Slashdot Mirror

GrokSoup writes "Magnificently loopy -- and spot-on -- profile of Jim Clark in Sunday's NY Times Magazine. In it, writer Michael Lewis manages to make the profoundly unsympathetic multibillionaire Clark at least somewhat sympathetic, while simultaneously dissecting the venture capital food chain, getting inside the Valley culture, describing Clark's many missteps, and generally doing a yeoman job of promoting his upcoming book. Read it." Great stuff! Up there with The Soul of a New Machine, but about the financial side of things. I strongly second GrokSoup's "read it."

GrokSoup writes "Magnificently loopy -- and spot-on -- profile of Jim Clark in Sunday's NY Times Magazine. In it, writer Michael Lewis manages to make the profoundly unsympathetic multibillionaire Clark at least somewhat sympathetic, while simultaneously dissecting the venture capital food chain, getting inside the Valley culture, describing Clark's many missteps, and generally doing a yeoman job of promoting his upcoming book. Read it." Great stuff! Up there with The Soul of a New Machine, but about the financial side of things. I strongly second GrokSoup's "read it."

Lucius Lucanius writes "A recurrent theme of late, the NY Times describes an Intel researcher's paper on the possible end of Moore's law. Soon, 'transistors will be composed of fewer than 100 atoms, and statistical variations in this Lilliputian world are beyond the ability of semiconductor engineers to control.' Is it for real this time? "

pq writes "The New York Time is running a mainstream review of Google, and how it plans to remain free of banner ads. (NYT, free registration, blah blah.) " Nice little bit - with a bit of the history to the site and what they plan to do - and check out the other jobs at Google. Head Chef - maybe I wouldn't have to eat packet o' sauce and noodles all the time.

sumana writes "Today in history: On this day in 1969, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" made its debut on BBC Television. (according to the New York Times's online "Learning" section, free registration required, yada yada spam spam spam) " As Eric Idle says: "And to celebrate, we're doing nothing!"

sumana writes "Today in history: On this day in 1969, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" made its debut on BBC Television. (according to the New York Times's online "Learning" section, free registration required, yada yada spam spam spam) " As Eric Idle says: "And to celebrate, we're doing nothing!"

tomreagan writes "The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft has teamed up with MIT to launch a joint research initiative on educational technology. " It's the largest alliance to date of institution and company, to the tune of 25$US million with a strong focus on "instructional technologies." The feeling at MIT is "mixed" regarding the new project, called I-Campus.

tomreagan writes "The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft has teamed up with MIT to launch a joint research initiative on educational technology. " It's the largest alliance to date of institution and company, to the tune of 25$US million with a strong focus on "instructional technologies." The feeling at MIT is "mixed" regarding the new project, called I-Campus.

Winston Smith writes "Akio Morita, founder of Sony, died today at age 78. Morita defined the post-war Japanese electronics industry and his vision and influence played a major role in shaping our gadgetized world. He'll be missed. Here's the NYT obituary." (You already know the "registration required" drill.)

Billy Joe Bob writes "This Sunday's (10/03/99) New York Times Magazine features an article about L0pht Heavy Industries." Not a bad piece for a mainstream pub - good writeup about the personalities involved, how they work, etc. (free NYT reg. required to read.)

The New York Times ran a great article about the upcoming Global Rating System, coming to a country near you sometime next year. Stephen Balkam, the characteristically disingenuous defender of rating systems, is described as saying that so far no governments have mandated that content providers use online rating systems. Okay, that's true - because it hasn't been passed yet. Australia's states are in the process of implementing model legislation which would criminalize failing to rate or mis-rating a site - even accidentally. Similar legislation has also been proposed in Great Britain and the U.S. -- michael

Your Mama writes "Hoping to insure that the nation's spies have the latest information technology in the rapidly changing Internet age, the Central Intelligence Agency has established a venture capital company to nurture high-tech companies..." The NY Times has the story. The reference to Major Boothryod alone makes it worthwhile to get your free NYT registration if you don't already have one. Isn't that right, Mr. Bond?

Your Mama writes "Hoping to insure that the nation's spies have the latest information technology in the rapidly changing Internet age, the Central Intelligence Agency has established a venture capital company to nurture high-tech companies..." The NY Times has the story. The reference to Major Boothryod alone makes it worthwhile to get your free NYT registration if you don't already have one. Isn't that right, Mr. Bond?

Finnish law was amended last Wednesday, adding a two-year sentence for the catch-all crime "Causing danger to data processing systems." Is keeping sample virus code intended for anti-virus authors on your FTP site a violation?

A Michigan hospital may be only the first of many: a digital dictation system used by doctors for private medical notes has been cracked. 2600 magazine published a sample audio file, which got people's attention. Yahoo and ZDNet's CyberCrime have good coverage.

And, the Defense Department is very proud of its Defense Computer Forensics Lab. They fit broken disks together, read deleted files, "trace hackers across the internet," and use some doohickey called a "Beowulf cluster" to analyze captured computers. Can someone tell me why the FBI gets a lab in this building which was deliberately located near the National Security Agency? Isn't there some conflict of interest?

IQ writes "A federal appeals court has unanimously overturned a lower court ruling on the copyright of a freelance published work in an electronic database. Read more about it in the New York Times " Free login, blah blah. Interesting ruling though - essentially, the database companies have been told that they cannot include the work of freelance contributors without the permission of the freelancers. Seems elementary to me, but a step in the right direction for information rights.

Hapster writes " Raytheon has developed the most expensive weapon ever. This ICBM killer hones in on an oncoming missile and, like a bullet hitting another bullet, hopes to smash into it before it smashes into us. " On a sheer technology level, devices like this are some of the most intrinsicly interesting around, although I'm still not quite sure who's the enemy.

A New York Times story reports that Microsoft has unveiled a big shift in its internet strategy. "Software as a service," no "dogmatic commitment" to the Intel platform, and new hardware (a low-cost NC). Plus a revamped MSN, a portal for businesses, and free ham sandwiches for everyone (well, maybe next year). Other news reports are more skeptical, saying "Strategy-less" and "Nothing new."

The FTC today announced a crackdown on pornjacking, errr, pagejacking. Apparently these smooth operators have been copying other sites wholesale in order to get hits on certain keyword combinations - search engine fodder. And then of course when you click through from the search engine, you are whisked away with Javascript into porn land, never to return... It seems that the actual offenders were Australian so international cooperation was required. Hmmm, here's a couple of readers submitting a New York Times story too, it's a little more in-depth.

