NYT reporters place the attacks of September 11 in context with a wealth of details about the US government's policies and actions against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Worth reading. Excerpts from interviews with many current and former cabinet officials.

Many Say U.S. Planned for Terror but Failed to Take Action

Blogdex has informally announced a new feature called the "social network explorer." The URL format is like this:

http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/socnet/index.asp?ego=domain.tld

where domain.tld is the site you want to know about (such as memestreams.net, which probably isn't in the blogdex database).

It displays your selected site in the top 3/4 of the screen. The bottom 1/4 is split into three frames containing relationships for the selected site: "linked to", "friends", and "links to". The "friends" panel is the interesting one ... the others are just simple SELECT queries on the database. Check it out, recalling that the authors say it's still in testing.

blogdex social network explorer

His speech considers what is happening in the war against terrorism, and calls for a long-term strategy to address underlying problems in the countries involved. During the lecture ex-President Clinton revisits the themes of his speech at Warwick University in December 2000.

The full transcript of Clinton's speech is available in "printer-friendly" HTML.

Bill Clinton: The Struggle For The Soul of The 21st Century

...

'Harry Potter' Beats Copyright, Islamic Law in Iran

Abstract: "Building on a richer conception of authentication than has been used to date, a statement of requirements is expressed for public key infrastructure (PKI) to support e-business. Inadequacies inherent in conventional PKI are underlined, providing important reasons for its continued low take-up rates. Alternative approaches to electronic authentication are evaluated against the requirements."

Contents:
* 1. Introduction
* 2. The New Model of Authentication
* 3. What Public Key Technologies Do, and Don't Do
* 4. Requirements of an Effective PKI
* 5. Conventional PKI
* 6. Alternative Approaches to PKI
* 7. Conclusions
* Appendix 1: Elements of a PKI to Support Digital Signatures
* References

Roger Clarke's 'Re-Invention of PKI'

"Welcome to the website dedicated to making mixed tapes and cds. Browse the archive and check out recent submissions. Or, submit a mix yourself. And, Art of the Mix is home to a community of people all devoted to the fine art of making mixes."

A neat site. You can set up an account and log your mixes in various categories. Everyone provides feedback, and a community develops around the discussion. People can select the mixes they like and arrange CD/cassette trades with others.

The Art of the Mix

Based on data reported by international news organizations, this page presents a network map of terrorists involved in the 11 September attacks. It is a sample of the output produced by InFlow, a software program for network mapping and social network analysis. For another sample, see the "Internet Industry Map of Partnerships and Alliances" at

http://www.orgnet.com/netindustry.html

Social Network Analysis of Terrorist Networks

It won't be taught by the Simpsons' evangelical neighbor, Ned Flanders, but a philosophy class being added to Siena Heights University's curriculum will be based on the popular animated TV series. This winter, the university is offering a two-credit class on how religion and philosophy are part of popular culture, including "The Simpsons." Readings will include "The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" by William Irwin, and "The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the Most Animated Family." "Animated Philosophy and Religion," taught by Kimberly Blessing and Anthony Sciglitano, is already proving popular with students.

(Never heard of Siena Heights (sienahts.edu)? It is "a Catholic university founded by the Adrian Dominican Sisters" located in Adrian, Michigan.)

Read about _The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer_ at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812694333

What's even funnier than this story is that Amazon paid someone to scan in 16 pages of this book!

D'oh! University offers 'Simpsons' studies

Onion Networks, of St. Paul, MN, provides software and services for ad-hoc peer-to-peer content delivery networks. They freely provide a Java Forward Error Correction (FEC) library in support of IETF standards work. These are the technical people who designed the SwarmCast system for OpenCola.

Onion Networks

MemeStreamers in the SF Bay Area may be interested in this upcoming conference. Deadline for submission of papers is 1 Jan 2002. The Program Committee includes Jamie Zawinski, Bram Cohen, Iag Grigg, and others.

"CodeCon 2002, scheduled for February 15, 16, and 17 in San Francisco, California, is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties."

CodeCon 2002