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No registration required - here.

Here's a link to the whole story from the NY times - no regsitering required...

If you could be arsed registering. The story's here.

Speaking as someone who admins in a Cyber Cafe, I can say that the idea is cool, as long as you can overlook the mega-corporations aspect. Many customers come in with their Palm Pilots replete with passwords; if they could use their own machines it'd be great. I know I get sick of de-securing the password list on my pilot, looking it username and passwd, logging on and then going back five minutes after I left because I forgot to log off again.

I just read about Yahoo implementing software in its auction area to filter out "hate material". And while I'm not a big fan of censorship, Yahoo is company, not a government institution or anything similar, so we can't complain too much.

The fact is, not matter how bad Yahoo or any existing site gets with regard to censorship, we can always create our own new site. Just like in the ongoing crackers versus security warfare ensures that there is never a truly secure system, the opponents to free speech will never be able to keep anyone completely silent.

If you don't like hateful speech, then respond to it, don't silence it. Many oppressed groups flourish because having an enemy unites them. The answer to false, ignorant, hateful ideas, is MORE FREE SPEECH, not less. Respond to ideas that you don't like and everyone will learn. If hate mongers choose not to listen or behave irrationally, let them. They will look like fools, not martyrs.

Hey, I like this guy. I also like this guy's article. Not only is he to the point, but he's honest and shows no [obvious] bias towards any chipmakers. He dishes out the facts and avoids the computer jargon that 90% of humans wouldn't understand. In other words, he makes it easier for me to explain all of this to my dad, by providing the simple translation that I could otherwise never come up with.

As for the difference in chips' speeds, I expected that a chip would eventually be slower than its predecessor sooner or later. Sometimes we need to take a few steps back in order to really move forward. (Maybe that's what Windows ME is all about... I use it, I would know.)

Most of the "smart" geeks know that there is more to computer speed than just clock speed - RAM, cache, blah blah blah. I'm not going to pretend that I know everything about that. But given all the numbers, I know what makes one system better than another ... for my purposes.

There is no way Bush will let the current breakup plan stand. And I don't think that he's going to be enthusiastic about regulating Microsoft in anyway. I think that this New York Times article which suggests letting Microsoft off with a huge fine is an all too likely possible outcome. The one saving grace may be that 19 states are also plaintiffs in the case, so as mentioned by another NYT article, the case may still go on even when Bush caves into Gates.

"That fat, dumb, and bald guy sure plays a mean hardball."

There is no way Bush will let the current breakup plan stand. And I don't think that he's going to be enthusiastic about regulating Microsoft in anyway. I think that this New York Times article which suggests letting Microsoft off with a huge fine is an all too likely possible outcome. The one saving grace may be that 19 states are also plaintiffs in the case, so as mentioned by another NYT article, the case may still go on even when Bush caves into Gates.

"That fat, dumb, and bald guy sure plays a mean hardball."

This discussion may be a moot point because the election has changed the landscape for anti-trust to the point where there may be no action at all against Microsoft.
See the New York Times article on the developments with Ascroft as Attorney General.

Actually, someone has written a very good book entitled The Physics of Christmas which describes, among other things, how Santa could use warp technology to have all of the time he needs and move at whatever speed is required without vaporizing himself in the process. You can read a quick summary of some of the ideas here.

The NYC Times, of course, wants registration info, so you'll have to make another account

Ive simply stopped reading articles that link to the NY Times. I suggest /. stop linking to their articles - 'we' are only encouraging them to continue this 'login' madness by sending them the /. hordes day after day. Instead of sending them readers - i suggest everyone click this link: http://www.nytimes.com/slashdot-users-hate-your-lo gin-crap_free-the-net.html. Put 100,000 messages like that in the logs and someone at NYTimes will notice.

Attention /. 'editors': Please STOP linking to NY Times articles as long as they continue this 'free-login' garbage.

Getting to the stories through channel.nytimes.com allows you to see the stories without registering. Here's that Iridium story.

In a related press release, AOL (NYSE:AOL) today announced that all customers who visited their astrology forums would be automatically signed up for the superstitials.

BTW, a here's a better link to the article, without the annoying popup window ad.
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OK kids, let's review the latest strategies from the advertisers...

Pop-up ads

Maybe these advertisers should take a lesson from Geocities: pop-up ads don't work. Nobody likes to go to a page, only to have a window with some flashing ad banner pop up. My reaction: close them and move on. Nowadays, I have Ad Filter (DISCLAIMER: Windows only) on my machine, which keeps the ads away from me.

