Interesting commentary by Kevin Werbach for ZDNet news regarding 802.11 networks and lack of scarcity of the airwaves:
Here's a cure for bandwidth blues
(Note: emphasis below cheerfully added!)Bandwidth isn't as scarce as you think. The cure for the broadband blues is right in front of our faces, but we don't see it because we've trained ourselves to look elsewhere. The answer is something called open spectrum.
The concept is that wireless frequencies could be shared among many users rather than assigned in exclusive licenses to individual companies. Smart devices subject to rules ensuring that no one player could hog the airwaves would replace networks defined by governments and service providers. Spectrum would be used more efficiently. Bandwidth would be cheaper and more ubiquitous.
It's a deeply subversive idea, just as the Internet was for networking and open source is for software development. But it's an idea whose time has come.
"We could have the greatest wave of innovation since the Internet...if we could unlock the spectrum to explore the new possibilities," said David Reed, formerly chief scientist at Lotus and a researcher involved in the original development of the Internet.
All it would take to open the floodgates for innovation are a few government decisions to make more wireless spectrum available for "unlicensed" services. Unfortunately, the companies that have paid for exclusive spectrum licenses oppose alternatives that would make the airwaves shared and virtually free. They argue that unlicensed services would cause ruinous interference--a "tragedy of the commons." The real tragedy is that today's spectrum owners are preventing a commons that could benefit all.
No government has yet taken the open spectrum idea seriously. There's new hope today, though, thanks to the runaway success of 802.11b (WiFi) technology. It uses a small, congested sliver of spectrum set aside for unlicensed use. WiFi was designed for the mundane purpose of replacing Ethernet cables for connecting office PCs. Despite these limitations, WiFi is taking off as an alternative mechanism for Internet access. There will be 10 million WiFi devices installed by the end of this year, and 4,000 public wireless access points in locations such as airports and cafes.
I must admit, I already wake up every morning wondering what the latest ridiculous plan out of Ashcroft's mouth is going to be, but this morning's announcement about a "responsible cooperator program" really takes the cake: let's give immigration incentives for providing information about terrorists!
This way we can not only encourage foreign hopefuls to make up stories about real or imaginary people in order to increase the chance that their immigration status may be "fast tracked", we can also assist potentially threatening foreigners to get into the country quicker! (Since, in theory, anyone who might be privy to such information could themselves impose a threat to national security.)
Law-abiding foreigners: do not be fooled by this insidious invitation! If you should actually have the misfortune to happen across any important information that may somehow lead to the capture of terrorists or the prevention of a terrorist act from occurring, tell one of your white upper-middle class non-Jewish-American friends about it, so they can phone in an anonymous tip from a pay phone!
(No one is safe! :-)
See the CNN article: U.S. to offer immigration incentives for terrorism information.
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday a new plan to possibly offer immigration assistance to encourage international citizens living in the United States or abroad to come forward with information about suspected terrorists.
"If you have information which is reliable information and useful to us in preventing terrorism and apprehending those who are involved in terrorist activities, bring it to the FBI or if you are overseas, to an embassy, and you could as a result of that information be provided a visa which will allow you to be in the United States, allow you if necessary to work in the United States and provide a basis for your someday becoming a citizen," Ashcroft said.
Calling the new plan the "responsible cooperators program," Ashcroft said, "We want the kind of responsible people who would help us in the war against terrorism."
Ashcroft sent a directive Thursday to the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, all United States attorneys and the Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, outlining the new incentive initiative.
Bummer: Ban on DVD-cracking code upheld (written by Evan Hansen for CNET News.com)
The decision for now upholds a controversial law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and prevents Web site 2600 and its publisher, Eric Corley, from posting links to computer code known as DeCSS--a program that allows DVD movies to be decoded and played on personal computers.
Joining a growing consensus among courts across the country, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found that computer code is speech and therefore entitled to some First Amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution. But the court concluded that the material in this case is "content-neutral," and therefore entitled to considerably less protection than "expressive" content such as poetry or a novel.
