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I would like to send you some links to publications about my criminal case. I was forced to confess to the possession of internet digital pictures of porn in deleted clusters of my computer hard drive. My browser was hijacked while I was browsing the web. I was redirected to illegal sites against my will. Some illegal pictures were found on my hard drive, recovering in unallocated clusters, without dates of file creation/download. I do not know how courts can widely press these charges on people to convict them, while the whole Internet is a mess. This is my story in inquisition21.com. There is all information about case written by Irish writer Brian Rothery. You can see a lot of violations of law by police http://www.inquisition21.com/article~view~7~page_n um~3.html This is publication in Wired news http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,633 91,00.html This is publication in Theregester http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/browser_hi jacking_risks/ Article in Globe and Mail newspaper http://ctv.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20040617.gttwhijac17/tech/Technology/techBN/ctv-t echnology Article in ZDnet http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5344831.html This is article in Washington Times, May 22, 2004 There is information about my case. http://www.cato.org/cgi-bin/scripts/printtech.cgi/ dailys/05-30-04.html Article in Crime research center: http://www.crime-research.org/news/07.22.2004/506/ Article in Dallas, TX Newspaper http://www.crime-research.org/news/24.12.2004/862/ Child porn law was declared unconstitutional in Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA' http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=11750 "I came here to the US as political refugee from the former Soviet Union, and, now like many other people in the US, I feel shame that all of this can happen in the US - supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world."

In the US patents are 20 years from the date of filing of an original application. This is done to give companies time to implement their idea without fear of losing their investment(Company A develops a new widget, 2 years into the design of it Company B hires away their core team developers and finishes the project, patent law keeps Company B from selling their stolen product)

For an individual inventor, the patent laws lets them invent something and then shop around for a comapny to develop/market the product without fear of them stealing the idea.

The US patent case RIM is involved in is not a "submarine" patent.
(http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGA M.20060128.wxcover0128/BNStory/Technology/)

An expansion on the brouhaha...

Sarmite Bulte, a Liberal Party Canidate was defeated in her riding in this mondays' election, possibly in part due to the media (i belive) started by Jack Kapica's column in the Globe and Mail (link ... actual article about this issue here).

In short, she was previously the Canadian Heritage minister, and she was being wined and dined and donated to by the media industry, and advocating copyright reform that would allow DMCA style C&Ds. She was replaced with an NDP canidate, which made me pretty happy.

According to this article, they were the first University to do so.

I mean the lost productivity due to poor interoperability (even with other MS products), bit rot, incomplete products and difficult interfaces must be on the order of billions every quarter. That's along side the problem of security and having a system that's more or less designed to spread viruses, spyware, spam, Denial of Service attacks and worms. Each of those is estimated to individually cost many tens of billions of dollars per quarter. All are only made possible due to persistent design flaws and an architecture unsuited for any kind of networked environment. These flaws have been around long enoug that at this point they can be called intentional.

So that's the damage to any computer-using business.

On top of all that you have the damage that Gate's empire has done to the IT sector, especially in the US. He took a thriving, diverse, competitive, innovative industry and crushed it with give aways (illegal tying), strong arming (esp. OEMs), sabotage, false advertising, predatory and illegal business practices, overcharging and lobbying.

All that bleeds the country (pick one, any one) in way that bin Laden couldn't even begin to dream about.

But the good side is all the tax money the MS movement brings in right? Wrong. MS pays nothing and hides in foreign tax havens. So in return for all that damage, MS gives nothing. Ok maybe some feel-good advertising and nice lobbying budgets, but not much more.

Inanimate?? Dude, we're already to the point where advertising is tattooed to humans! See the following: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050121.gtrforehead21/BNStory/Technology/

From Canada'a Globe And Mail:

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20051214.wrimm1214/BNStory/Technology/

Of note from the story:

"Donald Stout, a patent lawyer and co-founder of NTP, said the deal should help his firm's case before the patent office. "RIM has been saying our patents are no good, but we have had three major companies sign up to license them. If there was nothing there, no one would deal with us," he said. "This suggests we can do business with people and licences get worked out.""