We can probably assume there were assorted copyright violations involved; but when does this rise to the level of consumer fraud? Using dictionaries to get search engine hits is a stupid practice, one that the search engines are right to minimize, but if it starts being regarded as some sort of legally-actionable fraud, a lot of people are going to be in trouble - and there's a lot of potential side-effects (see the various lawsuits that have been filed about people using certain keywords in their META tags, such as Playboy suing a former Playmate who used "Playmate" in her tags: Playboy lost). Where's the line? -- michael

An anonymous reader writes "This article (NYT=Free Login Required) at the New York Times describes an upcoming paper on the experiences of one online class and the technological barriers that resulted in frustration for participants. " Its an interesting piece and talks about several relevant issues. I always wanted to take my classes online, and I still think that it is definitely going to be important in the future, but, well, read the article.

Following up: The New York Times has a follow-up story on the Munich Ratings Summit. "Not censorship", says the author of the plan, surprising no one. Tigr writes "Many people complained that the Bertelsmann Foundation Memorandum was available only in PDF format. I took the time to convert it into ASCII. The result is available. Read it while it is not yet declared unlawful. " Javier Candeira undertook a translation of our recent Munich article into Spanish and it has been posted on the Barrapunto.com site, which also uses the slash engine. Someone who speaks better Spanish than I do will have to tell me if it's a good translation or not.

SkrewBawl, among others, notes that Shays-Meehan, aka the campaign finance reform bill, passed the House recently. The New York Times ran an interesting story on it, discussing the possible effects on web sites. The problem is, existing campaign finance laws already cover the internet.

Shays-Meehan isn't likely to pass this year. Though the House passed it, the Senate Republicans have the ability to filibuster and prevent it from passing as they did last year. So you probably need not worry about that bill passing or about any meaningful reforms in our election system; Dubya¹ will win the election with millions upon millions of dollars of "soft money" funneled through his party and not subject to campaign finance laws.

But let's look at existing campaign finance laws. They require, among many other things, that anyone who spends more than $250 promoting a candidate, even totally independently of that candidate's campagin committee or political apparatus, must register with the FEC. Spend over $1000 and you have to register as a political action committee. The problem is, when looking at websites, the FEC counts the cost of the domain name, the hardware used to run the site, bandwidth and other costs, as well as the actual time and/or money spent to develop the site - so essentially every website which promotes a specific candidate is in violation of the law unless they file with the FEC. Furthermore, the proprietor of the website must include his full name along with his political message - it is illegal to anonymously endorse or oppose a candidate for office.

There is doubt about the constitutionality of that statute. An Ohio law which also outlawed anonymity was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1995, in a case called Mcintyre vs. Ohio elections Commission. Nevertheless, the federal statute has never been directly challenged and the FEC does not consider it to have been affected by the Mcintyre decision.

So what problems will occur as the next set of major elections draws near? If anonymity is outlawed, individuals cannot freely express their opinions without fear of retaliation.

If anonymity is permitted, Internet electioneering is likely to turn into a horde of fake astro-turf sites which are allegedly independent supporters of candidate X, but were actually created and paid for by the candidate. We've already seen this in movie promotion and other forums; for even higher stakes such as the Presidency, you can expect correspondingly more fakery.

As for myself, I'm undecided. This country's election system desperately needs an overhaul. But it seems like most of the proposed changes wouldn't do much to improve the system, and lead to draconian restrictions on political speech on the Internet and elsewhere. What's the solution?

1. George W. Bush, Jr.

Bobalu writes "Below is a link to a NY Times article saying Nortel has supplied the software needed so: ``Carriers can now begin taking steps to correct technological impediments within their networks that currently prevent law enforcement from being able to carry out court-ordered electronic surveillance directed at suspected criminals and terrorists,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said in a statement. Joy." Click below to get some background, and the link to the story.

The article is actually an AP article, and this is a temporary URL but will probably remain available throughout today. If it's not available, just search your favorite news site which carries an AP feed.

Background: In 1994, the FBI, complaining about pedophiles and terrorists on the internet, got Congress to pass a law requiring all telecommunications providers to make their networks easily tappable. One example of the necessity for such which is still trotted out by the FBI is solving kidnappings - "What if your child was kidnapped?". However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.

The primary stated reason for the law was that the telcoms were upgrading to digital from analog, and therefore the men in black couldn't just hook up an alligator clip to the wires anymore... the law was explicitly stated to NOT expand law-enforcement access to communications but simply make sure that they could access digital phone lines. The telecommunications companies fought the law until Congress added $500,000,000 in government subsidies for them, when they promptly shut up.

Unfortunately (but expectedly), the FBI has interpreted the law as granting them free rein to tap anything at any time. The FCC is granted the power to implement CALEA - and the current FCC commissioners would make Big Brother proud. So the FBI has sought and received, as of August 30, substantial additional tapping powers - they will now receive the current location of cell-phone users during the tap, the ability to listen in on conference calls even if the tapped party has left the conversation, and a couple of other minor enhancements which slowly yet steadily erode your privacy.

More important, the FBI has also sought the ability to tap packet-switched communications - by which I mean, of course, the big bad Internet. This authority, never enacted in law, has nevertheless been granted by the FCC, to be implemented by the telcoms no later than September 2001.

Recently there have been stories about companies in Russia having to provide the ability for police to tap internet communications. U.S. folks laughed at those poor bastards, living in a surveillance state. The only difference between Russia and the U.S. is: the Russians are more upfront about their surveillance.

See EPIC's wiretap page for more. -- michael

As promised last Friday, here's more on the Munich conference. Pay attention or wait to be forced to label your internet content. It's your choice.

A number of articles have appeared in the online press about Munich. Half of them are just rehashes of press releases - nothing very useful there. Some of them are fairly in-depth (we think CNET and the NY Times had the best coverage), but none of them really give you the big picture. We're going to try to. Let us know how we do.

The first thing that the press is missing is that there are (well, were) two meetings in Munich, not one. The first is the one you heard about: a meeting called by the Bertelsmann Foundation, part of the huge Bertelsmann publishing empire, which sponsored the Internet Content Summit. They're getting together to have a little feel-good session about "self-regulation" of internet content. By self-regulation they don't mean that end-users regulate their own behavior; they mean that ISPs regulate users instead of government doing so directly. Users will still be regulated, of course. And the regulation will be driven by what the national government wants. It's just that government will lay their heavy hands upon the ISPs, and the ISPs will act as the enforcers rather than law enforcement. Think of it as a distributed system - government assumes the role of a second-line rather than first-line manager. At a previous internet content summit, this type of regulation was described as "soft law" versus "hard law", and we think that's a good way to think about it. They are not talking about voluntary, individual actions of corporations - they are talking about imposing laws and restraints on the citizenry through another means. Self-regulation = soft law, but law nonetheless.

The first meeting is interesting for a number of reasons, but not terribly ominous - the people meeting were not previously working together, and all that will come out of it is thoughts and ideas. The second meeting is rather more dangerous.