"Neither the DMCA nor the posting prohibition is concerned with whatever capacity DeCSS might have for conveying information to a human being, and that capacity...is what arguably creates a speech component of the decryption code," the unanimous three-judge appellate panel wrote in a 72-page opinion that leaned heavily on the reasoning of a lower court.
The decision is a major win for copyright holders in general, but especially for the movie industry, which has been fighting to ban DeCSS from the Internet for about two years. Civil rights advocates have been closely watching the case, arguing that the DMCA is overbroad and that banning links to content online could wreak havoc with free expression on the Internet.
Corley, the last holdout in a case that originally targeted dozens of defendants, has won high-profile supporters concerned about the case's speech implications, including the lower court's limits on linking. In a flurry of legal filings earlier this year, groups ranging from the America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to a coalition of hotshot programmers submitted amicus briefs siding with Corley and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is spearheading his defense.
While acknowledging the difficulties in placing limits on linking, the appeals court essentially agreed with the lower court's reasoning "that the DMCA, as applied to the defendants' linking, served substantial governmental interests and was unrelated to the suppression of free speech."
![]() Photo By Alex Maness | The thought police are at it again. See: The Poster Police --
A Durham student activist gets a visit
from the Secret Service, by Jon Elliston for the Independent Online. |
Then: Knock, knock ... unexpected guests at Brown's Duke Manor apartment. Opening the door, she found a casually dressed man, and a man and woman in what appeared to be business attire. Her first thought, she says, was, "Are these people going to sell me something?"
But then the man in the suit introduced himself and the woman as agents from the Raleigh office of the U.S. Secret Service. The other man was an investigator from the Durham Police Department.
"Ma'am, we've gotten a report that you have anti-American material," the male agent said, according to Brown. Could they come in to have a look around?
"Do you have a warrant?" Brown asked. They did not.
"Then you're not coming in my apartment," she said. And indeed, they stayed outside her doorway. But they stayed a while--40 minutes, Brown estimates--and gave her a taste of how dissenters can come under scrutiny in wartime.
And all because of a poster on her wall.
Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig had some interesting things to say about the negative effects of copyright law at this week's Darklight Digital Film Festival.
See the Wired News article by Karlin Lillington: Why Copyright Laws Hurt Culture .
Copyright laws in the United States are placing the control of material into an increasingly "fixed and concentrated" group of corporate hands, he said. Five record companies now control 85 percent of music distribution, for example.
Because copyright law now also precludes "derivative use" of copyright material, people cannot develop new material based on copyrighted work without permission. Lessig said this radically changes how human culture will evolve, since "the property owner has control over how that subsequent culture is built."
This restriction also stymies technological innovation, as developers cannot follow the long-established practice of taking existing code and enhancing it to produce something new, he said.
"...Digital production and the Internet could change all this, so that creative action and the distribution of these arts could be achieved in a much more diversified way than before," Lessig said. This would allow for a "production of culture that doesn't depend on a narrow set of images of what culture should be."
A more open business model in which artists have greater control over their productions would create "diverse, competitive industries" rather than centralized, monopolistic companies, he said.
New technologies such as peer-to-peer-based communication and file-exchange programs could force a new look at copyright laws and profoundly change the methods of distribution, Barlow and Lessig both said.
![]() | The MIT Micro Gas Turbine Engine Project has developed a micro turbine rotor engine. See the Wired News article,
The Little Engine That Could Be, by
Louise Knapp. |
There's also a white paper written by the same group at MIT that explains how it works: Micro Electric Machines for Micro Turbomachinery.
Here's an excerpt from the Wired News article:
The development of a fuel-powered miniature engine, touted as a more efficient and longer lasting alternative for the battery, may push the Energizer Bunny to the unemployment lines.
No bigger than a regular shirt button, the micro gas turbine engine uses the same process for producing electricity as its big brother electricity stations -- burning fuel and running it through a power plant.
"Fuel and air in, and electricity out," said Luc Frechette, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University and one of the team members building the engine.
Hey girls! Now you can be beautiful and die for your country!
