Somewhere, someone failed because they needed yesterday what you only finished today.

Don't wait. Go.

Mantra #1

The purpose of computers is human freedom.

Like "maturity" and "reality" and "progress", the word "technology" has an agenda for your behavior: usually what is being referred to as "technology" is something that somebody wants you to submit to.  "Technology" often implicitly refers to something you are expected to turn over to "the guys who understand it."

What we really need is software designs that go into realms that cannot be visualized on paper, to break ideas and presentations out of their four-walled prison.

Cyber means "I do not know what I am talking about" or "I am trying to fool and confuse you."

And please, Mr. Programmer, leave the choices to ME, not labyrinths of software outside my control, because I DO NOT TRUST YOU.

The Web is a foam of ever-popping bubbles, ever-changing shop windows.
The Web is the minimal concession to hypertext that a sequence-and-hierarchy chauvinist could possibly make.

If you haven't read Ted Nelson you're not really a hacker.

specialK wrote:
] Had this been an Israeli group that killed this Palestinian
] teenager, it would have been all over the news.

Well, you'll be happy to know NYT coverage is on Google News right now.

] Not only that, but is anyone else alarmed that Palestinians
] are setting up weapons in civilian areas? Where's the outrage??

Well, both news reports that I've read about this claimed that the family wanted to prevent the rock launcher from being set up because the IDF has a policy of launching rocket attacks on civilian homes who are thought to have collaborated with militants and they felt that if they couldn't stop the rocket launcher from being setup they might be the target of such an attack.

If you are to be outraged that the militans put civilians at risk you ought to be equally outraged that the IDF directly targets those civilians as a result.

I have a hard time seeing "good guys" here. Neither the 15 year old boy nor his family nor the militants nor the IDF seem to be on particularly sound moral footing.

Of course, thats why these stories don't get better coverage. Someone is getting killed in this conflict every time you turn around, and only the most radical, and those with vested interests, feel particularly sympathetic to one side.

Everyone else just kind of turns away in disgust. What is there to say on this occaison that hasn't been said 1000 times before. One hopes that someday something remotely resembling progress will actually happen, but no one believes it for a second.

There are two paths to peace. One is that a particular side is completly demoralized and defeated, and the other is that moderates within each society begin holding back the radicals on their own side, rather then focusing on all the bad stuff the other side is doing.

Neither seems likely here. One might see reflections of the U.S. WOT here. The later process, of moderate relaxation of tensions, is particularly difficult when one seeks revenge. Would you be willing to let Bin Lauden go if all of the militant Islamists agreed to a truce?

RE: Palestinian teen killed trying to stop Kassam launch

] This site is designed to empower you, the individual
] activist, to help stop the genocide in Sudan. You do
] have the power.

A reasonable starting point for those who want to better understand the Sudan.

http://passionofthepresent.com

] The U.S. Congress declared that the killings of tens of
] thousands of black civilians by Arab militias in Sudan's
] Darfur region amount to "genocide," while U.S. Secretary
] of State Colin Powell warned that Khartoum must act
] quickly to disarm Arab militias or face U.N. sanctions.

The Sudan is more likely then Iran to be your next front in the War on Terror.

CNN.com - U.S. Congress declares 'genocide' in Sudan - Jul 23, 2004

] The company is strongly urging e-mail providers and
] Internet service providers (ISPs) to publish Sender
] Policy Framework (SPF) records that identify their e-mail
] servers in the domain name system (DNS) by mid-September.
] Microsoft will begin matching the source of inbound
] e-mail to the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of e-mail
] servers listed in that sending domain's SPF record by
] Oct. 1. Messages that fail the check will not be
] rejected, but will be further scrutinized and filtered,
] said Craig Spiezle, director of Microsoft's Safety
] Technology and Strategy Group.

Microsoft is planning on enforcing SPF. Fortunately they aren't going to outright drop non-SPF emails, but it remains to be seen if MemeStreams email will go through to hotmail accounts after this change. SPF breaks systems like MemeStreams that send out emails on someone else's behalf. There is a workaround, but it is hacky to the point of being considered harmful, and I can't easily employ it because outbound email from MemeStreams comes from the webserver and not the mail server. In any event, if you notice that your memestreams messages aren't getting through as this moves forward please let me know. Its going to be a hell of a lot of work to address this and I don't want to do it until it becomes a real concern and not just theoretical.

InfoWorld: Microsoft to break MemeStreams

] While you have carefully crafted this bill to preserve
] the 20-year-old decision in the Sony case, it may become
] necessary to consider whether that decision is overly
] protective of manufacturers and marketers of infringement
] tools...

This is an extremely biased opinion for an executive agency to be presenting.

Today, the way things work, is that if a tool has non-infringing uses then its legal. The induce act flips this standard around 180 degrees and says if a tool has infringing uses then its illegal. There are many shades of gray in here that we could be having a reasonable discussion about. Instead we have this radical non-sense, and its coming from the people we pay to offer reasonable technical perspectives.

This isn't the first time that people working in the Intellectual Property arena in our government have proven to be foaming at the mouth copyright maximalists. Recently our UN abassador to WIPO argued that WIPO had no business discussing open source software because a discussion of anything other then "all rights reserved" is apparently inappropriate for an Intellectual Property organization. I concur with this author that some serious house cleaning needs to occur. People need to be fired.

Copyright Office wants to ban VCRs

] "Mother Jones and Alternet interviewed Joe Trippi,the guy
] behind the Howard Dean campaign ('the candidate lost but
] the campaign won'). He has a new book out, 'The
] Revolution will not be Televised' (click for excerpt),
] about how the Internet is radically changing the way
] politics is done.

Slashdot has a number of articles with Joe Trippi. His speech at ETC was one of the most interesting I've heard this year.

Slashdot | Joe Trippi Roundup

Likely, the identity of the Arabs on Annie Jacobson's flight...

Clinton W. Taylor on Nour Mehana & Terror in the Skies

The resolution, such as it is, involves the complexities of time travel — wormholes, tangent universes and so forth — in a way that asks larger questions about free will.

The Resurrection of 'Donnie Darko'