Because of the A-list names--such as Google co-founder Larry Page and Technorati founder Dave Sifry--and the level of discourse involved, the trip, known as Foo Camp (for Friends of O'Reilly), has become one of the must-get invites among the geek set.

But when the event convenes again this weekend near the Sebastopol, Calif., offices of O'Reilly & Associates, O'Reilly's publishing company, a number of people who have attended previously or who would like to be on hand won't have gotten invitations.

That's why some of them have gotten together to organize what they're calling Bar Camp and referring to as an open-source alternative to Foo Camp. Bar Camp is a play on the word "foobar," a common programming variable.

Geeks to hold anti-foocamp

What's a music-download fan to do -- actually pay for music?

If it comes to that, they'll find that a lot has changed in the online music business.

These rental-music outfits are highly conducive to exploring and discovering new music. They're ideal if your taste leans toward what one Internet wag calls Disposable Contemporary.

Britney to Rent, Lease or Buy

MemeStreams.net -- Your source for breaking news on catasrophic transformer explosions.

Blast rattles San Francisco financial district

Xiaoyun Wang, one of the team of Chinese cryptographers that successfully broke SHA-0 and SHA-1, along with Andrew Yao and Frances Yao, announced new results against SHA-1 yesterday at Crypto's rump session. (Actually, Adi Shamir announced the results in their name, since she and her student did not receive U.S. visas in time to attend the conference.)

Shamir presented few details -- and there's no paper -- but the time complexity of the new attack is 2^63. (Their previous result was 2^69; brute force is 2^80.) He did say that he expected Wang and her students to improve this result over the next few months.

Schneier on Security: New Cryptanalytic Results Against SHA-1

OMG! Its like a car. Except that its like a bike. Except that its like a fighter jet.

I used to dream of vehicles almost exactly like this when I was in elementary school! My imaginary carbike was red with beige interior. You sat with your legs almost directly out in front of you, like sitting on the floor. It could seat two, but just barely. It had two wheels at full speed, but when it slowed down two stabalizer wheels would automatically fold out of the sides and touch the ground. And it had front mounted machine guns and a rear oil slick capability, of course.

I used to imagine weaving it through traffic at high rates of speed on important national security type missions while stuck in the back seat of our car on long, long holiday drives... Its kind of amazing to see a real one. Its like someone read my mind.

CARVER - The most athletic car in the world

Aug. 16 - Last year a Chinese mathematician, Xiaoyun Wang, shook up the insular world of code breakers by exposing a new vulnerability in a crucial American standard for data encryption. On Monday, she was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address to an international group of researchers meeting in California.

But a stand-in had to take her place, because she was not able to enter the country. Indeed, only one of nine Chinese researchers who sought to enter the country for the conference received a visa in time to attend.

"It's not a question of them stealing our jobs," said Stuart Haber, a Hewlett-Packard computer security expert who is program chairman for the meeting, Crypto 2005, being held this week in Santa Barbara. "We need to learn from them, but we are shooting ourselves in the foot."

A policy designed to protect national security by preventing tecchnology transfer from the US to China has actually hurt national security by preventing technology transfer from China to the US. If you know someone at State tell them to read this article. This matter is very serious and they should have made an exception in this case and gotten the visas in time.

Chinese Cryptologists Get Invitations to a US Conference, but No Visas

The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography.

"The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children," Gallagher said in a letter that was made public on Monday.

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ICANN's vote this year represents an abrupt turnabout from the group's earlier stance. In November 2000, the ICANN staff objected to the .xxx domain and rejected ICM Registry's first application.

At the time, politicians lambasted ICANN's move. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., demanded to know why ICANN didn't approve .xxx "as a means of protecting our kids from the awful, awful filth, which is sometimes widespread on the Internet." Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., told a federal commission that .xxx was necessary to force adult Webmasters to "abide by the same standard as the proprietor of an X-rated movie theater."

They were damned either way.

Bush administration objects to .xxx domains | CNET News.com

"It's all about the 'memes,' " says Stan Jonas, head of interest rate strategy at Fimat USA in New York... "Those guys say it and about a week or two later, the guys on Wall Street pick it up."

The Big Picture: WSJ: Economists Join Blogging Frontier

The following link was forwarded to me by a friend. This is the recent Hard Talk programme of BBC in which a British Muslim leader speaks..It's difficult to believe that some people can be so stubborn and different in what they believe.

This is religious intolerance taken to it's natural conclusion.

Its about 30 minutes. It will piss you off.

[IP] Justifying acts of terror?

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much. I don't plan to post for a while. I am hereby turning over all reponsibility for administration of this site to Nick Levay (Rattle). I am not managing MemeStreams or Industrial Memetics for the time being. All queries should be sent to Nick.

I think its appropriate for this community to be able to express its views without implicating any conflicts of interest that I may have, so I am stepping back for now. The perspective of this community belongs to the community and not to me or Nick or anyone else.

Furthermore, to avoid any rumors, there has been absolutely nothing from any of the parties involved in this dispute that has prompted this action, nor to I really believe that any of the parties involved in this dispute would have a problem with what this site consists of, presuming they understood what it is. This is simply a precautionary measure that I am taking to avoid any potential problems and to ensure the freedom of the people in this comunity to express their views.

It is my sincere hope that all of this drama dies down as quickly as it began.