![]() | Product Description "Secret Agent Barbie lets kids join Barbie and her friends in an exciting new adventure as she travels the world as a secret agent... Secret agents have access to special powers like running, jumping, tumbling, and blending into the background. There are special gadgets like pink-vision glasses and a remote-control puppy, and a selection of cool secret agent outfits." |
![]() | Here's a piece by Nat Hentoff for the Village Voice: |
On Thursday, November 15, William Safire—The New York Times' constitutional conservative—distilled Bush's new raid on the Constitution:
"Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. . . . We are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts. . . . In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.' "
What Bush has done by executive order—bypassing Congress and the constitutional separation of powers—is to establish special military tribunals to try noncitizens suspected of terrorism. Their authority will extend over permanent noncitizen American residents, lawfully living in the United States, as well as foreigners.
The trials will be held here or in other countries—like Pakistan or "liberated" Afghanistan—and on ships at sea. The trials will be in secret. There will be no juries. Panels of military officers will be the judges—with the power to impose the death penalty if two-thirds of these uniformed judges agree. There will be no appeals to any of the sentences. (Even in regular court martials, judges must rule unanimously for executions.)
The defendants may not be able to choose their own counsel—lawyers who, after all, might get in the way of the swift justice commander in chief Bush has ordered.
The military tribunal will have other, more extensive ways to undermine the rule of law than exist in court martials or regular trials. The evidence to be allowed will be without the range of protections accorded defendants in what used to be the American system of justice.
For example, under "the exclusionary rule" in American courts, illegally obtained evidence cannot be used at a trial. Neither can hearsay evidence, which can include rumor and other unverified information about which a witness has no personal knowledge. Such evidence helps produce a death sentence.
Much of the prosecution's evidence will be withheld from the defendant and from whatever lawyer he or she can get because it will allegedly be based on classified intelligence sources. And the military officers in charge will, of course, decide the severe limits on the defense in other respects as well. These secret trials will be based, to a large extent, on secret evidence.
A little good humored Turkey Day fun:
Patriotic Turkey and friend
Here's an interesting account of the stand-off going on right now in Afghanistan between the Taliban and U.S. Troops written by Ian Cobain (in Konduz Province) and Damian Whitworth (in Washington D.C.) :
America will take no prisoners
The title sounds harsh, but it's actually a pretty objective article. I mean, on the one hand, sure, it would be kinda silly to go all the way out of there and then kinda look the other way when "they" (or, in this case, the "friends of they") are finally surrounded.
But at the same time, there's no need to be too hasty about it if there's a chance that perhaps thousands of innocent people might be saved...
AMERICAN forces attacking Taleban fighters in Afghanistan are under orders to take no prisoners, the US Defence Secretary said last night.
Donald Rumsfeld also ruled out suggestions that thousands of al-Qaeda mercenaries trapped in the northern city of Konduz might be allowed to negotiate safe passage to a third country, and said that America would do all in its power to stop Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taleban leader, fleeing Afghanistan.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders, nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners,” he said.
Mr Rumsfeld was responding to attempts by opposition forces to negotiate a peaceful end to the siege of Konduz. General Mohammad Dawood Khan, commanding the Northern Alliance forces that face the Taleban on three sides of the city, told The Times: “If a country accepted them as refugees, we would have no problem, they can go free. We have been in contact with the UN over this.”
The deal is being discussed to avoid massive bloodshed during any attempt to take the city by force. Up to 30,000 troops, including up to 10,000 foreign fighters, are encircled in Konduz, the last outpost of Taleban resistance in the north of Afghanistan.
The prospect of giving safe passage to large numbers of fundamentalists alarms Washington because they would be expected to regroup and possibly wage guerrilla war against whatever government may be established in Kabul, or to plot further terrorists attacks.
Mr Rumsfeld said: “Any idea that those people in that town who have been fighting so viciously and who refuse to surrender should end up in some sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilise other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States is something that I would certainly do everything I could to prevent. They’re people who have done terrible things.”
The US was not prepared to negotiate with the Taleban or al-Qaeda’s foreign forces, he added. “It’s our hope that they will not engage in negotiations that would provide for the release of al-Qaeda forces.
