Monday, August 26, 2002

Firesign Theatre tackles the subject of homeland security and the government's program to get civilians to "tip" the government to suspicious activity. On All Things Considered, in Real Audio. 11:20:28 PM    comment []

There just isn't enough bandwidth to do good design when a team is geographically dispersed [Joel on Software] 6:19:40 PM    comment []

Networked Technologies and the Internet: A Brief Historical Perspective, by Amy Friedlander, Special Projects Associate at the Council on Library and Information Resources in Washington, DC. [from benton/digital voices] This is an interesting piece, trying to draw morals from the adoption of electric and telephone netowrks for broadband Internet. 5:19:30 PM    comment []

Annals of self-regulation versus government intervention, part 4,162: DoubleClick changes ad policy, by Jim Krane (AP). In order to ward off an investigation into its privacy practices, online ad provider DoubleClick Inc. agreed Monday to adhere to stiff privacy restrictions -- and to pay a $450,000 settlement. 4:19:27 PM    comment []

As Multinationals Run the Taps, Anger Rises Over Water for Profit, by John Tagliabue (NYT). Water is a resource essential to life, said Hannah Griffiths, of Friends of the Earth, an environmentalist group based in Britain. Decisions about allocation and distribution should be democratic and based on everyone's fundamental right to a clean, healthy supply. Not all agree. Some argue that unless water is treated as an increasingly precious commodity and priced to reflect its value — particularly for heavy users like farmers and factories — much of it will be wasted. It also often takes more money than some governments are willing or able to spend to improve the systems that deliver fresh water to cities and towns around the world, especially to the poor. But will allowing private enterprise to manage or own many of the world's water systems help overcome those problems? And will it expose the poor to impossibly high water bills? 4:19:26 PM    comment []

Rebecca's posted the Webl og Ethics section of her book, and she points at these additional resources. 2:19:01 PM    comment []

On Wednesday, I blinked the ''Hacking Las Vegas'' story in Wired. In The hack goes on, kottke writes: Following Thursday's post about the MIT Blackjack Team article in Wired, I got this email from a reader with some inside dope on the team's current status (reprinted with permission): 12:18:51 PM    comment []

good music has changed my life. for the better i hope... [deliberately random thoughts] 12:18:49 PM    comment []

Why Not Put Off Till Tomorrow the Novel You Could Begin Today? By Ann Patchett, in the New York Times. The thing I really don't want to do is start my fifth novel, and the rest of my life is little more than a series of stalling techniques to help me achieve my goal. 12:18:44 PM    comment []