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the_newsbeagle (2532562) writes "As part of a 50th anniversary celebration, IEEE Spectrum magazine tries to peer into the technological future 50 years out. Its biomedical article foresees the integration of electronic parts into our human bodies, making up for physical, emotional, and intellectual disabilities. The article spotlights the visionaries Hugh Herr, an MIT professor (and double amputee) who wants to build prosthetic limbs that are wired directly into the nervous system; Helen Mayberg, who has developed brain pacemakers to cure depression; and Ted Berger, who's working on neural implants that can restore memory function."

acidradio writes: "Somehow the SCCM application and image deployment server at Emory University in Atlanta accidentally started to repartition, reformat then install a new image of Windows 7 onto all university-managed computers. By the time this was discovered the SCCM server had managed to repartition and reformat itself. This was likely an accident. But what if it weren't? Could this have shed light on a possibly huge vulnerability in large enterprise organizations that rely heavily on automated software deployment packages like SCCM?"

croddy writes "The first beta of the Ardour digital audio workstation has been released. A tarball is available at the Ardour project page on Sourceforge. Packagers are currently preparing binary releases for several major Linux distributions. Ardour is a professional-grade, low-latency, multi-track digital hard disk recording and mixing application designed to replace dedicated HDR systems, and software systems such as ProTools and Samplitude. It supports audio processing plugins via LADSPA. Although it is still a beta, the years of work and dedication by the Ardour development team are very much visible in this release."

It was supposed to be done by September 30, but Congress finally finished its budget for this year. Because it works best with our sometimes-bizarre legislative system, this year, like every year, hundreds of unrelated measures were rolled up into one massive package and crammed through the door. Your grandchildren may look up at you with a puzzled expression, fifty years from now, and say "grampa" (or gramma), "did you really use an unfiltered internet, back in the olden days? Wasn't that scary? How did you ever survive with all that porn jumping out at you?" If that happens, just sigh, and think back to the olden days -- December2000 -- before censorware became mandatory in public institutions nationwide.

The massive spending bill has been passed by the House and Senate, and President Clinton is expected to sign it soon. Despite some noises from the Clinton administration mildly protesting censorware, the small amendment making it mandatory is not considered to be an important enough issue to veto an entire appropriations bill.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment.

As the ACLU says,

Earlier this year, an 18-member commission appointed by Congress rejected the idea of mandating the use of blocking software, which is notoriously clumsy and inevitably restricts access to valuable, protected speech. A wide spectrum of organizations have opposed blocking software mandates, including the American Library Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the conservative Free Congress Foundation and state chapters of the Eagle Forum and the American Family Association.

"There was an Alice in Wonderland quality to this debate," said Marvin Johnson, a Legislative Counsel with the ACLU's Washington National Office. "With its vote, Congress rejected the advice it asked for from the panel it appointed."

The "wide spectrum of organizations" extends from educators to The New York Times to strongly conservative political/religious groups. For more on the COPA Commission and its recommendations, see our stories from July and August.

Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet.

The text of the self-declared "Children's Internet Protection Act" is available from CDT. It uses the term "technology protection measure" to describe the software.

In related news, Peacefire, an advocacy group for youth free-speech rights, released a tool to provide one-click disabling of some popular censorware programs.

Meanwhile, the ACLU will be suing to stop this bill from taking effect. This is not a slam-dunk like the CDA was. They're in for a tough fight. Here are three reasons why:

1. The CDA's language was very broad. This bill targets its material precisely: obscenity, child pornography, and "harmful to minors" material. Of course there is no "technology protection measure" in existence which can censor only this material, or even claim to censor only this material.

2. The CDA covered speech. This bill addresses the right to read that speech in a public institution.

3. This bill regulates institutions which are taking public money and how they may use it. Legally, and also in many people's minds, it is more permissable to enact regulations which go against the grain of the Constitution if they are tied to acceptance of public funds.

(The classic example is that the Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable search and seizure, but when the government provides public housing, it sometimes tries to say that the 4th Amendment does not apply. Same situation, different Amendment.)

Brock Meeks is more optimistic, saying the bill is "doomed." The key issue, I think, will be whether censorware can work. If it does not work, if it cannot work, then the language of the bill is irrelevant; our Congress might as well have demanded a "technology protection measure" to give all our kids 200 IQs and an lifetime supply of free donuts.

When I get in the mood to be optimistic, I think about all the stories we hear from students who are already forced to use this software. It seems like everyone has an anecdote about how they were blocked from doing legitimate research for school.

So maybe if this legislation survives, in ten years, all the kids who grew up with first-hand experience with censorware will start to vote. That's about the only bright side I can see.

For now, Brown v. Board of Education is the example I'm keeping in mind. The Supreme Court, after a half-century of segregated schools, decided that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" -- the theory might be OK, but it had failed in practice.

The courts should evaluate the "technology protection measures" by what they do, not by what the law demands they do. The theory might be OK, but in practice, all the technology that I've looked at blocks much more than it should. I'll be hoping for a verdict that reads: "technology protection measures are inherently censorship."

And, hopefully, now -- not after a half-century.

Shisha asks: "I'm looking for some Voice over IP solution for Unix (Linux, and Solaris in particular). I want to call friends in Prague from the UK. Is there any way how to make the phone call go over the net?" I know there are programs like CCFAudio, Ethernet Phone, FreeWebFone and Speak Freely, however I haven't used any of these programs so I can't say to how well they perform. Have any readers out there tried any of these or have other VoIP solutions that they use that deserve mention?

Squeezer sent us the April Edition of ext2 and Jim sent us the April Edition of FreeBSDZine . For the obsessive, Evan Vetere sent us a link to the Amazon preorder form for novelizations of the prequels. Its a 4 book set: 4 different covers, but 4 copies of the same book. Doommaker sent us linkage to info about that other cool movie coming out: Southpark is also gracing the big screen. bjb sent us a link to a applet that will Shred Any Web Page. Particular cheering after a long unsuccessful day. DaMan Penguin Pez Well, its the season for Peeps, and Italica sent us a url to a page of fun things to do to your leftover marshmellow bunnies. Not enough candy torture? frohike writes sent us another one. What did those bunnies do to deserve this? An anonymous reader alerted us to www.fishdot.org. Wierdos. Finally, an another anonymous reader sent us the most Hilarious Attorney Page Ever. Its for Leonard Crabs, Attorney At Law. "If your legal case is not won within 24 days, we''ll buy you a free combo meal at Taco Bell." Go now. Its funny.

Jim Kinney sent us a link to this SunWorld Article where you can read that SCO is in the process of making their Unix run unaltered Linux binaries out of the box.

SunWorld reviews the results of its poll on the importance of Open Source to developers Not surprisingly 96% of Linux users considered it important, but so did 77% of NT users, with an average of 69% of developers finding OpenSource very important to their work. Even managers like OpenSource, with 70% calling it very important versus 75% for sysadmins. GNU utilities took the king's place with 85% of cross-platform respondents using them. One interesting figure is that Linux is more prevalent in smaller companies while Solaris rules the roost of larger companies... so SunWorld named us a competitor to Sun. Thanks, Andrew Crump and Jim Kinney, for this one.

The ultra cool geek mailing list 0xdeadbeef sent accross a URL today that I just had to share with everyone. This page has been testing Peeps (those colorful sugar colored easter marshmellows) against all sorts of environmental conditions. You see Dave (the guy who wrote most of the comments code for slashdot) spent a good portion of last week with a lighter burning and melting peeps. What a world. Just had to share this laugh with ya, seeings how its friday and all.