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The article neglects to mention that some states have begun implementing their own version of TIA (see The Washington Post article). There appears to be some feeling that they can sneak in under the radar if it's not a federal program.

The pledges of restraint by Florida law enforcement officials are particularly comforting.

According to the Washington Post, Lona Therrien, the @Stake spokesperson, "said the company had no conversations with Microsoft about Geer or the report."

However (same article), Sean Sundwell of @Stake said that on Tuesday night, when notice of the report's pending release was circulated, "Microsoft was contacted by @Stake officials . . . expressing their disappointment in the report and saying that Dan Geer's opinion did not reflect the position of @Stake and its commitment to an ongoing relationship with Microsoft."

So... which is it? Did they discuss the report directly with Microsoft or not??

This happens to be an article on the front page of the Business/Technology section in Friday's Washington Post.

CowboyNeal's writeup, in which he uses the words "not sanctioned," is quoted directly from the article. The Post's paragraph states:

Massachusetts-based AtStakeInc., a computer security firm, said yesterday that chief technology officer Daniel R. Geer is "no longer associated" with the firm. A company statement added that Geer's participation in preparation of the report was not sanctioned by the firm, and that "the values and opinions of the report are not in line with @stake's views."

Please read the goddamn article before shooting the messenger. Thank you.

(I should have mentioned, the quote I referenced was from this article about the same thing, which I guess is not referenced in the slashdot story. Personally I think it is a better article.)

So yes, I think Mr. Strickland represented his area well. He wanted to protect some jobs that some people have, regardless of the slight inconvenience of a few.

Still, before all of you who don't live in the 6th District of Ohio start bitching, why don't you do some research into Mr. Strickland's constituency. Quote:

Many of the district's counties, especially those along the Ohio River in old coal mining territory, suffer high unemployment. Among these is Scioto County, the 6th's most populous, which also contains Portsmouth, the district's largest city.

As a California resident, I say "well done" to Mr. Strickland, and a hearty "whew" that the bill passed by such a landslide anyway.

NY Times article
Washington Post article

Congress now needs to make a law authorizing the FTC to implement a Do-Not-Call registry.

According to the Washington Post , there is activity on the House side to do just that:

Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee's ranking minority member, issued a joint statement this morning saying they "will take whatever legislative action is necessary to ensure consumers can stop intrusive calls from unwanted telemarketers."

I've listed the members of Energy & Commerce below. Members of Congress do care what their constituents think, and if they hear from enough of them, they are less likely to listen to lobbyists for the direct marketing industry. If you are a constituent of one of the members below, please do one of the following (in decreasing order of impact):

1. Write a snail mail letter c/o U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515.
2. Place a telephone call to 202-224-3121 and ask for your congressman's office.
3. Send an email.

If you're not sure who represents you, go here and type in your Zip code where it says "Find Your Representative."

If they don't hear from you, they will think you don't care.

Here are the members of this committee (as listed in The Almanac of American Politics ):

Majority (31 R): Tauzin (LA), Chmn.; Bilirakis (FL), Barton (TX), Upton (MI), Stearns (FL), Gillmor (OH), Greenwood (PA), Cox (CA), Deal (GA), Burr (NC), Vice Chmn.; Whitfield (KY), Norwood (GA), Cubin (WY), Shimkus (IL), Wilson (NM), Shadegg (AZ), Pickering (MS), Fossella (NY), Blunt (MO), Buyer (IN), Radanovich (CA), Bass (NH), Pitts (PA), Bono (CA), Walden (OR), Terry (NE), Fletcher (KY), Ferguson (NJ), Rogers (MI), Issa (CA), Otter (ID).

Minority (26 D): Dingell (MI), RMM; Waxman (CA), Markey (MA), Hall (TX), Boucher (VA), Towns (NY), Pallone (NJ), Brown (OH), Gordon (TN), Deutsch (FL), Rush (IL), Eshoo (CA), Stupak (MI), Engel (NY), Wynn (MD), Green (TX), McCarthy (MO), Strickland (OH), DeGette (CO), Capps (CA), Doyle (PA), John (LA), Allen (ME), Davis (FL), Schakowsky (IL), Solis (CA).

Aha... so that explains why NASA is letting Galileo decend into Jupiter. Must be a security measure against all these recent buffer overflow exploits.

