] After the spectacular crashes of big-name Internet
] grocers in the late 1990s, the dream of a grand new wave
] of online food stores appeared to fizzle.
]
] But with intentionally meager fanfare, grocers have made
] Internet shopping available to tens of millions of
] consumers nationwide, and upcoming expansions will expand
] it to millions more.

I've always felt that online sale and scheduled delivery of groceries was a real no brainer. Webvan like ventures were simply expecting the demand to start off higher and to grow much faster. Usage of such services will continue to grow, but its not going to hit any kind of dot-com van fleet scale. Its a nice growing nitch market.

CNN.com - After flashy failures, online groceries quietly grow - May 19, 2004

] Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence that the
] tiny particles known as "nannobacteria" are indeed alive
] and may cause a range of human illnesses.
]
] The existence of nannobacteria is one of the most
] controversial of scientific questions - some experts
] claim they are simply too small to be life forms.

BBC | Claim made for new form of life

Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.

I just picked up a copy today. From the perspective of several dozen pages into it, its not only a good book, but a pleasurable read. Barzun writes in a conversational style that's easy to parse at a healthy clip.

From Dawn to Decadence

] Essentially, Mac browsers (including Safari, Mozilla, and
] Firefox) are all designed to launch the Help Viewer
] program when the help: protocol is invoked in a web link.
] Unfortunately, the Help Viewer program, in turn, is able
] to run scripts. What this means is that a malicious user
] can set up a page with an automatic redirect that runs a
] dangerous script. More details for the tech-minded can be
] found on this MacNN thread. And if you want a terrifying
] (but harmless) example of this, go to
] http://bronosky.com/pub/AppleScript.htm. It will launch
] Terminal and run a harmless du command

mamamusings: serious os x 10.3 security problem

] If people are to get into the habit of owning an awful
] lot more music, then it is essential that playlists drive
] the model, not albums. Customers want "type" or "genres"
] of music to sit together to create mood. They do not want
] all of a recording artists' work played in one block, and
] they don't want to be forced to buy it that way either.
] And what seems ridiculous to us is that all music,
] regardless of age, should be charged at the same rate.

Yet another article showing how the RIAA refuses to acknowledge that the world of music buying and listening has changed.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Music biz waves axe at goose that laid golden egg | The Register

Robert Wright, author of Nonzero, writes in the LA Times.

The revolution of grass-roots digital empowerment will change the nature of war and the place of war in American foreign policy.

Some people who see the Abu Ghraib scandal as technologically driven are suggesting technological reforms. At one level, Rumsfeld grasps the power of digital technology. It was because our troops were digitally empowered that we needed so few of them.

But this cuts both ways. Once you figure technology into both sides of the ledger, war looks different.

Note to Public: Although Rumsfudd^h^h^held has not issued you a trusty repeating rifle, let there be no mistake: you have been drafted.

Organized by Orkut, trained by TiVo, and equipped by Ericsson, we are all superempowered now.

Engage!

Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel

] "Let's face it: Gangs already have their own alphabet,
] their own language, their own hand signals, so why not
] use the Internet?" said Tod Burke, a criminal justice
] professor at Radford University in Virginia. "Is this
] case unusual? Yes. But what I'm afraid is going to
] happen, this is probably just the beginning of it."
]
] In fact, gangs threatening rivals and issuing challenges
] on the Internet has become relatively common, said Jared
] Lewis, director of Know Gangs, a Wisconsin-based
] organization that educates police and the public about
] gangs. It's fueled in part, he said, by chat rooms and
] bulletin boards on gangster rap artists' Web sites, he
] said.

If you ever find yourself at a public place where any two large angry groups of people seem to be converging, exit the area.

HoustonChronicle.com - Street fight started in chat room

] PieSpy is an IRC bot that monitors a set of IRC channels.
] It uses a simple set of heuristics to infer
] relationships between pairs of users. These inferrences
] allow PieSpy to build a mathematical model of a social
] network for any channel. These social networks can be
] drawn and used to create animations of evolving social
] networks.

PieSpy - Inferring and Visualizing Social Network on IRC

"Neurotypical individuals find it difficult to be alone and are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. Tragically, as many as 9,625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical."

Neurodiversity Forever

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

Its a small small world?

CNN.com - Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed - May 13, 2004