China tries to wipe Internet icon from Web - Yahoo! News

Wired News: No Sex, Please, We're Repressed

"Beijing has worked hard but struggled to extend its heavy-handed control of domestic media to the country's booming internet, which is forecast to have 120 million users, second only to the United States, by the end of the year."

~~ China using their powers
of E-Governance in a totalitarian fashion. ~
~ techno pol. ~~

ABC News: More U.S. Cities Pushing Public Wireless Nets

ABC News: More U.S. Cities Pushing Public Wireless Nets

ABC News: Most New York Voters Back Subway Searches

ABC News: Most New York Voters Back Subway Searches

"New Poll Shows That 72 Percent of N.Y. Voters Support Random Police Searches of Bags in Subways"

~~~ Majority opinion does not overcome the US Consitution. The searches are too random to be effective. And any profiling WILL NOT stand a Court test . The searches simply give the politicians a new mega-phone with which to speak staunchly on Terrorism. All while avoiding the substance of the core issue, that being : the War in Iraq is not going well. ~~~ technopolitical ~~

Salon.com News | Why racial profiling doesn't work - NP

Salon.com News | Why racial profiling doesn't work - NP

Radio Free America

~~ Video did not Kill the Radio Star,, big biz like Clear Channel did though.
BUT community-based radio stations hold out hope for making radio relevant again. ~~~
~~ technopolitical ~

"American Prospect Online - ViewWeb
Radio Free America Low-power radio stations may not have Clear Channel’s candlepower, but what they lack in wattage they make up in commitment"

"From the beginning, independent, community-based radio stations picked up on the campaign and used the air to organize support for the boycott. And in December 2003, the Prometheus Radio Project -- a small, nonprofit made up of former radio-pirates-turned-media-advocates -- organized a band of volunteers to travel to Immokalee, Florida, for a weekend to help the workers set up their own low-power radio station, WCIW. Since then, says Ramirez, the station, which broadcasts in multiple languages, has helped to unite and organize the diverse group of workers and has provided a platform for reaching out to political allies across the country."

~

Notorious apartheid policeman in Biko case dies - Yahoo! News

Notorious apartheid policeman in Biko case dies - Yahoo! News

~~ Time to meet your Creator. ~~ tp

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pioneering net community sold off

~~~ Is the internet getting old ?
Will I be telling my grandchildren that I used "The Well" ,
when it first went online !!"

Even though i did not.

{ Though yours truly was online in 1986 through GREENLINK--- which was Greenpeace 's early & primitive global internet network---- when i was a staffer in the NYC office. }~~` . TP

" Pioneering net community sold off"


The pioneering electronic community known as The Well is being sold off.

Set up in 1985 before the net was widely used, The Well helped to define the basic ethic and etiquette of online life.

Many of the early members of The Well have gone on to become the guiding lights of net as it has risen to its current level of prominence.

TV Campaign by a Public Advocate Candidate Stresses a Wireless City - New York Times

~~ Very interesting and forward looking. Now the Homeless & Welfare recipients can sleep easily, knowing the city will be wired for broadband. But yes, down the road this is inevitable in all cities, but should it be a priority now ? -- when the $$ could go to help those who are more worried about food & health ~~~ TP

August 19, 2005
TV Campaign by a Public Advocate Candidate Stresses a Wireless City
By JONATHAN P. HICKS http://www.nytimes.com/

Throughout the campaign, Mr. Rasiej (pronounced Ra-SHAY), has championed an unconventional platform of expanding computer use and high-speed information technology for the public. As a cornerstone of his campaign, he said he would seek to create wireless Internet access throughout the city and in the subways. The campaign declined to disclose how much the ad campaign cost. "New Yorkers, look around you," Mr. Rasiej states in one of the ads, with a blur of traffic on the screen and a montage that lifted some footage from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's campaign commercials. "See your city as it could be. Imagine if firefighters could download floor plans of burning buildings on their way to a fire. Imagine signs on subway and bus stops telling us when the next train or bus is going to arrive. Imagine being able to call 911 in a subway in an emergency." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/nyregion/metrocampaigns/19advocate.html

"Web map tracks demand for major news"

"What's next? Web map tracks demand for major news"
By Eric Auchard

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - It's debatable how big a deal any specific news event is compared to all the other human mayhem that occurs each day. Journalists, editors, historians and the guy at the end of the bar could probably never agree.

A news mapping service introduced on Thursday by Akamai Technologies Inc. promises to give unprecedented insight into the relative hunger that millions of Internet users have to learn of breaking events minute-by-minute."