The second meeting, scheduled in conjunction with the first, was of the principals of INCORE, Internet Content Rating for Europe. This group consists of a number of European corporations and protect-the-children groups and their sole goal is to establish a single rating system for use across Europe (they're also coordinating with Australia). Of course, the members of this group overlap significantly with the first - for example, Jens Waltermann, director of the Bertelsmann Foundation and sponsor of the first meeting, is also one of the prime movers in INCORE - which ought to tell you why the Bertelsmann conference is so slanted towards ratings systems as the sole means of protecting the children.

But why is this going forward? As at least one slashdot poster pointed out in the discussions of last week's article, rating systems have been discussed before, and haven't come to anything yet.

What happened is the government (the European Commission, in this case) decided to get serious. They buckled down, and at the end of 1998, allocated funds to be spent on the development of a global rating system. About $11 million is allocated to be spent on developing this system, so the corporate participants can be reasonably assured of being reimbursed for all their plane fares and hotel costs. (Question: if it's so voluntary, how come the government is paying people to develop it?)

The European Commission's plan runs from January 1999 to December 2002, four years. 1999 is scheduled for development and meetings. 2000 is scheduled for rollout and beta testing. 2001 and 2002 are allocated for the encouragement process and tweaking - making sure everyone is toeing the line. There's plenty of time allocated because it's important to make sure that the resulting rating system aligns with national laws - for instance, since Germany outlaws hate speech, one of the rating categories will involve hate speech, and Germany will outlaw the transmission of any content rated in this category into the country. Laws can be "hung" off the rating categories, if they're set up properly.

The rating system will be based off the American Recreational Software Advisory Council's system, that they originally developed for video games and then, when threatened by Congress with the CDA, transformed for internet content. (The funny thing is, for the first year that RSACi was being promoted for use on webpages, it still had all the original references to video games. Pretty sad.) RSAC was recently folded into the Internet Content Rating Association, basically so they can revamp the RSACi system and submit it to the European Commission for approval and funding. Who is the chairman of ICRA's board of directors? Jens Waltermann again. Are you beginning to see a pattern?

Civil liberties groups world-wide have finally recognized the threat that government-mandated rating systems pose to the internet. The ACLU was the first major group to speak out against them, in their 1997 paper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?. But for this Munich conference, the chorus was loud and close to unanimous - the Global Internet Liberty Coalition condemned it, the ACLU condemned it, Electronic Frontiers Australia condemned it, Internet Freedom (UK civil liberties group) condemned it.

Several civil liberties groups managed to wrangle themselves invitations to the conference. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is attending and distributing a book free of charge to all participants (besides the attack on free speech, EPIC is irritated because the European Commission has also recommended that online anonymity be strictly prohibited for all European Union residents - after all, if they're anonymous, it's harder to make them obey the law). Nadine Strossen of the ACLU published the statement she's making to the Conference, harshly opposing the labeling requirements; even Esther Dyson, a tremendous supporter of rating systems, expressed her unease at the slant of the conference.

Strossen's comments above neatly summarize the civil liberties community's objections to so-called self-rating systems, and we urge all readers to take a look at that link above. She makes several points:

1. Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored
2. Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly
3. Conversation Can't Be Rated
4. Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation
5. Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers

Strossen is far more eloquent than we are, and she makes the points extremely well. Take a look, it's worth your time.

But back to the conference. The main document to come out of the conference is their Memorandum on Self-Regulation (538K), released yesterday. A number of "internet experts" contributed to the report - mostly these same people we've been seeing, representatives of the companies that want the Net to be kid-friendly (increase profits!) and protect-the-children groups from throughout Europe, and representatives from various governmental agencies. They lay out their censorship proposal in some detail. The basics are laid out in a single phrase: "Content providers worldwide must be mobilized to label their content...".

Prepare to get mobilized.

"It is in the best interest of industry," they say, to take the steps necessary to "enhance consumer confidence" and meet "business objectives." The suits invited must all have nodded their heads to this one: if only they could get the obnoxious people off the net, then all the soccer moms and grandpas would feel safe enough to fire up a browser and finally type in their credit card numbers.

So, problem: naughty stuff on the net. Answer? Open source! <spit>

On p. 59 of the 60-page memo is a neat diagram that looks almost like an API to a multi-layer code library. Except in this case, the bottom slice is the underlying technology of censorship (PICS), and the top slice is the user's experience of censorship (at the browser).

Sitting on top of PICS is Layer 1, in which the content creators - that's you, me, and everyone else who makes anything public on the internet - label our data with a "basic vocabulary" of keywords. If we write porn, we call it porn. Simple enough so far?

Next comes Layer 2, which is where the fun stuff starts to happen. Here, third parties can invent "template profiles." These combine the keywords in interesting ways. The idea is that in one country, the ratings systems will typically rate porn as bad but violence as OK; in another, perhaps the opposite; someone else will invent a profile for use in schools that blocks everything noneducational; a profile for your company's router might block all sports but let profanity through; a national profile for Australia might block all sex but let stupid political grandstanding through; and so on.

These template profiles should be, according to Bertelsmann, "open source."

How are they going to do this? They can't rely on a NetNanny or SurfWatch to rate the net: censorware has been a dismal failure in practice, the software just doesn't work because there's too much of the net and too few censorware employees to evaluate it all.

What they need instead is for you, the author, to do their work for them. Remember that "basic vocabulary" of keywords? It turns out you're not just going to pick porn vs. non-porn. Oh no. After all, you have to provide enough information for the profiles to work with.

That means you're going to be rating everything you publish according to:

"e.g.: gratuitous violence,
frontal nudity,
explicit sexual acts,
crude language,
vulgar language,
sports,
extreme hate speech,
arts,
aggressive violence,
death to humans,
medicine,
non-explicit sexual acts,
strong language,
history, ..."

E.g.? E.g.!? There's more?

Well, there has to be more. In fact, Bertelsmann has only scratched the surface. In order for there to be enough "template profiles" to be worth mentioning, the variety of keywords has to be extreme.

Be ready to run down a checklist for everything you write and decide whether it contains gratuitous or non-gratuitous violence, explicit or non-explicit sex acts. Please rate from 1 to 10 how much art and history was in that last post of yours. Don't think you'll have a choice about doing it - your ISP will be enforcing it upon you, as a condition of service.

And the "template profiles" that are provided for the end user? These profiles are just simple sets that group the predefined keywords together. If I'm the CEO of NetSitterPatrol, I group keywords 1, 3, 5, and 12 together and call it "NetSitterPatrol Profile."

