Current Events

There's an interesting post on the Metroblogging New Orleans site today titled "The Road Back." It discusses a few recent articles in The Times-Picayune (the daily newspaper for the Greater New Orleans area) concerning the current economy, and the various difficulties encoutnered on a daily basis by those that have already moved back home. It's a pretty enlightening read, especially the newspaper articles. For convenience, I've linked to the articles below.

Post-Katrina New Orleans proves pricey
Wounded N.O. economy remains in coma
Some who returned to New Orleans consider leaving (not the T-P, but still worth reading)

As reported on Slashdot:

"Imagine your life ruined by an organized mob that convicts with scant, unreliable evidence. Fueled only by hearsay and rumors, an invisible horde of your fellow citizens begins bombarding your snailbox, email, phone, work, school and family with threats, insults and general harassment. You are forced to drop out of school and quit your job as a result of constant attacks. You are shunned and ridiculed in public as anywhere you go, you are instantly recognized. Although it may seem to be just a second-rate Hollywood nightmare scenario reminiscent of "The Net," this sort of "organized mob" justice is being dealt out freely in South Korea where net usage is booming. So freely, in fact, that almost 1 in 10 of 13-65 year-olds has felt its sting. Could this trend hit the U.S.? Will policing net behavior eventually become necessary?"

This rather eye-opening article is a good example of what can happen when mob mentality rules and an individual's personal rights are simply ignored.

Full article:  http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/14/news/korea.php

I recently discovered a very good weblog focusing on current events in New Orleans. Anyone interested should head over to Metroblogging New Orleans.

On a related note, Network World recently published an article on communcations network disruptions in the wake of Katrina, and what businesses are doing now to mitigate risk from a future storm. It's a very interesting article, and well worth taking a few minutes to read.

Full links:
Metroblogging New Orleans - http://neworleans.metblogs.com/
Hell or High Water - http://www.networkworld.com/research/2006/081406-katrina-rewiring-neworleans.html

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) reported earlier today about the victory by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) in their lawsuit to halt the illegal and unconstitional domestic spying program being performed by the NSA at the request of the Bush administration. This is an important early victory, and strengthens the EFF's own case against AT&T for "violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications."

More details can be found in the EFF summary: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004880.php
as well as the AP report: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_on_go_pr_wh/warrantless_surveillance

You are engaged in a chat session with some friends and colleagues, when one of them makes a witty remark or imparts a pithy bit of information. You hit CTRL-A and select the conversation, then copy it to a document that you save. Under a little-noticed decision in a New Hampshire Superior Court in late February, these actions may just land you in jail.

So does that sound as rediculous to you as it does to me? You'll need to read the full story on SecurityFocus for all the details, but needless to say, it's an awful situation. Heck, all major chat clients (including the oh-so-wonderful Gaim include features to automatically save transcripts. This is a selling point. Let's hope this situation gets resolved quickly.

Here's the full story.

CNet has an interesting story today about DARPA and its two recent high-profile, and highly criticized, projects; the Total Information Awareness (aka Terrorist Information Awareness) and FutureMAP projects.

Now, I'm personally against both of these (I believe the TIA goes to far and can easily be exploited, and FutureMAP is just asking for trouble from foreign nations), but I agree with the author that DARPA itself is a highly regarded and necessary agency.

Read the full story for more thoughts on this.

Ok, I agree that this is a rather sad first posting in the News and Current Events topic, but it was just too good to pass up.

According a Yahoo TV article, 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin turned an $800 stock investment into a $350 million portfolio in only two weeks. How'd he do it? By traveling back in time from 2256.

Duh.

Full (and amusing) Story