“The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect. So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner (by the Northern Alliance).” Mr Rumsfeld would not say if US forces would pursue al-Qaeda over borders, but said “We might have an early, intensive consultation with the neighbours.”
He also ruled out the possibility of Mullah Omar being allowed to find a safe exit from Kandahar. “Would I knowingly let him get out of Kandahar? No I would not,” he said.
While searching for information about the Larry Flynt/Afghanistan situation, I happened upon a great essay by Sarah Guzick for the University of Texas'
Campus Newsjournal of Women's Issues: Issue 2 --
Larry Flynt: "Hero" for Free Speech, Insidious Woman Hater? Or Both?
At least The People vs. Larry Flynt puts the porn/free-speech issue on the table, even if it leaves out tons of relevant information. See the movie, think about porn, think about how it affects you, if it affects you at all. The doors of a dialogue on pornography have been re-opened. Let's keep them open. Let's discuss these issues even if they do not affect us consciously on a day-to-day basis. Regardless of our positions, we as women should be concerned. If this film has to be the catalyst for our discussion, then so be it.!
Hilary and Chelsea can't figure out whether Chelsea was jogging or out getting a newspaper when the first plane hit in New York on the morning of September 11. (And I can't figure out why anyone cares :-)
See Larry Elder's The Clintons and the Journalists who Love Them
What Hilary says (to Jane Pauley on TV):
"She'd gone on what she thought would be a great jog. She was going down to the Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She went to get a cup of coffee and – that's when the plane hit."
Pauley: "She was close enough to hear the rumble."
Sen. Clinton: "She did hear it. She did."
Pauley: "And to see the smoke ... "
Sen. Clinton: "That's right."
Pauley: " ... in person, not on television."
Sen. Clinton: "No ... "
What Chelsea says (In her Talk Magazine article):
"On the morning it happened I was at my friend Nicole Davison's apartment, near Union Square in Manhattan. That morning we had gotten up and grabbed coffee, and then she took the subway to work while I bought a paper and headed back to her apartment. I had just walked in when she called from work. A plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center, she said. I should stay put and she'd call me back when she knew more. I turned on the television and watched as the second plane hit. "
These people aren't even in the White House any more, and we still have to follow them around every time one tells a fib to the other? Who knows which story is true or indeed if either story is true? This isn't a terrorist investigation, right? This is just Hollywood. (White noise really...)
Larry Flynt is Suing the Defense Department for not letting him send reporters to the front lines of Afghanistan. (Thank you, Larry.)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt has sued the Defense Department for the right to send reporters to the front lines in Afghanistan.
Flynt asked a federal court in Washington to force the agency to loosen its restrictions on media coverage.
``The actions of American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan are of great interest and concern to American citizens,'' his attorney said in the lawsuit filed last week.
The Pentagon turned down Flynt's request to allow writers to accompany troops on combat missions because of ``the highly dangerous and unique nature'' of the operations, according to a letter Flynt said he received this month from Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.
It's hard to believe, but this is the other Newsweek press release that went up today: Newsweek: Afghan Woman Who Had Secret Beauty Parlor in Kabul Says in a Month Or Two, 'I'll be One of the First to Open a Beauty Shop in Public'
An Afghanistan woman who secretly operated a beauty parlor in her home for five years tells Newsweek's Melinda Liu that although hers is still a "Taliban style" beauty salon, in a month or two, "I'll be one of the first to open a beauty shop in public. I hope you and other Western women will come."
Sure I'll be on the next plane. Pencil me in for Sunday at 2:45...
The woman, named Latifa, wore lipstick and had dyed auburn hair. She secretly styled women's hair, applied makeup, hidden by the all-enveloping burqa, which covers the face, and played forbidden music cassettes and videotapes for women who lounged on sofas covered in leopard-print material in her living room...
And isn't that what freedom is all about? (Lounging on leopard-skinned sofas, listening to Elvis the pelvis and secretly piercing your ears..)
The politics of post-Taliban Afghanistan still need to be sorted out and Afghan women are waiting to see if Northern Alliance representatives are serious about women's liberation.