And if I'm a national government that's cracking down on porn, violence, hate speech, or vulgar language (your government wouldn't do anything like that, would it?), I'll just add the keywords for indecency, abortion information, hate speech, racism, or whatever else I want to censor, and give the list to the backbone providers in my country to filter out and protect the delicate citizens. Hey look, I'm an open source programmer!

by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy

Hapster sent in the link to a New York Times story (free reg. req. to read) about how the US and Russia are setting up a joint task force to make sure we don't accidently get into a nuclear exchange because of Y2K bugs in missle warning and launch software. According to the article, "The confidence-building operation will use U.S. early-warning satellites and advanced computers, and could reassure Moscow if Y2K computer problems in Russia mistakenly signaled a missile launch somewhere in the world."

__roo writes "Today's New York Times [free login req. to read - ed.]reports that Michigan inventor Lynn Svevad has invented the "Ancestral Computer Program", which virtually brings a deceased relative "back to life" by drawing upon stored data. It uses voice recognition and stored animations and responses recorded while the person was alive to simulate the responses that the relative would have given, simulating 'a two way conversation between the user and the relative.' Search www.uspto.gov for patent #5,946,657. Didn't I see this in an old episode of Max Headroom? (see episode #8)"

One-eyed Orbital Snake writes "Interesting essay in the NYT magazine (free login, yadda yadda) on commercial 1m resolution satellite photos, with the Sept. 24 launch of Space Images' Ikonos. Not much new, but well written and all in one place. References Clarke's 2061, Brin's Transparent Society, and ties it all up with a heartwarming 1st Amendment ribbon. Definitely worth a read."

An Anonymous Reader writes "An article (free login required) in yesterday's New York Times (Business Section) says that the number of college students in the physical and biological science is decreasing because of the "easy money" available in the field of computers. It also says that the computer industry's growth will slow and that the next big boom of technology jobs will be in biotechnology. Interesting stuff. " Of course the real reason is Turing machines. We really just dig drawing out turing machines on chalk boards and arguing about NP problems.

rwest writes "The latest from news.com, an article Sun to offer Microsoft Office competitor for free. The interesting bit is about half way through, where Brian Croll, a marketing director in Sun's platforms and software group says that "In addition to giving the software away for free, Sun will make the original programming instructions, or 'source code', available under the Sun Community Source License". " This comes after yesterday's speculation about whether or not this would be open sourced.Update: 08/31 02:45 by H :NY Times also has an piece talking about the creation of Star Office as a Web app.

Zorro turned us on to an NYT article that says law enforcement agencies routinely seize hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers and hard drives as evidence, but have so few computer experts that confiscated equipment can gather dust for months or years until someone decides whether or not they contain criminal information. The story also says that, even if you're innocent, once the cops grab your computer they can keep it until the statute of limitations on the alleged crime runs out, which is typically five years. (Free NYT reg. required to read.)

Occasionally someone submits a feature that really raises my eyebrow. Jack William Bell did just that by submitting 'Open Source as an Ant Farm'. Its a really interesting piece that talks about code as art, and much more. Its quite funny, and its got a lot to think about. Click now, you won't regret it. Open Source as an Ant Farm by Jack William Bell

Where Open Source is concerned, hyperbole from the digerteratti hype meisters proliferates nearly as quickly as the hyperlinks they hype. Let's face it -- Clapton has been deposed; Linus Torvalds is now God. And those pundits shouting his divinity the loudest can^Òt even tell a stack register from a walrus. I wonder if Jesus had the same problem?

This constant lionizing of Linus is getting on my nerves. I mean, he is probably a great guy and all (if you know what I mean), but a great man? Usually you wait until people are safely dead (and unable to further embarrass themselves) before heaping those kinds of laurels on their heads. If I was he I would start worrying about that strange human proclivity for taking our living idols down a notch once in a while. Or even nailing them to a tree. Not to mention burning at the stake, drawing and quartering and satirizin g on TV.

But I knew things were getting ridiculous this last week when I saw three different weblogs pointing to the same dumb article using variations on the same dumb caption: 'Open Source as an Art Form' . I mean come on, just because a bunch of nutzoid art types gives Torvalds an award for Linux doesn't mean that an operating system or a development model is art! Yeesh!

Not that I don't think of programming as art mind you. After all I am a programmer myself and I often like to compare what I do to the creation of art. A kind of raw industrial art perpetuated underneath the digital world by Morlo cks like myself while the Eloi cavort on the surface, unaware of the immense complexity (and fragility) of their world. In other words code is art, but it is exclusionist art. No more approachable to the everyday person than a Jackson Pollock work. And twice as incomprehensible!

After all if everyone could do it, it wouldn't be art, would it? It would be just another craft. And if everyone could appreciate good code the way I appreciate the Impressionists then it would be 'Classical' (read 'Dead') Art. Not something alive and thriving. Bubbling and fermenting and making funny smells the way the process of hacking out good code does.

But, you say, it is being appreciated just as you would like! After all, isn't that what the award was all about?

Well, no frankly. Not even close. In my opinion if you can't write good code you can't appreciate good code. At the most you can only appreciate the end result, the compiled program. And, while some programs are definitely 'art' in their own right, many others cannot be described as such based on their even visible-to-the-user external features. And Linux, while a work of art in my programmer eyes, is really just a kernel. A piece of code that, if everything is working right, the user will never see directly. Some of my peers would agree with this. Some will not. As always opinions are all over the map...

One poster on Slashdot tried to have it both ways when he opined "Which part of the programming is the art? Is it the code, neatly formatted, with creative comments and clever algorithms or is it the finished product? When you look at 'art' in a museum, all you see is the finished product . . . So which is the art? The code or the program? I personally think it's the program, and beautiful programs usually have very nice/efficient/clean code."

While another lamented "When the New Yorker compares Open Source to the Algonquin roundtable, the seventh seal will be complete and Microsoft will be free to release Windows 2000."

And another asks "So how is this art going to be displayed? Will art galleries have framed printouts of C code, or will they just give out Linux CDs?"

How indeed? Well, if you read the dumb article I mentioned above you will find the author's thesis is that neither the source code nor the compiled Linux kernel code is the issue, rather the art in question is the Open Source development model that built it! He bases this proposition the following facts:

• China Youth Daily used the Microsoft consternation over Open Source for propaganda purposes.
• The Open Source development model (as described by Eric Raymond) is about cooperation and participation.
• Indian Potlatches were about cooperation and participation.
• The Surrealists did some stuff that involved cooperation and participation.
• A lot of twentieth century art uses 'quotation' (like painting soup cans or sampling 1970's Rock and Roll for Rap music) and 'quotation' is kind of like Open Source, isn't it?
• John Myatt's art forgery scam was kind of like 'quotation' too! And it was kind of like art as well
• When some people share a pseudonym to do wacky performance art, and then someone else uses the same nom de plume to crack a web site or to write an on-line 'tag-team' novel you have cooperation and participation and quotation and propaganda all rolled into one, with an Internet connection as a sweetener!

My first thought on reading the article was "Huh?" Then I reread and listed the salient points above and reiterated "Huh?"