The "Swen" worm arrives in an official-looking e-mail message that appears to be from Microsoft. Users whose PCs are not patched against the Microsoft flaw this worm exploits will be infected just by viewing the message, as will protected users who click on the e-mail attachment.

clearly requires some dumb schmoe to click on the executable file

No. "Requires some dumb schmoe to open up Outlook."

I hope more big companies and more individuals will start to realize that Microsoft isn't the ONLY way to go! Espicially when open-source out there. Hell, it's almost easy enough to dive in the code yourself to learn how to tweak it...

I'm getting tired of seeing Billy Gates on the top of the money list anyway..

P.S. Nice try on the sig. Those are for APPLICATIONS not Linux you dolt. Here is my new sig

31 Unpatched IE security holes
Server attacks stump Microsoft
Credit card theft feared in Windows flaw
Microsoft issues patch for "serious" XP hole
Windows flaw threatens PC services
Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Why I hate Microsoft
bsod_videowall
bsod_airport
License to plunder
Microsoft Media Player logs users' DVD picks
MS wanted to 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition
Microsoft Palladium
Control with fine print
Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
Microsoft software "riddled with vulnerabilities", trade body claims
Microsoft Issues Five New Security Warnings
Why Open Source Software / Free Software

Life imitates art.

SCO is small time.
Fairfax County Virginia found 39 Million dollars left over in their budget for the year.

IMarv

The really sad part is, that's almost a direct quote from Rummy.

That's easy to arrange.

The RIAA can actually win the definition game about what meaning you lay in copyright, property, stealing/piracy vs. copyright infringement. They can do this through media.

As late as today I read this column in Washingtonn Post from a Cynthia L. Webb, a person thats probably above average educated on the subject and a person working for a respected newspaper that presumptuously should not be completly lost.
She do has some critisism of the RIAA but fails to see why (in my opinion).

The Recording Industry Association of America's right to pursue a heavy handed legal attack on music pirates. Stealing is stealing, whether it's breaking into a home or downloading a file on the Internet.

I would have moderated this as Troll if someone wrote this on slashdot.

And from other newspapers, in the same article:

But Mike Langberg of The San Jose Mercury News writes today that the RIAA's legal moves are "absolutely necessary." Langberg: "Internet apologists, who seem to believe the most basic rules of right and wrong don't apply to online activity, are appalled. Not me. Property, whether it's your house or the copyright on a song, deserves to be protected by law. Anyone who takes someone else's property without permission must face the possibility of real punishment."

Please, get your definitions straight.

A Montana newspaper, The Missoulian, also sided with the RIAA in an editorial on Friday. "Do you think the neighbor kids should be able to waltz into your house and steal your stuff? Do you think shoplifters are entitled to take what they can carry out of a department store? Should your broker be able to skim money from your investment portfolio for his personal use? Well, of course not. So, what's all the uproar over the recording industry's filing lawsuits to stop thieves from pirating music over the Internet?," the paper wrote.

If many journalist and comentatorts continue like this most people will (continue) to believe that P2P as a concept is illegal.

If nothing is done to stem the bleeding of America's IT, it's probably true that American tech will not disappear entirely, but it will be reduced to that of other countries. While those countries we've chosen over others, to gain hard-earned tech experience in our place, will rise and surpass their teacher. This may very well result in an economical reversal of roles. Corporations will move labor (IT/management/research/scientists) from cheap country to cheaper country (causing economic crises is less stable economies as jobs leave) until corporations find themselves hiring IT in an economically unrecognizable United States; an America probably still significant in IT (otherwise the IT jobs wouldn't come back), but as a country no more the super power than Canada is now. This may take anywhere from a few short years to decades, but companies will manage to get cheap labor that by happenstance also speaks English (assuming that English is still the language of business).