Still, history has proven one thing: pop-ups simply don't work.

Interstitials and the such

Unless you're rich / at work or school / lucky, chances are, you're still stuck on a 56 K modem like the rest of us. Who wants to wait for some gigantic 2 MB Javascript ad to load, especially when you're putting along on a modem? It doesn't matter if it "quietly" loads in the background or not, it still sucks up the same amount of bandwidth. Not everybody has a cable modem or higher in their homes.

Conclusions

Why do advertisers think that big-ass Javascript ads are the way to go? Sure, we all grew up with ads on TV and the radio, but until around 1994 - 1995, the Internet was still commercial free. Not all of us grew up on a banner-filled Internet...and some of us who did grow up in one still don't like it.

PS: The channel link works. Neener.

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NYTimes Channel Link
http://channel.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/technology/1 8STEL.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/16/opinion/16DAVI.h tml

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OK, I'll admit that I am karma whorin' a bit, but I think that I wrote a fairly good essay and someone might even like reading it. I wrote this essay for my final project in an english class. While it is not comprehensive, even in my own knowledge, and certainly a small fraction of what is really evil about huge companies it was written to give people who just didn't understand what the big deal was about having large corporations in charge. I wrote it with the average person in mind (dumbed down and not at slashdot level). I do think that is a fairly good essay to show people to give them a solid idea of why you feel anger towards large corporations (if you do) without having to write an essay yourself or give a speech to every person you want to tell. I know that some things might not be entirely accurate but I did try to cover all angles, so don't come down too hard on the mistakes. Also, if you ever wanted to know just how much the big record companies screw artists out of money check out This link It is Steve Albini (producer of In Utero) talking about the manipulations of some recod companies. My point in this is that something like this WILL NOT help consumers, and is only used as a tool for further influence by large corporations. So anyway ...

Large Media Corporations are Abusing Their Power By: Simeon Bassett

The larger the corporation, the more collective influence they will have over their industry. There is a point in the rise of power of anything that can work as whole that the power becomes too great, and it is abused. It has happened in every society that has given power to a specific person or a group with similar motives. One example is the emperors of ancient China. One emperor, Quin Shihuangdi wanted himself to be remembered as the first emperor of China, and went on a crusade to erase anything from the past and to make China start over under his rule. He burned literature and destroyed libraries, reminiscent of the thought control portrayed in George Orwell's 1984. He originally wanted to have his personal army buried alive with him after his death to protect himself in the afterlife. This nightmarish example of tyranny seems to be almost cliché in history, but thought is not given seriously to the parallels of the present. The United States of America was founded so that people would have choices throughout their lives when dealing with their religious beliefs and any other elements that affect them. Branches of government were created to balance the power and create subtle conflict so that decisions are not made out of personal interest from a select few in power.

The biggest culprits of corporate over-control and consumer neglect are the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Sure, there are companies such as Microsoft, which is under scrutiny because of their monopolistic practices with their huge (90%) user base on desktop computers. Intel, which is out of hot water because of a recent rise of competition, took their time releasing incrementally faster microprocessors until they had someone to compete with (Advance Micro Devices). Cisco, who has a much-overlooked tendency to buy up competition before they turn into a threat, seems like the Microsoft of the networking world, but never seems to be under corporate pressure. All of these are examples of companies that have clearly abused their power in many instances, but they pale in comparison to the two giant alliances of media powers.

To quote Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, when talking about digital movies: "Our attorneys believe we need to pursue this very cautiously. Industry wide compacts where you sit down and say, `This is what seven or eight companies are going to do' - that's very dangerous ground." To say that this is hypocritical is something of an understatement. Seven giant companies acting collectively is, for the most part, what the MPAA is. It is an organization made up of the following major film companies: Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Universal Studios, Inc., and Warner Bros. Each one of these companies is a household name and together they make a massive monolith that has influence on almost everyone in the country. Unions of workers were created to give more power to the working class. A union of giants gives exponentially more power back to the titans of the corporate world. You can observe the control of the MPAA yourself by looking for their logo. Have you ever seen the symbol at the end of the credits of a movie with the oval shape, inner oval, and five dots in the middle? If you haven't, look for it and you'll find it - on almost every movie you see.

While I won't go into everything the MPAA has done that crosses the line between business tactics and monopolistic practices, and I won't debate whether or not Ronald Regan was right in cutting the separation of the movie industry and movie theatre chains, I will go into one recent, blatant, and insulting event that has taken place at the hands of the MPAA.