~ ~ I hope this does not become the dog wagging the tail.
Just because a newsstory is popular, does not mean it is also "news" worthy. ~~ tp~~~

"Akamai, which helps speed delivery of 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic over its network, is looking to count the sum of page requests across 100 major news sites it serves to rank interest in major events on a scale never seen before.

The Akamai Net News Index provides a map of six global regions and measures the current appetite for news relative to average daily demand in terms of millions of visitors to news sites per minute, per week, within each geographic region."

Spikes in traffic can reveal the next wave of news demand.

David Weiss, Who Filmed Hot Type's Last Days, Dies - New York Times

David Weiss, Who Filmed Hot Type's Last Days, Dies - New York Times:

"David Loeb Weiss was born in Warsaw in either 1911 or 1912, and came to the United States with his family as a child. He earned a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's in political science from the New School for Social Research. He rode the rails a hobo and had a variety of jobs, among them dishwasher, busboy, waiter, union organizer, merchant seaman and teacher."


~~ What an interesting Life !! G-D Bless his soul ~~ TP

BBC NEWS | Technology | Netting the connected electorate

~~~ In the USA 2004 race the Bush team "netted" the religious right. ~~ TP

BBC NEWS | Technology | Netting the connected electorate
"Widespread access to and use of the net is influencing the complex balance of influences that determine voting patterns and electoral outcomes. One of the comments made by several commentators this time around was that we did not seem to be having a "national" election but instead it was a collection of local contests. I know that this is how it is supposed to work, but the last 50 years have seen this model break down as national questions and national politicians dominate the debate, manipulating a suitably pliant media into reporting it in these terms. " The net, by creating connections between people and giving anyone who wanted it access to a vast pool of information on candidates, policies, likely outcomes and strategic options, did what it does best: it connected the nodes on the electoral map and allowed information to flow.

Study: More Using Web for Political News

~~~~ Ah , but are they getting substance in their news , reporting that really makes them think about and deeply examine the important life and death issues of our time ?

Or are they using the internet to get just simple minded knee-jerk , Rush Limbaugh-Fox- O'Reilly style junk ??

I report you decide !! ~~ TP

"Study: More using Web for political news"

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP INTERNET WRITER

"It's a channel difference not a substantive difference," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. "Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people."

NEW YORK (AP) - Reliance on the Internet for political news during last year's presidential campaign grew sixfold from 1996, while the influence of newspapers dropped sharply, according to a study issued Sunday.

Eighteen percent of American adults cited the Internet as one of their two main sources of news about the presidential races, compared with 3 percent in 1996. The reliance on television grew slightly to 78 percent, up from 72 percent.

Meanwhile, the influence of newspapers dropped to 39 percent last year, from 60 percent in 1996, according to the joint, telephone-based survey from the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Nonetheless, Americans who got campaign news over the Internet were more likely to visit sites of major news organizations like CNN and The New York Times (43 percent) rather than Internet-only resources such as candidate Web sites and Web journals, known as blogs (24 percent).

Twenty-eight percent said they primarily used news pages of America Online Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other online services, which carry dispatches from traditional news sources like The Associated Press and Reuters.

"It's a channel difference not a substantive difference," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. "Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people."

The study also found the political news audience more mainstream - more women, minorities, older Americans and lower-income users than before.

Fifty-eight percent of political news users cited convenience as their main reason for using the Internet. This group was more likely to use the Internet sites of traditional news organizations or online services.

But one-third of political news consumers cited a belief that they did not get all the news and information they wanted from papers and television, and another 11 percent said the Web had information not available elsewhere. These individuals were more likely to visit blogs or campaign sites for information.

And blogs, Rainie said, likely had an indirect influence on what campaigns talked about and what news organizations covered.

Blogs, for instance, have been credited with forcing an apology from CBS News anchor Dan Rather for last fall's "60 Minutes" report on President Bush's National Guard service.

Blogs "are having a modest level of impact on the voter side and probably a more dramatic impact on the institutional side," Rainie said. "Blogs are still a realm where very, very active and pretty elite, both technologically oriented people and politically oriented people go."

The study also found that the reliance on the Internet for political news was most pronounced among those with high-speed connections at home - 38 percent among broadband users against 28 percent among all Internet users. Reliance on newspapers was roughly even between those groups - 36 percent for broadband and 38 percent for all users.

Forty percent of Internet users found the Internet important in helping them decide for whom to vote, while 20 percent said the online information made a difference.