A link to the original article: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20051128.gtsmartcars28/BNStory/Technology/

Here's what I'd think would make htis a much more reasonable idea:
-First, if you are going to implement it, incorporate a big emergency override button that turns the system off instantly, no questions asked, and sends a little report to the local authorities that says you hit the button and records how fast, how far, how long you went. You are then required to file an emergency report in the next week or so explaining why you used the button. Assuming the report is reasonable and you don't do it too often, nothing else happens.
-Second, incorporate some sort of passing toggle, automatic or manual, which allows you to override the system for short durations but doesn't send any report unless it passes a certain speed or certain duration. This wouldn't require you to toggle a report unless there are indications of abuse.

IMHO, that would be a very UNreasonable, "Big Brother" idea. "Yes, please put a device in my car that actively radios in to the authorities that I was actively speeding." I think you're missing an important point...the device receives GPS data, but doesn't send a darned thing back to anybody.

If the car begins to significantly exceed the speed limit for the road on which it's travelling the system responds by making it harder to depress the gas pedal...

Also note that it doesn't PREVENT the accelerator from being depressed, but just makes it a bit harder. Thus it fits your criteria of not being an impedence in emergencies.

According to this Globe & Mail Article:

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20051111.gtsony1111/BNStory/Technology/

"Computer Associates, maker of eTrust PestPatrol anti-spyware software, says that the technological protection measure (TPM) uninstall routine itself can be classified as spyware."

And

"Sony issued a "patch," a 3MB download that contains a large amount of new software. That patch removes the rootkit, but also installs itself without notice to the user and without user permission. Moreover it cannot be removed either. The uninstall routine is so poorly made that the act of removing the rootkit can cause Windows to crash."

Lovely. I guess it's format reinstall time for those affected users.

Here you go. The globetechnology site belongs to the Globe & Mail newspaper group.

I don't think much of the art form debate either. Up here in Canada the Globe and Mail ran a good review today, which just called it a work of art and got on with it... http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20051104.gtgaming04/BNStory/AtPlay/

.... Some phone companies in Canada are tying to brand their services so that they don't sound like they're VoIP because of the negativity associated with these services.

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews /TPStory/LAC/20051020/TWVOIP20/TPTechnology/?query =voip

Here are a couple of followup pieces done yesterday afternoon and today on the same subject by Globe staff giving alternative points of view:
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050930.gtkapicasep30/BNStory/Technology/ http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050929.gtcopyrightsep29/BNStory/Technology/
Cheers,
Ian Johnson Globetechnology.com/Globe and Mail Technology Editor

Here are a couple of followup pieces done yesterday afternoon and today on the same subject by Globe staff giving alternative points of view:
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050930.gtkapicasep30/BNStory/Technology/ http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050929.gtcopyrightsep29/BNStory/Technology/
Cheers,
Ian Johnson Globetechnology.com/Globe and Mail Technology Editor

...Hey, Bell, how about completing the fucking Alberta supernet first before you start masturbating with Ted about Canada?

I have been reading about the "lawful access" proposal in various newspapers recently and the article in the Windsor Star is completely wrong about judicial oversight. You can read a much better article about the proposed legislation in the Globe and Mail here.

In summary, the government intends to insert computer network and cell phone communications into the existing criminal code wiretapping provisions which already conform to our Charter of Rights and provide strong judicial oversight. Legislatively, it appears quite simple, but technologicially the law will require a lot of work for ISPs to implement.

I think what is confusing many people (and journalists) is the requirement that ISPs maintain records of your internet activities such that those activities could then be accessed by law enforcement only after a warrant for such information was issued. As I understand it, this is also the point of contention for many civil libertarians: that all internet activities are logged before the application of a warrant. It is equivalent to requiring all telephone companies to record each and every telephone conversation so that the police would be able to review the calls after obtaining a warrant.

So, the legislation isn't the death knell to privacy that some journalists would have you believe. I understand the enormous pressures that police are under to prosecute crimes as they relate to the internet, but I am not convinced that we really need to log all internet access as it occurs so that police may review such activity after the fact. Further, even if the draft legislation did not include judical oversight provions there is no way the law would pass our fractured Parliament without those provisions nor would the law survive a Charter of Rights challenge.

Police groups say they are not asking for any new powers but rather the ability to continue their regular investigative activities in the digital age.
Clayton Pecknold of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police said police are working with laws originally written in 1974, a time when wiretapping involved climbing telephone poles.