I say recent because the court decision in favor of the MPAA is still in the appeal process, blatant because hopefully it will be easy to see why this is such an extreme violation, and insulting because it flies in the face of the first amendment. A program written by Jon Johansen called DeCSS decrypts (unscrambles) the encoding that the MPAA has put onto all DVD movie discs (more on this later). He put the source code into the public domain, and not only was he attacked by the MPAA, but so were web sites that merely linked to places where the DeCSS source code could be acquired. Source code, which is text describing a program, can be read just as anything else can, and not jut by a computer. So why is it that it is not protected under free speech laws? The MPAA's answer would be that its primary purpose was the unauthorized copying of DVD discs. They maintained this stance throughout the trial even though they could not document one case of piracy due to the program. The intent as stated by the author and the users of the program was that they wanted to create their own DVD movie playing software so that they wouldn't be contained to using the software made by other companies, which is mostly sold commercially. It would enable them to watch the DVD movies they own on any computer they wanted to program for, not just ones sanctioned by the MPAA. This would actually increase the number of potential buyers of DVDs but the MPAA still came down hard. Even if the intent of the software was for copying DVD movies, it should still be considered free speech. If something can be sung in a song, or put on a t-shirt then clearly it can and should be treated as speech. In fact, both of these things were done, the song was taken down from mp3.com for "offensive lyrics" and the retailers of the t-shirts, copyleft.net, were given a subpoena by the MPAA. At least they're consistent.

Even if you overlook all of atrocious logic of the MPAA, the fact still remains that they sued and won their case against 2600 magazine for merely providing a link to the source code of the program. This is the equivalent of one person telling another where to buy gasoline and getting blamed because that person could potentially use it to harm someone. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the judge presiding over the case, Judge Kaplan, is a former employee of the MPAA. How do they get away with all of this? Maybe it's the huge political involvement they have, from the parties thrown at Republican national conventions to the large amount of financial support for the Democratic Party.

This isn't an isolated problem either; the RIAA is just as bad or worse than the MPAA. They're recent bought with digital music distribution methods like Napster, have been much publicized by the media, but the sheer legal aggression that they have shown in their battle to maintain their current revenue stream without increasing their quality of service, has been passed over for the most part. To quote the RIAA website directly: "RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States." Ninety percent control is a lot. Especially when it covers the entire industry. Microsoft has about a ninety percent control over the operating systems of desktop computers (the program that keeps everything running) with Windows, but a parallel example would be if they controlled ninety percent of all the software commercially sold. To be fair, the RIAA is composed of many more companies than the MPAA. Any record label that meets their requirements can apply. This should make everything fine as long as being a part of the group doesn't require monopolistic practices like price control. But it does. They even have an acronym for it - MAP. MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price scheme. It says that no company can advertise CD's for below a certain price. Shouldn't the FCC step in and do something about this? They are, and it's about time. Deals have been struck out of court so that companies that don't agree with advertising for a certain price, like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Circuit City don't get angry. But now the FCC is finally stepping up and alleging that fixed pricing schemes have cost consumers $480 million.

This is a typical pattern for the RIAA; they seem to want both ends of every deal. Another example would be that they receive royalties from any blank CD sold. This is supposedly to compensate for anticipated piracy, but the cost is spread around to everyone who buys CD-R discs, whether they use the blank CD's to copy and resell music or not. If I as a musician want to make music and distribute it recorded on CD-R discs, then I am not only paying the company that made the disk, I am paying the RIAA, my major competitor, with every CD I create. You would think that they would be satisfied, but they have still created large-scale efforts against supposed music piracy. I guess the compensation isn't enough.

One such effort is the ongoing lawsuits against music distributors such as mp3.com and Napster. Napster has made no money at all from its efforts at the time of this writing and even though they distribute no music themselves, and the people that do distribute music do it with no money changing hands at any point, the RIAA still feels that they are a threat created through illegal means. Even more odd, is that Napster should technically be shielded by the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992, which states that any distribution of music that is not being sold by any standard is legal. It was meant to facilitate the copying of music between friends and such, and at the same time, compensate the RIAA with royalties from the mediums of choice. Now that there is no medium, as with network file sharing, there are no royalties and the piece of legislation that the RIAA personally created, lobbied for, and oversaw through congress, is now Napster's suit (pun intended) of armor, and what the RIAA is fighting against.

