Slashdot Mirror

New submitter riskkeyesq writes with a link to a blog post from Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net, about what Jasper sees as the deepest problem in the U.S. broadband market and the Internet in general: "There are a number of threats to the Internet as a system for innovation, commerce and education today. They include net neutrality, the price of Internet access in America, performance, rural availability and privacy. But none of these are the root issue, they're just symptoms. The root cause of all of these symptoms is a disease: a lack of competition for consumer Internet access." Soft landings for former legislators, lobbyists disguised as regulators, hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber sitting unused, the sham that is the internet provider free market is keeping the US in a telecommunications third-world. What, exactly, can American citizens do about it? One upshot, in Jasper's opinion (hardly disinterested, is his role at CEO at an ISP that draws praise from the EFF for its privacy policies) is this: "Today’s FCC should return to the roots of the Telecom Act, and reinforce the unbundling requirements, assuring that they are again technology neutral. This will create an investment ladder to facilities for competitive carriers, opening access to build out and serve areas that are beyond our reach today."

schwit1 writes "Recently a number of ISPs have been caught improperly redirecting end-user traffic in order to generate affiliate payments, using a system from Paxfire. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Paxfire and one of the ISPs. This is a serious allegation, but it's the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure if everyone understands the levels of sneakiness that service providers can engage in."

superdave98 writes "As a sign that a CIO has way too much time on his hands, Santa Rosa Junior College is sending emails threatening lawsuits to staff and students who have the letters 'SRJC' in their private email addresses. They contend that people could be confused and think these are official email addresses. Sure, I suppose people who fall for 419 scams probably could be fooled, but not any reasonable humans. I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea."

exphose writes "A small, hippie-friendly town in northern California, Sebastopol, had made an agreement with Sonic.net to provide free Wi-Fi across the downtown area. However, not everyone in town was pleased with the arrangement. According to Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin, citizens had voiced concerns that 'create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard' and so they canceled their contract with Sonic.net. Some more details are at the blog of Sonic.net's CEO."

pyramis writes "Matt Turner has installed a Mac mini into his Volkswagen as an integrated audio/video system. He's distributed the I/O ports around the cab for convenient access and installed a remote power button right into the dashboard. Cool pics of all of this, plus a detailed article on that cool power button."

tiltowait writes In response to the incredulity expressed in this story about the technical prowess of libraries, I'd like to present a short essay titled "Librarians: We're Not What You Think" - read on for more. Update: 10/20 18:15 GMT by M : The author has also put up his essay on his own webpage. From the spinster librarian in It's a Wonderful Life to the crochety archivist in Attack of the Clones, librarians are often portrayed (in everything from movies, musicals, children's books, literature, science fiction, comics and cartoons to pornography - yes, pornography) as something less than noble or admirable. The perception of librarians has been a popular topic recently, with several articles focusing on the fringe-type librarians (ska, rockabilly, bellydancing, modified, bodybuilding, laughing, and lipstick). Although something of an anti-stereotype, these people illustrate the range of librarian personalities.

Many people may hold the image of a librarian as a shushing school marm who does little more than stamp and shelve books because that's all they've seen librarians do. Well think again - that's about as inaccurate as believing that Alan Greenspan is nothing more than a glorified bank teller. The job titles may change but the mission of the profession remains the same: organize information and help people find it. Libraries have been around a lot longer than the Internet, and even library technology can hold its own with the best out there. For example, Google's savvy results ranking was hardly the birth of citation analysis (next up: metadata - cough, cataloging, cough), and there are enormous library systems that also predate the Internet.

Although library geeks and technology nerds may have contrary images, in today's world the boundary between the career of the librarian and the information technologist is disappearing. Librarians today not only administer Web servers and dynamic databases to help manage large digital collections and thousands of electronic resources, they teach people how to use library systems. And just as enlightened computer engineers are advocates of noncommercial software and campaign for online rights, the library profession has a long history of staunchly defending freedom - from book burnings to the FBI's Library Awareness Program to the latest copyright battles and almost all other current issues in intellectual freedom.

