There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
Forgiving the unforgivable | Chicago Tribune
Topic: Society
5:23 pm EDT, Oct 7, 2006
In the days since the killings in a schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa., the tone from the grieving Amish community has been not of despair or revenge, but of forgiveness.
A relative of 13-year-old Marian Fisher, one of the children shot by Charles Carl Roberts, 32, extended an invitation to Roberts' widow to attend the girl's funeral. The Amish woman told a reporter, "It's our Christian love to show to her we have not any grudges against her."
...
Still, anyone who has ever set out on the winding road to forgiveness knows it is easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk. This week the Amish have offered all of us a superb lesson on how to make the talk and the walk intersect.
I can't help but notice this can now be referred to as the "PERP Act".
Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006 -- H.R. 2679 -- provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees.
With regard to the Boy Scouts angle, see BSA Legal:
Boy Scouts of America appreciates Congress’ interest in the litigation facing Boy Scouts and the solution Congress is pursuing in the “Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006.” For the past decade, Boy Scouts as well as federal, state, and local governments that support Boy Scouts, have been the targets of ACLU lawsuits challenging Boy Scouts’ relationships with government entities. Those lawsuits seek to use the Establishment Clause to sever government relationships with Scouting merely because Boy Scouts pledge a nonsectarian promise to do their “duty to God.” Boy Scouts of America hopes that the Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006 will help eliminate this frivolous litigation against Scouting and government entities.
From the record:
The ACLU received $950,000 in a settlement with the City of San Diego in a case involving the San Diego Boy Scouts.
Also:
In Redlands, California, the city council reluctantly capitulated to ACLU's demands and agreed to change their official seal. But Redlands didn't have the municipal funds to revise police and firefighter badges that contained the old seal so, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, `rather than face the likelihood of costly litigation,' Redlands residents now `see blue tape covering the cross on city trucks, while some firefighters have taken drills to `obliterate it' from their badges.'
Further:
The official name of the City of Los Angeles (known as `The City of Angels') is `The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the Little Portion,' which refers to Mary, Mother of Jesus. Many other California cities contain religious references, including San Clemente, Santa Monica, Sacramento (named for the `Holy Sacrament'), San Francisco and San Luis Obispo (named for Saint Louis the Bishop). Under precedents groups like the ACLU are setting under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, the very names of these cities are in legal jeopardy.
To the section which begins "including, but not limited to, a violation resulting from--", they might as well have added "(5) a government employee's particularly pious demeanor." How can you disagree with that? Shouldn't government employees have the same rights as everyone else, wi... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
"It has become clear that Internet access in itself is a vulnerability that we cannot mitigate. We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient." -- Undersecretary of Commerce Mark Foulon
Google in Talks to Acquire YouTube for $1.6 Billion
Topic: High Tech Developments
8:41 pm EDT, Oct 6, 2006
The eyes have it.
Google is in serious talks to acquire YouTube, the wildly successful online video-sharing Web site, for $1.6 billion in cash and stock, people involved in the negotiations said today.
A deal would end an almost yearlong chess game among the nation’s media and technology moguls to take over YouTube, which allows users to share home movies, amateur spoofs and snippets of the best parts of television shows. Though it is not yet profitable, the site has exploded into a cultural phenomenon less than a year after its debut, broadcasting more than 100 million video clips a day.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Viacom and the News Corporation, among others, have all paid visits to YouTube’s headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., in recent months to inquire about buying the company.
Terms of the potential sale to Google could not be learned. It was still possible that the talks could collapse or that another suitor could swoop in with a rival offer.
The negotiations come as all of the established media conglomerates are in a frenzied hunt to acquire hot Internet properties. Yahoo, for instance, is in negotiations to buy Facebook, a social networking site originally aimed at college students, for more than $1 billion, according to people involved in those talks.
The buyout rush is partly a reaction to Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace, an online hangout with millions of personal Web pages. MySpace, which Mr. Murdoch bought last year for $580 million, is now worth as much as $2 billion by some analysts’ estimates.
Fred Turner - From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Topic: High Tech Developments
7:17 pm EDT, Oct 2, 2006
This is a nice capsule; probably nothing but a nugget or two new here for many MemeStreams regulars.
“The Last Whole Earth Catalog,” published in 1971, which ended up selling a million copies and winning the National Book Award, has the eerie luminosity of a Sears catalog from the turn of the last century. It is a portrait of an age and its dreams.
As Fred Turner points out in his revealing new book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism” (University of Chicago Press), there is no way to separate cyberculture from counterculture; indeed, cyberculture grew from its predecessor’s compost.
The book earns plugs from Kevin Kelly and Douglas Rushkoff. The Publishers Weekly review calls it "a compelling genealogy", but that's about as glowing as they get.
And if You Liked the Movie, a Netflix Contest May Reward You Handsomely
Topic: High Tech Developments
5:05 am EDT, Oct 2, 2006
Netflix, the popular online movie rental service, is planning to award $1 million to the first person who can improve the accuracy of movie recommendations based on personal preferences.
James Bennett, left, a Netflix vice president, with the company’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, in a headquarters screening room.
To win the prize, which is to be announced today, a contestant will have to devise a system that is more accurate than the company’s current recommendation system by at least 10 percent. And to improve the quality of research, Netflix is making available to the public 100 million of its customers’ movie ratings, a database the company says is the largest of its kind ever released.
“If we knew how to do it, we’d have already done it,” said Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif.
If no one wins within a year, Netflix will award $50,000 to whoever makes the most progress above a 1 percent improvement, and will award the same amount each year until someone wins the grand prize.
This report examines how US national security strategy and the USAF might change to better confront new challenges ...
Our analysis suggests that the United States could fail to achieve its core objectives -- could, in other words, lose -- under certain circumstances, in a conflict with any of the three most likely near- to mid-term state opponents -- North Korea, China, and Iran.
These findings are, of course, scenario specific; we do not mean to say that the United States. would, or must, fail in these or any other contingencies. The point that we wish to convey is that it is now fairly easy to devise scenarios in which the United States "loses" a war, something that seemed impossible during the post-Cold War era.
What's new is the use of evolutionary algorithms in programs that laypeople might use to invent things. A simple demonstration on Icosystems' website, for instance, asks a user to select a few initial designs for Mondrianesque wallpaper or bathroom tiles; the designs' evolution can then be directed toward the pattern the user likes best.
The first standalone commercial service based on the Hunch Engine will debut this fall, when Icosystems launches an online company-naming service. Bonabeau says that for $15 or so, the naming engine will let a user recombine random phonemes and filter the resulting names until something pleasing, inoffensive, and non-trademarked emerges.
Until now, software programs like that were the closely guarded trade secrets of advertising agencies. It's nice to see this coming into the open.
