] When I pointed out to the officials that they only had
] authority to search for threats to the aircraft, one of
] them, a bug-eyed, crew-cutted troglodyte, declared that,
] if I had taken any of these substances, then I would have
] endangered Flight 310. That such an obviously ungifted
] person was capable of so imaginative a conceptual leap
] remains a marvel to me.

Barlow is contesting charges stemming from the discovery of marijuana, mushrooms, and ketamine in his baggage by airport security personnel, claiming that the search was unconstitutional because it was not limited to what would be threats to the aircraft.

] Now the more authoritarian among you might say that
] if these searches reveal other, non-terror-related,
] criminal activity, then so much the better. The 4th
] Amendment should provide no sanctuary for the guilty,
] whatever their crimes. But randomly searching people's
] homes against the possibility that someone might have
] a bio-warfare lab in his basement would reveal a lot of
] criminal activity. And it is certainly true that such
] searches would reduce the possibility of anthrax
] attacks and enhance public safety. Still, I doubt you're
] ready to go there. Yet. Given a few exotic outbreaks,
] you might be. Should that day come, would you still
] believe such searches should not be precisely limited?
] This may seem hyperbolic, and of course it is, but it's
] actually a fairly short conceptual distance away from
] what's going on in the nation's airports at present.

BarlowFriendz: A Taste of the System

] NewsKnowledge and The Hive Group have joined forces to
] bring you News Maps, visual maps of the NewsIsFree
] headline database. News Maps allow you to quickly scan
] dozens of news articles and instantly understand what's
] being reported all over the world.
]
] Each square in the News Map is an article. You can obtain
] additional detail on each article by moving your mouse
] over it. You can read an article by clicking on it.
]
] The Hive Group's Honeycomb algorithm organizes news
] headlines by source. Size and Color information indicate
] article age and popularity (described below). You can
] easily filter and rearrange you results to view articles
] that meet certain criteria, or that contain certain text.

Very cool!

NewsIsFree: NewsMaps - in collaboration with The Hive Group

] If there were a Luther for the internet, he might post
] (presumably on his blog, rather than on a church door)
] some set of theses that seemed to him self-evident but
] that few involved in the church of the day were
] previously prepared to utter. With apologies to the real
] Luther, they might look something like the following:
]
] In the Name of Jon Postel.

The comments in this essay are good, although I do not feel they qualify as justification for services that are far from then edge in nature like Sitefinder. Aside from only several points that could be used very effectively out of a context, I don't think it supported a pro-Sitefinder argument well at all.

Well written fodder. Makes good points, but does so in a real loaded way. As a defense for say new TLDs with different ways of handling things, fine. Justification for significant changes to the way .com/.net work, its well written troll bait.

(I still think that function should be handled by the client, and that it is harmful if done as a DNS wildcard. I also believe that even if ICANN was not there, it still would have been fought off successfully by the Internet community.)

Susan Crawford blog :: Time for Reformation of the Internet

] The ability to have a presence should of course be
] available to anyone; but the ability to act in cyberspace
] - for example, to collect someone's personal
] information or their money - should be accompanied
] by some accountability.

Esther Dyson's take on how to solve the phishing problems. Be sure to read the comments. Tom makes an appearance pointing out that what begins with the DNS system and the location bar, might end with SSL certificates, and better handling of the elements (UI and otherwise) surrounding their usage and certification.

The Accountable Net: Who Should Be Accountable?

The parallels are unavoidable.

This op-ed by Larry Lessig was published in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Bytes and Bullets

Someone predicts that Microsoft will invent MemeStreams in 2008 and then it will be replaced by Google/Amazon in 2010. Very news centric in nature (as is MemeStreams), it ignores that much of the mass media consists of entertainment like movies and TV aside from mentioning Tivo. That's fine, I enjoy a good tale of the future, and this one points at in very obvious direction that most are oblivious of. Apparently some of the most significant technological innovations of the future will be branding, at least that's what I'm thinking after staring at company logos for eight minutes while being told a story.

"In 2005 people realized MemeStreams had already been there since 2001, it just didn't have the resources of Google or MSN. Wired wrote a news article, but the world continued talking about RSS feeds and BitTorrent."

EPIC 2014

] Locations marked show total or near-total destruction of
] structures and do not convey lesser damage not visible
] from satellite images of this resolution. While there is
] reported extensive damage to the city and its inhabitants
] the 26 locations marked appear to indicate that major
] devastation is limited. A more complete and accurate
] account awaits the availability of comprehensive ground
] level images and reports.

Be sure to check out Cryptome's Fallujah coverage. This is one example. There are many, many others.

Eyeballing the Fallujah Kill Zone - 7

] Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for
] scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers,
] theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports
] from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to
] find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers,
] professional societies, preprint repositories and
] universities, as well as scholarly articles available
] across the web.

Another good way to slice into Google is born. I just tossed a few queries at it with various combinations of terms like "intellectual property", "spontaneous sociability", "social capital", "social network", reputation, scarcity, meme, etc. A number of interesting looking papers were turning up that would never have made it into a standard Google search. Much more inclusive and with a better UI then diving into individual repositories like citeseer.

Google Scholar

Heres a bunch of fun reading if you have a lot of free time! US Military field manuals. They recently published this one:

] FMI 3-07.22. Counterinsurgency Operations 1 October 2004
] (3 MB PDF file)

This book covers new tactics being employed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Other interesting books include:

] # FM 24-18. Tactical Single-Channel Radio Communications
] Techniques. 30 September 1987.
] # FM 24-33. Communications Techniques: Electronic
] Counter-Countermeasures. 17 July 1990.
] # (C)FM 32-20 Electronic Warfare (EW) (U)
] # (C)FM 32-30 Electronic Warfare, Tactics of Defense
] # FM 33-1 Psychological Operations August 1979
] # FM 34-1, Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Operations
] 27 September 1994. [superseded by FM 2-0]

Army Intelligence and Security Doctrine

] Despite his popularity, Powell will be remembered for
] presenting flawed evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass
] destruction to the United Nations when he made the case
] for war on behalf of Bush.

...as he did so with Tenet sitting behind him, who is also no longer part of this governments leadership either.

I guess in the end, the secret service are not the only ones who will take a bullet, real or otherwise, for the president. Powell and his legacy are riddled with holes at this point, and its unclear how many of them were ones he leapt for versus hit him directly.

Rice may be his replacement.

] Powell is the highest-level official to quit since Bush
] won re-election, and one of four cabinet members whose
] resignations were announced on Monday. The others were
] Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Education Secretary Rod
] Paige and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

... and that's not all. Major shakeup. This isn't last term's administration.

Powell Resigns!!