If there was a person of middle-eastern ethnicity who could at the flip of a switch cause America to lose its IT workers, we (knowing all the benefits of even HAVING an IT capability) would've called it an act of terrorism and gone to war. If an American citizen were able to intentionally cause a massive disruption that resulted in the loss of the American IT to a foreign power, we (understanding the economic and security capabilities one gains from having IT capability at home) would declare the citizen a traitor. When an American company does this to America, what do we call it? Sun's Scott McNealy calls it an "international company". If the Chief Executive Officer of Sun no longer considers Sun an American company, it should be treated as such. Otherwise, it is given an unfair advantage over other foreign companies that don't have the luxury of pretending to be an American company and all the benefits of allowing it to operate in America as an American company. The pretense should be dropped in fairness to others if fairness can be attributed to a libertarian, and to allow the status of being an American company reserved for those that really are American. I don't think McNealy (despite his complaints of taxes, employee benefits...etc) would consider the idea either profitable or plausible. I wonder why? I don't mean to single out Sun. I consider McNealy's attitude inimical towards American citizens, but not a dangerous one when acting alone. It is when many companies as a whole start considering themselves as "international", but behave in unfair self-interest that specifically hurts American citizens, that I co

The only actual research I'm aware of on this is an FAA study from the '90s. This article is a good summary: Cell phone use isn't banned by the FAA, but by the FCC in 1991, citing "cell phones' potential to interfere with ground-to-ground cellular transmission." Another web site explains, "at altitude, a cell phone will light up multiple cell towers and may cause the system to lock up." BS? The FAA is going to do another study and they don't seem too worried about "locking up the system."

Unfortunately, it seems that the majority favors the FMA. If so, and if the members of the Houses vote in accordance to the wishes of the majority, then it does indeed have a very good chance of passing. Maybe we'll visit you on your island; maybe not.

The concept of marriage is actually religious in nature. It only appears to be social in nature because *gasp* the USA was founded more or less on Biblical principles, and/or by folks that believed in the same. (Okay, so the previous country's social structure likely had a lot to do with it, but what was the official Church of England? The Catholic church?)
You don't need to be married to propogate. However, propogation is generally in the best interests of the government to expand its power and tax base (read: "resources"), and as such, it provides those that choose to declare their formal implied intent to propogate with certain benefits.

Fastforward to today, where we have a group of people that are physically unable to propogate the species, yet want the same benefits provided to those who can and are (implied) doing so.

So, here's a likely-crappy comparison for you: "I'm a lard-ass, but I want an Olympic gold medal for my last-place performance in the 100-meter dash!" If I get my medal, won't that cheapen the existing gold medal winners' victory to a certain extent? If so, consider the large mess made when one miixes in the subtle effects of "family values," morals, personal ethics, and that whole bucket of stew - there's really only one name for the change in state:

degradation.

Uh, I read The Washington Post and don't have much trouble finding out about it. They've also had a bunch of editorials etc.

The Post also did a nice big fast A1 lead story on its own poll finding that the majority of Americans don't support gay unions.

This despite that the Post as an employer is gay friendly, is in a gay-friendly city and is gay friendly editorial-wise.

Heheh I read your blog for a second too. Calling America's liberal's "socialists" just shows you have no idea what you're talking about. This country, including most "liberals" balk at even the most minor shifts towards "social democratic" type of institutions, which are a far cry from socialism.

Anyway, you outweigh the liklihood and support of the FMA.

See, in 1984, the government lied to its people about the past, and went so far as to remove evidence of the real past. Anyone can pick up a history book/surf the web/watch TV and learn what I've just said.

But they
don't do they?

And from the look of this Bin Laden has already won.

Funny Read

This is how I picture spamers ... "His hair pulled tight in a ponytail, his sunglasses small, dark ovals, and wearing a dark suit and red tie, he looks like a Miami Vice extra"

Wish I could have seen that, I'd know if I got in arms reach of a spammer, I'd be kicking some spammer ass too.

for those saying they don't trust Microsoft to fix their systems, I have one question: If you don't trust this company, why did you give it your money?

Santa Cruz wants to impeach Bush (this works so far)

EACH PASSENGER TO BE ASSIGNED COLOR THREAT LEVEL (what a surprise; this piece of news is also "under revision")

RIAA vs. the People

I think you'll find the NYT's standards are always whiter than white.

Any thoughts on how to 'wow' the little ones and make the older ones want to learn more about programming?

Well, after you are done 'wow'ing them, you might also wanna mention this:
Programming is $60-an-hour software job (also done by a $6-an-hour code writer in India)

Source:

A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the think tank of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., suggests why. When a firm ships a $60-an-hour software job to a $6-an-hour code writer in India, the most obvious benefit goes to the Indian. But, the McKinsey study reports, the U.S. economy receives at least two-thirds of the benefit from offshore outsourcing, compared with the third gained by the lower-wage countries receiving the jobs.