So it's in the hands of the Northern Alliance, is it? How unfortunate. They haven't been overly concerned with women's rights in the past.
Under Taliban rule, Afghan women were forbidden to work or show their faces and were required to wear the burqa. But since last week, Afghan women are venturing into public again and looking for work...
And food and shelter...
At least four women got jobs at Radio Afghanistan, and others continued to stop by the radio station to apply. "When I heard the Taliban was finished, I rejoiced beyond measure," says Rida Azimi, 25, one of the first women to read the news at Radio Afghanistan after the Taliban fled. After Azimi heard the news about the Taliban's defeat, she joyously burned her burqa at home. "I felt so depressed wearing the veil," she tells Newsweek. "Now I see the sunlight and it's so beautiful."
Due process is out and secret military tribunals are in.
Newsweek: Bush Insisted Only He Should Decide Who Should Stand Trial Before Military Court .
(Note: this is not a full article but a press release about an article that appears in the print version of "Newsweek" that hits the stands Monday.)
After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.
Bush's powers to form a military court came from a secret legal memorandum, which the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the days after Sept. 11, Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke his broad wartime powers, since the U.S., they concluded, was in a state of "armed conflict." Bush used the memo as the legal basis for his order to bomb Afghanistan. Weeks later, the lawyers concluded that Bush would use his expanded powers to form a military court for captured terrorists. Officials envision holding the trials on aircraft carriers or desert islands, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor Jr...
![]() | I've re-released the MP3s on my music website under the Open Audio License. I'll be putting up some new stuff soon, but right now Wander and Shake All Over are freely available for unlimited distribution. |
Here's an eerie Flash animation of Michael Jackson's strange metamorphosis to his latest state.
A new tool lets parents mar classic films in the name of cleaning them up!
See this article by Gwendolyn Mariano for CNET News.com: Trilogy Studios to offer home censor kit.
Software maker Trilogy Studios said it plans to release a home "censorware" product that will cut scenes and language from DVDs to create PG versions of R-rated movies.
The company, which launched a new Web site last week, said it plans to unveil its Movie Mask DVD player by the first quarter of 2002. The software works on PCs and Microsoft's Xbox game console, telling the device to skip over specific frames in the film that portray violence, profanity or nudity. The company said the DVD remains unaffected, since the censorship instructions reside in the video playback device.
In addition to taking scenes out of a film, the software can be used to put more "wholesome" scenes in. While Movie Mask might cut the violent moments from the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's World War II epic "Saving Private Ryan," for example, it also lets parents add educational links to battle maps or a biography of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
"Choice is the main thing," said Breck Rice, chief revenue officer for Trilogy Studios. Trilogy wanted to "share some of the great Hollywood movies with...children but wanted to show it at a level that they could handle a little better."
A new e-mail tool that allows Lotus Notes and Domino users to retract unread e-mails from a person's inbox is most likely in violation of more than one of the U.K.'s surveillance and data protection laws.
See: E-mail retraction tool breaking laws?, by Wendy McAuliffe for ZDNet (UK).
The Office of the Information Commissioner has warned that the Demailer tool, announced by IBM/Lotus on Wednesday, could conflict with e-mail interception principles set out in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). The e-mail retraction utility is also in danger of infringing data processing guidelines contained within the Data Protection Act 1998, as the intended recipient will be unaware that an e-mail has been retrieved from their inbox.
"If the tool allows an individual to retrieve an e-mail from the server, that is not unreasonable," said David Clancy, assistant commissioner to the information commissioner. "But if it allows someone to retrieve an e-mail from beyond the server, when the e-mail is waiting in the inbox, we would see this as interception, which also has potential data protection issues."
The IBM/Lotus Demailer, developed by IT Simple, allows users of Lotus Domino Notes to retract e-mails within any organization, across any organization's domains, within private Domino intranets, and from Domino customers and suppliers through the Internet. The tool is designed for the retrieval of e-mails sent in error, without the receiver being informed. E-mail retraction has been a feature of some systems for years, but recent legislation may mean that such a tool is no longer legitimate for business purposes.
Citibank is going to offer its Web payment service for free in an attempt to give PayPal a run for its money.
