Talking to young Iraqis, you sense how much they want to break the old mold — how much they want to be Arabs, with an Arab identity, but to build a modern state that actually focuses on tapping its people's talents and energies, rather than diverting them, and one that seeks to base their dignity on what they build, not on whom they fight.

Telling the Truth in Iraq

] Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National
] Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader
] reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation,
] prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found
] "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through
] telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia
] and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone
] systems, electrical generation and transmission, water
] storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas
] facilities.

] "We were underestimating the amount of attention [al
] Qaeda was] paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey,
] a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of
] staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure
] Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as
] a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time
] mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we
] previously thought. An attack is a question of when,
] not if."

] What they do know is that "Red Teams" of mock intruders
] from the Energy Department's four national laboratories
] have devised what one government document listed as
] "eight scenarios for SCADA attack on an electrical power
] grid" -- and all of them work. Eighteen such exercises
] have been conducted to date against large regional
] utilities, and Richard A. Clarke, Bush's cyber-security
] adviser, said the intruders "have always, always succeeded."

Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared (TechNews.com)

] Internet users who type the WindowsUpdate.com URL in
] their browser get an error message. Microsoft has deleted
] the Domain Name System (DNS) information for the domain,
] and it no longer sends traffic to an actual Web site.

According to Reuters, the number of Blaster-infected machines currently ranges from 386,000 to 1.2 million, depending who you ask:
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3287116

Microsoft pulls WindowsUpdate.com to avert Blaster

] Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by
] acclaimed author Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep tells
] the true story of what really did become of Elvis. We
] find the King (Bruce Campbell) as an elderly resident
] in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities
] with an Elvis impersonator years before his death, then
] missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with
] Jack (Ossie Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who
] thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy,
] and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle
] an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term
] care facility as his happy hunting grounds...

Good, Bad, this movie is going to rock.

Bubba Ho-Tep

Dusk shot of the big apple with the lights off, from the New York Times Website.

Everyone in the world shares the same reference point to this moment in time.

Picture of New York City with no power

] Heads up, sharers of music, video and software files: If
] a prominent Michigan lawmaker has his way on Capitol
] Hill, you will soon be a felon.
]
] U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, is the
] sponsor of the Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner
] Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003, which
] declares sharing a single copyrighted file online to be a
] felony.
]
] Because the bill doesn't specifically name the type of
] file, you could theoretically become a felon by copying
] and posting this very column on your Web site. (We frown
] on that sort of thing anyway, but webmasters, be warned.)
]
] Giving fake information to the folks who register domain
] names, the basic Internet Web addresses (such as
] freep.com), would be punishable by up to five years in
] prison and a fine. Using a camcorder to record a movie in
] a theater -- whether you share it or not -- would be a
] federal criminal offense.

HEATHER NEWMAN: 60 million file sharers could face prison, fine

Checking out the CD right now... Very nice. Instrumental. Sort of soft indy rockish.
Two thumbs, dude...

The Mercury Program

] A major power outage simultaneously struck dozens of
] cities in the United States and Canada late Thursday
] afternoon.

CNN.com - Major power outage hits New York, other large cities - Aug. 14, 2003

] TWU believes in freedom from frivolous (and automated!)
] lawsuits. In that spirit, we are presenting the
] following false list of "pirated software". NONE OF THIS
] SOFTWARE IS REAL. If you download it, you will find that
] the files merely contain an endless string of "zero
] bytes": Nothing at all. The sole purpose of this page is
] to attract automated lawsuits, and demonstrate how
] foolish the whole process of "e-Suing" is.

TWU - The Web Union [v3.0]

] Look at the "jobless" economic recovery in the United States.
] Productivity growth has outstripped production by a percentage
] point, so while GDP goes up, employment does not. And that's
] just due to increased efficiency from the application of
] information technology.

Ultimately this means that the cost of products goes down. Eventually you reach a point where people begin to consider cutting hours, because you can make ends meet with less money and would rather have the freedom.

I have a friend in Austin who works three days a week. She would much rather have the time then the money. I'd honestly like to do the same. Having time to work on projects like MemeStreams would be well worth a significant cut in salary. I know a lot of people who feel the same.

The barrier to this, usually, is employers. If they can have two people working half time instead of one person working full time, ultimately this is the same deal for them, but its hard to convince them to change the way they operate. So difficult, in fact, that the last time this occured it took a widespread social movement to make it happen.

I'm talking, of course, about the 30 hour work week. Which has a precident, the forty hour work week. I think this is where we are headed.

This is also another place where I think this author is wrong. The fact that this doesn't work for minimum wagers is basically a policy problem and not an economic problem. Minimum wage should be livable, based on a standard work week. Arguements to the contrary from well meaning conservatives are simply short sighted. To devalue labor is to devalue people. This is a barrier to automation. Its the cost of people that moves us toward robotics. Making people cheap mires us in the status quo. Look at China. A lot of the automation we use in construction and manufacturing simply doesn't exist there because the people are too cheap. Higher minimum wage spurs innovation which increases productivity and ultimately lowers the price of goods.

RE: Robotic Nation, by Marshall Brain