] Ensembl presents up-to-date sequence data and the best
] possible annotation for metazoan genomes. Available now
] are human, mouse, rat, fugu, zebrafish, mosquito,
] Drosophila, C. elegans, and C. briggsae, Others will be
] added soon.

Surf the human genome!

Ensembl Genome Browser

Top 10 reasons why British people think poorly of American visitors:

...

8. They don't know who Guy Fawkes is. ("Who? Guy Fox? Nah, don't know him... Is he from New Jersey?")

The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes

] The second way the FCC's claims are deceptive is the more
] troubling of the two, and that is the compatibility
] problem I spoke of above. Arguably right now a TiVO or a
] DVD recorder with no tuner might not be covered, but
] after 2005, that same TiVO or DVD probably won't be
] compatible with the new FCC-governed DTV television set.
] ***THIS is the REAL problem. Whiles the FCC says the
] device is not covered, after 2005, in many cases it just
] won't work. ***

[Politech] Analysis of FCC's broadcast flag rules, from Ethan Ackerman

] According to a KPTV newscast, a Simpsons fan with too
] much time on his hands grafted a tobacco plant and a
] tomato plant and, ta-da: tomacco!

Where was this when I was quitting smoking? Shesh.

Slashdot | Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

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

] 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...

] Laying a broad basis for possible future prescriptions, the
] President's Council on Bioethics yesterday issued an
] analysis of how biotechnology could lead toward
] unintended and destructive ends.

Comments on the matter from Decius:

I must express some suspicion of this given that we already understand what the administration's perspective of this is. Is this a search for answers, or a hammer looking for a nail?

Some of the NYT's quotes reveal a mixed bag:

For example, this makes sense to me:
"By medicalizing key elements of our life through biotechnical interventions," the report says, "we may weaken our sense of responsibility and agency."

We already do this in many different ways.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine a more foolish luddism then this statement:

It concludes that "the human body and mind, highly complex and delicately balanced as a result of eons of gradual and exacting evolution, are almost certainly at risk from any ill-considered attempt at `improvement.' "

While the wording here is carefully chosen, the message is clear. Obviously there are risks. Everything has risks. It is important to understand risks and avoid them. But by waxing about the perfection of the human being and placing the word improvement in quotes, the author is not really referring to risk management. He stops short of arguing that all activity in this space would be counterproductive only because he can't prove that. He is saying that biotechnology is bad.

What this perspective ignores is that every single technological development in the history of man, from the first wooden spear to the space shuttle, has been an attempt to escape the boundaries of what nature has given us. That is, in fact, fundamentally what makes us human and what differs us from most other animals. We invent technologies which help us adapt to environmental pressures that other species cannot adapt to because they adapt at random and without will.

To claim that we have no reason to continue to expand the boundaries of our capabilities is the same sort of narcissistic bullshit that lead Fukuyama, who made large contributions to this paper, to conclude that we are at the end of political history. This perspective is absolutely ignorant of human nature.

Bush's Advisers on Biotechnology Express Concern on Its Use

... Tons of foreign technology is imported, but it's never really internalized ...

Tom Friedman on Arab society in the Sunday New York Times.

Courageous Arab Thinkers

] On October 16, 2003, VeriSign announced the sale of its
] Network Solutions (NSI) business unit three years after
] its purchase from SAIC. This is a report on the
] historical snapshot of Network Solutions and a collection
] of commentaries made in response to this event.

Some good comments here.

Reaction to VeriSign-NSI Break Up