See the story: Citibank to make Web payment service free, by Troy Wolverton for CNET News.com.
Neato. Check out the 802.11 Planet Conference going on in Santa Clara November 27-28, 2001.
Here's a great account by Neil McAllister of one of the most exciting sessions of last week's O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference: Michael R. Macedonia, Ph.D.'s Network-Centric Warfare.
Peering Into The Future -- The military contemplates network-centric warfare
The term "cyber warfare" gets thrown around every now and again. Most often, it comes attached to the fanciful notion of some virtual battleground of the near future, one where hackers are the foot soldiers, worms and viruses are the tools and dominance over the network is the ultimate military objective. It's an idea that owes more to Hollywood than to reality, however. In truth, bullets, bombs and control of all-too-real estate are likely to remain central to warfare for a long time to come.
That's not to say the US armed forces are letting the fruits of the Internet Age simply drop from the vine -- far from it. The military is among the first institutions to recognize the many contributions of the computing industry to solving real-world problems. So perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise when representatives of the armed forces came looking for ideas among a decidedly nonmilitary bunch: the geeks, hackers and codeheads attending last week's O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference in Washington, DC.
![]() | The recently-announced O'Reilly Research has released its 2001 P2P Networking Overview: The Emergent P2P Platform of Presence, Identity, and Edge Resources , written by Clay Shirky, Kelly Truelove, Rael Dornfest, Lucas Gonze and others. Here's a sample chapter: Chapter 1 All The Pieces of PIE , by Dale Dougherty. |
Here's a great piece by O'Reilly Weblog newcomer Bruce Epstein that parallels his daughter's new bus security requirements to the unseen etiquitte of P2P Networks:
Group formation in P2P networks.
![]() | Here's a healthy alternative to solitaire: Teletubbies. |
Is it impolite to protect yourself and warn others about security vulnerabilities without first waiting 30 days to see if they can be patched? Or the other way around?
Or as AnchorDesk Editorial Director Patrick Houston put it: "MS to hackers: Shhh, can't we be a little more discreet?"
See the ZDNet article by Robert Lemos' : MS group to oversee hack reports.
The latest announcement has already sparked controversy: Russ Cooper, a software security expert and editor of security mailing list "NTBugTraq," published his own guidelines for an independent security group, called the Responsible Disclosure Forum. Cooper boycotted Microsoft's conference largely because he distrusts the software giant's motives.
For the most part, however, Cooper and Microsoft agree on the problems that fully disclosing software flaws can create.
"You either participate in the Responsible Disclosure Forum, or you're a black hat bent on being malicious. End of story," he wrote in the introduction to the guidelines. "Too much money, too many individuals and too much of the world's communication rely on responsible disclosure for it to be continued to be seen as a discussion worth debating."
The Microsoft-supported guidelines tentatively give software makers 30 days to patch their products after being informed of a flaw. They also require members to respond promptly to a report of a security hole and keep the original author advised of their progress.
"This is something we talked about 11 months ago (at a previous security conference) and we have some real traction now," Microsoft's Culp said.
More bad news: The plane wrecked into a residential area in the Rockaway section of Queens.
![]() | These photos taken from the same article referenced earlier today: CNN.com - American Airlines jet crashes in New York - November 12, 2001 | ![]() |
I had the best time last week at The O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference.
![]() |
Here's the one weblog I've written so far covering the event: RIAA President Hilary Rosen Speaks to P2P Community . I created an HTML version of her speech. (Which was quite an eye opener.) |
More coverage on the way...
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued its Considerations for Distinguishing Influenza-Like Illness from Inhalational Anthrax.
CDC has issued guidelines on the evaluation of persons with a history of exposure to Bacillus anthracis spores or who have an occupational or environmental risk for anthrax exposure (1). This notice describes the clinical evaluation of persons who are not known to be at increased risk for anthrax but who have symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI). Clinicians evaluating persons with ILI should consider a combination of epidemiologic, clinical, and, if indicated, laboratory and radiographic test results to evaluate the likelihood that inhalational anthrax is the basis for ILI symptoms.
