Musicians vs. RIAA At USA Today [Slashdot]
6:22:05 PM  #   your two cents []

WorldCom to axe 2,000 jobs in Europe. Troubled telco to cut niche services [InfoWorld: Top News]
6:20:04 PM  #   your two cents []

Console games, copyright, and obsolete hardware.. <<As early console game systems become harder to find, and game media are lost or destroyed, the chances increase that some console games will be forever lost. This is of no benefit to society, and copyright law should be amended to prevent this.>> [kuro5hin.org] Agreed. And changed to save a lot of other worthwhile creations from oblivion.
6:18:15 PM  #   your two cents []

SJ Mercury: Issues that will shape the Internet. Dan Gillmor: "It took a series of smart decisions to create the Internet as an open network where innovation could thrive, as I noted in this space a week ago. Now let's look at some upcoming decisions that will shape communications for the next 50 years -- and ponder the consequences for openness and innovation if we make the wrong choices this time."
3:11:47 PM  #   your two cents []

Herman Wouk. "Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today." [Quotes of the Day]
3:09:26 PM  #   your two cents []

From the Guardian: Nuclear ships face protest flotilla. <<Two ships carrying radioactive material across Irish Sea to Sellafield power station expected to face huge protest.>> The Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, left from the Dublin quays for this rendezvous. Several government officials, including ministers, went down to visit the ship and wish the Greenpeace people well. Ireland is officially a non-nuclear country and very unhappy about having the UK's Sellafield nuclear power plant dumping its radioactive waste into the Irish Sea (yep, Sellafield, the one accused of falsifying its plant records, which is why the ship laden with spent fuel is a-comin' back from Japan, which now doesn't want the stuff...)  . BTW the entire Irish population was mailed iodine tablets by the Irish government just in case of a Sellafield meltdown.
3:08:06 PM  #   your two cents []

Iona extends Web services to CORBA. Seeks to satisfy core customer base with open-standards support [InfoWorld: Top News]
3:01:47 PM  #   your two cents []

More crypto news: another crypto guru, Bruce Schneier, is suggesting in this week's Crypto-Gram that new crypto algorithm AES, as well as Serpent,  might -- or might not -- have been broken. He thinks this didn't get wide publicity when announced because the paper in which the process is described is quite dense and technical. He describes the results of the reasearchers as "amazing". But also notes we don't have to panic... yet.
3:00:50 PM  #   your two cents []

LawMeme is tracking the blogging "minor tempest" over Lawrence Lessig's Red Herring piece on Microsoft's Palladium initiative. Basically, critics are shocked that Lessig might just be eyeing Palladium with a favourable eye, while Lessig's offended response is, "Optimist, moi?". Mais non!

Meanwhile, Mr PGP, Phil Zimmermann, is joining the board of UK think tank and privacy advocacy group the Foundation for Information Policy Research. Pretty Good Privacy inventor and crypto hero Phil is still listed on the advisory board of Dublin-based US crypto mail company Hush Communications (the company was based in Dublin due to flexible Irish crypto laws; at the time the company felt development was more safely done over here as the US still had its strong encryption export restrictions in place -- though certainly the Patriot Act won't have made many people any more relaxed about US laws... The company has since closed the Irish office and seems to be keeping a fairly low profile). ZDNet UK has a piece or you can also check out FIPR's own announcement. BTW FIPR's looking for a director, if you think you would enjoy antagonising the UK govt. on a regular basis!
2:50:03 PM  #   your two cents []