Slashdot Mirror

Bob Roberts writes: "It looks like the frivolous lawsuit brought against quepasa.com by Whatshappenin.com is finally over: the case has been settled by Quepasa.com. What does 'dismissed with prejudice' mean?"

rhet writes, "NASA may deliberately crash the $1.5 billion Galileo spacecraft which is exploring Jupiter to avoid contaminating the moon Europa. Scientists believe simple life forms may exist on Europa. There is evidence that Europa has an ocean beneath its ice crust. Read more about it here."

st.n. writes "Heise News is reporting that Microsoft made its own proprietary extension (and incompatibility) to the Kerberos authentication protocol, which was developed at MIT as an open standard. Supposedly a W2K client will only work with a W2K server, not any other kerberos server, because MS uses a yet unused data field and the W2K client relies on that field being present. For those of you who don't speak German, I found it also at Yahoo."

Gary Franczyk writes, "The United States government has tightly controlled the export of "supercomputers" to certain other nations (i.e., China, Pakistan, India, etc.) for quite some time. Sun has had to deal with this numerous times when selling their equipment. How will the U.S. government handle the fact that now anyone with access to large numbers of PCs can create a "super-computer" cluster? I'm sure that the government is using Beowulf to do nuclear simulations right now... Who says that other nations cannot do the same? " Interesting thought. I'm not aware of any export controls on Beowulf, but with the U.S.'s views on cryptography, how will it be before such draconian views extend to any powerful computing technology? Is it even possible for the U.S. to restrict Beowulf in any way?

BMIComp writes, "The Anti-Defamation League is asking for Yahoo! to take down club sites that promote hatred, such as "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the World Church of the Creator." They are asking this of Yahoo, since its terms of service state that users are not allowed to: upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;" ZDNet's story here " Ah, the ADL. My favorite left-wing censorship group.

Syn Ack writes, "SGI and SuSE announced at CEBIT that they are going to team up to bring Iris FailSafe to Linux. Linus is quoted as saying that this is a "piece of the puzzle" that Linux is missing. Here is SGI's press release." The press release says FailSafe for Linux will be open source, but doesn't say under what license.

argonaut writes, "I saw a cool article about the UltraSPARC 3 at Ace's Hardware. They have some of the usual intro stuff about Sun in the beginning, but then get more in depth about the technical specs. The best part is the second page where they talk about ILP, pipelining, and scalability (up to 1000 cpus!). There are some excellent examples of ILP and load latency. "

keil writes, "Bernstein will be able to post his source code to Snuffle without needing an export license according to this article on dailynews.yahoo.com. The loosened export restrictions make this possible. Anyone may post encryption source code as long as it's royalty-free and they send a copy to the government. A Wall Street Journal article also says the code must not be able to reach residents of countries supspected of supporting terrorism, which creates an interesting problem. Click to read the previous article on this. " Bernstein and his lawyers actually have a bit of a pickle - the new regs allow code to be posted, but still place restrictions on what you can do - you don't have to notify the government when you post a cookie recipe online, for instance. So though there isn't much of a restriction, it still exists: do they pursue the case or drop it and call it a win? The letter from the BXA is available.

Hasdi Hashim writes, "NEC Corporation is using the first generation National Semiconductor chipset in the world's first Bluetooth interoperable notebook PCs with a built-in antenna, displayed at CeBit 2000."

GregGardner writes, "According to this press release, RedHat and Real Networks are teaming together to bring Real products to Linux. RealServer 7.0 and RealPlayer 7.0 will be physically bundled with RedHat and that RealPlayer 7 will be released for Linux within 30 days on Real's Web site. "

mTor writes, "Cnet.com is reporting in this story that Microsoft is willing to open the source to Windows to settle its case with government. " Personally I think this would be pretty sweet. It'd definitely be a boost for projects like WINE. Wonder what license they would use? *grin*. CT : several folks sent us this Yahoo story where Bill denies the cnet story linked above.