The random survey of 2,200 adults, including 1,324 Internet users, was conducted Nov. 4-22 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

==============

"Study warns of junk-news diet" / From Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2005

This Blog is NOT Junk news !!!!!

Free Press News : Printable Format

Study warns of junk-news diet
From Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2005
By James Rainey

American consumers confront an ever-broader river of news from myriad sources, but the standard for gathering and presenting the information tends to be “faster, looser and cheaper” than in the past, according to a survey of the news business to be released today by a media watchdog group.

Internet blogs and cable TV programs have led the trend toward a “journalism of assertion” that relies less on reporting than personal opinion, reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated with Columbia University.

That trend makes it more important for journalists “to document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it,” the organization concluded in its annual report.

On two of the top media stories of 2004, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet merited a mixed verdict, the study found.

On one hand, the study’s review of 250 randomly selected stories buttressed the complaint that President Bush got worse coverage than Sen. John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential race. Coverage of the war in Iraq, on the other hand, tended to be far more neutral than some critics had charged — with 2,200 stories containing roughly an even mix of positive, negative and neutral accounts.

The second annual report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is based in Washington, focused more on trends and prospects than on content. The considerable change facing the industry is revealed in a few facts: Online advertising has increased 30% to almost $10 billion in one year and estimated readership of blogs has increased 58% in six months. About 32 million Americans say they have obtained information from the Web logs, or journals, known as blogs.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the research project, said that with the growth in Internet commentary, the culture of opinion journalism has expanded exponentially. Blogging has its value — exposing, the report said, hasty reporting by CBS News on memos that referred to Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War. But it can also lead the public astray, the report found, such as when it fomented the “unfounded conspiracy theory” that Republicans stole the presidential election in Ohio.

Rather than taking the time to gather and scrutinize each piece of information — the model for the mainstream media — the report said some bloggers hewed to another philosophy: “Publish anything, especially points of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward in the response of fellow bloggers.”

Although the traditional media continue to have struggles of their own, the public’s view of the believability of news organizations has stabilized somewhat in the last two years, according to the study, which relied on research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. About 35% of Americans said the media get the facts straight.

Only better reporting and increased transparency about its tactics will help the media regain credibility, the study concluded.

“Since citizens have a deeper range of information at their fingertips, the level of proof in the press must rise accordingly,” it said. “In effect, the era of trust-me journalism has passed and the era of show-me journalism has begun.”

For its analysis of media content in 2004, the study team partnered with researchers at four universities to review coverage of two big stories and other trends.

The presidential race

Days were randomly selected from throughout the race to profile the equivalent of one month of coverage. Two hundred and fifty stories were then dissected. Any that had twice as many positive comments as negative ones were deemed “positive” and the reverse for negative references. The review found 36% of the stories about Bush to be negative, compared with 12% negative about Kerry. It found 20% positive stories about Bush, compared with less than 30% positive about his Democratic challenger.

The study did not try to assess whether the outcome reflected partisan bias against the Republican Bush, a tendency to view incumbents more harshly, or some other cause.

The war in Iraq

Using a similar methodology on 2,187 stories, the study found reporting of the conflict had slightly more stories with a clearly negative tone than stories with a clearly positive tone — 25% negative, compared to 20% positive. The largest number, 35%, had no decided tone and another 20% were on multiple subjects with no apparent tilt.

Newspaper coverage most closely mirrored that balance, while Fox had the most pronounced slant. The cable TV outlet aired twice as many positive as negative pieces about the war.

That finding may be partly related to a larger tendency at Fox on all kinds of stories that allows on-air personalities to offer their personal opinions. Seven out of 10 Fox stories reviewed in the study included opinions not attributed to reporting. That happened in less than one of 10 CNN stories and in less than one of three stories aired on MSNBC.

Rosenstiel linked the opinionated nature of Fox programs partly to big-name personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, whose programs are built largely around his musings. But even field reporters on the network employ a colloquial style. In one instance, a Fox journalist expressed hope that Iraqi forces, rather than Americans, capture a terrorism suspect. In another, a reporter speculated that Martha Stewart might want to buy back her company’s stock.

Despite the many issues raised about the media’s reliability and challenges in holding audiences (newspaper readership dropped again in 2004 and the audience for cable television stopped growing), the mainstream media continued to be a big moneymaker.

Corporations have been slow, however, to fold that money back into newsgathering. The number of editorial employees at American newspapers shrank by 500 in the most recent year studied. Local TV stations employ fewer news people than they did in the boom economy of 2000.