Check out LISNews.com (recognize the format?) and some library blogs if you're interested in reading more about real librarians.

A Happy Plague writes "I work at a hedge fund and one of the nice ammenities are real time news tickers. At 11:34 EDT, a nice red line scrolled on my screen.."FTC Alleges Rambus Violates Antitrust Laws". The headlines followed..."...Anticompetitive Acts... Deceived standard setting organization...never acknowledged patents... deceptive conduct..." Too bad it takes a long time fo bureacracies to work, but they usually come around. Yahoo News has the story." Of course all rambus has to do now is buy a president to get out from under this. In related news, Tricot writes "Over at Salon, there is a newswire article claiming that the justice department is investigating memory chip maker Micron for anti-competitive practices. Wow, if it's a monopoly, then it certainly hasn't hurt prices."

Bill Kendrick writes: "Infogrames (the folks who now own Atari) have just struck a deal with another company to produce a 10-in-1 video game system based on the Atari 2600. It'll be joystick-shaped, plug into a TV set, cost only $20, and include games like Combat, Asteroids, Missile Command, and my favorite, Adventure! It won't replace my Atari 2600 Jr and 60 cartridges, but it's a step in the right direction!"

Gr0und_zer0 writes: " A Cal State professor is currently conducting an economic survey of Everquest players which will be used to write a paper he plans to submit to an academic journal. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out and if it actually is published. Maybe we will learn the Everquest platinum to be favorable to some of those devalued third world currencys floating around. So much for living in reality, who needs the stock market these days, I'll invest in Everquest."

te wrote in to tell us that penguins are being threatened by oil spills, habitat destruction, the overfishing of their food supplies and even the weather. For those that do not know why the Linux mascot is a penguin, read the latest Linus interview. (It also tells us what he thinks of the DOJ-Microsoft trial). Since the ocean is far away (from me in Colorado at least), does anyone know of any organisations set up to help our favorite feathered friends?

Okay... weds we asked for submissions of weird links for a conspiracy feature to coincide with the opening of the X-Files movie. What happened? Click the link below... Okay... let's face it - we all knew, maybe subconscously, that there was going to be a lot of weird stuff out on the web. I mean, that's the cultural stereotype - a geek with a bunch of comic-book inspired political philosophies creating a web page so that he can network with all the other geeks about alien abductions, cattle mutilations, whatever... We've all experianced these types of sites, we've all treasured the links as something to peruse when slacking off at work, etc.

As you can imagine, like everything else on the internet, the sheer volume of information on "nutcase" ideas has proliferated to such gargantuan proportions that trying to browse it and bang together a comprehensive overview over a couple of hazy evening hours is a staggering task. But goddammit, that's what I'm here for.

Sitting down in the poof chair with a Jack Ripper cocktail (purified rain water and grain alcohol) I proceeded to plow through the sites that had been submitted to me since weds, when this excursion was announced. And, through strength and perserverance - and a deep determination to disbelieve everything I read - I emerge to present to you some sites of interest.

Brian shot me a link to the Arc-Hive. It's a very well organized and catagoried index of conspiracy oriented papers. Highlights include the the Conspiracy Dictionary (hey, you need to know what a manchurian canidate is before you can have paranoid delusions of them breaking in your front door), also you can learn how Tickle-Me-Elmo is part of the new world order.

And while there are many archives of conspiracy material, a more direct source for material is the horse's mouth. On the extreme protestant end of that scale is the Flat Earth Society (thanks to Janne Moren for this one). I'll bet you never suspected your sixth grade geography teacher was part of the globalist conspiracy to discredit the bible. A bio for the "flat earth prophet" can be found here (thanks to Dan Hollis).

Another horse mouth would have to be Art Bell - a radio talk-show host who often discusses aliens and other paranormal goings-on. This link was sent to me by several people - probably working together.

From the kooky-bitshifted-copy-of-Slashdot category comes Parascope (submitted by Eric Maland). The site's major accomplishment is reporting articles like "Bigfoot in Russia" but still maintaining a sincere journalistism feel. And hey, when you can't wait for the next issue of Weekly World News to get the skinny - this is a great place to go.

On the other side of the conspiracy spectrum was Circle Makers. (submitted by Dan Hollis, who submitted just a few too many links to remain above suspicion) This website documents crop circles not as alien pasttime, but rather an art form that many overtly mathmatical and probably unstable crop-artists pursue. There are some fantastic pictures of crop circles, and even a mac program that will allow you to design agricultural destruction in your own home.

If preserving the American Way against the new world order, freemasons, etc is your thing then you'll probably enjoy Free America. Pay attention, because long after I'm neutralized by the Secret Government you'll be able to survive - provided you have a compound, a good water source, and lots of freeze dried food.

That's it. Enjoy going to the X-files movie tonight if you think that's the safe thing to do. I'm going to wait a few days, I think - to make sure the opening night audiences aren't reprogrammed subliminally, that is. So farewell - thank you to all who submitted links, and a tip from agent Kandalgaonkar: remember to tin-foil all your windows as protection from government microwaves.

Okay... weds we asked for submissions of weird links for a conspiracy feature to coincide with the opening of the X-Files movie. What happened? Click the link below... Okay... let's face it - we all knew, maybe subconscously, that there was going to be a lot of weird stuff out on the web. I mean, that's the cultural stereotype - a geek with a bunch of comic-book inspired political philosophies creating a web page so that he can network with all the other geeks about alien abductions, cattle mutilations, whatever... We've all experianced these types of sites, we've all treasured the links as something to peruse when slacking off at work, etc.

As you can imagine, like everything else on the internet, the sheer volume of information on "nutcase" ideas has proliferated to such gargantuan proportions that trying to browse it and bang together a comprehensive overview over a couple of hazy evening hours is a staggering task. But goddammit, that's what I'm here for.

Sitting down in the poof chair with a Jack Ripper cocktail (purified rain water and grain alcohol) I proceeded to plow through the sites that had been submitted to me since weds, when this excursion was announced. And, through strength and perserverance - and a deep determination to disbelieve everything I read - I emerge to present to you some sites of interest.

Brian shot me a link to the Arc-Hive. It's a very well organized and catagoried index of conspiracy oriented papers. Highlights include the the Conspiracy Dictionary (hey, you need to know what a manchurian canidate is before you can have paranoid delusions of them breaking in your front door), also you can learn how Tickle-Me-Elmo is part of the new world order.

And while there are many archives of conspiracy material, a more direct source for material is the horse's mouth. On the extreme protestant end of that scale is the Flat Earth Society (thanks to Janne Moren for this one). I'll bet you never suspected your sixth grade geography teacher was part of the globalist conspiracy to discredit the bible. A bio for the "flat earth prophet" can be found here (thanks to Dan Hollis).

Another horse mouth would have to be Art Bell - a radio talk-show host who often discusses aliens and other paranormal goings-on. This link was sent to me by several people - probably working together.

From the kooky-bitshifted-copy-of-Slashdot category comes Parascope (submitted by Eric Maland). The site's major accomplishment is reporting articles like "Bigfoot in Russia" but still maintaining a sincere journalistism feel. And hey, when you can't wait for the next issue of Weekly World News to get the skinny - this is a great place to go.

On the other side of the conspiracy spectrum was Circle Makers. (submitted by Dan Hollis, who submitted just a few too many links to remain above suspicion) This website documents crop circles not as alien pasttime, but rather an art form that many overtly mathmatical and probably unstable crop-artists pursue. There are some fantastic pictures of crop circles, and even a mac program that will allow you to design agricultural destruction in your own home.

If preserving the American Way against the new world order, freemasons, etc is your thing then you'll probably enjoy Free America. Pay attention, because long after I'm neutralized by the Secret Government you'll be able to survive - provided you have a compound, a good water source, and lots of freeze dried food.

That's it. Enjoy going to the X-files movie tonight if you think that's the safe thing to do. I'm going to wait a few days, I think - to make sure the opening night audiences aren't reprogrammed subliminally, that is. So farewell - thank you to all who submitted links, and a tip from agent Kandalgaonkar: remember to tin-foil all your windows as protection from government microwaves.