Anonymous Coward writes "At http://www.the-times.co.uk/interface/dailyextra5.html is news of a voice-operated Linux handheld computer to be announced at CeBit next week. Sounds cool!" Oh yeah. Until someone shouts out, "ARRR-EMMM ARRR-EFFF STAR!" Then we'll see who's laughing.

fred_the_slow writes, "The German Remote Sensing Data Center has posted images from the ongoing Shuttle Mission. The resolution is amazing, as the pictures on this link show." Beautiful stuff! Takes a while for the images to download, but they're worth waiting for.

ochinko writes, "This is an interview with the German programmer who wrote TFN and TFN2K. Basically he says that it's quite easy to launch such attacks but extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the initiators to be tracked." Suck.com has a pretty good article on the attacks, as well. Maybe I should take credit for the DDoS attacks and become an international superstar.

lunartik sends us this link, regarding NASA's efforts to produce a high-resolution radar map of the Earth.

quakeaddict wrote to us with a cool feature about the upcoming Near Earth Asteroid Rendevzous with Asteroid Eros. It's got a rundown of the schedule of the mission. Hmm...now if they could just work out asteroid mining, we'd be doing fine.

Nik4 writes "As per this news item on Yahoo, MP3.com has filed a law suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its president, Hilary Rosen. More details are available here on the MP3.com site. MP3.com is complaining of defamation, trade libel, interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair business practices. " At this point, I think it's safe to say that the MP3 will be locked up in court for quite some time - and in the meantime, MP3 will become more and more the standard.

Nik4 writes "As per this news item on Yahoo, MP3.com has filed a law suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its president, Hilary Rosen. More details are available here on the MP3.com site. MP3.com is complaining of defamation, trade libel, interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair business practices. " At this point, I think it's safe to say that the MP3 will be locked up in court for quite some time - and in the meantime, MP3 will become more and more the standard.

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

d writes "Corel will buy Inprise/Borland Corp. in a $2.44-billion deal "designed to capitalize on the growing Linux market". "

A few bits and pieces on the BSD front in the recent past. Scott Bartram announced that JDK 1.1.8 is now available for NetBSD-current/i386. Over at LinuxWorld, Jonathan Bresler sent in this e-mail about BSD related activities. Sun are releasing source code for NFS under the SISSL (and boosting funding for a Linux only effort to implement v4, sigh). Anti Basic wants you to know that you can now pre-order FreeBSD 4.0 from the FreeBSD Mall. And finally, this month's edition of DaemonNews hit the stands a few days ago, including a particularly interesting article by Greg Lehey, outlining his work on software RAID, Vinum.

I was sent word that AbsoluteValue and Intersil have announced more development of wireless support for Linux. The announcement is actually for Intersil PRISM-based WLAN cards, but what it does mean is more support for IEEE 802.11 wireless cards, access points, etc. Here at Slashdot, we've been using the ZoomAir cards, but are starting to play with the Lucent cards - what does everyone else think about Linux and wireless cards?

FModnar writes "Texas Instruments CEO Tom Engibous is claiming that the PC era is ending. He claims that wireless Internet devices are replacing PCs as 'the driving force in the electronics industry' and will become even more popular once they are linked to broadband networks. Check out this story at Yahoo! News."

rhet writes "Here's an interesting article about an autonomous robot that is exploring the Antarctic looking for meteorites. So far it has found three of them. The robot, Nomad, is built by Carnegie Mellon. Nomad's home page is here."

Bryan Mattern wrote to us with the latest press release from IBM regarding Big Blue and Linux. IBM has now ported Linux to run on their network terminals - specifically the Network Station Series 2200 and 2800.

Ristoril writes "There's an article on Yahoo! News about the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, taking place in 2001. The goal is to get nations to start 'doing something' about racist propaganda on the Internet. While no specific policies are mentioned, I seriously doubt they're planning the sensible thing -- education." Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Ristoril writes "There's an article on Yahoo! News about the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, taking place in 2001. The goal is to get nations to start 'doing something' about racist propaganda on the Internet. While no specific policies are mentioned, I seriously doubt they're planning the sensible thing -- education." Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

MetalHead writes "Anyone running a Web site in China may be interested in this story." You should check this out even if you don't run a Chinese site; it's yet another case of a government cracking down on news media.

quakeaddict writes "It seems Scott McNealy has some new ideas for Solaris 8 according to this article. " It's not free as in software, but free as in "no license fees". Evidently, this is going to be the center-piece of their new public-relations campaign, with the official rollout of Solaris 8 starting in February. However, a top Sun official also went on to say that Sun will "never" adopt Linux and expressed amazement that folks like IBM and others were "chasing after" Linux.

AntMan asks: "OK. I am building a new system for myself. Now checking on pricewatch.com I noticed that Dual processor motherboards can be had for under $100. My budget was $800 tops. But on doing some research I realized that I could build a 866 Mhz dual Celeron system in that much with change left over. But when I looked on Anandtech, Aceshardware, and tomshardware, I found very few reviews/guides for building dual processor systems. Additionally I wanted to build a system, in which I can put in a couple of cheap 433MHz celerons PPGAs, and hopefully upgrade to a couple of 1GHz PIIIs when the price is right (in about a year or so). So my question is ... Is this possible? And what MB would people recommend?"

jimmcq writes "President Clinton on Friday proposed a $2.8 billion increase in research into elusive medical cures and high-technology breakthroughs like reducing information in the Library of Congress into a unit the size of a sugar cube. More info at Yahoo! News." Specifically, Clinton is advocating "as much as" $497 million for nanotech out of a $2.8 billion increase over last year's ~$38 billion federal allocation for scientific research. But don't get excited yet. Congress holds the budget pursestrings and may not go along with all or any of the President's proposals.

Doofus writes "Yahoo is carrying some Reuters copy about a new injector device that sounds like the 'hypo' from Star Trek. It's a needle-less injector that uses helium to inject powdered medicine through the skin at supersonic speeds. The future is almost here! The manufacturers have been working on this product since at least 1993, and expect it to go into production in 2001."

Doofus writes "Yahoo is carrying some Reuters copy about a new injector device that sounds like the 'hypo' from Star Trek. It's a needle-less injector that uses helium to inject powdered medicine through the skin at supersonic speeds. The future is almost here! The manufacturers have been working on this product since at least 1993, and expect it to go into production in 2001."

slackeress writes "The Internet Report on Yahoo has a story about The Confessor Web site that invites sinners to confess online. Finally a chance for me to be redeemed. Ha! I'm glad to see that the Big Guy is Internet savvy." Wow! I wonder what those local loops charges are! :)

LocalYokel writes "This Yahoo! article states that 10 motion picture and 3 broadcasting companies today filed a complaint against iCraveTV and individuals and companies behind the Internet operation, including William R. Craig, William R. Craig Consulting, George Simons and TVRadio Now Corp. They're also in hot water with the U.S. National Football League. Is the idea of streaming Internet television, the dream of many, truly viable under the constant threat of copyright lawsuits?" This isn't the first time we've seen action against iCrave; check it out here. The original Slashdot iCrave story is here. Enjoy.

Ian Davis writes "This Geoworks Press Release announces that they have U.S. and Japanese patents dating from 1994 covering some the essentials of the WAP and WML specs. They're demanding a license fee of $20,000 per year from all WAP phone manufacturers as well as WAP site owners. The WAP Forum have acknowledged the patent and their policy is to allow it provided the owners provide fair access to the technology covered. What do people think? Is this a fatal blow to U.S.-based WAP startups? Will it give the Europeans an even bigger lead in the WAP market?" The $20,000/year fee for WAP Web site operators is only for companies with $1 million or more in annual revenue. This _may_ not be as bad as it sounds.

leiz writes "This article on Yahoo says Western Digital is pulling out of the enterprise hard drive business. This means they will no longer produce SCSI hard drives and Western Digital will be instead concentrating on the IDE and software business. What does this mean for the SCSI market? With 7200 rpm UltraATA/66 hard drives catching up in performance to SCSI HD, products such as the Fastrak RAID 0, 1, 0+1 card, and the cheap cost affectiveness of IDE/ATA, is SCSI no longer necessary for desktops / workstations / small servers?"

Quite a number of people have been writing about the announcement from Motorola concerning their new fuel cell. The new approach is an innovative one. They are using methanol, wood fuel alcohol, in a patented approach. Power claims are "twenty hours for laptops" and a month for cell phones - and it's small enough and light enough that it could simply replace a battery. I'd love to have something that could do that - better than the maybe-an-hour-and-a-half with my Vaio.

Myxx sent us an article from Yahoo that talks about online voting and the issues and recommendations reached by a panel in California. The summary is that they suggest waiting and seeing. Apparently the Internet is secure enough for billions of dollars in financial transactions, but not for voting.

Sarah writes "It seems that the National Weather Service has a brand-new computer which will allow them to predict the weather earlier and more accurately. If I were a kid, I could now plan my snow days in advance..." Yeah, but the teachers would give you enough homework to last you through the day.

ChrisRijk wrote to us about the release of PKI information to Mozilla. The "Sun-Netscape Alliance" has that announced that it will give mozilla.org a bunch of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) library source code and utilities. This was made possible due to looser regulation of encryption source code by the US Department of Commerce." A FAQ available at the Mozilla web site.

Gary William Flake writes "A new study by Inktomi and NEC Research Institute show that there is at least one billion unique indexable Web pages on the internet. The details are pretty interesting; for example, Apache dominates the server market. "

brokeninside writes "Infoworld's 'Windows Manager' Columnist Bob Livingston named Linux his 1999 product of the year in his most recent column. I especially enjoyed his assertion that Microsoft was 'playing catchup' with Windows 2000. He said, '...Microsoft is catching up with Linux, not setting a higher standard.'"

FunkBox writes "Apparently, The World Wrestling Federation (WWF) has won the first international arbitration in a ``cybersquatting'' dispute over the rights to an Internet address. Check out the story here." Or just read the decision. ICANN strikes the first blow under its new expedited uniform dispute resolution rules, that everyone - everyone - is now subject to.

naughtius_maximus writes "NBC is peeved that CBS used the live-digital-editing technique mentioned in a previous /. article to cover up NBC's logo with one of CBS's creepy eye logos during the new year's bash. The full story is at Yahoo! News." How much of this is faux righteous indignation on the part of NBC? On the other hand, they did pay for the Astrovision screen that CBS imaged over. Maybe they're still mad about Letterman.

ColPanic writes "Looks like the NSA is gonna have a Linux OS of their very own soon. They have selected Secure Computing to develop a high security version of Linux."

You think your community is conservative? Holland, Michigan, home of the Slashdot Geek Compound, is a conservative community. "Y2K," according to yard signs on my way to last night's library meeting, stands for "Yes 2 King Jesus." Supposedly the city has gone to every Republican presidential candidate but one (Abraham Lincoln). Now the American Family Association has brought mandatory library censorware to a vote on Feb.22, and the measure's opponents have a tough six weeks ahead of them. This is the first time the battle over library filters has come near my community, and my first close look at the grass roots of a First Amendment struggle. Click for more.

The conservative community isn't the only reason that the AFA has chosen the Holland area, in my home state, to be one of its important fronts in the library blocking-software war.

There is an unusual law in the city of Holland that allows any measure to be brought to a ballot vote by petition. This is good in that it brings democracy directly to the people. Unfortunately, if a couple thousand people signed a petition demanding that the mayor must part Lake Michigan or forfeit his salary, that issue would go on the ballot. Democracy doesn't always make sense.

You may have seen press about the Republication presidential candidates campaigning in our fair state. This is because our governor pushed the primary ahead this year, so that we are now one of the first states to cast a ballot for the nominees. Registered Republicans will be going to the polls on Feb.22 to decide which candidate they like best.

Registered Democrats don't get to vote on GOP candidates and largely don't care. But in the city of Holland, thanks to a last-minute petition drive spearheaded by the AFA, there will be one additional issue on the ballot: mandatory blocking software in the city library.

Ironically, the surrounding townships help pay for the same library, but because the petition-to-ballot law applies only in the city, they won't be voting on how their money will be spent.

Holland Republicans, already at the polls to nominate a candidate, will merely have to check one more box. Holland Democrats, assuming for the sake of argument that they exist, will first have to learn that they can vote on Feb.22, and then take the trouble to drive down to the polls for the sole purpose of, as the AFA will surely characterize it, forcing children to look at pornography.

Not that it's quite that simple - the issue surely doesn't break precisely across party lines - but: Ouch! Putting the issue on the ballot on the same day as the Republican primary was a brilliant strategic move. If this is what local politics are all about, maybe I'm glad I haven't gotten involved before.

But if last night's meeting at the library is any indicator, it's not over yet.

The meeting was sponsored by Families for Internet Access, a small Holland group working to oppose library blocking software. Roughly 200 people showed up in the basement of the library to discuss the issue, including at least three Slashdot readers. The large majority were clearly opposed to filters. Luckily, the minority was vocal enough that at least some of their views could be heard, so it wasn't too one-sided.