Clearly Harvey Blume isn't a programmer. If he was I wouldn't trust him to code a 'for' loop based on his demonstrated grasp of simple logic. Nonetheless if he had simply stated that Open Source programming with the Bazaar model is 'Art' because he says it was art I would have much less to quibble with. After all art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Only he didn't. Instead he chose to defend his allegation using arguments that indicate he doesn't understand anything about the subject. In other words, I cannot say Mr. Blume is wrong, but I can state with near certainty that he is the wrong person to make the claim. He might be right, but for the wrong reasons.

So, assuming you can call a development model an art form -- how do you hang it on the wall? I would argue that it is already there. The main point about Open Source is that it is (wait for it) . . . OPEN! Duh^Å Unlike 'Closed' development the source code is available for all to see. And often the discussions between developers are available as well, archived on one list server or another. In the Internet sense you can't get up against the wall any more that that!

But what does the average art lover see hanging there? Open Source as an Art Form? I think not. More like Open Source as an Ant Farm! At most they will get a glimpse of we scurrying workers as we toil underground. But they will never, ever understand. As I said before, I am OK with that.

Non programmer types can present art awards for Linux or even Sendmail if they like, but it doesn't signify to me. In my opinion these awards mean nothing until they are given by someone who understands why the jargon file definition of 'Recursion' is funny. Until then I would rather they just threw money. Wouldn't you?

Your Mama sent us a funny NY Times bit (yes, you need a free account) about dumbing down keyboards because all those crazy keys confuse the newbies. BUt this begs the question: How can we survive without old friends like the Scroll Lock, the Sys Rq and of course, break?

Most small company IPOs have at least a little disorganization and hype surrounding them, but Red Hat's was over the edge. We're not even going to try to sort out the claims and counter-claims, the complaints and counter-complaints, and all the rest, just point you to a selection of stories on the subject, not all of which agree 100% about exactly what happened, when it happened -- or to whom.

• Late IPO change left many red-faced at C|Net.
• Red Hat charges up 272 percent in debut from ZDNet
• Geeks Tip Their Caps to Red Hat at Wired News
• Share Price More Than Triples in Red Hat's Public Offering from the New York Times (free registration required to read)
• The Tech Investor column in the Aug. 12 Washington Post talks not only about Red Hat, but other recent IPOs. Good perspective piece.
• Red Hot (with a cute "hat" graphic) headlined Salon's take on the subject.

I found a bunch of other stories too, but they all said pretty much the same as the ones I listed above. If you spot any more good ones (or have any good stories of your own to tell), please post them below.

Most small company IPOs have at least a little disorganization and hype surrounding them, but Red Hat's was over the edge. We're not even going to try to sort out the claims and counter-claims, the complaints and counter-complaints, and all the rest, just point you to a selection of stories on the subject, not all of which agree 100% about exactly what happened, when it happened -- or to whom.

• Late IPO change left many red-faced at C|Net.
• Red Hat charges up 272 percent in debut from ZDNet
• Geeks Tip Their Caps to Red Hat at Wired News
• Share Price More Than Triples in Red Hat's Public Offering from the New York Times (free registration required to read)
• The Tech Investor column in the Aug. 12 Washington Post talks not only about Red Hat, but other recent IPOs. Good perspective piece.
• Red Hot (with a cute "hat" graphic) headlined Salon's take on the subject.

I found a bunch of other stories too, but they all said pretty much the same as the ones I listed above. If you spot any more good ones (or have any good stories of your own to tell), please post them below.

Cy Guy writes "The NY Times has an article on how users are coping with an overload of passwords. Helpdesk costs related to lost passwords are $340/user/year according to the Gartner Group estimate cited." (Free NYT account required to read.)

IQ writes "This NYTimes article discusses Sun's latest chip, known as Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing or MAJC. Looks like a huge, fast MultiDiePackage with a lotta chips. " Fits in well with Sun's continuing attempt to route around Intel-these chips are look like they are philosphically aligned with Jini. More specs will be coming out later on this month. (Free login required @ NYT).

Calmacil writes "Lunar Prospector hit the moon, and made no dust plume. Thus, no water was found :( "Darnit, there goes my moon base.

jht writes "Taking the Clinton Administration's electronic paranoia to new heights, this NY Times article details plans to have the FBI establish an infrastructure (called FIDNET) capable of monitoring all non-military public networks. And you were wondering why they're so down on encryption... The NSA is reviewing it now, with final rules expected in September. " Uh,oh. This is potentially a Very Bad Thing. You may want to e-mail your Congressional Representative about it. (Free NYT online subscription required to read the article.)

Rob sent us a New York Times article (this means you need a free registration) that talks about something we've addressed here in the past. Its tech unions. It talks about the struggle of the MS Temps, as well as the fact that techies are often paid well (cash, stock options and benefits) that the 70 hour work weeks just don't seem so bad.

bw writes "The NYTimes magazine explains why there is no such thing as a secure network. Along the way, it compares the attacks of script kiddies to a million monkeys firing catapults at random -- some attacks are bound to succeed. Also, Eugene Spafford thinks that after Y2K suits dwindle away, hungry lawyers will start looking at how the promiscuous connectivity of modern office apps can have dangerous side effects (think Melissa with a payload). " A truly excellent article! It's quite long, but worth the reading time, and if you don't have a (free) NYT login yet, this is the time to get it.

phred writes "It didn't turn out quite the way NSI had set it up. They wanted House Commerce Committee chair Rep. Thomas Bliley, representing their area of Virginia, to beat up on ICANN at Thursday's hearing into the unfolding competitive environment for the Domain Name System registry. Instead, panel members turned their attention to new NSI boss Jim Rutt, who didn't do so good. The New York Times is on the case, but C-Span is not, as they are not apparently planning to show the hearing. " (Usual NYT "free registration required" to read the article.)

tomreagan writes "The New York Times has a good article on vintage computers. It talks about a wide variety of the old beasts and is quite exhaustive. It makes me proud to admit that my favorite computer is still my first, a trusty Apple IIc. " Free login required, natch.

tomreagan writes "The New York Times has a good article on vintage computers. It talks about a wide variety of the old beasts and is quite exhaustive. It makes me proud to admit that my favorite computer is still my first, a trusty Apple IIc. " Free login required, natch.

TreyHarris writes "The New York Times has an article about how MP3 is changing the experience of listening to music. Most other articles have been hung up on how it changes the experience of purchasing music, which misses the point, so this is a nice change of pace. Pretty simplistic, but good for your clueless friends. Requires free registration. "

Matthew Priestley has written an excellent essay on News in the Slashdot Decade. It talks about how The Internet is changing the way that news moves about, and discusses problems and advantages related to it. Interesting its a really excellent piece.

