The Code Red Hype Hall Of Shame Misc. 'We've had no end of entertainment these past weeks with the Code Red and Code Red Junior IIS worms. Vast battalions of 'security experts' paraded themselves eagerly before the press, trotting out their finest doomsday quotes for a shot at fifteen minutes of fame. Meanwhile, legions of well-groomed, academically-inclined twinkies armed with tape recorders and Masters' Degrees in journalism greedily sucked them up, and obediently generated the most laughable headlines predicting that Code Red would break the Internet.

Risking All to Expose the Taliban Polical Speech 'The seemingly endless list of activities banned by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban includes taking pictures of people and animals, using the Internet, educating girls and badmouthing the government.' 'The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan does all of the above.' 'The organization of social activists risks incarceration and worse to expose atrocities committed by one of the world's most repressive regimes. RAWA was founded in 1977, but only garnered international fame in 1997 after it launched a website documenting the bizarre and tragic details of life under the Taliban.

Economist.com Misc. 'It is certainly a pity that the Internet has not turned out to be quite the force for freedom that it once promised to be. But in many ways, the imposition of local rules may be better than the alternatives: no regulation at all, or a single set of rules for the whole world. A complete lack of regulation gives a free hand to cheats and criminals, and expecting countries with different cultural values to agree upon even a set of lowest-common-denominator rules is unrealistic.

Perfect Fear Factor Stunt Personal Commentary My wife has gotten addicted to NBC's "Fear Factor", and in a one-bedroom apartment where I'm currently home nearly all the time, that means by extension, so have I. A lot of people think it's a clear contender for the trashiest show on television, but I think that's only true from the "voyeur" point of view. From another point of view, the show also offer psychological insights into the contestants, though the insights aren't as profound as I think the Weakest Link may offer.

Revisiting isolation and its link to the Internet Technology & Sociology 'The Internet has grown from an alpha-geek subculture to a near-ubiquitous presence and as it has grown, so have the challenges in assessing its impact on society. Attempting to distill any broad conclusions about its ultimate impact is an exercise akin to asking ``What is the impact of automotive technology on our lives?'' That question might have been useful in 1920, but today the answer would be so diffuse as to be meaningless.

freedom in fiction Patents 'The general public often wrongly attributes inspiration. It comes from individuals without any company input. But big companies work hard to imply the reverse is so. A premise is employees as zombies running programs. Big companies lay claim to the mythical smart fountain.' 'Something went very wrong somewhere. What to do? Now megacorps herd the intellectual property parade. Every idea has to belong to some corp, never all of us.

Judges: Don't Monitor Our PCs Misc. 'Some federal judges are protesting the monitoring of their computers by Washington managers concerned about personal Internet use.' 'The judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco claim the practice is illegal. They are pressing to get it stopped, and the Supreme Court chief justice and other judges will consider the request next month.' 'To demonstrate their discontent, judges of the 9th Circuit ordered staff to disable monitoring software in May.

Slashdot | Pavlovich Jurisdictional Challenge Denied DVD & DeCSS From Slashdot: 'The Sixth District Court of Appeals has denied Matt Pavlovich's challenge to being sued in California for the act of posting DeCSS on an internet web site.' Don't miss this comment (#224), which provides a nice counterbalance.  

Slashdot | EU & US Patent "Syncing" Patents From Slashdot: Christian Treczoks writes 'Software patents are threatening Europe, too. The EC said 'we want software patents to harmonize with the US', but the public - private persons and small to medium businesses - objected. So they made an 'Analysis' of the replies. Effectively, 91% are against patenting software, but, as the majority of the proponents are important business figures, it's a draw.

German's Anti-Hate Push Angers Country Watch- Germany 'German Interior Minister Otto Schily has not even firmed up plans to visit Washington this fall to talk with U.S. officials about battling neo-Nazi websites through legal channels, and already the plan has generated controversy...' 'This week, the controversy over how to handle the problem of hate content on the Internet kicked up anew when Schily told World on Sunday, a German paper, that he planned to meet "