Freenet has released a new version of their software that "is the first (release) where we can confidently encourage people to go download the software and comfortably expect it to work for them," according to Ian Clarke, the founder of the Freenet project [News.com].

I downloaded and ran one of the first versions of Freenet a couple of years ago. All-in-all, it's a great concept. Maybe its time has come.
11:23:09 AM    

As the U.N. Security Council continues to debate a resolution on Iraq, France maintains its stance against any clause that would call for an automatic use of force [BBC News]. President Bush has stated that the U.S. will attack Iraq unilaterally if the U.N. refuses to back our efforts.

This is highly unfortunate. I applaud France for its efforts to support military conflict only as a "last resort". However, I would really like to know the details of the resolution that France would support. Is it tough enough? Tough action is certainly required with the upfront understanding that a future resolution to use force will be likely if Iraq does not comply.
11:13:19 AM    

FFmpeg, an open source multimedia player/recorder, has recently included a reverse-engineered decoder for Windows Media audio files [Slashdot]. For the first time, users of Linux systems can play files encoded for the Windows Media Player.

Real Networks announced, back in September [Sept 22], that they were going to release a reverse-engineered version of the codec. I wonder if this new FFmpeg decoder is the decoder released by Real. If not, did the FFmpeg developers reverse-engineer the WMA codec themselves? Either way, this is good news.
10:09:56 AM