OK! I'm off to the World Social Forum today. And then Argentina for the duration of February.

Have fun ... and I'll be posting here and on ThoughtStorms as and when I can.

ciao

phil

Thank Poland!

Hadn't noticed, but Seb's Open Research seems to be back

Ross Mayfield : The word wiki isn't defined in the release, perhaps because it doesn't need to be anymore.

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Similar to a Wiki

I'm kind of awe-struck by this course ...

Syllabus, HUM 202 -- Toward a Literacy of Cooperation

Remember, today is a "buy nothing day" in the US.

Not One Damn Dime!

(even if it's a hoax, something might come of it if it's taken seriously. Society is weird like that. And remember, we're an empire now, we make our own reality. Fuck them! Let's make some reality back. Don't spend it today.)

2005 : Free software continues to eat into the mainstream software industry.

Software: Expect The Giants To Stay Sluggish

My God! The experts got the news around 8:00 am on Sunday morning local time. An hour later, the first massive wave struck. But the experts started to discuss the economic impacts when they discussed if a tsunami warning should be issued.

Swedish paper reports tsunami warning halted out of concern for tourist industry

Seymour M. Hersh : The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.

The New Yorker

Discordian exercise of the day. Grab the nearest book ...

Huygens sends first Titan images

How Cassini got to Saturn.

This is either very sad, or an opportunity for Python-based companies to beat the pants off everyone else.

Here is the key quote from the Newsweek article :

Scroll down and read it in the comments ... :-(

A natural, low-tech solution to tsunamis: mangroves | csmonitor.com

Surreal spam of the day :

Someone came and posted this URL on ThoughtStorms : "http://fucking-spamers.uni.cc"

Go to it and it's a site selling the domain name. Got that? Companies selling spam-hata domain names by spamming. Duh!

David Temkin has the best tagline I've seen on a weblog : every day, computers are making people easier to use

:-)


davidtemkin.com

JohnRobb in the article below says no significant Global Guerrilla activity has appeared in Afghanistan. But that will change if the US tries to suppress opium production in the country. As this is the only viable crop for large parts of the population.

Now the US is considering that.

JohnRobb : I wish I wasn't right on this, but I was right about a guerrilla war in Iraq, infrastructure disruption in Russia, growing instability in Saudi Arabia, high oil prices (due to global guerrilla activity), and the lack of meaningful guerrilla opposition in Afghanistan (at least until they begin to crack down on opium production this year).

John Robb's Weblog

43 things is Yet Another Social thingie. This time you categorize yourself and find friends not according to what you say you *are* interested in, but by what you want to do.

Wonder what difference this makes. The first thing I did when I got my account (you have to queue up for a few days to get in) was sign up for "I want to become a better programmer" and "I want to be more efficient when working". How will these categories differ from joing a "programming tribe" or a "Getting Things Done" tribe? We'll see.

interstar on 43 Things

Surreal spam of the day :

From: 'Moratoria B. Herring' <misogynist@logicsouth.com>

Subject: dictates

albumin

Happy new year everyone!

Hope 2005 is going to be good (ie. interesting, productive, happy, peaceful, inspiring, exciting, prosperous etc.) for you all.

:-)