"The laws were written for a wired world as opposed to the wireless world," he said. "We are not asking that we be given any powers without a court order."

The main private orbital contender is probably SpaceX, which is scheduled to launch its first rocket later this year. This article has a good overview:

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050721.gtbcspace21/BNStory/Technology/

SpaceX has also announced its intent to compete for Bigelow's orbital prize. Their Falcon V, which launches one of Bigelow's habitat module prototypes next year, should be big enough for an appropriately-sized manned capsule.

Hey, kids you should aspire to be astronauts so you can be a space janitor or a space maid in a space hotel.

I don't know about you, but (Roger Wilco jokes aside) I would give almost anything just for the chance to be a "space janitor." I'm sure many other people feel the same way.

You are going to have to hope some of the private ventures can scrape together the funds to build an afforable launch vehicle to LEO.

Like SpaceX?

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050721.gtbcspace21/BNStory/Technology/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

The absolute pinnacle I can see NASA aspiring to is a moonbase which will end up looking a lot like an ISS except on the moon. People living in tin cans trying to find things to do on a place totally hostile to life.

And learning how to make use of off-planet resources, which we have effectively zero experience with at the moment. Such experience will be quite useful for extended settlements on Mars and elsewhere.

At the point you have colonists on Mars and not Astronauts that is the point you have accomplished something, you have achieved a revolution and you will change the way humans think about the universe.

I agree.

Not sure the solar power thing will fly anytime soon. Nuclear reactors on Earth are a lot better bet.

Agreed. I don't think space solar power is going to be economical any time soon.

I'm sure NASA will never break out of the round trip mode of thought but it is totally the wrong mindset for a Mars policy.

I personally suspect that we won't ever see one-way trips from NASA -- it's politically impossible. With low enough launch costs, however, I could see self-funded groups pursuing that...

The law has NOT passed. It is an early draft of a *proposed* ammendment to the copyright law. It's in the early review stages, so that these types of implications can be investigated and (hopefully) adjustments can be made. Please check your facts before posting so as not to spread FUD!
Here's the link to the original article in yesterday's post: link to article in question

It's more interesting to go straight to the original article .

That was a PITIFUL ARTICLE. Why not link to the actual SOURCE of the info??? (You know, one with actual statistics and usable info)

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050704.gtvirusjul4/BNStory/Technology/

------------------

"12 Minutes to PC Infection"

By JACK KAPICA

Monday, July 4, 2005 Updated at 12:07 PM EDT

Globe and Mail Update

* E-mail Jack Kapica
* Read Bio
* Latest Columns

If your Windows computer is not properly protected, chances are it will take all of 12 minutes before it becomes infected, a major security company says.

The speed with which machines can become infected has shortened, virus-watchers at Sophos, based in England, say, because they have detected 7,944 new viruses in the first half of 2005, a 59-per-cent increase over the same time span last year.

As a result, the time before a machine is infected is rapidly decreasing, with a 50 per cent chance of being infected by an Internet worm within just 12 minutes of being on-line using an unprotected PC.

The security company made this observation while releasing its list of the top 10 viruses for the period from January to the end of June. The list was headed by Zafi-D (25.3 per cent), followed by Netsky-P (17.5 per cent); Sober-N (10.3 per cent); Zafi-B (4.7 per cent); Netsky-D (3.8 per cent); Mytob-BE (2.6 per cent); Netsky-Z (2.3 per cent); Mytob-AS (2 per cent); Netsky-B (1.9 per cent) and Sober-K (1.7 per cent). The remaining 27.9 per cent was shared among all other viruses.

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The figures were in agreement with those released late last week by IBM, which reported that phishing attacks had increased 226 per cent, while viruses and worms, such as Sober and Mytob, also continued to spread rapidly through e-mail and Web applications.

IBM's May Global Business Security Index attributes the increase in phishing attacks to the rise of zombie "botnets" being used to pump out massive volumes of the scam e-mail used in phishing attacks, as cyber-criminals attempt to increase their profits.

IBM added that in May, more than 30 per cent of e-mail contained some form of virus -- a 33 per cent increase over the previous month.

"The Sober family of worms is an example of how damaging the collaborative efforts between virus writers and spammers can be, hijacking the computers of legitimate organizations to create 'zombies,' whose purpose is to perpetuate the generation of more spam," said Sophos spokesman Greg Mastoras.

