Kevin Hale of Particletree wrote an interesting essay about the importance of RSS and speculates that the success of social bookmarking sites like MemeStreams have got Google worried about the reputation agent becoming the new search.

Slashdot | The Importance of RSS

ATLANTA, Georgia (June 17th, 2005) - The Board of Directors of the Industrial Memetics Institute strongly condemns allegations made earlier this month by Amnesty International that its software development operations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are "the gulag of our times."

Industrial Memetics President and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Cross, said "The comparison is completely unreasonable. Russian Gulags were places in which thousands were worked to death in the oppressive Siberian winter. Our people in Cuba are well fed, gainfully employed, and air conditioned! A job at Industrial Memetics is a fine and valuable life endeavor. If circumstances where different these people might have wasted away in shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro or been forced to sell themselves in the AIDS infested sex markets of South Africa." He added that "people who think critically about Industrial Memetics hate America."

Industrial Memetics Chief Technology Officer, Nick Levay, said "The recent claims that one of our managers flushed a Koran down the toilet are completely unsubstantiated. Why would there be a Koran in an Industrial Memetics office?! We don't allow any religious artifacts to enter the building. Acknowledgment of religion is completely forbidden at the Industrial Memetics Institute."

Industrial Memetics Secretary of Defense Billy Hoffman said, "Our competitors are trained to make outrageous claims about our workplace practices. These claims should be ignored. They are obviously part of their overall strategy to slow the pace of innovation and flood the market with inferior products."

The Industrial Memetics Institute is committed to its goal of producing the finest technology and services money can buy. Industrial Memetics stands by its work place environment as being "a hell of a lot better then a Russian Gulag." (TM)

ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL MEMETICS INSTITUTE

The Industrial Memetics Institute is a leading distributor of adult entertainment via electronic platforms. The Company delivers the most extensive lineup of quality programming over the broadest range of electronic means, including cable, satellite, Broadband and video-on-demand.

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections made by management. The Company intends for the forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements. Words such as "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "believes", "seeks", "estimates", or variations of such words are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, Mr. Cross's ability to create even more value for our shareholders, and the outcome of any contingencies. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are made as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this news release whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth or implied by any forward-looking statements.

For more information please visit our website at www.industrialmemetics.com.

Industrial Memetics offices are not 'the gulag of our times.'

The random chatter of several hundred Microsoft engineers filled the cavernous executive briefing center recently at the company's sprawling campus outside Seattle.

Within minutes after their meeting was convened, however, the hall became hushed. Hackers had successfully lured a Windows laptop onto a malicious wireless network.

"It was just silent," said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's security unit. "You couldn't hear anybody breathe."

Matt Thomlinson, whose job it is to help make Microsoft engineers create more secure code, noticed that some of the engineers were turning red, becoming obviously angry at the demo hacking incident. Yet as painful as the lesson was, he was glad to see the crowd of engineers taking things personally.

Microsoft meets the hackers | CNET News.com

Don't be surprised: Under duress, I may confess that I've been on the Bush Administration's payroll to undermine the regime by helping to spread use of weblogs; I've tried to weaken moral values of young Iranians by promoting western culture and values; I've been part of a secret network of Israeli and American spies; I've distributed large amounts of money to Iranian dissidents, activists, bloggers and journalists inside in Iran so they can topple the regime.

Nor should you be amazed to hear me say that I've been running a virtual brothel in Tehran from my apartment in Toronto; I've been trafficking heroin and cocaine to Iran; and I've been secretly dating Natalie Portman and Kyra Knightly and have even an illegitimate child with Rachel Weiz.

Don't let them fool you: They might try to silence you by saying things like "remain silent and we won't torture him," or "don't talk to local and foreign press about it and we'll take it easy on him," etc. Under extremely high pressure, I myself, might even ask you to keep quiet. But don't listen to any of this. Go ahead! And as Sina Motallebi has said, keep on pressuring the regime using different means of protest.

Hoder has returned to Iran for a visit. He has posted some guidelines for what to do if Iran tosses him in a gulag. I hope his visit goes well. I'll be paying attention.

I had a chance to meet Hoder at BlogNashville. I popped up in his Flickr photostream.

Hoder | Going home, finally

The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' online activities.

Your ISP as Net watchdog | CNET News.com

Lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

The House decides that you can support the War on Terror, support Freedom and Liberty, and still vote against provisions in the Patriot Act.

House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules

Apple Computer this month is expected to update its retail copies of Mac OS X 10.4 to include the first two maintenance releases to the Tiger operating system, ensuring that all new customers obtain the most stable and reliable version of Mac OS X directly out of the box.

The company's online store in Canada is already listing for sale the current version of Mac OS X as "OS X V10.4.2 'Tiger' Retail," although the latest official release remains at 10.4.1. Developers contacted by AppleInsider also said they are expecting to receive Mac OS X 10.4.2 on optical media -- something Apple did not offer with the release of Mac OS X 10.4.1 last month.