Please provide the source for your statement. Otherwise it should be modded as -1 for troll.

Look around the web on site:

here,
here,
here,
here, and lots more places.

It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.

The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.

Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."

With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.

It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.

According to this story over at the Washington Post, a study conducted by Forrester Research has "predicted" that online music distribution will kill off compact discs as a music distribution medium.

While this may seem painfully obvious to most of us here on /., since the suggestion comes up in almost every RIAA related article, it is good to see an "authoritative" organization come up with the same prediction. They may be heard better by the record companies and the entertainment industry.

No, more likely he means he can't get Adelphia. I am in the same situation -- based on his post, I can estimate that the guy probably lives five or ten minutes away from me... I can relate.

As I linked in an earlier comment, read about the Loudoun situation here.

The jokes about Adelphia usually have some reference to "in the next (three|six) months", because that's what Adelphia always says... and has been saying for at least the past three years. Adelphia, if I recall correctly, has the lowest broadband penetraion of any cablemodem service provider. What's more, when they finally started setting up the infrastructure out here, they started west to east -- meaning they started wiring the rural, cowtown parts of the county long before even approaching the highly populated areas.

Adelphia has a history of fucking up, lying, and planning poorly.and doesn't seem to be slowing down, in this respect.

Perhaps the most ironic ancedotes of all is the fact that most residents of loudoun county, Virginia -- home to major WorldCom, AOL, Covad operation centres, as well as many other high tech companies -- have little choice with regards to broadband... IF they are lucky enough to have it at all! With DSL unavailable in most areas of the county due to fibre loops, and Adelphia years late on its cablemodem rollout to most of the region, there are tonnes of high-tech employees in the area who are virtually tied to narrowband.

Read the (my) Washington Post editorial letter regarding the situation.

I think you're assuming that PHBs are rational. They are epecially irrational when the FUD sets in. I have little hope for this, since they're accustomed to buying whatever line MSFT feeds them.

Has anyone noticed that MSFT's stock sort of peaked about 9 months ago and hasn't seen much improvement in the latest run-up of tech stocks? They're looking for something, anything, to convince Mr. Moneybags to slap down even more big honkin' purchase orders to get their stock moving again. As one of the most closely followed companies in the world, their predictable earnings growth has already been discounted, so they need something new, and in a near monoploy, something new is hard to come by.

1. Microsoft doesn't use it for its own products. If .NET is so good, why? If someone said, "I would never eat this, but here is some for you", would you take what was offered?
2. Programs written in .NET are more easily decompiled. If you discover and implement an especially good algorithm, others may be able to see what you did. Maybe that is the reason for number 1, above.
3. All the tools are proprietary. The programmer and his employer become like dogs on a leash. Their fortunes are tied to the management decisions of the proprietary vendor. Computer company managements often make sink-the-company decisions; consider the .com self-destruction, for example. When your company uses proprietary tools, your company is dependent on the lifestyle of the proprietary vendor's management, the vendor's ability to hire and keep good people, the vendor's financial decisions, and the vendor's estimation of whether they want to invest more in the tools you are using.
4. My understanding is that the license agreement for .NET prevents a company from using .NET to compete with Microsoft in some areas. But how does a company know if software it develops will eventually compete with Microsoft?

1. Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
   The mainstream media is starting to realize that Microsoft products are especially insecure.
2. (PDF file): The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) urges the Department of Homeland Security to stop using insecure (Microsoft) products.
   The computer industry attempts to educate those in government about the insecurity of Microsoft software.
3. Stupid Microsoft Tricks -- Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to Cheat
   A famous industry columnist exposes an example of Microsoft's apparent dishonesty. When ordered by a court to produce all its email records concerning a company that alleges theft by Microsoft, there was a 35-week gap.

Actually, you may want to investigate whether or not AOL has gone live with their blog offering ( article here). If so, it may be viewed as an intentional act.

Hacker Suspect Bragged of Exploits

Jason Lee Parson, the 18-year-old Minnesotan who was arrested Friday in connection with the Blaster worm, bragged of his exploits on his own Web site.

Parson, who was known online as "teekid," is suspected of creating and releasing a third version of the Blaster worm, a malicious program that spread itself around the Internet using a viral engine bearing his online moniker, "teekids.exe."

The Web site registered under his own name and Minnesota address -- www.t33kids.com -- is no longer up. But a cached version of his site on Google offers insight into the mind of a young hacker who was apparently proud of his work.

While nothing on his site specifically references Blaster, Parson bragged about several of his recent creations, including a worm called "p2p.teekid.c" that spread over file-sharing networks like Kazaa and iMesh. The site also offered links allowing people to download and potentially tweak his malicious programs.

"My little p2p worm spreads via Kazza and imesh, downloads a file from web. No biggee."

Parson also apparently broke into the Web site of the Minnesota Governor's office, leaving the message "site hacked by Teekid."

In an online forum, Teekid described himself as a "junior Trojaner." A Trojan horse is a malicious program that, when installed on a victim's computer, allows attackers to take complete control over the infected computer. One of the main alterations Parson allegedly made to the Blaster worm was the inclusion of a backdoor Trojan.

reference

According to the Washington Post's latest update, it looks like, yeah, he's that dumb.

The person the FBI arrested is responsible for the Blaster.B variant and one of his changes was to have the worm register itself at his personal website so he could keep track of the infected machines. Seems to me that writing a worm that "phones home" directly to your own web site ought to qualify you for some sort of special "Idiot of the Year" award. (I suppose that's less expensive than renting a billboard.)

The story is kind of thin on details. The next day, they noted he was from Minnesota, and released his name (click).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A642 67-2003Aug29.html

They arrested him. 18 years old - Minnesota.

RIAA Adopts High-Tech Gumshoe Tactics

The city of Rio de Janeiro has a reputation for violence. The homicide rate is 43 per 100,000 people. The city of Washington, D.C, the capitol of the United States, does not have a reputation for violence. The homicide rate in Washington, D.C. is approximately 77 per 100,000 population, close to double that of Rio.

There is now an updated article that says that the plane that was spotted was not the missing plane after all. The article also provides fuller background information.

Well, there are many websites that vigorously claim that the email tax is a number one hoax....

So it must be true then.

Right?
RIGHT!

Uh Oh.

That was this summer 2003, Sen. Mark Dayton's idea to fight Spam...

Pfew, that was a close call: Senator Downplays E-Mail Tax Idea, Thursday, May 22, 2003.

If they tax email, then the spammers have won.

Now, if 'they' find this posting, they'll probably come up with a tax on hyperlinks...

But will anybody think of the children?

Yeah, I hear there's lots of spare housing in France all of a sudden...

What are the estimates, 10,000+ elderly are dead in the heatwave? Whew, there hasn't been a purging of such a large segment of their "undesirable" population in 60 years...

the washington post also has an article on the guy, perhaps a little more in depth. pretty neat stuff.

Good article summarizes the differences between security approaches for MS, Apple, and Linux. Hard to believe MS hasn't gotten this message yet.

The Quiet War Over Open-Source
By Jonathan Krim
Thursday, August 21, 2003 [original article]

Every day now, it seems, we do battle with technology. If it isn't spam, it's worms. If it isn't the worms, it's viruses, or hacking, or identity theft. Sometimes, it's the gadgets and software we buy that are still too hard to use.

But as technology in general, and the Internet in particular, drives deeper into the fabric of daily life, battles also rage behind the scenes. They are struggles for control over how the Internet should work, over who sets the rules for its pipes and gateways and who owns the material that moves through them. These are the wars fought with armies of corporate lobbyists, technologists and citizen activists but largely ignored by the general public. And none is larger, or carries higher financial stakes, than the issue with the eye-glazing name of intellectual property.

Consumers are getting a taste of this right now, as the major record companies sue hundreds of people for stealing their works by using file-sharing programs. On another front, "open-source" software, which relies on collaboration and sharing of computer code rather than traditional for-profit development and distribution of programs, is capturing the attention of cash-strapped governments and businesses as a less-expensive alternative to commercial products.

Open-source software has been embraced by some companies that are building businesses around it. But it is the bane of others, including the industry's most powerful player, Microsoft Corp. The world's largest software maker is lobbying furiously in state, national and international capitals against laws that would promote the consideration or use of open-source software. So alarmed agents of Microsoft sprang into high gear in June after a surprising quote appeared in Nature magazine from an official of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The official said that the Switzerland-based group of about 180 nations, which promotes intellectual-property rights and standards around the globe, was intrigued by the growth of the open-source movement and welcomed the idea of a meeting devoted to open-source's place in the intellectual-property landscape.