"Organizations are being victimized and likely being identified as a source of spam, endangering reputations and potentially causing their e-mail to be blocked by others."

Sophos says it has also seen a threefold increase in the number of keylogging Trojans so far this year. Trojans are arrive as e-mail attachments or links to websites. They are often used by remote hackers to steal privileged information and very often, to launch further attacks. In June, an NISCC investigation, which Sophos assisted, found that nearly 300 British government departments and core businesses were the subject of Trojan horse attacks.

Trojans are increasing in number on a daily basis, Mr. Mastoras said. But "Trojans typically don't make the charts because they do not spread on their own and are used for targeted attacks, which are designed to make money or steal information."

IBM's report says it found that phishing incidents reached a peak point in January, and then dropped again. In May, phishing attacks exceeded anything previously recorded, increasing by 226 per cent.

In May, one in 32.2 (or 3.12 per cent of all e-mail) e-mail messages contained some form of virus or Trojan attack, an increase over the past month of 33 per cent.

Spam, however, has levelled off, IBM says. In May, 68.7 per cent of i

Not to mention the original article was a lot better, and not a link to yet another news aggregrator that in turn links to another site: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050704.gtvirusjul4/BNStory/Technology/

What's wrong with C|NET, they are fairly late on the RIM vs NTP case. The USPTO has already rejected 7 out of the 8 patents held by NTP.

Globe and Mail Article on the patents being rejected.

Welcome to My Search History!?????

I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlords.

This lack of semantic connection is something being worked upon by the founder of the Web himself (Sir Tim Breners-Lee, at MIT) in a radical re-design of how the Web is structured and an update of the communication protocols that hold it all together.

They clearly spelled his name worng. :)

This lack of semantic connection is something being worked upon by the founder of the Web himself (Sir Tim Breners-Lee, at MIT) in a radical re-design of how the Web is structured and an update of the communication protocols that hold it all together.

They clearly spelled his name worng. :)

Illegal P2P music sharing may be coming to an end

In other words, no income for the government from them.

So in other words if you count the lost productivity due to M$ viruses, worms, trojans, and general interoperability problems, it's a liability for the U.S. to have M$ in the country. Oh, yeah and arrays of cracked MS-Windows machines cranking out spam for damage of over $58 billion per year

So no income from MS, great expense from MS, and it's largely MS pushing the sw patent issue. So who's going to gain from sw patents in Europe except the portfolio companies? They might gain, but they sure don't produce or develop software.

Or you could just go straight to the article.

It's one of a string of many delays from Intel over the last while: here's another article about it.

Bah, this is absolutely nothing compared to the coding error that brought down Canada's Royal Bank last month, leaving millions of customers without paychecks, access to their accounts, etc.... And this too was attributed to human error, but had far more drastic repurcusions than not getting your morning paper, and cost RBC a heck of a lot more than a million dollars.

What about this, eh?

Telus and SaskTel are doing the same thing. Read at CTV

* An OS that is less secure than Windows.

Remember that Slashdot article about how Linux was the most-breached OS on the net? I sure do. A Slashdot editor even modified the headline so it said "Linux Most Attacked OS On Net" instead of "Most Breached" so it didn't look as bad.

Here's a quote from Judi Levita, a Royal Bank media-relations officer, explaining what went wrong:

"I honestly don't know. As I say, I mean, it's one of those tech things."

Source

There are two separate rulings (although only one was by a judge). Whether both of the rulings stand is still to be determined.

In December 2003, the Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision stating that downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is legal. This is not a court decision and not surprisingly, the Canadian Recording Industry Association disputes the decision. The board also noted that it believed uploading copyrighted works online appeared to be prohibited by law.

Fast forward to April 2004. The CRIA is in court trying to force major Canadian Internet service providers to divulge the names of suspected copyright violators. Not only did federal judge Konrad von Finckenstein deny the request but went on to rule that placing copyrighted works in a shared directory is legal, akin to the photocopiers mentioned above. The CRIA does not agree with Finckenstein and has appealed his ruling.

To buy his argument you have to believe that placing a copyrighted work in shared directory doesn't amount to distribution. "Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying," Finckenstein wrote.

