] VeriSign claims to have invested $150m in two and a half
] years, but Vixie said the numbers are suspect: "They
] didn't spend $150m on the root servers, they put $150m
] into their gTLD servers... they made sure .com and .net
] were well-served, and the roots came along for the ride."

Paul Vixie responds in the press to the factual misrepresentations in last weeks abominable interview with the CEO of Verisign.

Trouble Grows at the Internet's Root - Computer Business Review

] Defending the right to link to controversial information
] about flaws in electronic voting systems, EFF announced
] today it will defend an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
] and a news website publisher against claims of indirect
] copyright infringement from the electronic voting
] machines' manufacturer.

EFF: ISP Rejects Diebold Copyright Claims Against News Website

] // getsrvbyname.c -- A trivial implementation of a DNS
] // SRV [RFC2782] resolver.

Here's Bucy's code. Probably buggy. BSD license.

getsrvbyname()

bucy wrote:
] ] The SRV RR allows administrators to use several servers
] ] for a single domain, to move services from host to host
] ] with little fuss, and to designate some hosts as primary
] ] servers for a service and others as backups.
]
] SRV records might, for example, make sitefinder much less bad;
] if the wildcard were
]
] *.com IN SRV host=sitefinder.verisign.com port=80 priority=1
] weight=1
]
] rather than
]
] *.com IN A ...
]
] I expect that the effects would be much less disruptive, i.e.
] browsers would be redirected but everything else would not.

This is a very interesting approach to the sitefinder problem. John, if you make it to Phreaknic I'm willing to give you some of my speaking time to talk about this.

U: I guess one concern is this still creates problems for HTTP based XMLRPC services, which will get a "no XML service on this webserver" error instead of a "host not found" error. (Of course, one could ask that xmlrpc lookup _xmlrpc._tcp.*...

RE: A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV) (RFC2782)

] Attorney Dr. Martine Rothblatt filed a motion for a
] preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from
] disconnecting an intelligent computer in a mock trial at
] the International Bar Association conference in San
] Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. The issue could arise in a
] real court within the next few decades, as computers
] achieve or exceed the information processing capability
] of the human mind and the boundary between human and
] machine becomes increasingly blurred.

KurzweilAI.net: Do AIs have standing in court?

] The team created a glass block, two centimetres in diameter
] and three millimetres thick, containing about 400,000 to
] 500,000 individual channels.
]
] Thanks to a phenomenon called the electric double layer,
] when water flows through these 10-micron-diameter-wide
] channels, a positive charge is created at one end of the
] block and a negative charge at the other - just like a
] conventional battery.

Canadian team invents new power source, no moving parts, may be useful for powering nanotech devices.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Water sparks new power source

From the Scout Report: This fascinating collection of social hygiene posters (designed to inculcate certain social practices regarding hygiene, friendship, prostitution, and mental health) is culled from the fine holdings of the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

There are some gems to be found here, and the collection is easily browsed. Consider "Beware of Chance Acquaintances" and "Danger in Familiarities".

American Social Hygiene Posters, ca. 1910-1970

OC_Colin wrote:
] Have you ever wondered why you vote the way you do? Why you
] adhere to a religion? Why you hold to a political philosophy?
] Well, our good friends at the University of Berkley have come
] up with an answer for this perplexing life question.
] Unfortunately, they only have the answer if you’re a
] conservative.

I think its obvious that the mud slinging is wrong on both sides. Honestly, I think its a matter of being urban or rural.

If you grow up in the city you see other people's poverty as a source of most of the bad things about your life, you tend to be very culturally tolerant because your community is diverse and has lots of immigrants, and you see guns as something people use to commit violent crimes. You tend to look to society for answers because everyone is interdependent in the city.

If you grow up the country you don't see as much poverty. You tend to be self reliant, and you expect it of others. You don't tend to be tolerant of people who are "different" because you rarely see them and don't have to live with them. It makes sense to you that kids should pray in school because God created the world and you've never met a hindu. You see guns as something you do on the weekend for fun and it pisses you off that someone might want to take them.

And this is reflected directly in the votes. Urban places like California, New York, etc... tend to vote liberal. Rural places like Texas tend to vote conservative.

These sides never really agree because they aren't coming at this from the same place and they can't put themselves in the other's shoes. It seems to be a frustrating argument most of the time: the country trying to impose its value system on the city, and the city trying to impose its rules of order on the country...

RE: Josef Mengele Moves to Berkley

] NASA engineers, using personal contacts, asked the US
] military and intelligence agencies to use their spy satellites
] to look at the shuttle's wing. There were three separate
] attempts to ask for spy photos and each time, NASA
] management found out about these requests and ordered the
] military NOT to look at the shuttle. Managers warned the
] engineers to follow procedures.
]
] If the NASA engineers had gotten the images, they would have
] seen the hole, the astronauts could have stayed in the space
] station, another shuttle (Atlantis) could be sent up, and the
] astronauts could return on the second shuttle.
]
] The CAIB report should be read by anyone who works in
] large organizations. It uncovers the blindness in organizational
] decision making, shows how this occurs, and how this can be
] remedied.

[IP] The Columbia space shuttle accident report

... Tons of foreign technology is imported, but it's never really internalized ...

Tom Friedman on Arab society in the Sunday New York Times.

Courageous Arab Thinkers