Don Wildmon, president of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based AFA, says "a community's taxpayers own the local library," and it's going to be interesting to see if that's true. The Holland library has had few problems with inappropriate material to date. The computers in the children's section are not on the net. The internet terminals in the adult section are clustered closely in a well-lit area; patron sessions are limited to 30minutes once per day, and library staff walk through the area frequently to enforce this rule. Even with access restricted to brief sessions, there is almost always a line waiting to use the next computer.

In the four years they've offered internet access, there have been a total of six incidents where a patron had to be removed for causing a disturbance. Of these, only one involved viewing of inappropriate material (it was unclear whether or not this was pornography). To put this in perspective, there were 26,000 patrons who used the internet last year alone.

It seems a bustling, crowded public area in a public library, in front of a big window facing a busy street, is not an environment where people commonly go to look at porn. Imagine that. As one of last night's presenters said, "there is an effective filter in place already, and that is the good people of Holland." It seems clear that censorware is a solution in search of a problem - at least in this community.

But the AFA knows how to look for a problem. The pamphlet that they circulate on library "safety" suggests some ways to determine whether a library has "come under the influence of the American Library Association." The "citizen activist" is urged to "use these helps to learn if your library is a community friend or foe":

"Inquire if your library ... celebrates ALA's 'Banned Books Week.'"

"Search for classic scholarly books. A healthy selection should be available. Suggested titles... Principia Mathematica by Sir Issac Newton." [sic]

"On your library's computer, go to www.yahoo.com or any of the popular Internet search engines. In the search field enter the following: XXX,hardcore,nude"

Are those really the best ways to determine whether a library has a problem with pornography?

Incidentally, I've not gotten confirmation, but the rumor is that the local AFA will be recommending SurfWatch as their filter of choice. In which case, that last suggestion is an interesting one. I purchased and installed SurfWatch on my home computer this weekend, and it blocks me from accessing Yahoo. I still can't figure that out, considering the company that sells it partners with Yahoo.

The AFA has also been claiming support from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). But at Monday night's meeting, he said he can't specifically support the local initiative because he doesn't know what it's all about. In fact, when the AFA's position was described to him, he interrupted to ask what "AFA" stood for.

In the end, it may not matter whether the problem of inappropriate library material exists or is manufactured. The AFA also recommends that its activists "take [their] concerns through the library chain of command," but in Holland, they refused to meet with the library and went straight to the ballot instead. The voters will decide whether censorware gets installed, and the public's chance to learn about the issues may be limited at best.

In the next six weeks I hope to get a "view from the trenches" of Holland's First Amendment struggle, and to bring it to Slashdot. I'll make no bones about the position I take on the issue. I'll try to focus less on why blocking software is a bad idea in libraries - I'll leave it to other websites to explain that - and more on how the memeticwarfare ^[*] is being conducted. I'll be reading all your comments. Check the YRO section, too, for updates not quite important enough for the Slashdot homepage.

Because this month, mandatory library censorware is a hot topic in Holland. Next month, it may be in my home town. And the month after that - yours.

kerskine writes "Seems that Red Hat has a new CTO . What happened to Mark Ewing? " There also an updated press release available as well, which gives significantly more information. It looks like Marc Ewing will be spending more time working with the Red Hat Center for Open Source now.Update: 01/12 05:04 by H :The new CTO they've named is Michael Tiemann, one of the Co-Founders of Cygnus. As you recall, Red Hat recently purchased Cygnus. The deal closed on Monday, which is probably why this announcement has finally been made official.

kerskine writes "Seems that Red Hat has a new CTO . What happened to Mark Ewing? " There also an updated press release available as well, which gives significantly more information. It looks like Marc Ewing will be spending more time working with the Red Hat Center for Open Source now.Update: 01/12 05:04 by H :The new CTO they've named is Michael Tiemann, one of the Co-Founders of Cygnus. As you recall, Red Hat recently purchased Cygnus. The deal closed on Monday, which is probably why this announcement has finally been made official.

ts4z writes "Reuters reports: 'Australian scientists say they have answered a question that has plagued and entertained drinkers for generations -- why do the bubbles in a glass of Guinness appear to be falling to the bottom?' I found the full story on Yahoo. Explains my endless facination with the stuff. " Hah! Beer and science working together. It's beautiful.