The following was written by Slashdot Reader Matthew Priestley, who, despite his email address, is a pretty cool guy Honest News in the Slashdot Decade
In this paper, we discuss the nature of biased and unbiased news in terms of 'trust decisions', using the cryptographic sense of that phrase. We examine the biases in modern media and identify their causes. Two examples of community news services are examined: Slashdot.org, and FreeRepublic.com. (0) From this analysis we derive a model of community news.

Disclaimer: The author of this paper works for Microsoft, but his opinions may not be the opinions of Microsoft. In fact, they aren't. The author hereby declares that nobody important at Microsoft is even aware of his existence, and that he is about as significant to Bill Gates as a single bacterium in your colon is significant to the weather in France.

0 Introduction
There is a malaise of distrust among news consumers. In recent years the number of news outlets has dwindled due to mergers and attrition, leaving information consumers with a scrawny range of choice. As the global quantity of information grows at a jaw-dropping rate, individuals increasingly despair of their ability to filter the news without aid from massive corporations.

Almost half of adults have little or no trust in media agencies (1), yet almost all delegate news collection to companies they will condemn if asked. When consumers knowingly act against their own interests, a form of coercion must be in operation. In the case of news, this coercion is a stranglehold enjoyed by media companies over filtered information. If their services are not accepted, the consumer sinks in a sea of data. In a world in which no one can process all the news and still enjoy a full life, having all information is as useless as having no information at all.

1 Nature and weakness of trust decisions
The selection of a news-filtering agency resembles what is called in cryptology a 'trust decision'. Briefly, a trust decision is a choice made by the user to validate another user's digital certificate. By assigning trust to the certificate, any content signed by that certificate becomes, in a limited sense, trustworthy. (2)

It is burdensome to evaluate the trustworthiness of every certificate, and a typical user lacks the expertise to investigate each exhaustively. For this reason, most users choose to trust a Certification Authority or CA, a central agency empowered to make trust decisions on their behalf. By endowing a single node with the power to filter certificates, the user is spared this chore. (3)

This process is analogous to the decision to accept news from an established information outlet. It would require an unreasonable effort and scads of time for any individual to audit all the news. Apart from sheer volume, appraising facts often requires background familiarity. Sources must be checked, viewpoints solicited, and impact considered. It becomes clear that this is no task for a person who hopes to conduct, for example, a life on the side. Hence the necessity of the trust decision.

Due to the exhausting claims of evaluating news, authority to filter information must be delegated.

2 Sources of bias in modern media
2.1 Opinion pollution
That trust decisions are subject to predation should be apparent. The most evident form of bias is opinion pollution, in which the subjective feelings of a reporter taint the news. Such bias may either systemic, or it may be the fault of "rogue" reporters, or both.

This form of bias is trivial to establish. In a July 8th article discussing a verdict against tobacco companies, the New York Times dwells on the volume of damning evidence presented by the plaintiffs. The deformities of the smokers are described, and the article drops a helpful tip about joining the suit. (4) Covering precisely the same event, the Wall Street Journal scrupulously avoids discussing the smokers, save to describe their organizers as 'flamboyant'. The spectre of a flooded court system and billions in costs is raised multiple times, and the guilty verdict categorized as a legal 'aberration'. (5)

This form of trust violation can be characterized in two ways. If the tolerance for personal beliefs in the news is not widespread, but isolated to a few reporters, then officials of the corporation have delegated their authority unwisely. An organization that is otherwise trustworthy will eventually correct this error. If the corruption runs throughout, however, then the consumer's initial trust decision was poor. In either event, ongoing opinion pollution can only be sustained by broad organization-wide consensus on the value of certain ideas.

Opinion pollution is a trait of homogeneous groups.

2.2 Advertising revenue and corporate ownership
Often overlooked as a source of bias is the murky relationship between news providers and advertisers. The age-old subscription model has fallen by the wayside, unable to compete with advertiser-funded services that appear to offer information for free. (6)

One fallacy is that advertising flows toward high readership, rewarding popularity with success. In reality, corporations are not interested in buyers, not readers. The Daily Herald, a worker's paper in 1960's England, boasted a readership of 4.7 million the year of its demise - nearly double that of the Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian combined. (7) But the Herald's readers were demi-socialists, and failed to support the very businesses keeping their paper alive. The advertising money melted away.

A look at subscription income and advertising income emphasizes the dwindling importance of readers. A copy of The Washington Post costs as little as 24 cents a day. By contrast, one inch of black-and-white advertisement in the paper commands $257.55. (8) Economically, it would be more prudent for the Post to alienate 1000 readers than one business buying a daily inch of print. If the lost readership were confined to non-buyers, advertising rates would not even have to drop. When profit per advertiser squashes profit per consumer, the business of advertiser-funded information outlets becomes not the sale of information, but the sale of a receptive audience.

The situation is aggravated when a large corporation owns the news-filtering outlet. Most fans of TV news are unaware ABC is owned by Disney, NBC by GE with investment from Microsoft, and CBS by Westinghouse Electric. Stories critical to these interests are treated gingerly in the news. (9)

Reliance on advertising or corporate ownership selects for news that is business-friendly. High readership is no exemption.

2.3 Feeder authority
Any reader who has attempted to wrest information from the government is aware of its inertia. Similarly, the PR departments of businesses are known for their unhelpful volubility. In the first case the problem is information deficit, in the second it is disinformation glut, but ultimately the predicament is the same.

The situation is no different in a modern newsroom. Effective reporters are those who have established personal relationships with 'sources' inside various institutions who feed them privileged information. These reporters are superior information gatherers because they may ask questions that typically are rebuffed.

Without the goodwill of their 'feeders', even competent journalists drown in a sea of flack. Should an information gatherer alienate an important feeder, the gatherer is instantly severed from a pool of developing information. Pains are taken to ensure feeders are pleased with the treatment of their comments in published accounts. (10) This creates an unhealthy environment for the analysis of news. If an information outlet were to criticize the statements of a feeder, or if fallacies or lies were exposed in the feeder's reasoning, the potential effect on the outlet would be calamitous. This allows the feeder to make use of information outlets as occasional distributors of propaganda, knowing that refusal is unlikely.

Information from a small number of feeders may be propagandized.

3 News distribution over the Internet
Slashdot.org and FreeRepublic.com are representatives of a new class of news filter. While using these sites, consumers alter the fundamental structure of their trust decision. Rather than inhabiting a descending tree, in which trust is derived from progressively higher and fewer nodes, a Slashdotter or Freeper distributes their trust. In a distributed trust model, each consumer inhabits a single node in a formless but highly connected graph. Central authority is weak, participants are anonymous, and all nodes perform small amounts of voluntary labor.

