International House of Penguins. Linux is the only operating system born outside the United States and while most of the attendees are American, this edition of LinuxWorld has a distinctly international flavor.  [Wired News]

The Atlantic Online: Homeland Insecurity. Charles C. Mann. Crypto was not enough to guarantee privacy and security. Failures occurred all the time--which was what Schneier's terrible idea demonstrated. [Tomalak's Realm]

Long jive the King

Does any man, woman or child with a pulse not know that today is the anniversary of The King's death? The best single piece of commemorative writing I have seen on this topic comes in today's Irish Times, from the wonderful weather/renaissance man columnist Brendan McWilliams. After an intro noting Elvis's death, he writes:

Sadly, the bulk of Presley's output is disappointing for the meteorologist. He seems to have had a strange preoccupation with romantic love, be it anticipated, surprisingly discovered, lost or requited with enthusiasm, and he neglects almost completely any mention of the elements or any celestial phenomena.

While it is true that Are you Lonesome Tonight contains the query "Does your memory stray to a bright sunny day?" and elsewhere we hear that during one romantic interlude "The wind in the willow played love's sweet melody", there is little else of meteorological or astronomical interest in his repertoire.

There is just one thought-provoking episode. When Elvis, as he discreetly puts it, "found my thrill on Blueberry Hill", that same night: "The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill/And lingered until my dreams came true." One assumes this must have been a full moon, being so noticeable in the circumstances and sufficient to generate a great enthusiasm...

Ireland.com subscribers...

John McManus reports in today's Irish Times that we now have 6,000 paid subscribers (that's according to the paper's management, anyway...) to the 'premium' content on the Ireland.com site -- basically all the daily paper content and the paper's archive going back to 1996. Rather controversially the Times decided to start charging for its content at the start of summer. It is in an unusually strong position to do this, as so much of its readership lies outside Ireland (the great Irish diaspora Mary Robinson liked to bang on about). Additionally it is much, much cheaper to get the online paper (euro79 for a year) than to buy it daily (euro1.30). Yeah, it's a lot of money and Irish papers tend to be expensive, but they are almost all content and very few ads. (Note for non-Irish readers: the Irish also read more newspapers than anyone else anywhere except Iceland, I believe, and unlike everywhere else in the western world newspapers here have increased circulation rather than lost it in recent years. Rain has an upside -- what else to do but read a paper alongside your pint on a grey day?).

The Irish Times has such a lengthy archive because it was one of the first newspapers in the world to go online (you can look up some early pages at www.archive.org), and it also put pretty much the whole paper online from the start -- back when doing so was very rare and the received wisdom is that your print circulation would drop. Didn't happen!

I think the Times has been brave in making this move to paid content although I would have made different choices than the Times management in some instances in deciding what to charge for. One of the downsides is that we as a paper have completely dropped off the Google and blog radar because our content isn't freely available. For example  our extensive coverage wasn't among the links in a recent story on Irish pharma company Elan in the witty business media analysis newsletter Media Unspun (well worth the $50 annual sub price -- just for the daily laugh). What does this mean for blogs, if much of the media content that bloggers like to comment upon/rant about suddenly can't be freely accessed? God forbid if the blogging universe becomes bloggers writing about bloggers... Hey! Then it will be like newspaper books review pages, where writers comment on other writers and everyone knows everyone else! Ohhhh, nooooo...

Brand names act on your brain differently from words [bOing bOing]

N.Y. Pol: No Cell Phones for You. If one legislator has his way, New York City will ban the use of cell phones in practically every public venue. [Wired News]

The SEC lists the statements from CEOs and CFOs. [Scripting News]

Here's a somewhat related story to the Linux one below -- with its own elements of absurdity as well...

No Free Dinner for Free Software. The Free Software Foundation is trying not-so-grassroots tactics -- like hosting fancy fundraising dinners -- to spread its message that the freedom to share and modify code is a right. [Wired News]

I love this story, for a number of reasons ranging from the comic and absurd to the overall challenge to the status quo of the concept:

Linux users march on city hall. A small but enthusiastic crowd of Linux lovers hit the streets of San Francisco, hoping to trumpet the virtues of open source to lawmakers and voters. [CNET News.com]

In a nutshell, a group of dedicated Open Source fans are trying to get California lawmakers to sponsor a bill that would require the state to purchase only open source software. Although I don't know how excited laid-back San Franciscans would be about the slogan this little group of marchers were chanting: ""Balance the budget. Switch to Linux" -- I do like their (inevitable) bumper sticker: "Why would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" Of course that refers to the fact that you can't fiddle with the basic, proprietary code of the Windows operating system. (side note: bumper stickers! Americans love these little tiny personal roving billboards for their cars. Not as much as slogans on t-shirts, but it's close.)