Another battle being waged is over mp3.com. A service offered by mp3.com allowed people to listen to music they owned whenever they were at a computer connected to the Internet. This was seen as a violation of the RIAA's property and mp3.com was attacked in a lawsuit, which they lost, and which crippled the entire company. Now mp3.com must pay royalties on every song that is "owned" by the RIAA and that the service offers, which has forced them into charging fees for the users (the service was originally free). In the end people are paying more money to listen to songs they already own. Could all this tight control be that the RIAA is looking out for the interests of the artist? Not likely. Steve Albini, who produced Nirvana's "In Utero", stated in an essay that in a typical situation with a hot band the money is distributed as follows: Lawyer: $12,000, Agent: $7,500, Previous Label: $50,000, Studio: $52,000, Manager: 51,000, Producer: $90,000, Record Company: $710,000, Band member net income each: $4,031. That's a total of $976,531 that the band has made. It is unfortunate that each band member gets 00.41% of the money they create. Yes, less than half of a percent comes back to each band member.

The RIAA and MPAA do not care about the consumer, or the artists that are making them rich. They have used tactics and business practices that go far beyond the limits of capitalism. As I have alluded to, there is much more to the story and many more instances of the RIAA, MPAA, and many other large companies flexing their corporate muscle to gain an unfair advantage in their industry, and to ultimately exploit consumers.


Bibliography 1. Music retailers irked by CD discounting (2000). 5 Dec. 2000. http://www.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/05/cds.re ut/index.html

2. Who we are (2000). href="http://www.riaa.com/About-Who.cfm

3. Cave, Damien. A hacker crackdown? (2000). 7 Aug. 2000 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/08/07/yoink _napster/index.html

4. Sabin, Rob. The Movie's Digital Future is in Sight and it Works (2000). 26 Nov. 2000 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/arts/26SABI.html ?pagewanted=6

5. Albini, Steve. The Problem With Music. href="http://www.negativland.com/albini.html.

6. Gross, Robin D. Court Uphold Right to Digital Music (1999). 29 June. 1999 href="http://www.mp3.com/news/283.html?lang=eng

KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

check the story from the NY Times: here

If you're interested in the history of the downfall of the US auto industry, check out 'The Reckoning' by David Halberstam.. (NYT requires login,

And keep in mind that the auto industry's huge problems regarding responding to the foreign challenge were largely installed plant, static management and unionized workforces. Software has none of these, and as a result, is poised to be able to turn 'on a dime' and fix its problems should it become necessary.

I don't think the software industry will undergo anything comparable to the fall of the auto industry, but it will definitely continue to be volatile.

Your Working Boy,

USA Today, man. What a junk paper. If you look at a reliable new source it says there was no ruling. The only unanimous decision of the court was not to sign the ruling. That's right they just sent the case back to Florida for carification and further consideration. And anyway, you think that even if the supreme court ruled against him that GOre would give up? Gore will not give up until November 2, 2004. After the supreme court, there is the International Court of Justice, and then Gore will probably promote space exploration to find a higher court, ruling over the galaxy. I would not be surprised if this "case" ended up in the hands of the imperial senate. Politics in America are a joke...and not a very good one at that.

I also find it interesting that you belive each candidate cares about federal/state power. Each candidate wants all the power concentrated in the hands of the chief executive and wants to be that chief executive. This election was obviously the a horse race of slime from the start. I cast my vote for Nader who, when he says he cares about "people" does not just mean himself and his running-mate (though gore obviously doesn't care about his running mate & chose conservative leiberman to pander to the right, hoping that picking a jew (yes, I am jewish too) to appease liberals.

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# cd /

USA Today, man. What a junk paper. If you look at a reliable new source it says there was no ruling. The only unanimous decision of the court was not to sign the ruling. That's right they just sent the case back to Florida for carification and further consideration. And anyway, you think that even if the supreme court ruled against him that GOre would give up? Gore will not give up until November 2, 2004. After the supreme court, there is the International Court of Justice, and then Gore will probably promote space exploration to find a higher court, ruling over the galaxy. I would not be surprised if this "case" ended up in the hands of the imperial senate. Politics in America are a joke...and not a very good one at that.

I also find it interesting that you belive each candidate cares about federal/state power. Each candidate wants all the power concentrated in the hands of the chief executive and wants to be that chief executive. This election was obviously the a horse race of slime from the start. I cast my vote for Nader who, when he says he cares about "people" does not just mean himself and his running-mate (though gore obviously doesn't care about his running mate & chose conservative leiberman to pander to the right, hoping that picking a jew (yes, I am jewish too) to appease liberals.