3.1 Slashdot.org
Recently thrown mainstream as a gathering spot for Linux advocates, Slashdot.org has a large and devoted following of geeks and technophiles. Interestingly, because of its adherence to transparency and peer review, Slashdot has evolved a news system that defeats several of the biases described above. Slashdot is the conceptual descendent of the Internet newsgroup and the old-timer's BBS. Members log in to the web board and select one or more current items to discuss, then post their reactions.

3.1.1 Successes of the Slashdot model Participants on Slashdot are only identifiable if they wish to be. Widespread use of aliases insulates participants from real-world reprisal - a Slashdotter may criticize the government, their employer, or other feeders with small risk. Handle-use also renders a state of meritocracy on Slashdot. Comments and topic submissions are judged by their own merits, since little is known about their real-world source. Aliases grow trusted in the forum as a result of their owner's contributions. Deprecated aliases have only themselves to blame.

Members submit topics on Slashdot, and those with promise are posted to the forum. By distributing the labor of reporting, the process of information collection becomes inexpensive, and the likelihood of discovering important news increases - much like the 'Have you seen this child?' ads on milk cartons. (11) When the system requests voluntary labor, it is limited to tasks costing only a few mouse clicks. The decision of what is 'newsworthy' is also simplified, since an audience member has provided the item. If each registered Slashdot member contributed only 1 minute per day, their efforts would sum to 1083 work-hours of labor - absolutely free.

Relinquishing trust to anonymous lurkers appears foolhardy, but as randomness grows, so does quality. The web demographic is a straw poll in the worst sense of the term (12), but there are tide pools of demographic validity if groups are narrowly defined. When a site achieves a certain level of notoriety, Slashdot for example, a cross-section of users may fairly be said to represent its supporting community, in this case idealistic geeks. An information consumer is not interested in topics useful to the average person; rather they are interested in what is useful to people like themselves.

No opinion is authoritative until it runs the Slashdot gauntlet. Members comment on topics, share experiences, and take potshots at sloppy reasoning. This is more egalitarian than the feedback model of magazines, TV, or books. In those cases, if a retort is even possible, it is run in the following issue, with no guarantee to reach the original audience. On Slashdot, user comments frequently upstage the 'official' news, and it is a testament to their quality that reading the primary source is often unnecessary. Because most topics excite a gamut of opinions, Slashdot defeats the threat of opinion pollution.

To tame dull or off-topic comments, Slashdot members are randomly empowered to moderate the 'score' of remarks. Moderators are chosen by the system with a preference towards regular but not ubiquitous readers. Comments that gain the approbation of everyday participants gradually move up through statistical effects. Pointless comments sink into oblivion. Visitors to the forum may choose their own threshold of dependence on this ratings system. On Slashdot, the uniform opinions of classic information outlets are rare.

Finally, the scripts and HTML that run Slashdot are released to the community. This ensures, within reason, that the site truly operates as billed, as well as opening the code to all the benefits of open source.

3.1.2 Failings of the Slashdot model
Among its positive effects, anonymity damages credibility. If Secretary of State Madaleine Albright posted a remark on technology export limitations, her opinion would be more significant than had 'DrDeath' typed precisely the same opinion. Validation of real-world credentials can be desirable. One solution would be to support either the S/MIME or PGP signing standards as a user option. A hash of important messages could be included with the post, thereby validating the identity of the signer. (13)

No Slashdot participant receives a handle until they submit an e-mail address to the Slashdot central authority. Those who do not may participate as 'Anonymous Cowards'. AC's suffer numerous disadvantages, not the least that their posts begin at a lower score. Though this distinction discourages meddling from non-regulars, it is risky. Regular members are no less anonymous or even cowardly than AC's, save that they have disclosed their private information to the Slashdot central authority. This makes criticism of the authority more difficult, since critical remarks are safe only as an AC post from a lab computer, which is immediately scored down.

There is one departure on Slashdot from democracy. While consumers do submit the discussion topics, these are dropped into an administrative black box, unseen until a few emerge handpicked by the central authority. Inside the 'box', a small number of humans, vulnerable to self-interest, choose which of the topics will be news. In theory, the authority could even replace submitted topics with its own. A better system would be an open one, moderated in the same manner as user remarks. Along with their ration of remark-points, moderators would be given a supply of topic-points, which could be spent on proposed topics in a pool. Users could set topic thresholds in the same manner that they set thresholds for remarks. This method would be self-policing and eliminate tedious work for the central authority. (Update: 07/16 01:15 by CT : See the Slashdot FAQ for the reason that I've decided not to do this)

Slashdot is funded by banner advertisements, and on 6/29/99 announced that it had been acquired by Andover.net. (14) While there is little danger of the various Linux distros exerting pressure as yet on Slashdot, and while Andover rarely appeared on Slashdot in the past, nonetheless these developments cast a shadow on the impartiality of the community forum. Is it less likely that a story criticizing Sony will be run when an advertisement for the Sony AIBO adorns the top banner? What would become of stories damaging to Andover? Members should be alert for signs of conflicting interest.

3.2 FreeRepublic.com
Similarly evolved, although less highly automated, is FreeRepublic.com, a forum for the exchange of conservative commentary. FreeRepublic is similar to Slashdot in appearance and general design. We will focus on their differences.

3.2.1 Successes of the FreeRepublic model
FreeRepublic's most notable trait is the freedom members enjoy in topic selection. Power is so far in their hands that every member may post any topic they choose, resulting in dozens of discussed topics per day. A true distributed trust network has no single point of entry. Since the number of daily articles is finite, any given node in a sea of nodes has negligible influence. Individuals may be bought or coerced, but since the merits of each contribution are peer-reviewed and peer-diluted, successful corruption must be hugely widespread. The resources needed to influence a majority of users would be prohibitive, and only dubiously worthwhile. Once accomplished, the forum would cease to serve the needs of valid members and would naturally dissolve. Attempts to corrupt distributed news forums are by nature self-defeating.

FreeRepublic reaps no funding from advertisement or corporate ownership. The site is fed by out-of-pocket donations from participants. Though it should be noted that FreeRepublic's supporting community stereotypically has more disposable income than the average netizen, even so the site is accountable to none save its members. When the object of a news outlet is the aggregation of money, it should be unremarkable when money supersedes the pursuit of information. But in a community forum, participants have no aim other than valuable and convenient news.

Participants on FreeRepublic meet physically, organize in chapters, and crusade in the real world to accomplish their aims. There is little risk to anonymity, since there is no need to divulge onscreen handles. Provided chapters are small and independent, the inevitable discussion of principles will not even dampen diversity of opinion, which could expose the forum to opinion pollution. Participants also leave the meetings with a sense of community, which increases their voluntary labor.

3.2.2 Failings of the FreeRepublic model
Although a blessing, complete freedom of topic selection is also a curse. At times of peak activity, two successive clicks on Refresh may result in two completely different topic lists. Crackpots frequently post and their topics slide off the page untouched by regulars. There is much duplication as news breaks. Most topics receive fewer than twenty comments, reducing the effects of peer-dilution and peer-review. All these problems could be resolved if FreeRepublic were to transition to the scoring-based topic selection approach recommended previously.

