Slashdot Mirror

Jonathan Springston, a longtime writer for Atlanta Progressive News was recently fired because his vision of fact-based reporting didn't match his boss's. A statement released by his editor, Matthew Cardinale, said Springston was asked to leave, “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.” While I appreciate the editor's honesty, I have to wonder about the wisdom of guiding your news organization into the philosophical position that objective reality does not exist. Talk amongst yourselves.

An anonymous reader sends us a link to this story about the U.S. Department of Transportation working on Intelligent Transportation Systems, a long-range plan to build various sorts of intelligence into the national road system. Likely this will result in better traffic monitoring, lots of traffic planning data to analyze to help prevent traffic jams, and less privacy for everyone. The article has a paranoid bent; although they're not wrong that the system will likely facilitate privacy abuses, I wish the author had been a bit more hopeful about possible system designs that would still help alleviate traffic problems without enabling snooping, because obviously such a system could be built if the political will was present to do so.

bearwayne writes "Former representative Bob Barr (R-GA), a conservative and non-technophile, who has now has teamed up with the ACLU to fight growth of the Federal government's infringements on Civil Liberties ala the Patriot Act, weighs in on the Trusted Computing Group/Alliance in this article at Creative Loafing. Among other things, he expresses concerns about censorship, loss of control over one's PC, and other corporate/government abuses."