In response to the ruling, Helene Scherrer, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, has promised to fix copyright law as quickly as possible. This may also push the government to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties. According to the Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access, ratifying the treaties may double the levies already imposed on blank digital media.

Here's an article with a little more detail. Note that the globe points out that they want an injuction against shipping any Pentium processors. That's going to cost intel way more than 500 million. It'll give AMD, VIA and the rest a big leg up in the x86 market. Well untill they get sued.

Ian Johnson writes a regular column for the Globe and Mail called The Chic Geek. He also edits the technology section of the paper.

You can be certain that manufacturers regularly send him stuff in the hope that he will review it. Additionally, you can be sure that they will try to send him the 'sexiest' and most eye-catching products from their line--which is all the stuff with blue LEDs.

(Warning: Slightly off topic but on par with parent comment on indiscriminate media reporting). This one rather surprised me as well.

Really, it's such a simple idea:

If you use GPL code, you publish somewhere the modifications you make under the GPL.

THAT'S IT. END OF STORY. JOURNALISTS, YOU CAN GO HOME NOW.

Instead, we get heart-wrenching human interest CRAP like the following:

(From speeding acceptance of linux)

Linux evangelists have prophesied for years that the open-source operating system would challenge Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. But it wasn't until the past year or so, when International Business Machines Corp., Novell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. seriously threw their collective and considerable weight behind it, that a challenge became a real possibility.

Victory, however, will not come cheaply.

The problem is that the future of Linux was never dependent on its quality. If quality were all that is required to win, everyone would be watching movies on Beta videotape and working on Apple Macintosh computers.

The problem is cultural.

The open-source community, an ad-hoc worldwide network of programmers dedicated to creating free software, has been too shrill, evangelistic and hot-eyed for corporate interests to deal with; the ferocity of their anger at proprietary software became the Linux community's own worst enemy -- nobody wants to gamble a corporate future on fanatics, no matter how worthy their bible.

Why do journalists slather this "human community" BS on top of this very simple idea?

It's like they're trying to freak people out! How completely idiotic is that???!!!

I wrote an article on my website about this very topic almost 3 weeks ago, but it is not as quite in-depth as the Globe article and is from a different angle.

• an unprecedented level of (MS-related) virus alerts, or
• the fact that these viruses only affect one line of products from one manufacturer, or
• the fact that the press gives no coverage of platforms and applications that are immune?

Yes, OS X, BSD, and the various Linux distributions (i.e. Debian, Mandrake, SUSE, or RedHat ). All easy to install, all easy to maintain, all easy to use. OS X comes pre-installed by the OEM and an increasing number of Linux distros are, too.

Furthermore, the layered structure of the OSes and separation of privileges means that these are resistent to future viruses as well as immune to those available today. Yes, apologists and astroturfers like to ignore that as well as blame users. But even if, and that's a big if, market share has more effect than design flaws, it will take quite some time for the virus activity to shift and during that time, businesses and users have come out ahead. Right now, die hard ideologs who refuse to drop a defective product are costing billions of dollars per quarter, a not insignificant number when you think how many jobs could be kept rather than downsized or outsourced in these increasingly bad economic times for the U.S.

How about a little focus? The title should have been "An Unprecedented level of MS Virus Alerts" and steer users off of the hamster wheel. From easy to hard, these are just a few of the many options:

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some of the latest enteries:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some highlites:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

here

New Moderation option demanded! +5 FAME AND GLORY!

Here's another

Clicky Clicky!!

A similar article can also be found at The Globe.

With the Linux community behind it, open-sourcing Java is going to mean a big leap for software development. Although they are worried about open source meaning zero revenue, this isn't necessarily the case.

OK, you're excused --- 'cuz you're wrong.

The internet was down for days in areas close to the disaster during the 9/11 attacks in NYC. "[A]ntique" Ham radio provided important emergency communications while nobody was "online".

Also, as reported by the Assoicated Press, during the blackouts in the Northeast and Midwest last autumn, Ham radio once again rode to the rescue.

These are only two examples of emergency service that ham operators provide on a volunteer basis. There are hundreds if not thousands of volunteer emergency communications organizations standing by "just in case". Such organizations sometimes even operate emergency communications drills within police/sheriff dispatch centers, as well as operate such drills from rustic sites, just to test emergency capabilities. And have fun doing it, I might add, 'cuz it IS a hobby, after all.