Some other good links are provided at the end of the report:
Additional information about anthrax is available at <http://www.hhs.gov/hottopics/healing/biological.html> and < ttp://www.bt.cdc.gov/DocumentsApp/FactsAbout/FactsAbout.asp>. Additional information about influenza, RSV and other viral respiratory infections, and pneumococcal disease is available at <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/flu/fluvirus.htm>, <http://www.cdc.gov/nip/flu/default.htm>, <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/index.htm>, <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/streppneum_t.htm>, and <http://www.cdc.gov/nip/diseases/Pneumo/vac-chart.htm>.
Here's a pretty vague account of how three journalists were killed in Afghanistan over the weekend: CNN.com - Blame disputed in journalist killings - November 12, 2001
I'm trying to find a better account of the details of the situation. (Something better than "Those who managed to stay on the machine survived, those who jumped or fell died".)
The journalists -- two French, one German -- were killed Sunday when the Northern Alliance military convoy in which they were traveling was ambushed by Taliban troops, about 30 minutes outside of this northern town, near the city of Taloqan.
Those killed were part of a group of six journalists who were riding on the back of an armored personnel carrier with alliance forces going toward the front lines.
In an exclusive interview with CNN's Satinder Bindra, Northern Alliance Gen. Atiqullah Baryalai said those killed were "assassinated."
But Paul McGeough, a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, disagreed.
"I don't think they could have discerned that in the pitch dark, there were six journalists on top of this machine," said McGeough, one of the three journalists who survived.
He said Baryalai's claim was biased "spin" and noted that "it's funny how in war, people want to make the appalling more appalling."
Another plane tragedy in NYC (this time it appears to be an accident).
![]() | See: CNN.com - American Airlines jet crashes in New York - November 12, 2001 |
Uh oh. Looks like defeating the Taliban might be a little tougher than we thought. But you wouldn't know it from what's been in the American press lately. The India Times' Taliban fought off US commando raid: Report provides a scary account indeed.
"NEW YORK: Twelve Delta Force commandos were wounded -- three seriously -- when they encountered stiffer-than-expected Taliban resistance during the October 20 raid on Mullah Mohammad Omar's compound outside Kandahar, the New Yorker magazine reported. The fiasco has triggered a review of special forces operations in Afghanistan.
But a top US general has denied the report.
Top US military officials are re-assessing future special forces operations in Afghanistan after the nearly disastrous October 20 raid, according to the Monday edition of the magazine.
The elite Delta Force, "which prides itself on stealth, had been counterattacked by the Taliban, and some Americans had to fight their way to safety," according to the article.
The ferocity of the Taliban response "scared the crap out of everyone," a senior military officer told Seymour Hersh, the article's author.
Looks like the incredible potential of peer-to-peer networks is finally starting to see the light of day.
Here's a Washington Post article by Leslie Walker: Uncle Sam Wants Napster! (washingtonpost.com).
Some analysts think the peer-to-peer concept could lead to a more powerful Internet if large corporations, fearing the loss of control over intellectual property, don't squash them first. Last month, 28 record and movie companies sued new file-sharing networks with names like MusicCity, Grokster and Kazaa. And last week the big three television networks filed suit against SonicBlue, which is preparing to launch avideo recorder that allows people to swap their recorded TV programs online.
Other entrepreneurs are fashioning similar tools for legitimate use in the workplace. Their makers report a spike in interest from corporate customers in the past month, as well as a revival of interest from venture capitalists, who largely withdrew funding for peer-to-peer systems in the wake of February's court decision shutting down Napster.
Now the military is sending a message that it, too, is shopping for cutting-edge software with some of the $40 billion in emergency spending Congress authorized to beef up national defense.
The U.S. Joint Forces Command last week began testing new commercial software called Groove, developed by the creator of Lotus Notes. About 20 large corporations also are using the program, which allows people to create ad hoc computing groups, send instant messages, mark up files and do other collaborative work online without help from system administrators.
The U.S. Government is getting serious about XML! There's an XML.gov website that details its strategy and a separate website for the US House of Representatives XML and Legislative Documents.