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# cd /

I'm not sure you're paying attention to this anymore, but this NY Times article explains with better statistics why there was a problem in the counting of the votes and why, in all likelihood, Al Gore got more votes in Florida than George Bush.

slashdot200/slashdot200 works.

Or just use this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/27NET .html

but channel works just great :)

Props to the /. poster who posted this first..but it was buried beneath some other posts. Wanted to make sure everyone go this.

Try http://channel.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/2 7NET.html. (Props to Jorn Barger for pointing out the channel.nytimes.com backdoor.)

-jon

Try http://channel.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/2 7NET.html. (Props to Jorn Barger for pointing out the channel.nytimes.com backdoor.)

-jon

The /. crew is a bit slow. Go Here instead (you don't have to register). Happy Holidays!

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Nope. Partners link doesn't work for me either... Chop off the "partners" part and it's fine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/27NET .html

Try this: http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/ 27NET.html

Before the Karma Whores kick in:
http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/arts/26SABI .html

Please, /. crew, could you give these 'partners' URLs instead of the ones requiring registration? I know this might cause suspicion at NYTimes, but there are quite a few of us who switch to the 'partners' URL anyway. You kind of miss the point of /. if there's that cumbersome reg stuff between /. and the /.ed article.

Cheers,
TeknoHog

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...right here.

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http://partners.nytim es. com/2000/11/25/science/25NANO.html

this lets you read the article without signing up to the NYT

I'm not a big fan of using the courts to punish every perceived wrong, but in this case, I say good. Take a look at this article in the New York Times (free registration required to view it). Those spam emails you get frequently contain HTML that allows the sender to obtain access to your browser cookies and tie your online activities to your identity. Not to mention being able to obtain your IP number and derive your location from it (Postel Services offers this feature for free in its HTML email service. Great way to stalk someone). Legislation doesn't seem to be forthcoming to curb these abuses, so at the moment the courts are the only weapon available.

Greeting cards already play music when opened; next, they will release an occasion-appropriate scent. Donald Spector, who lives in Union City, N.J., has patented a greeting card that emits an aroma.

The card comes with a small port on its rear panel. The port is covered with a sticker; inside is a small, vented bag containing plastic beads that have been infused with a fragrance. The aroma escapes from the bag through the vent.

A person who gets one of Mr. Spector's cards would open it, read the greeting and then peel off the sticker covering the port to release the scent of roses on Valentine's Day, chocolate cake on a birthday, or gingerbread, eggnog, or pine boughs at Christmas. Mr. Spector received patent 6,024,386.

--bdj

I concur with Katz's review, and want to stress something he didn't say enough about: It's a great story. It's fascinating that Goldstein managed to make fiction out of quantum physics, sure, but what's amazing is that it's such great fiction.

A few of the things that struck me: The gothic tone. The fragments of conversation that surface and resurface throughout the story, unrooted from time. The struggle between ways of understanding, between mathematics and poetry. Betrayals, great and small, and the fear of being betrayed again. The web of fathers and daughters and mothers and sons.

When I finished this book, I turned back to the first page and started rereading it immediately. I haven't done that since I was thirteen.

I also recommend Goldstein's Strange Attractors, a collection of interrelated short stories. Two of the stories feature a young mathematician named Phoebe who "studies the geometry of soap bubbles". Again, the stories combine a love of the world of ideas with a grounding in the world of people.

The New York Times has a pretty useful review of Strange Attractors but I can't get a working URL for it so if you're interested you'll have to do the search yourself.

The NYTimes is response to the massive demand from slashdot readers for more stories about circuts and monkeys has written a better story.

...some precinct workers said that they were under strict instructions to turn away people asking for voting assistance -- mainly out of fear that it would slow down the voting. Louise Austin, a precinct worker in Boynton Beach, said she and other workers at her precinct turned away voters who besieged them with questions.

"People were coming up to me," Ms. Austin said, "and I had to follow the directive -- `Don't help anyone. Don't talk to anyone.' "

Ms. Austin said that under directions given by the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, precinct workers were supposed to provide assistance to voters only if there was a mechanical problem with the voting machine. Everyone else, she said, was supposed to be turned away.

A later directive by the supervisor of elections, Theresa LePore, a Democrat, telling precinct workers to help confused voters was prepared for all precincts on Election Day. But Ms. Austin said her precinct did not receive the memorandum until late in the afternoon.

