The 3.4-million subscribers who rely on Excite@Home’s high-speed cable service for their fast connections must be wondering how long the pipes will continue to flow, now that At Home has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The one-time super-portal, turned cable-modem service provider, said that with protection from its creditors, it had enough cash to keep service up during reconstruction. After that, all bets are off.

But if any subscribers are surprised by the announcement, no one in the press or the tech industry seemed to be. News.com’s Ben Heskett and Rachel Konrad said the move was “as expected,” and most news reports noted that AT&T was standing by, waiting to bid $307 million for Excite@Home’s assets. The ailing tech company (Excite@Home, not AT&T, which ain’t doing so great either), had picked up $100 million in “emergency financing” just last June. But with a burn rate around $350 million per quarter, that didn’t last long, and by July some investors said they wanted their money back.

AT&T, which already owns 23% of Excite@Home and a controlling vote on the board, is on a mission to divest itelf into four separate companies (it spun off AT&T Wireless, the first of these, earlier this summer), and its broadband unit could be the crown jewel. Some
posters on Slashdot cited recent speculation that AT&T would sell the fat pipes to AOL, and wondered if this would “sweeten the deal” or put an end to it.

After Comcast made an unwelcome bid for AT&T’s cable unit back in July, AT&T scrambled to find other buyers. Then in early September, reports emerged that AOL Time Warner was considering a bid, and the

Wall Street Journal suggested AT&T would rather sell its cable system to Cox Communications — not only because regulators might like the deal better, but because Cox was also interested in voice-over-cable, a pet project of AT&T chairman C. Michael Armstrong. Indeed, that kind of deal could even garner support from Disney or Microsoft, since either company would be eager to keep the system out of rival AOL’s pocket. CNNfn.com reported on Friday that AT&T had signed a confidentiality agreement with Comcast, suggesting the two were ready to talk.

Meanwhile, Excite@Home’s chief executive, Patti Hart, who was brought on in April, said Chapter 11 would enable them to continue service during restructuring, but that could be tougher for the employees on board since the company laid off 500 last week. Any subscribers who moved over to the cable modem service after their DSL providers folded must now be wondering if high-bandwidth from the curb is feasible at all. Could it be we’re doomed to return to 56K dial-up? Or can 802.11 wireless save us all?

Sources:

Excite At Home Files for Chapter 11, To Sell Broadband Network to AT&T
https://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1001712629194436520.htm
(Paid subscription required)

Internet Firm At Home To File for Bankruptcy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43893-2001Sep29.html

At Home Says It Will Seek Chapter 11 Protection
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/29/technology/29EXCI.html
(Free subscription required)

Excite@Home files for bankruptcy

https://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-7339605.html

Chapter 11 For Excite@Home

https://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/29/1310231.shtml

Excite to file for Ch. 11

https://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/09/28/deals/excite/

Sun Microsystems and 32 others have forged The Liberty Alliance, yet another entrant into the Identity space. The project promises an “open, federated, single sign-on identity solution for the digital economy via any device connected to the Internet.”

Federated identity is the logical approximation of real-world identity. It is context sensitive: my work, cellular, and home phone numbers. It’s compartmentalized, loosely-coupled at best: my credit, video, and donor cards. It’s subtly nuanced: my community, enterprise, family, and personal calendars. I’d no sooner surrender this gestalt to a single online identity authority than stuff it all into my wallet.

Sun et al dive into the fray on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement of its intention to open Passport and create a “federation of trust” wherein an identity may used across systems, domains, and organizations.

While the alliance sports an impressive starting line-up, Lucas Gonze (of Decentralization mailing list fame) points to some interesting omissions:

AOL is Sun’s traditional ally and it isn’t a member. Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber aren’t members. IBM isn’t a member. Verisign and eBay are members but have deals to support Passport also.

Marge Breya, Sun One marketing VP, in an InfoWorld article:

The alliance hopes companies such as Microsoft and AOL Time Warner that are working on similar technologies will join the Liberty program, Breya said. A Web site could have multiple types of authentication available such as Passport and the Liberty protocol.

For now the alliance is strategic, not technological. Lofty name aside, Liberty doesn’t have much in hand to speak of; there’s no spec to implement, no code to run. Passport is deployed and usable today, is supported by partners galore, and promises open Kerberos 5 based authentication next year. Liberty could find itself branded “Passport, only later.”

I must also admit to being perplexed by the possible outcome of our present identity cornucopia. Do I face a zero-sum game of trading in My Yahoo!, My E*trade, and my library card for My Passport, My Magic Carpet, and My Liberty?

Related link: https://www.securityfocus.com/news/257

According to
Kevin Poulsen of Security Focus, the
Anti-Terrorism Act that’s being rushed through Congress lumps several hacking crimes into the same bill as some pretty gnarly stuff, including “assassination of public officials, violence at international airports, some bombings and homicides, and politically-motivated manslaughter or torture.” Computer crimes in this case are described as “crack[ing] a computer for the purpose of obtaining anything of value, or to deliberately cause damage.”

The act retroactively removes the statute of limitations on these crimes and gives the FBI broader powers to confiscate computer equipment. Worse are the penalties, which extend all the way out to life imprisonment.

Ashcroft to Congress: “I don’t believe that our definition of terrorism is so broad … It is broad enough to include things like assaults on computers, and assaults designed to change the purpose of government.”

MOSCONE CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO, CA. — The first thing I noticed at the Seybold keynote on Tuesday morning was tighter security.

The press, and everyone else I presume, had to “coat check” our backpacks before entering the ballroom. I grabbed my Visor and digital camera and headed to the area near the front of the room where the media sits. On my way, I noticed that the camera crew ahead of me was stopped and searched even though they had been previously cleared.

In the ballroom, the mood was more somber than what I’m used to for a keynote. Even the pre-show tunes were subdued — chamber music that I didn’t recognize played against the quiet backdrop of audience conversation.

But then a delightful twist of fate. Because the Paris Expo had been canceled, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance on stage pitching Mac OS X. The news was good, as was Jobs’ brief appearance.

First, the 10.1 upgrade will be available this coming Saturday. And for one month, the upgrade disc can be picked-up for free from your local Mac dealer. (Apple had the upgrades at Seybold for show attendees.)

Second, Microsoft Office for Mac OS X will be available in November. Better yet, 10.1 users can download a trial version of Word now and begin using it. This “preview” edition has the printing function disabled, but otherwise is very functional.

Jobs then turned the stage over to Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, who drilled down into the new features of 10.1. Schiller also brought many Apple gurus on stage demoing the various features of the “new” Mac OS X, which were impressive.

Clearly, Apple is betting the farm on Mac OS X. From what I saw today, I think it’s a good bet. Many aspects of the new OS have been improved, including companion apps iTunes and iDVD.

Now, if I could just get my backpack out of hock, I could go down to the Expo floor and get an up-close look at 10.1 for myself.

Any impressions of Seybold or the Apple keynote address?

I was lucky enough today to sit-in on Jason Snell’s Mac OS 10.1 demo today at the Mac Computer Expo in Santa Rosa, CA. Jason is a MacWorld magazine editor and an all around knowledgeable computer guy.

He was running Mac OS 10.1 on a 500 MHz G3 iBook. I’ve been using Mac OS X on my 400 MHz Pismo since its first release. After watching Jason’s demo today, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Wow! What a difference a ‘point one’ can make.”

Performance was smooth in all areas including DVD playback. The improved Finder showed many refinements. Networking capabilities have been enhanced to the point that Mac OS X is compatible in just about any environment.

It appears to me that Mac OS 10.1 is the release for the rest of the world. This will be especially true after Microsoft Office 10 hits the streets in early November.

Unless you make your living using an application that hasn’t been Carbonized yet such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, it’s time to start looking at Apple’s new operating system. From my perspective, this is the “real” Mac OS X.

If you’ve had a peek at Mac OS 10.1, i’d like to hear your reactions.

“Out thoughts are with those who were affected by the recent tragic events” says Apple’s home page along with a link to the American Red Cross. Any statement like this from a company is usually either a show that there are really humans working there, or just a crass attempt at commercialism in disguise. In this case, there’s more to the story.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed for MacCentral that the company was donating a million dollars to help the families of the rescue workers lost in the collapse of the World Trade Center. As well, Apple will be kicking in an iBook to each of the families that have children.

As nice as this is, what I am impressed by is the total lack of PR from Apple about this. No press releases. No statements on Apple’s site. And not much on the web about it besides the MacCentral article and a mention to it by As The Apple Turns. It truely is a gesture of help on Apple’s part. One that isn’t ruined by the urge to show up the competition. One that is a pure and simple gesture of sympathy and help.

Here’s an unsolicited "Thank You" to Apple for this. It’s things like these that make me happy that I’m an Apple stockholder as well as a customer.

It’s been a while since .NET Beta 2 arrived on the scene, and no doubt many early adopters have already migrated their Beta 1 code over to Beta 2. For those of you who haven’t, I’ve compiled a list of articles on the topic.

Rob
Howard on Beta 2 to Beta 2 migration

Rob is a Program Manager on the .NET Framework team. In this article,
he discusses changes that affect ADO.NET, ASP.NET configuration files,
and web services.

ADO.NET Code
Transitions to New Beta by James Culshaw

In this article, James describes the changes to ADO.NET in Beta 2.
The examples in the article show how to connect to an Access
database, transactions, and the OleDbCommand object.

Migrating ADO.NET Code by James Culshaw

James describes some of the changes you need to make in your ADO.NET
code to get it to work with Beta 2.

Beta 1 to Beta 2 Changes

This is actually a local file on your system. If you installed
Visual Studio.NET or the .NET Framework Beta 2, this file should
be available. You might have to change the drive letter if your
system drive is not C:

ADO.NET 1: Namespaces and Classes

Mahesh Chand writes about the changes in the ADO.NET API.

Eraserver.net Beta 1 to Beta 2 difference library

This is a collection of differences between the Beta 1 and Beta 2
quickstart tutorials. The differences show the lines of code that
changed as well as a little bit of surrounding context.

Top 10 Changes in C# Beta 2

Michael Lane Thomas writes about 10 significant features added to C#
in Beta 2.

Ten Syntax Changes in VB.NET Beta 2

Francesco Balena writes about 10 changes that happened to VB.NET between
Beta 1 and 2.

An Exciting Time

Rob Howard writes about major changes in ASP.NET between Beta 1 and 2.

Those are all the articles I’ve catalogued so far - if you know of others,
please send them my way!

Titles on germ warfare, terrorists, and Nostradamus jump to the top of the charts. Here are a few selections, as of late in the afternoon on Tuesday, Sept. 18:

1. Germs : America’s Secret War Against Biological Weapons
3. Twin Towers : The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center
5. The New Jackals : Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism
8. Nostradamus : The Complete Prophecies
9. Bin Laden
11. Taliban
16. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

See Amazon’s complete list of top sellers, updated hourly.

Little did I know 18 months ago that joining Dave Farber’s “Interesting People” list would turn out to be my intelligence lifeline in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

I had no idea, for example, that I would be better able to articulate why we shouldn’t indiscriminately bomb Afghanistan because I had just read the well-written Farber post, “Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan.”

I’m not sure I would have come across “The Dalai Lama’s letter to the President of the United States of America” on any of the typical news sites. But I read it yesterday morning on the Farber list.

And I was also made aware of the CNN story about cutting-edge radio frequency sniffers to help find people feared lost in the WTC collapse through a pointer on the Farber list.

Funny how one thing leads to another. A year and a half ago I was just standing there at the NAB conference in Las Vegas being overwhelmed by bright lights and sound when I noticed Dave Farber being interviewed for a webcast (He is the former Chief Technologist at the Federal Communications Commission). I liked him and liked knowing that we had someone like him in the government. When he mentioned his Interesting People mailing list, I decided to sign up right away.

For all the complaining we do about e-mail, this list illustrates that it can be a vibrant and important medium for relating news and sharing commentary. And as the events of the last week unfolded, the Farber list has helped me talk with reasonable intelligence among my family, friends, and co-workers.

If you’d like to see some of the threads from the Farber list, you can visit the Interesting People archive online.

If you’re a member of the Interesting People list, I’d like to hear your comments about the recent dialogue there.

Related link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/relief-outside

PayPal makes it simple as pie to donate to the National Disaster Relief Fund of the American Red Cross. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of Tuesday’s attacks and their families. PayPal has created a special fund to help PayPal members provide assistance to those affected by this tragic event. Thank you to the 11,992 members who have donated $457,055 so far.” It’ll only take a moment or three out of your day and $1.00 or more out of your wallet!

If you point an IRC client to chat.cnn.com and then join the channel #CNN_Newsfeed, you get a continuous transcript, all caps and in short lines, of what CNN is currently broadcasting on television.

Mark-Jason Dominus has written a gateway script that turns the text into more readable prose, which you can receive by IRC at us.slashnet.org, in the #cnn_mjd channel. He has also made available the Perl source for this filter.

I’m sure all us hackerly types can think of other interesting things to do with this feed in our copious free time. (Wishing I knew more about programming Mac OS X dock apps, me…)

Meanwhile: props to Slashdot for doing a fine job as an accessible information source through the thick of the horror. I picked up this and lots of other interesting pieces of news and meta-news from comments there.

A small ripple of concern emanating from the recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil was the fate of O’Reilly’s Peer-to-Peer conference scheduled to begin one week later in Washington D.C.

But like so many other troublesome details in times like these, a decision had to be made, and it had to be made soon. Keeping this date would present both logistical and emotional hardship for many of the conference’s speakers and attendees.

So the O’Reilly conference team decided. Here is the first official statement from them about the event:

We are shaken, with the rest of the nation, by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Due to the difficulties associated with air travel,
and after careful consideration of the challenges facing the communities affected and the attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors, we are postponing the Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference in Washington, DC. We are
currently negotiating the exact dates and anticipate having news during the next week.

Since I was scheduled to attend the conference as a reporter, I’ve been thinking about what decision I would have made had it been up to me. So, when I heard the official decision, just moments ago, it rang true in my heart and in my mind as the right course of action.

To explain why I agree, I need to be honest and state that there were two forces tugging inside of me concerning this issue.

On one hand, I did not want to postpone the conference. I think there will be important discussions about “security vs. rights.” Those of us involved with technology need to figure out where we stand on that delicate line before advocating for, or implementing, new technologies that would prevent terrorist actions, but possibly at the cost of the freedoms we now enjoy.

Plus, it is my personal belief that we need to continue with the business of moving our society forward, especially when challenged by forces that want it destroyed.

For these reasons, I wanted the conference to continue.

But we have to acknowledge the emotional hardship, and the difficulties of traveling by air, for all involved with the P2P event. And for those reasons, I was concerned about the conference beginning just one week after the attacks.

I was lucky. I did not lose a friend, a relative, or a co-worker in the tragedies. Many, many others were not so lucky. We owe them the respect they deserve while they try to cope with this situation.

For these reasons, I wanted the conference postponed.

This is why I like the conference staff’s decision. By postponing the event until late October or early November, we can move forward with the important issues that should be discussed, but allow time for healing for everyone touched by the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001.

I know it’s a small ripple to consider right now. But I’m happy about the decision.

There are so many decisions like these that have to be made right now. If you have a similar diffcult choice to make right now, I’d like to hear about it.

After spending much of yesterday either listening to or watching the news, I was amazed at how reckless the broadcast media has become. In response, here’s an open letter to the broadcasters of America…

Dear [ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, FOX, etc.]:

As a citizen of the United States, a person who once served this country in the military, and as a writer and editor, I would like to know just what your reporters where thinking yesterday as your network broadcast the news of the horrific acts of terrorism that hit New York City and Washington, DC.

In reporting the news of the day, you lost your sense of responsibility to the American public, and the world as a whole. We all know that the world was watching our news, particularly the broadcasts from CNN in Atlanta, but in the sense of “national security,” did you really need to report that the President was going from Florida to Louisiana and then later to a bunker in Nebraska? Your reporters gave away what should have been classified information — but then again, they weren’t entirely guilty.

Your reporters didn’t act alone: They had to get their information from somewhere. Somewhere, someone leaked the whereabouts of the President to the press (on AF1, headed to areas other than Washington, DC at first), where he was going to, when he arrived, when he departed, etc. Somehow, somewhere, there was another breach of security yesterday, and the men and women of the broadcast media were all accomplices.

Additionally, while watching CNN, I heard a reporter give out the address of the hotel in Kabul where he was broadcasting from. Was this really necessary? In my opinion, this was a very stupid thing to do. If the Taliban wanted (or wants) to stop CNN from transmitting images of Kabal, they now know exactly where to go and whom to look for.

As members of the broadcast media, you have a responsibility to the United States — as well as to the world — to report the news judiciously. Instead of being responsible, you were reckless, and could have placed many more lives in harm’s way.

Next time — and let’s hope there isn’t a “next time” — think twice before you aimlessly report something.

Sincerely,

Chuck Toporek
chuck@oreilly.com

The events that took place yesterday — Tuesday, September 11, 2001 (or 9-11) — seemed surreal. As if watching some Hollywood production, I sat glazed on the sofa at home watching the images of a second jetliner screaming toward one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. But this wasn’t fake — this was real.

By the time I heard the news about what happened, I instantly turned to the Internet as my source of news. Fat chance I could get on CNN’s site; they’ve never been able to handle the load of a big news story, so I called home and told my wife, Kellie, to turn on the television and go to CNN…but she didn’t have to get that far. All of the networks were broadcasting the news, live, as it happened from New York. She watched in horror as the second plane crashed into the second tower and screamed as she saw the plane come in from outside the picture. “Why?!,” she screamed, “Why?!”.

Boston.com was a little better, bringing me my first glimpse at the horror, as depicted by the explosion of the second airliner slammed into the second tower. This couldn’t be happening, could it? But I wanted news. I wanted a live feed, images or not. NPR’s site was also clogged, so I went to Boston’s local NPR affiliate, WGBH, and managed to get what I wanted — a live streaming QuickTime audio feed. Now I was plugged in and could hear what was going on.

As other editors here posted messages about trying to find out about their authors in New York City, I too realized I had an author, Brook Conner, who lived in NYC. I tried calling, but the phone lines were busy, so I resorted to email:

Hi Brook,

I just heard what happened in NY, and would like to know whether you and your family are okay.

Please drop me a line and let me know if you’re well.

Chuck

A few minutes later, I received the following response:

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at 10:20 AM, Chuck Toporek wrote:

> I just heard what happened in NY, and would
> like to know whether you and your family are
> okay.

When I got this, my initial response was “What the heck is he talking about?”

Then I checked the news, saw “Plane crashes into World Trade Center” and suddenly realized why so many of my neighbors on 12th street were looking out their windows. I’m north of the WTC, and my apt faces north - they face south.

> Please drop me a line and let me know if you’re
> well.

Lots of sirens, but I’m fine. :-)

Gonna go up to the roof and see it now

Brook

Later, I received another message from Brook, saying that he had heard news saying his parents, who worked in Washington, DC, were also okay. Even though I’m just his editor, I was relieved to hear that both Brook and his family were fine.

As Kellie and I sat on the sofa last night, watching the images from CNN, listening to our President, George W. Bush, addressing the American public and the world, we could hear the drone of fighter jets overhead from nearby Hanscom Air Force Base. What had the world become? What happened to our Nation? The “Friendly Skies” have turned into the “Patrolled Skies,” and America would forever be changed by these terrorist acts of war.

I couldn’t help but feel shocked. Instead of crying like some people, I sat there feeling anger and disgust over what happened. We live in a “free” country with limitless borders and lax security, so it’s easy to see how this could happen, but it is still difficult to fathom the events of yesterday.

Many people lost their lives yesterday as they tried to do their jobs. Whether they were office workers, military personnel, police and firemen, or people who were trying to get somewhere on one of those four planes, they all set out yesterday morning like every other day. But today is not the same, and nor will tomorrow or the next.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who lost loved ones in the tragic acts of terrorism in NYC and DC.

“Call it not patience, Gaunt. It is despair.
In suff’ring thus thy brother to be slaughtered,

Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life,
Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee.
That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale, cold cowardice in noble breasts.”

- Duchess of Gloucester to John of Gaunt
Richard II, Act. 1, Scene 2

I do not want things to get back to normal.

I do not want to pretend this didn’t happen, don’t want to forget by the weekend and watch the Emmys. There’s a smoking hole in New York, a burning wound.

Reading many blogs and personal essays online throughout the day, I have read over and again that people are afraid the United States will overreact. I speak only for myself (but probably for many others) when I say, I worry we won’t react enough. I worry that we value comfort above doing what’s right.

I am not just interested in punishment or retribution; I’m interested in our future. I want us to react in ways that safeguard our country’s future. Ignoring acts of terrorism will not make them stop. I do not feel casually distant from the murdered thousands in New York and Washington, D.C. I refuse to reassure myself by logically reasoning that it probably won’t happen to me or my loved ones; it has happened to many of our loved ones, and I neither feel nor choose to feel aloof or safe.

And yet, as a student of the First World War, I am aware of the dangerous spiral that can occur when a superpower puffs out its chest and goes for revenge. Austria-Hungary felt justified in its righteous anger when it sought concessions from Serbia after the assassination of its crown prince, Franz Ferdinand, in June 1914. Serbia had, after all, harbored the terrorists who murdered Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie; indeed, its secret police had close links to the terrorist cell that carried out those acts. Austria-Hungary’s thirst for retribution, for unreasonable concessions by Serbia, led directly to the escalation that drew in Russia, then Germany, then France, and then Britain to that apocalypse. It’s not out of the question that unreasonable actions by the United States could cause a similar scenario to unfold. I believe that the limited, deeply unsatisfying responses by superpowers in the late 20th century result from those lessons: better to swallow your pride than to risk an escalation.

But doing nothing at all, or even a token act of retribution, seems as dangerous. I see images of Neville Chamberlin returning from Munich after handing over Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938, boasting about “Peace in our Time.” If revenge is not the way to go, then neither is appeasement.

I hope our response is measured only by justice and reason, not by complacency. I hope we don’t act in ways designed to get us back to normal as soon as possible, or let things cool down so that we can get on with our daily grind. Things won’t be quite normal ever again.

Dave Winer is doing a great job covering this tragedy as it unfolds with links to significant stories, including a London Times article on the attack being celebrated in the West Bank, reports from Cameron Barret in Brooklyn, and report that Akamai co-founder Danny Lewin was on board the American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles.

Over at Blogger.com, Evan has posted a page of blogs focused on the day’s tragedies.

Eric Raymond reviews some of the lessons learned from the day in this email he sent out:

>Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 16:22:11 -0400
>From: Eric S Raymond 
>To: blitz@thyrsus.com
>Subject: Decentralism against terrorism -- First lessons from the 9/11 attack
>Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com
>
>Some friends have asked me to step outside my normal role as a technology
>evangelist today, to point out in public that a political panic reaction
>to the 9/11 terrorist attack could do a great deal more damage than the
>attack itself.
>
>Today will not have been a victory for terrorism unless we make it
>one.  If we reward in any way the Palestinians who are now celebrating
>this hideous crime in the streets of the West Bank, that wil have been
>a victory for terrorism.  If we accept "anti-terrorism" measures that do
>further damage to our Constitutional freedoms, that will have been a victory
>for terrorism.  But if we learn the right lessons, if we make policies that
>preserve freedom and offer terrorists no result but a rapid and futile
>death, that will have been a victory for the rest of us.
>
>We have learned today that airport security is not the answer.  At
>least four separate terror teams were able to sail right past all the
>elaborate obstacles -- the demand for IDs, the metal detectors, the
>video cameras, the X-ray machines, the gunpowder sniffers, the gate
>agents and security people trained to spot terrorists by profile.
>There have been no reports that any other terror units were
>successfully prevented from achieving their objectives by these
>measures.  In fact, the early evidence is that all these
>police-state-like impositions on freedom were exactly useless -- and
>in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center lies the proof of
>their failure.
>
>We have learned today that increased surveillance is not the answer.
>The FBI's "Carnivore" tap on the U.S.'s Internet service providers
>didn't spot or prevent this disaster; nor did the NSA's illegal
>Echelon wiretaps on international telecommunications.  Video
>monitoring of public areas could have accomplished exactly nothing
>against terrorists taking even elementary concealment measures.  If we
>could somehow extend airport-level security to the entire U.S., it
>would be just as useless against any determined and even marginally
>competent enemy.
>
>We have learned today that trying to keep civilian weapons out of
>airplanes and other areas vulnerable to terrorist attack is not the
>answer either -- indeed, it is arguable that the lawmakers who
>disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes,
>leaving them no chance to stop the hijackers, bear part of the moral
>responsibility for this catastrophe.
>
>I expect that in the next few months, far too many politicians and
>pundits will press for draconian "anti-terrorist" laws and
>regulations.  Those who do so will be, whether intentionally or not,
>cooperating with the terrorists in their attempt to destroy our way of
>life -- and we should all remember that fact come election time.
>
>As an Internet technologist, I have learned that distributed problems
>require distributed solutions -- that centralization of power, the
>first resort of politicians who feed on crisis, is actually worse than
>useless, because centralizers regard the more effective coping
>strategies as threats and act to thwart them.
>
>Perhaps it is too much to hope that we will respond to this shattering
>tragedy as well as the Israelis, who have a long history of preventing
>similar atrocities by encouraging their civilians to carry concealed
>weapons and to shoot back at criminals and terrorists.  But it is in
>that policy of a distributed response to a distributed threat, with
>every single citizen taking personal responsibility for the defense of
>life and freedom, that our best hope for preventing recurrences of
>today's mass murders almost certainly lies.
>
>If we learn that lesson, perhaps today's deaths will not have been in vain.
>--
> Eric S. Raymond
>
>"The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to
>destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create...."
> -- Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819.
>
>

Related link: https://www.suberic.net/~dmm/perlsong.html

I managed to stumble across The Perl Song that some local friends wrote a while ago, aping an old Beastie Boys number.

In part:

Back in the DAY
Too many tasks made Larry SAY
There has to be another WAY
I have to use awk, sed, and BA-
sic to do all this stuff toDAY
So he wrote perl with no deLAY
and you don't even have to PAY
'Cept for the books from o.r.A.

Related link: https://www.scottevest.com/

A fishing vest sans the fish. “When was the last time:
your phone vibrated and you missed the call because you didn’t feel it? you had to turn on and off all of your devices at airport security? . . . you misplaced your keys?
your cell phone fell off your belt clip?” [via Zed; more at BoingBoing]

Related link: https://www.develop.com/conferences/conferencedotnet/materials/

I recently attended Developmentor’s Conference.NET, a fabulous event chock-a-block full of detailed, developer-focused tutorials-cum-sessions on Microsoft’s .NET initiative and related technologies. They’ve been kind enough to make PDFs of their materials available online. Among my favourites: W2 The HTTP Pipeline, Parts I & II (can you say mod_perl?), W3 Web Services Using .NET Objects, X6 XML Schema, and W6 Hailstorm Overview.

Related link: https://mindstorms.lego.com/inventions/invention.asp?ID={72BAE2EC-A6EC-5037-5BA0-…

Two Lego Mindstorms RCX bricks, aided by a Vision Command video camera for cube-face scanning and recognition, desktop PC as brains behind the brawn, and some publicly-available general Rubik’s Cube solutions, are able to solve a 3×3x3 cube in around 30 moves.

Related link: https://www.replaytv.com

replaytv returns to the DVR hardware market with a broadband network-ready, 320 hour recording, commercial-skipping, program sharing, digital photo viewing box of multimedia joy.
An ethernet port affords sharing of programs and digital photos on your home LAN or over the Internet. There’s no playing footsy with the networks here; AutoSkip(TM) and QuickSkip(TM) commercial-free TV is front-and-center on the features list. Other yummy features include: MyReplayTV for Web-based remote-control, Parental Control for the family video firewaller, digital audio and progressive output for the mediaphile, and oodles more.
Hey, what about 802.11b for backyard laptop viewing?

Related link: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/06/technology/circuits/05CND-STAT.html

David Pogue is as enjoyable as ever in his NY Times review of Windows XP, guts to GUI. “It turns out that even the good news is big: Windows XP is very attractive and extremely stable.”

Rob Flickenger, our system administrator at O’Reilly Network, is also our local wireless guru. After setting up an 802.11b wireless network, Rob went on to co-found
NoCat wireless community network with another O’Reilly developer, Schuyler Erle. NoCat is one of a growing number of community wireless networks that aim to offer free wireless coverage in limited areas. The movement has garnered a lot of press, including a recent InfoWorld article by Ephraim Schwartz that quoted a source referring to them as “parasitic grids.” I asked Rob what he thought of that term.

Rob Flickenger will talk about “Wireless Community 802.11b Networks” at the O’Reilly Conference on Peer to Peer and Web Services, Sept. 18th-21 in Washington, D.C. Related Articles: Bridging 802.11 Networks with Linksys Recipe for a Linux 802.11b Home Network 802.11b Tips, Tricks, and Facts

Rob: That was funny. I laughed and laughed. It doesn’t feel very parasitic every month when I pay my DSL bill. There’s nothing parasitic about a community network. The bandwidth is paid for. People are taking their existing connections and letting other people share it. There’s nothing new.

I think what has people scared is that, as I know and others know, bandwidth is significantly oversold. If everybody wanted to request their 384 kilobits or their 1.5 Mbps at the same time, you’d have the same thing happening that you had in the twenties with the run on the banks. The infrastructure can’t support it, even though it’s sold as such. I think that’s where the fear is coming from on the telco side.

But the fact remains that I signed a contract that says that I’m due 384 kilobits, on the average over a month, and dammit, I’m going to use them. They’re mine to do with as I please.

I think the “parasitic grid” term is just a smoke screen that gets people in the 3G world scared, as well they should be.

Dave: I think of them as entirely different uses. I think of 3G as being for a PDA on steroids, or an iPAQ. But maybe it’s the same thing.

Rob: It could be. 802.11 isn’t very well suited for that. There are a lot of things that it doesn’t do well, like roaming. Anything that we’re doing with community stuff is just a hack to make it seem like you can roam from node to node.

The thing that 3G is going to have over 802.11 is ubiquity. If you can have these tiny little devices, and you can have them everywhere, well there’s something to be said for that, even if they’re only at 20 Kbps. That’s terrific.

With the community LANs right now, people are concentrating on hot spots: we have downtowns, we’ve got the coffee shop, we’ve got the places we hang out. We’ve lit up a couple of apartment buildings here and there. But it’s not like you have access everywhere in the city where you might happen to be, like you have with most cell phones. That’s going to be the real strength of 3G, I think.

Dave: I actually thought the fellow from Wayport had a good point in that InfoWorld article. He sees the networks as a good thing for them, because it makes 802.11 more ubiquitous. It makes it more likely that someone will have a wireless card. He said there are places where it’s going to be free, and there are places where it’s going to cost, and that’s where you’ll find Wayport. And that seems fair enough. Because you can’t get community networks into an airport, for example.

Rob: Yeah, I definitely have nothing against people who are trying to make money selling captive portal access. More power to them. But if there are people in that area who are willing to share their access, more power to them, too.

Dave: What are you talking about at the upcoming P2P conference in Washington, D.C.?

Rob: The session’s on
community wireless, and we came up with a way to decentralize the responsibility of administering a community network. It’s the multi-level marketing scheme idea, which is, rather than have a couple of administrators who are responsible for saying this person is a co-op member but this person isn’t, and that person is, but I don’t like them, we set it up so that anyone who is a coop member is able to sponsor other coop members. So if you want to be a part of this network, you register and say, “Hey make me a part of this network.” Now you’re “public” class. Public class users typically have restricted access to networks and very restricted access to ports, because we don’t know who you are, and we don’t know if you’re going to abuse the network.

Once you’ve become a cooperative member, then you’re granted further access, up to the amount that the person who’s running the node deems appropriate.

So if I have an ISDN line, and I don’t want just anybody hogging it, I can say, “I’ll give the coop members 12 K, but I’ll only give the public class members 2 K.” It serves as an incentive to get people to become cooperative members.

As it is right now, somebody has to make that decision, and that somebody pretty much has universal access to everyone’s account. The idea we came up with is, anybody who’s a coop member can sponsor other people. When you log in, you’re notified that this many people are pending, they want access, do you want to grant them further access? That’s what I’ll be talking about.

Related link: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060932902/ref=pd_gw_qpt_1/104-3079620-97…

“Science writer Matt Ridley has found a way to tell someone else’s story without being accused of plagiarism. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters delves deep within your body (and, to be fair, Ridley’s too) looking for dirt dug up by the Human Genome Project.”