An encyclopedia that is created and alterable by everyone, licensed under the GNU FDL.

Wiki to the extreme.. In the licensing area, they even keep the threat letter templates they use and keep track of all the places and articles they know of that use the content without the required attribution.

wikipedia

] Today, however, we are motivated by different dates. "Our
] defining date is now 1989 and yours is 2001," said Mr.
] Bildt. Every European prime minister wakes up in the
] morning thinking about how to share sovereignty, as
] Europe takes advantage of the collapse of communism to
] consolidate economically, politically and militarily into
] one big family. And the U.S. president wakes up thinking
] about where the next terror attack might come from and
] how to respond -- most likely alone. "While we
] talk of peace, they talk of security," says Mr. Bildt.
] "While we talk of sharing sovereignty, they talk about
] exercising sovereign power. When we talk about a region,
] they talk about the world. No longer united primarily by
] a common threat, we have also failed to develop a common
] vision for where we want to go on many of the global
] issues confronting us."
]
] Just as we once had U.S.-Soviet summits to ease the
] tensions of the cold war, maybe it's time for a
] U.S.-French-German summit to ease the tensions of the
] post-cold war. Leaders of all three nations have behaved
] badly and have weakened the West, even if they have not
] ended it. It's time to chart a new Atlantic alliance, but
] not one that is based on nostalgia for 1945 -- one
] that really bridges the differences between 1989 and
] 2001.

The End of the West?

] Unlike a database run by the state's Bureau of Criminal
] Apprehension, the MJNO network doesn't just tell police
] if a person has been convicted of a crime. It also tells
] whether they've ever been arrested or if they appear in
] police files as a victim, a suspect, a complainant or a
] witness. It has juvenile files.

Ever get turned down for a job because you were investigated but not charged with a crime? You will... (This is absolutely aweful. Its clear that this was done outside of the government because its grossly illegal and obviously couldn't get state funding. By retaining data about suspects once cases are over, and about people found innocent by the courts, you turn getting investigated/charged into something that carries a punishment (greater scrutiny forever). By retaining juvenile files you eliminate one of the core features of the juvenile justice system, which is that people who make mistakes when they are young are allow to make good and start again when they grow up. Finally, by doing this with a private company they ensure that this information will ultimately become available to private companies and PIs. This system must be pulled!)

USATODAY.com - Growing use of private police network raises concerns

] let me just say that, as a slashdot troll, i have a
] firewall which allows me to dynamically modify my o/s
] fingerprint, a highly adaptive cookie manager/poisoner
] that can decode many cookies in realtime (stop using
] urlencode!), a browser plugin that lets me modify my
] entire http header including user agent, a
] database-driven transparent proxy tracker which harvests
] new proxies 24/7, scripts to generate free email accounts
] by the 100's, good web scripting skills, and on a good
] day around 500 moderation points on slashdot from over
] 1,000 monitored accounts.

This is a really great discussion between a troll and a sysop. It really speaks to the fact that governance of an internet community is a very complex problem that shares many of the social dynamics of governance of a IRL community.

Trolls vs. Sysops...

Available in 80G and 120G models. Guess who is going to be very unhappy about this. Good timing with the broadcast flag situation. Its nice to have something handy to point at as an example of a device that could be either useless or illegal soon.

Pioneer DVD Recorder with Built-In TiVo - DVR/DVD Burner in One

Halloween in San Francisco is awesome. The whole city goes nuts.

I recovered well enough from that whole asthma attack thing to have one hell of a good time last night.

Went to a great party, ran into many friends. Saw mjr's new band, a surprise d33z reunion, and a two man punk act from Israel. I didn't actually wind up going to the Castro/Market area at any point, but the whole mission was filled with people either coming to or from.. Much chaos. Lots of random things happening all over.

General theme this week has been good news. Several friends have landed good jobs recently, others are have success pushing some cool projects forward, etc.. In short, good things, a departure from the suckyness of recent. I hope it continues. I'm starting to get a good feeling about 2004 as it grows closer.

I spent most of today unpacking stuff from boxes that have been in storage for two years. Normally this is one of my least favorite part of moving, but this time its been like unwrapping xmass presents all day.

I just got discharged from the hospital. Apparently, I had an asthma attack. I didn't think I had asthma, never been diagnosed with it before, and certainly never had anything the likes of today happen before.

I get asthma symptoms whenever I'm around cats. I'm allergic.. It always goes away once I'm around fresh air. Always completely gone within 10 min, and most of the relief comes in the first few breaths.. Never connected it with anything other then cat allergies, which I am _totally_ used to because _EVERYONE_ I know has cats..

Well, apparently that's asthma. The cat allergies just trigger it.. And when the trigger goes away, it doesn't necessary mean the asthma response will. In this case, the attack started up last night when I was over a friends house. It didn't stop until spending some time sucking on a nebulizer down at SF General. Not fun.. I had one hell of a rough night, morning, and afternoon.

Whenever I'm around cats, I wind up breathing like shit. Everyone always asks, have you tried this, and this, and this, etc.. I answer yes, because obviously it pisses me off enough where I have tried just about everything to curb my cat allergies. Nothing works.. The one thing I've never tried was an Albuterol inhaler.

So yeah, that sucked.. But my movers came today! Good? Well, it would be if various critical things were not missing.. Like the two most important pieces of my desk (which means I have no desk) and my high-back leather chair (I love that damn chair). This wouldn't be a big deal, its still in the storage I share with Decius, but judging from past experience with the movers, I'm going to wind up having to put out at least another $50 to resolve this situation get the stuff.. grrrr.

My bed sheets are missing also, but the bed is here.. That's enough for me at this point. Its not the couch. And I can breathe again...

... is due to several factors. I'm in the middle of moving into my new place, and I've got this nasty sinus infection. I'm probably going to be mostly off the radar till I'm a little more situated and recovered.

"There is a lot of phenomenal intellectual property that has not found its way into the marketplace yet."

As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge

What would happen if the 'source code' of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time.

A new essay from Douglas Rushkoff. Download the full text in PDF.

Open Source Democracy