Mac OS X 10.4.2, which is due for release from the company this week, will reportedly deliver over 80 fixes and enhancements to Tiger, in addition to those included with Mac OS X 10.4.1.

Among the many fixes expected in the release are Finder updates to finding by kind and using Slideshow, updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, and improved autologin for managed user accounts.

Other areas of change will reportedly improve user experiences with AirPort and wireless access, iDisk synching, installation reliability, and file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services.

The release is also rumored to deliver enhancements to Address Book, Automator, Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies.

Sources tell AppleInsider that Mac OS X 10.4.2 will likely arrive in two versions: a 42MB Delta release containing only the changes made since Mac OS X 10.4.1, and a 55MB Combo update that will pack all the enhancements made to Tiger since its inaugural release on April 29th.

According to reports already present on several Internet sites, Apple over the weekend provided its developers with Mac OS X 10.4.2 build 8C29, which at the time contained no known bugs.

Still, it's rumored that Apple continues to work on Mac OS X 10.4.2 this week and is considering builds from the 8C3x milestone as final candidates.

Hopefully this fixes some of the problems I've been having.

AppleInsider | Apple to refresh retail copies of Tiger with 10.4.2

Globalization and the information revolution are creating new community relationships that build upon, democratize, and magnify existing social frameworks.

The network allows ideas to compete and confers a competitive advantage on those most able to share, trade, and receive the most relevant information.

State Department officials may look gleefully at other foreign ministries and note that the United States is far ahead of its perceived counterparts in responding to globalization and the information revolution. These officials, however, do not recognize that competition is not coming from other states, but from other forms of organization altogether.

Power today is as much about promoting ideas and norms of behavior as it is about projecting military might.

By disaggregating the state foreign policy function into its component parts, it is possible to identify where greater integration into networks is feasible and desirable, and where the hierarchical structures of accountability can and should remain intact.

The very term "foreign policy" attempts to differentiate between "domestic" and "foreign" in ways that make less sense in a globalized network environment. Foreign policy is not foreign. It is global -- both domestic and foreign simultaneously.

The primary impediment to networked engagement is the culture of insularity and secrecy that pervades US foreign policy institutions.

Accountability should not be purchased at the cost of ignorance.

Understanding control as the ability to influence values and standards in a decentralized system, not as the need to maintain absolute authority over every component of the policy process, will pose a fundamental challenge to governments. The networked global environment of the information revolution, however, not only distributes control, but also punishes those who attempt to hoard information and rewards those who share it. In the Information Age, you have to give up control in order to get it back, but it returns in a different form. Old control was about hierarchy, monopoly, and aggregation. New control is about flexibility, decentralization, and networked specialization.

Open dialogue and the sharing of ideas should be goals in themselves. The United States must support and facilitate such dialogue, even when it is critical of the United States.

Conscious efforts must be made to shift government institutional culture from a focus on secrecy, information hoarding, and hierarchy to a system of openness, innovation, and information sharing.

Governments must change the way they do business to make their best voices heard in a networked world.

Network Diplomacy

Acidus cranks out another neat hack.

The AMIS protocol was designed in the late 80s early 90s to allow Voice mail systems of different vendors to automatically transmit voice mail messages to each other.

It uses DTMF tones to communicate back and forth, establishing who the voice message is for, where it is coming from, and for the destination system to specify if the mailbox is full, to provide a forwarding number, etc. The use of timeouts, checksums and acknowledgements make this a reliable protocol, with a variable payload length. The analog voice message itself is not digitized, and is played real time. A sample session looks like:

-A dials B
-Using DTMF tones, A and B agree on a protocol.
-A tells B for the message is for, who it is from
-B confirms information is correct and mailbox is available
-A plays voice message "Hi Billy, this is Jill..."
-A signals message is over
-System gracefully terminate.

While I don't really care about forwarding voice mail, the use of DTMF tones to create a reliable datalink layer is something I was trying to do. A pair of FSR radios, some DTMF chips and some PICs and I have a reliable, low speed (~45bps) data communcations with around a mile range for under $50. This is far more flexible then the model airplane remote controls that cost over $75.

Cisco has some info on it too.

AMIS: DTMF Data Link (kind of) [ZIP]

Acidus gives Elonka a run for the money. Way to go Acidus!

How scary. And how refreshing.

Make, a new quarterly put out by O'Reilly Media, is a throwback to an earlier time, before personal computers, to the prehistory of geekiness - the age of how-to manuals for clever boys, from the 1920's to the 50's.

The technology has changed, but not the creative impulse. Make's first issue, out in February, explained how to take aerial photographs with a kite, a disposable camera and a rig of Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Silly Putty. It also showed how to build a video-camera stabilizer - a Steadicam, basically - with $14 worth of steel pipes, bolts and washers; how to boost a laptop computer's Wi-Fi signal with foil from an Indian take-out restaurant; and how to read credit card magnetic stripes with a device made with mail-order parts and a glue gun.

Congratulations to Acidus on being the first MemeStreams user to make the New York Times op-ed page. And on a Sunday, no less! (14:59, 14:58, 14:57, ...)

A New Magazine's Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty!