Check out the TIA (Total Information Awareness) logo merchandise at Cafeshops.com. It's a hoot and the proceeds go to the ACLU.

Apple Computer this morning announced a new version of the Xserve 1U server and a new RAID device called (not surprisingly) Xserve RAID. The new Xserve has one or 2 1.33GHz G4 CPUs and uses DDR333 RAM for faster access. It also contains the new FirewWire-800 announced only one …

A number of sites have pointers to this internal memo[1] allegedly from Sun Microsystems and posted on InternalMemos.com[2]. The gist of the memo is that more resources need to be committed within Sun to make sure that the development efforts necessary are spent on Java and that …

The BBC is reporting in the following article that a 10m hole opened up yesterday swallowing 3 lawns (gardens by English standards). The apparent cause is the boring of a connecting tunnel to London from the Chunnel that was taking place 20m below the surface.

According to an article on Yahoo, the Japanese government is continuing to invest money in supporting developers who are working on open source solutions for consumer electronics and government desktops.

With Verizon's recent request for a stay of the order for it to provide information to the record labels after a recent court loss, the labels are fighting back. According to an article from CNet, the RIAA has filed a strongly worded brief accusing Verizon of failing to live up …

You may or may not have seen these "Harley Earl" Buick ads recently. If you haven't, basically the advertisements show the relatively nondescript, 1950's-dressed Harley Earl introducing himself and talking about how decadent his new car designs are. Being a young pup as I am, I just assumed Mr. Earl …

The Liberty Alliance Project released a white paper[1] entitled "Liberty and 3rd Party Identity Systems", which aims to describe how the Liberty Project compares to and inter-operates with identity packages such as .NET Passport (Microsoft) and Verified by Visa (Visa). White paper no longer available. ↩︎

In an obvious effort to deflect recent complaints (and legal action) about the run-away nature of the TIA (Total Information Awareness) initiative to spy on Americans, the Pentagon announced the formation of two boards to help oversee the program. InfoWorld reports in this article that the two boards are being …

A message on the Linux Kernel mailing list accuses Castle Technology Ltd, UK of incorporating portions of the Linux Kernel into their product RiscOS. Now the Linux Kernel folks are going to have to decide if they want to sue or take some other legal action.

CNN is reporting in this story that a 20-year-old man who carjacked the van of a California Judo team has now been sentenced for his crime. This is clearly a case of choosing the wrong victim, because not only did he get a chance to spend 11 years in jail …

An article in InfoWorld states that the RIAA has once again been attacked by people who apparently don't agree with the organization.

The Wall Street Journal reports in an article[1] that a local Great Falls, VA research firm found that most employees spend more time online at home doing work that at work doing personal things. The snippet is about a third of the way down the page and states that …

After a few years of people talking about too much porn, surfing, and bad internet jokes in the workplace, an article in Business 2.0 draws attention to the possibility that monitoring and cracking down on personal internet access at work could be counterproductive. The piece also theorizes that an …

According to an article from CNet, the Chinese company Huawai Technologies that was accused by Cisco of creating illegal clones of their equipment has now stopped shipping them to the U.S. for now.

According to an article[1] reported today in the Washington Post, President Bush has signed National Security Presidential Directive 16, calling for the creation of a national strategy for when and how to deploy cyber-warfare. The directive was apparently signed in July, but was only disclosed recently. Perhaps it is …

Wired magazine is reporting in an article about the findings of a group of researchers in New Zealand. It appears that they have actually found a case of what they call "eThrombosis", similar to the problem that is reported to occur on long airplane trips in which a blood clot …

General Electric has started shipping materials with Sollx, it's newest plastic that has a glossy sheen when applied with other plastics. An article in Business 2.0 describes recent successes with the plastic in products such as the Segway. GE Plastic's plan is to approach automobile manufacturers who could use …

India has renamed the Metsat-1 satellite and all new satellites in the series to Kalpana-1 and so forth. According to a news release from the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Prime Minister of India announced this at a memorial service yesterday. The first Metsat satellite (Metsat-1) was launched in September …

Boeing announced late last year that its Connexion service would be delivering high-speed internet access to plane travelers in 2003. So far, the trials (mostly with Lufthansa have been going well, with 30%+ of the customers signing up for the service on flights where it is available. The reporter in …