about this from, um... certain customers... Just a little ray of sunshine to brighten up your day!

Executives are starting to confront the real chance of panicked workers, supply disruptions, and economic upheaval.

Avian Flu: Business Thinks The Unthinkable

Hijexx wrote:
Basing sentencing on motive alone seems like a slippery slope to thought crime.

I've been thinking about this. I agree that sentence modifiers aren't a deterrent with respect to crimes of passion rather then profit. However, FineThen did a good job of convincing me that a hate crime, such as a cross burning in someone's yard, is a substantially different thing from an act of vandalism. It has a greater emotional impact on the victims and a greater impact on the community at large. Can these things be reconciled?

Its not illegal to burn a cross according to the Supreme Court. You have a First Amendment right to hate that cannot be infringed by any legislature in the country. But you cannot intimidate the community. Your cross burning cannot be posed as a threat. This case is a good presentation of how to draw the line between these two cases.

In a state of nature, all ideology which disagrees with the establishment is inherently violent, because violence is the only means through which the establishment can be changed. In a democracy, ideology is inherently nonviolent, because the establishment can be replaced through nonviolent means through the process of persuasion on the merits. So in a democracy, you can have an inalienable right to your ideology... it can be legal to hate, because hatred is not inherently violent. You can, in fact, be a neo-nazi without hurting anyone.

However, once you commit a crime with the intent of furthering your ideology, you have peirced the democratic veil, and moved back to a state of nature, in which ideas are imposed by force rather then persuasion. This is a serious crime in a democracy, and it is not the same as random vandalism, or another non-ideological crime. If your ideology opposes a minority, we call this a hate crime. If you ideology opposes the majority, we call this terrorism. They are two sides of the same coin. Either way, they should not be considered simple acts of expression, or compared with other crimes merely on the basis of the physical damage done.

As far as this case is concerned, the article is really too vauge to be useful. There seems to be a basic dispute of fact in the case. If the officer did prevent the man from providing medical aid, was this a crime? Would it have been a crime if there really was a risk to the man? Assuming it is a crime, was it based in ignorance or avarice? Lets assume the officer pulled the guy off and said something like "He's a gay, those people often have AIDS, you shouldn't touch him." Could this be considered an attempt to further an ideology of hatred, or was it an honest attempt to protect that man rooted in extreme ignorance. Thats what I think is more challenging here. Can you accidentally commit a hate crime simply because you acted on a prejudiced assumption about someone and you didn't know that prejudice was unreasonable? I don't think so. Hate crime laws are not a prohibition on being an idiot or an asshole. Now, if he instead said "He's a gay, those people are wrong before god and you shouldn't save them," it might be a different story. Figuring out which situation you're dealing with could be really difficult in a court room.

RE: Suit: W.Va. Police Chief Denied Gay Man CPR - Yahoo! News

dmv wrote:

Newsvine combines the best features of a number of companies and products like Digg and Google News with great features like chat and blogging-style comments. The result is a perfect news site (note that new competitors, like spotback (mentioned here) are aiming to overthrow Newsvine already, however).

The result is a really wonderful social news experience.

Memestreams sinks lower...

Honestly, I'm not all that impressed. With the amount of money and brains behind newsvine I had expected something a bit more than Digg with pictures. Where is the technology innovation here? We've done a lot more with a lot less for a lot longer, but of course, we don't have time to work on the project, much less money to hire people, so our site isn't pretty and we don't get covered by the press.

The value of this site today is simply the people here, not the technology. The technology is simply a ruler by which you can measure what other people are doing. If one of these guys actually builds something that really works, is fun, and encompasses everything we've thought about, then great. I won't need to worry about it anymore. Otherwise we'll eventually be in a position to work on this again. In the mean time, I have a feeling a bunch of this stuff is simply going to die on the vine from overcapitalization and oversaturation... It feels bubbly.

RE: TechCrunch � Newsvine is Perfect

Chapter 72 of the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook addresses the important issue of the ideological differences between the United States and al-Qaida and the necessity to win the war of ideas. This chapter outlines the ideology promulgated by al-Qaida and associated terrorist groups. It examines recent attempts by the United States to combat al-Qaida’s worldview and compares this effort with America’s global propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union. The chapter concludes with some preliminary ideas about waging an effective counterpropaganda campaign against al-Qaida, including potential themes and approaches.

Waging the “War of Ideas”

At several points in the past, we have attempted to get people to colonize a MemeStreams IRC channel. Each time, its had about the same result. Five or six people pop in the first day.. The times when people are chatting don't line up, and people stop coming. Then I see a trail of people entering and exiting for 15 minutes at a time for the next several days..

Lets try this again... This time, stay in the damn channel. Idle there. Attract some more people. It takes awhile for any given channel to grab traction.

The topic isn't limited to MemeStreams, but should have something to do with media, idea transfer, Internet issues, communication theory, or current events.

irc://irc.freenode.net:#memetics

Freenode is a great network. Its stable, there are numerous servers, and the channel/nick services work well so there is no need to have bots to administrate the channels.

For those that don't use IRC, its a very old chat protocol. There are numerous networks and a plethora of clients you can use to connect to it. Asking which client is the best to use is like asking for a major debate. I prefer XChat myself. The main site has the Windows and Linux clients. There is an OSX specific port as well.

MemeStreams/Memetics IRC Channel (again) - #memetics