"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. "

Swater mentioned this poem to me in a discussion about some recent drama related to a network we used to run. I'm sure it resonates with many of you who spent years building empires that have now turned to sand.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias

"David Holtzman, editor in chief of GlobalPOV, a privacy Web site, said that the notion of privacy was "undergoing a generational shift." Those in their late 20's and 30's are going to feel the brunt of the transition, he said, because they grew up with more traditional concepts of privacy even as the details of their lives were being captured electronically."

The culture grapples with the loss of anonymnity online. How long before people turn to keeping multiple aliases for different contexts?

[ Originally from Decius. I'm already partially using multiple aliases and soon I will probably become more regimented about it. --Rek ]

Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp

"Legal experts believe that if the ruling is upheld, it could easily become a firm legal precedent across the European Union, drastically limiting the information that many European search engines are allowed to provide to their users.
"The situation is very dangerous for the whole Internet," said NewsClub founder Christian Kohlschütter. "It's absolutely insane." "

The European courts are unravelling the Internet, mostly through ignorance rather then malice, but who do you fear more: An idiot with a gun, or an evil genius with a gun?

The train wreck between the first amendment and intellectual property that I predicted in 1996 is well under way, if you haven't noticed.

Deep Linking Takes Another Blow

"Light can be turned into a glowing stream of liquid that splits into droplets and splatters off surfaces just like water. The researchers who've worked out how to do this say "liquid light" would be the ideal lifeblood for optical computing, where chips send light around optical "circuits" to process data. "

so cool

New Scientist

Man I must be so naive...I used to live just down the street from one of these places and I had no idea...

[ Originally from tgaptte. Forced prostitution. Bad juju. This happens for more commonly than most people think. --Rek ]

Mercury News | 07/24/2002 | Officer charged in sex racket

"John Rigas, the founder and former chairman and CEO of Adelphia Communications, and two of his sons were arrested in Manhattan Wednesday morning on federal fraud charges. "

[ Hang'em. --Rek ]

Rigas and two sons arrested on fraud charges.. - Jul. 24, 2002

Warren Buffett chastises the nation's CEO's in today's NYT.

There is a crisis of confidence today about corporate earnings reports and the credibility of chief executives. And it's justified.

Without blushing, almost all CEO's have told their shareholders that options are cost-free.

To clean up their act, CEO's don't need "independent" directors, oversight committees or auditors absolutely free of conflicts of interest. They simply need to do what's right.

CEO's ... should quit talking about some bad apples and reflect instead on their own behavior.

[CEO's] talk principle, but, for most, their motive is pocketbook.

[ Originally from Jeremy. See something bad in the hierarchy of the company? Well, it's usually because there is something bad at the top. Almost 100% guaranteed. --Rek ]

Who Really Cooks the Books?

"A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?"

Sept 11 Conspiracy Theory

"A team from Emory University in Atlanta says they have resolved a question philosophers have been debating for centuries: Why do people cooperate with one another even when it is not in their best interests to do so? "

Is this why using MemeStreams is so much fun?

I've been having conversations for years the people about this very problem. Everyone has philisophical convictions, and they differ. Are humans fundamentally good or evil?

[ Originally from Decius. And, of course, the answer is that they are fundamentally good or, at the very least neutral, and "nurture" can be used to assure their eventual goodness. --Rek ]

Study: Brains Want to Cooperate

Kewl.

[ ..:: wu :: riddles(intro) ::..]