If they're so certain, why didn't they address the problem at the appropriate time...

Presumably, the argument here is that people DID ask for help, and were told, essentially, to fuck off by the staffers.

See http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/11/13/politics/13 TOCK.html

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..a lot of them said they were too embarrassed to ask for help at the polling station. People are there at the polling station to help out and if the voter doesn't take advantage of what is available that is their loss.

There are accounts of election officials being instructed to turn away anyone who needed assistance because it would slow down voting and turnout was much higher than normal. Because of this, people who did ask for help were turned away and their votes voided.

*I don't remember which paper I read that in, I'm reading about 10 these days from all over the place. It might have been in the New York Times or AP coverage of the NAACP hearings.

There is mention of it in this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/20 00/ 11/13/politics/13TOCK.html

The pic from an old New York Times article:

htt p:/ /graphics.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/05/biztech/a rticles/30chip.1.jpg

its wee - but you get a rough idea of the shape... though its probably changed by now :)

The ;El ectoral College was almost 100 points apart despite the close popular vote.

Not only that, but do you think that the Republicans in southern illinois were sitting idly by while Daley "stole" the state for Kennedy? There was about as much fraud down there as in chicago with Daley.

I just hope that no major elections ever hang on Illinois' electoral votes like this one hangs on Florida's. Illinois is the most buyable state in the union.

"Knight, a master plumber whose four children had attended schools...

OK: the guy doesn't even *have* kids in the public schools now: he's already swept them off into a safe little nook where they are controlled in every thought and act.

And *don't* start with "...but he's paying taxes that support the public schools.." -- his share of the total school district budget is miniscule at best. His share is probably neither substantially larger nor smaller than anyone else's..

All of us are members of the entire society we live in, and a lot of people need to grow up and accept the fact that society at large may by necessity support transactions that we personally don't think much of...

...in the Exeter area two years ago before transferring to private schools, has been a vocal critic of the local school boards' decision not to require filtering or blocking software on school computers. Concerned that students were visiting pornographic or other inappropriate Web sites,

Aha! This is what this is *really* all about: the guy has his own narrow little prejudices, and he's goddamed if he's going to let anybody else look at what he doesn't like.

What's inappropriate? Sites about meat-based diets? Sites about Amnesty International? Sites about AIDS information? Sites about anime? This is *one guy* -- he's got his kids sealed off from what *he* doesn't like, but now he's going to censor what anybody else can look at? And don't doubt for one moment that this is exactly where this is going...

...he sought access to Internet History log files from 1998 -- the date when a majority of local students gained online access in schools -- to the present."

The core problem here is that far too many people have the world-view of a three year-old: "I am the center of the entire universe, and *all* shall bow before my wishes".

The atomization of American culture by the widely-held belief that any single individual can mold collective behavior into his or her own narrow tastes is the serious threat here, not the fact that school district web logs are suddenly public information.

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

I hope posters are using the free link to actually read the article before firing off their posts.

Call me foolish, but I am not as upset after reading about the ruling of the judge. By ruling that identifying information about users be removed from the logs before they are turned over, he's protecting personal privacy and obeying the FOI Act.

When this father's crusade is said and done, I belive he's going to find nothing that justifies his censorware. In fact, he's probably going to create another problem. He's going to find some consistant evening or early morning "dirty" surfing going on - there's going to be a scandal over which faculty member or administrator (or stupid sysadmin who forgot to remove that from the logs) visits the sites and the censorware will be forgotten or the shouts of "family values!"

Someone else will step forward with information about how screwed up filtering software is (not only ethically, but even under it's own standards, by blocking political or inocuous info). And maybe, just maybe, enough people will admit that they too, have surfed for porn, and that maybe this is all ridiculous.

I'm not pushing a transparency critique here, I'm just acknowledging that once some info escapes through a crack in the dam, it's only a matter of time before it breaks and intelligent and relevant decisions can be made.

Besides this is Vermont. We get this guy some Ben and Jerry's and we'll have no problem!

Friedman has suggested we set up a unity government, similar to what parlimentary states do in wartime. It's explained in the article here.

His basic idea: If Bush wins, he should make Clinton sec of state, Gore sec of interior, Nunn sec of defense, etc...

If Gore wins, he should make Powell sec of state, Bush sec of education, Cheney sec of Defense, etc...

This would reflect the will of the voters - a perfect split. It would also force the parties to cooperate. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

http://partners. nyt imes.com/2000/11/10/technology/10CYBERLAW.html