FreeRepublic has no moderation method for comments, and consequently all remarks carry equal weight. In its absence, opinions win by volume or position near the top of the remark list rather than insight or appeal to the median qualities of the community. Corruption of an unmoderated forum is trivial given fifty aliases and sufficient time.

On FreeRepublic, community participants are not permitted to comment or post discussion topics unless they are logged on. This is an extreme case of Slashdot's Anonymous Coward dilemma. No contribution can be made to the forum without being noted by the FreeRepublic central authority. There is no guarantee the central authority will not terminate or diminish the accounts of those who criticize its practices.

Finally, FreeRepublic is closed source. Though the site is more static than Slashdot, what scripts it has are not disclosed to the forum. Members must take it on trust that no back doors lurk in the code.

4 Issues in Internet news distribution
4.1 The trouble with enthusiasm
One trait of both Slashdot and FreeRepublic is that their populations contain a percentage of zealots. This fact attracts the attention of non-members and ensures the continued participation of long-standing ones. While allegiance to a specific viewpoint is in no way an exclusionary criterion on Slashdot or FreeRepublic, most users share a common opinion on a few controversial issues. This may reflect the fact that contentious topics generate the most passionate interest.

Regrettably, this bond introduces a capacity for bias. Most information processed on a trust graph will lie outside the emotional boundaries, allowing peer-review and peer-dilution to ensure honest news analysis. But when discussion touches on a 'hot button' topic, rampant uniformity of opinion eliminates these safeguards.

FreeRepublic may safely be termed incapable of objective thought when the topic of President Clinton is broached. One recent post discussing Clinton's attendance at the World Cup bore the helpful keywords 'CLINTON RAPIST EVIL SLEAZY TRAITOR'. (15) Similarly, the high quality of discourse on Slashdot disintegrates when Microsoft enters the headlines. Both communities may be absolutely correct in their opinions on these topics, but the mere fact of consensus mimics the effects of corruption and degrades the community information filter. Whether it is desirable or even possible to generate a community forum without this sort of bias is a question for further debate.

4.2 Overcoming feeder bias
Although incisive analysis may overcome the flaws in a poorly written news article, community forums are ultimately limited by their feeders. These feeders are not usually primary sources, except in cases where significant documents are available online. Far more common is the linking of news articles from established information filtering corporations. The question arises whether community news efforts can surmount partiality on the part of the original reporters.

The answer appears to be yes. When CPU-maker AMD recently released comparisons between its chips and those of rival Intel, Slashdot was quick to dissect the biases in presentation and supply the necessary omitted background. (16) However, it should be noted that processors are a topic enjoying high familiarity among the technical elite who visit the site. Had the discussion been on the political condition of Nicaragua, results would be sketchy at best. Fortunately, community information forums are inherently unlikely to encounter this dilemma. Since the group as a whole selects topics, discussions lying outside the expertise of the majority are rare. A more difficult question is this: will community news replace traditional news outlets, or merely supplement them?

5 Conclusion
Community information filters are a novel approach to news. Trading on the principles of self-interest and distributed trust, they levy the expertise of thousands into producing honest, cheap daily news. In a world where command of information is rapidly becoming the root of institutional power, distributed trust graphs refocus information upon the needs of the citizen. While they remain in a state of infancy, the rise of sites such as Slashdot and FreeRepublic herald the demise of traditional information flows. We have entered the Slashdot decade, and only time will judge our success.

6 References
(0) http://www.slashdot.org, http://www.freerepublic.com
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990108.asp
(2) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/4-1-3-11.html
(3) E.g. http://www.thawte.com
(4) "Tobacco Industry Loses First Phase of Broad Lawsuit", New York Times, 6/8/99
(5) "A 'Class' Trial Finds Tobacco Firms Liable; Big Payments May Follow", Wall Street Journal, 6/8/99
(6) Cable is an exception. The means of distribution in cable are monopoly-owned, preserving cable from direct competition with TV.
(7) Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, p15, [cf.]
(8) As of July 1999, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guide/sub/sub.htm, http://adsite.washpost.com/rates/retail/fullrun.html
(9) http://www.fair.org/media-woes/media-woes.html
(10) E.g. http://independent.org/tii/content/events/f_macarth.html
(11) http://www.missingkids.org
(12) http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide
(13) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/2-2-2.html
(14) "Slashdot Acquired by Andover.Net"
(15) "Clinton hopes for soccer diplomacy"
(16) "Athlon Benchmarks Out"

XLawyer writes "In an article about Defcon, a reporter from the New York Times tried reasonably hard to explain and observe the difference between hackers, who like to figure out how things work, and crackers, who like to get into other people's things and sometimes stop them from working. An interesting item in the article shows how crackers make reporters' jobs harder by calling themselves "hackers." " The article itself is well written, and lucid with some telling interviews; (NYT requires free login, BTW) .

TwoSticks writes "Compaq patents a keyboard that captures your kinetic energy. Magnets and coils on each key charge a small battery to augment the big one in your laptop. Standard NYTimes deal: requires free registration. " I'm a bit suspicious but it looks interesting. It might give me an incentive to fix typos anyway ;)

Daniel M. German writes "The CyberLaw Journal of the NYTimes has an excellent article about the MP3 and the implications of the recent ruling on the case RIAA vs. Rio. Simply put, by making a copy of your MP3 you are "space shifting" your already adquired music. Further, it is fair use. Some even claim that fair use might mean it is legal to own a copy, even if it came from an illegal source. Quite interesting reading. " Its the NY Times, so you need a free account to read it.

Slaab writes "The New York Times covers the upcoming DEF CON 7.0 hackers' conference in Las Vegas here. Notice, they are careful to make the correct distinction between "hackers" and "crackers". " If someone had told me two years ago that the NYT would be covering defcon seven, I would have laughed till I cried. It's a different world. The convention starts this evening.

schnucki writes "A new, innocuous-looking consumer electronic device known as a personal video recorder is not much different in nature from the video cassette recorder, and very few of them have been sold to date. And yet, an increasing number of executives at television networks and advertising agencies have their ears nervously on alert, ... " Its the NYT so you need a free account, but its decent piece talking about the impact of ReplayTV and Tivo on TV industry. Personally I think this is an intermediate step before we get to full, on-demand broadcasting over the net, but its a great step. RIP Network TV.

EngrBohn writes "This NY Times article reports on SpamCop, a website that will extract the real origin of anonymous (and spoofed) spam and then notify the spammer's network administrator. This basic service is free of charge, and for a $15 membership, additional services are available. " Cool-maybe I can get their home address and hire bounty...um...er.