The proposal for the meeting had come in a letter from nearly 60 technologists, economists and academics from around the world, and was organized by James Love, who runs the Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology.

Love and others argue that in some areas, such as pharmaceuticals or software that powers critical infrastructure or educational tools, developing nations in particular would benefit from less restrictive or alternative copyright, patent or trademark systems.

In short order, lobbyists from Microsoft-funded trade groups were pushing officials at the State Department and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to squelch the meeting. One lobbyist, Emery Simon with the Business Software Alliance, said his group objected to the suggestion in the proposal that overly broad or restrictive intellectual-property rights might in some cases stunt technological innovation and economic growth.

Simon insists that his group does not oppose open-source software, or discussion of the issue, but fights to defend the notion that a strong system of proprietary rights offers the best avenue for the development of groundbreaking software by giving its inventors economic incentive to do so.

And he said that the BSA's governing board, composed of several companies in addition to Microsoft, unanimously opposed the letter and the meeting.

The U.S. government, which wields considerable clout in WIPO, might not have needed prodding from Microsoft to demand that the idea of an open-source meeting be quashed.

Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,

Looks like in addition to all the garbage we've been getting as a result of this virus propagating (the virus itself, attachment-free e-mailings by the virus, mis-directed automated notifications that "Your mail server sent us a virus", bounces to people whose addresses were spoofed by the virus, probably etc.), we can expect the infected computers to start being used as relays for the sending of "normal" spam -- with the corresponding spike in spam volume that would bring.

According to this article:

After examining two month's worth of junk e-mail earlier this year, New York City-based e-mail security company MessageLabs found that roughly 65 percent of spam originated from computers running proxy servers. More than 75 percent of those servers appeared to be installed on PCs that showed signs of being infected with Sobig and similar viruses.

And Symantec:

Sobig.F can download arbitrary files to an infected computer and execute them. The author of the worm has used this functionality to steal confidential system information and to set up spam relay servers on infected computers.

Looks like in addition to all the garbage we've been getting as a result of this virus propagating (the virus itself, attachment-free e-mailings by the virus, mis-directed automated notifications that "Your mail server sent us a virus", bounces to people whose addresses were spoofed by the virus, probably etc.), we can expect the infected computers to start being used as relays for the sending of "normal" spam -- with the corresponding spike in spam volume that would bring.

According to this article:

After examining two month's worth of junk e-mail earlier this year, New York City-based e-mail security company MessageLabs found that roughly 65 percent of spam originated from computers running proxy servers. More than 75 percent of those servers appeared to be installed on PCs that showed signs of being infected with Sobig and similar viruses.

And Symantec:

Sobig.F can download arbitrary files to an infected computer and execute them. The author of the worm has used this functionality to steal confidential system information and to set up spam relay servers on infected computers.

For what it's worth, I remember an accident on the D.C. Metro in Bethesda when I was living there, sometime through 94 and 97. I couldn't find anything in my admitedly short search, but essentially it was on a shared part of the track during slightly wet weather. The Metro slammed into the read of a slower freight train, and the only death was the driver. An investigation showed that the train was being controlled remotely. He had radioed in they were travelling too fast, but couldn't stop it. I think he may have warned the travellers to move to rear cars, but he had no door into the cabin for security reasons.

Sudden inspiration to use WashingtonPost.com and not Google

Well, I did a search of WashingtonPost archives for 95-98. It was January 7th of 1996, the tracks were icy, and the control was by a central computer. It kept it at 75mph and when it did brake for the station it slid into a parked train. Other than later articles discussing various probes into whether the possibility of the problem was known and ignored, I can't give much more info. The full text in the archives is only available for a fee, but the relevant facts were in each's first two paragraphs.

I guess my point is even the brakes didn't help, once the train was doing 75mph. Don't assume that human intervention will overcome computer error. a) They can make the errors a lot more quickly than humans can compensate. b) Sometimes we misread the errors.

If interested, archive search. I used Metro, Train, accident, from Jan 96 - Mar 96. If you expand to later dates you will see the followups.