Decius wrote:
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.

I officially acknowledge receipt of this message, and assume control of The Industrial Memetics Institute as the Acting CEO. In light of the situation, and full recognition of your importance to Industrial Memetics and The MemeStreams Community, your status will be classified as "on sabbatical".

Industrial Memetics will make a formal press announcement sometime within the next 24-hours.

We fully expect that your sabbatical will be short yet fruitful. It should be noted that in your entire service since our great company's founding in September of 2001, you have not taken a vacation.

I look forward to seeing if what happens in Vegas, truly stays in Vegas.

Nick Levay, Acting CEO, Industrial Memetics Institute

I assume the helm. Stay the course..

This is an annoyingly short article about how Mike is now getting probed by the FBI because of ISS.

Mike Lynn Is Being Investigated by the FBI

A presentation called “The Holy Grail: Cisco IOS Shellcode Remote Execution” was slated to run at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this week. But Internet Information Systems and Cisco, the companies presenting the segment, decided to pull the presentation after discussions between the two firms.

Further Abaddon Nogoodery

Even more of Abaddon being up to no good.

Abaddon, still up to no good.

According to Love in Action's rules, posted on Zach's blog, clients must report sexual fantasies to the staff. The program specifies the exact length of haircuts and how many times men must shave each week (seven). Love in Action bars jewelry and clothing by Abercrombie and Fitch. The rules prohibit "campy gay/lesbian behavior and talk." New clients are not allowed to talk to or make eye contact with anyone for the first three days. Clients have to wear pajamas to bed and if they get too cozy they "must always have exactly one person between them." Clients cannot keep a diary, and all their belongings are searched every morning by the "Chain of Command." All secular media, including music and movies, are forbidden. Also, during counseling -- no "disgusting" faces.

The Refuge program is "like a boot camp, but worse," Zach wrote. "What is it with these people? How could you support a program like this?"

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services investigated the Love in Action facility for possible child abuse but discontinued it because of lack of evidence. The brouhaha exposed an oddity of the ex-gay ministries, which is that they are largely unregulated. Ministries claim they are not hospitals or any other facility that would typically require regulatory oversight or licensing. Love in Action spokesman Tommy Corman says the facility does not need to be licensed by the state at all because it is not doing anything "therapeutic." A bold declaration, considering the group promotes "the prevention or treatment of unhealthy and destructive behaviors facing families, adults, and adolescents," according to its Web site.

Nevertheless, the ministries fall into a regulatory blind spot. "There has been some question of who licenses that facility," said K. Danielle Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services. "This would not be under our jurisdiction. I have not been able to ascertain who licenses that facility." On July 11, the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities sent a letter to Love in Action, warning the facility that it may be operating without a required license. Results of the investigation are pending.

This is the first really in-depth story that I've read about the Christian Conservative's movement to "deprogram" gays. No matter what stance you take on the matter, I highly recommend the article just so that you can know what it is that the group is trying to accomplish and what the hindsight view of some who have been through the program is.

There are four parts to this story - I linked to the final installment since it has links to the first three at the top of the article.

Turning off gays

Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available - exclusively over the Internet - broadcast television's first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely's interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology. NerdTV will be available for download from www.pbs.org/nerdtv .

I, Cringely . NerdTV

I've been playing around with the recently release Google Maps API and wrote this little app to display wifi hotspots around town. Since I live in the Nashville area, it centers on Nashville. You can easily take the code and modify it for your area. Feel free to borrow.

Dolemite

Google Maps API Fun

I don't know which one I'd prefer to show off with... the Bling Ringer or the Laptop Lowrider. Make sure that the next time you take a shower in a hotel or another person's home that they haven't installed an R. Kelly Golden Showerhead.

Gangsta Gadgets

The story of a Sunni girl from Fallujah selling herself in a Damascus nightclub represents startling new fallout from the Iraq war, one human rights organizations and experts are only beginning to address. An increasing number of young Iraqi women and girls who fled Iraq during the turmoil are turning to prostitution in Syria, although there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are involved. That might partly explain why so little reporting has been done on the topic. For journalists and human rights workers, securing contact with Iraqi sex workers in Syria is difficult and dangerous because the topic is taboo.

This is an interesting article around the desparation that many Iraqi refugees are feeling, but it's not really just because of the war. One person quoted in the article said it pretty clearly - prostitution isn't new, there's just a lot more of it. Many of the economically pillaged countries with high populations and few jobs face this kind of problem every day. Go to Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai or Beijing and see how prevalent prostitution is there, and not just locals - the bars and clubs are full of women from the Phillipines, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam, you name it. The war is certainly the biggest factor in the economic depression that Iraq is experiencing, but ending the fighting won't solve the problem, either.

Unveiling Iraq's teenage prostitutes

Decius wrote:
If you like comics you'll probably enjoy this WotW serial. Darkhorse is posting new pages weekly...

This is obviously a marketing tie-in with the upcoming movie version, but it does lend some sort of hope that companies like Dark Horse will find a way to make a viable business model out of offering content online. As a collector, I value the printed material. I have a book case filled out with pretty, leatherbound editions of graphic novels. While I don't want to see my precious bound materials to disappear, I also don't want the publishers of such a rich medium to disappear, either. The costs to publish and distribute comics keeps going up and the readership is going down. Web publishing is an obvious step for the next generation in graphic novels and while there are many successful online comics, I don't know of any that have made the actual transition, or that have tried both online and printed versions of the same material. I can only hope.

RE: War Of The Worlds eComic