] There is currently a healthy robust competitive market
] for expired domains. The WLS seeks to kill the entire
] market and allow a system devised by Network Solutions to
] decide who gets every name, and allows them to charge
] domain consumers exorbitantly for the privelege of using
] their monopoly.

The actual product is named "Next Registration Rights".. I commented on this awhile ago. http://www.memestreams.net/users/rattle/blogid3252412

Another reason to hate Verisign

] We study empirically how fame of WWI fighter-pilot aces,
] measured in numbers of web pages mentioning them, is
] related to their merit or achievement, measured in
] numbers of opponent aircraft destroyed. We find that on
] the average fame grows exponentially with achievement; to
] be precise, there is a strong correlation (~0.7) between
] achievement and the logarithm of fame. At the same time,
] the number of individuals achieving a particular level of
] merit decreases exponentially with the magnitude of the
] level, leading to a power-law distribution of fame. A
] stochastic model that can explain the exponential growth
] of fame with merit is proposed. The model also provides
] likelihood of deviations from expected fame; it predicts,
] that the odds to be ten times more famous than expected
] from one's merit are ten in a million, while the odds to
] be ten times less famous are as high as one in ten.

[cond-mat/0310049] Theory of Aces: Fame by chance or merit?

] While still teaching at Berkeley, Stonebraker founded
] Ingres Corp. to commercialize the relational database
] technology. (The company was acquired in 1990 by ASK
] Computer Systems.) Shortly after launching Ingres Corp.,
] Stonebraker and his students pushed databases ahead yet
] again with POSTGRES, a relational database that could
] understand "objects," groups of simpler pieces of data.

29 years of relational databases...

] His research shows that not only are suicide terrorists
] significantly more educated than their peers, they are
] also significantly better off. According to Krueger,
] although one-third of Palestinians live in poverty, only
] 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers do; 57 percent
] of bombers have education beyond high school versus 15
] percent of the population of comparable age.
]
] The Defense Intelligence Agency also gave me profiles
] of all these people they were interrogating at Guantánamo
] Bay in Cuba. They divide them into Yemenis and Saudis.
] The Yemenis are sort of the foot soldiers. And they found
] that the Saudis, their leaders especially, are from
] high-status families. A surprising number have graduate
] degrees. And they are willing to give up everything. They
] give up well-paying jobs, they give up their families,
] whom they really adore, to sacrifice themselves because
] they really believe that it's the only way they're going
] to change the world.

These people are not stupid, nor poor, nor desperate. While there are reasons to focus on education and poverty in places like West Bank/Gaza, the idea that its going to prevent people from deciding to become suicide terrorists is apparently wrongheaded.

An interested oped on Religion in this article too...

Everything you know about terrorists is wrong.

] As described in the 15th November, 2002, issue of the
] journal Science (Ferber, 2002), the current
] administration has engaged in political screening of
] appointees to peer review study sections that are charged
] with evaluating the scientific merits of research
] proposals on HF/E issues in the workplace.

Strong protest from workplace ergonomics community about political interference from the Republicans in their scientific workgroups.

[IP] Political interference with scientific committees

SunnComm drops its lawsuit.. That was quick.

] Jacobs said in an interview late last night that a
] successful lawsuit would do little to reverse the damage
] done by the paper Halderman published Monday about his
] research, and any suit would likely hurt the research
] community by making computer scientists think twice about
] researching copy-protection technology.
]
] "I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of
] chilling effect on research," Jacobs said.

] I just thought about it and decided it was more important
] not to be one of those people. The harm's been done . . . if I
] can't accomplish anything [with a lawsuit] I don't want to
] leave a wake," he said.

The Daily Princetonian - Threat of lawsuit passes for student

] SunnComm Technologies Inc. (OTC: STEH), a leader in
] digital content security and enhancement for optical
] media, announced today that it intends to take legal
] action against the writer of a critical report titled:
] "Analysis of the MediaMax CD3 Copy-Prevention System."

CD 'shift-key' Hackers Sued

] No -- future TV will may be unrecognisable from today,
] defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and
] scheduled by television executives, but instead will
] resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of
] content, some indistinguishable as actual channels. These
] streams will mix together broadcasters' content and
] programmes, and our viewers' contributions. At the
] simplest level -- audiences will want to organize and
] re-order content the way they want it. They'll add
] comments to our programmes,programmes, vote on them and
] generally mess about with them. But at another level,
] audiences will want to create these streams of video
] themselves from scratch, with or without our help. At
] this end of the spectrum, the traditional "monologue
] broadcaster" to "grateful viewer" relationship will break
] down, and traditional advertising and subscription models
] will no longer be viable.

The director of BBC New Media on why MemeStreams is the future of Television. :)

TV's Tipping Point: Why The Digital Revolution Is Only Just Beginning: PaidContent.org

This is whack. Anti-American propaganda from North Korea. Worse then junior high schooler's rap. Entertaining regardless...

Fucking USA

This is a really good write-up on Elonka's adventures cracking the cryptic (literally) artwork of James Sanborn.

STLtoday - Woman sets sights on code on CIA sculpture