The WMD Hunt. THE WMD HUNT....Remember those nuclear plans we found a couple of days ago in the backyard of an Iraqi scientist in Baghdad? The original CNN story included this statement:CNN had this story last week but made a decision to withhold... [CalPundit]

Read the link at Talking Ponts and the CNN article. Not only does our WMD search effort look like some sort of Keystone Kops when it comes to actually finding anything in Iraq, but this story plays like Three Days of the Condor. If the press had not gotten involved, the Iraqi scientist may very well have been screwed by the CIA. It appears that only the transparency of our republic, in the guise of a free press, forced the CIA to do the right thing. I wonder if many other things got screwed up because of a lack of openess?  11:45:29 PM    

Elspeth Hyams reports on several recent UK meeting .... Elspeth Hyams reports on several recent UK meetings on open access and asks:
'What does it mean when the symbolic head of the academic and research world?s bête noire commercial publisher, owner of the copyright in 25 per cent of all high-quality scientific content, says: ?I am not against open access??' [FOS News]

A very interesting read. The for-profit publishers, such as Elsevier, are having to do a lot of backfilling. They have had a very arrogant view of the industry since they essentially held a monopoly on publishing in certain areas. There are a lot of researchers and universities that would love to see them fall. It is not likely but they are going to have to adapt very rapidly to maintain any sort of business. They are looking at new models. It will all come down to cost and whether most people believe that a healthy profit margin is acceptable in an era of open access.  9:26:49 AM    

Voices. So many voices in this most tumultuous of the many tumultuous moments I've lived through, in my five years of involvement with the RSS phenomenon. So many people taking time away from friends and family, this weekend, to consider the matters at hand. So tempting to simplify it all as a silly-season little-endian/big-endian tempest in a teapot. So much at stake. Update: So sad the voice that started it all has, for now, gone silent. Further update: And now is back, thankfully. ... [Jon's Radio]

There is a lot of turmoil in the world of developers concerning the future of RSS, newsfeeds, etc. Different personalities, different goals. As a user, I just want to make sure that the tools I use do not get broken because of some obscure pissing war between factions. So far, this battle has been a little more collaborative than some in the past and may actually result in something better. But there are some very strong personalities involved with very strong opinions who can easily rub people the wrong way. My hope is that the collaborative power of news aggregators, weblogs and RSS will prevent a war from erupting. This time the number pf voices that can become part of the conversation is huge. Let's hope it moves us to a better tool, not just a different one.  9:17:04 AM