The study found surprising the lack of investment in websites devoted to news; 62% of those working for Internet news outlets said their newsrooms had suffered cuts in the last three years, far greater than the 37% of news people at traditional outlets who said their staffs had been cut.

The reductions came despite the spiraling Internet audience and seemed tied to a larger trend in American journalism that emphasizes “prepackaging and presenting information, not … gathering it,” the study concluded.

The study recommended that news consumers, like dieters, become more discerning.

“The real crisis may be news obesity,” the study said, “consuming too little that can nourish citizens and too much that can bloat them.”
======================

This article is from Los Angeles Times. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.

"Bush Denies U.S. Plans to Attack Iran " By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

Do you believe him? ~~~TP

Bush Denies U.S. Plans to Attack Iran
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush said Tuesday that it is "simply ridiculous" to assume that the United States has plans to attack Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program after discussing the issue with European allies.
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The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Chinese Censors and Web Users Match Wits

~~ You will notice I pick on the Chinese Censors alot .
Remember China , I 'm monitoring   you !!
Now go export something disposable to the USA....
you Commie-Capitalist you.
~~ TechnPolitical~ ~

March 4, 2005
Chinese Censors and Web Users Match Wits
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/international/asia/04censor.html
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

HANGHAI, March 3 - For many China watchers, the holding of a National People's Congress beginning this weekend is an ideal occasion for gleaning the inner workings of this country's closed political system. For specialists in China's Internet controls, though, the gathering of legislators and top political leaders offers a chance to measure the state of the art of Web censorship.

National Government ID cards

****************************************
~~~National Government ID cards have the potential for serious abuse. Recent hacking incidents into the data bases of both Gov't , and Commmercial , shows that while national security is important , a certain wall of privacy for American Cittzens needs be maitained to keep America a truly free place. Write to you legislators to oppose the bill .{On the Net: http://thomas.loc.gov/, Information on the bill, H.R. 418} ~ ~ TP

Groups Share Concerns About House-Passed Bill That Rewrites

By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writer

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=535662

WASHINGTON Feb 27, 2005 --
"But in Montana, members of the state House are refusing to cede

their driver's license authority to Washington. Last week, they

approved a bill that prohibits the adoption of federal driver's

license standards for noncommercial licenses.
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., was one of eight

Republicans who voted against the bill."In our efforts to protect

our homeland and increase our border security we must move

forward with solid measures. At the same time, our individual civil

rights are nonnegotiable," Pombo said in a statement. "The

establishment of a national ID card, I believe, has the possibility of

violating those rights."

On the Net:http://thomas.loc.gov/ Information on the bill, H.R. 418:Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=535662


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"On the Net, Unseen Eyes" NY Times :By PATRICK DI JUSTO

If you own a webcam be careful. ~~ tp

"On the Net, Unseen Eyes"
NY Times :By PATRICK DI JUSTO
Published: February 24, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/technology/circuits/24camm.html

With the proliferation of surveillance cameras in everyday life and Webcams at home computers, the ease with which unsecured cameras can be detected on the Internet has become an increasner's permission.

The Yankee Group, a market research firm, estimates that as many as 13 percent of American households have a Webcam attached to one of their computers, often sitting on top of a monitor in a living room or a bedroom.

It is illegal to gain access to a secured computer without the proper authorization, even if the computer's password is publicly known. But is it legal to look at unsecured Webcams discovered as a result of a Google search, through the back door, so to speak? "It's probably not illegal, but you never know," said Annalee Newitz, policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. "That would be the court case - would a reasonable person consider these cameras to be public?"

Jennifer Stisa Granick, executive director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, agrees that it is a gray area. "The law states you have to know that you're not authorized to look at this information," she said. "But if it's available through Google, most people would reasonably think that it was all right. But what if a person didn't realize that their Webcam image was going out over the Internet? Do they have an expectation of privacy?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/technology/circuits/24camm.html

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======

Reporter's shield bill introduced in House , © 2005 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

~ ~ ~ The Court ruling that reporters
can be compelled to reveal their
sources is bad news. Luckily,
Congress can fix the situation
A Republican and a Democrat
co-sponsoring a much need

piece of legislation. ~~ TP

Reporter's shield bill introduced in House
© 2005 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Journalists would be shielded from
being forced to reveal confidential
sources under the
"Free Flow of Information Act."
Reporters must testify in CIA leak probe

BY TOM BRUNEWASHINGTON BUREAU

February 16, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that two reporters must testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources in a probe trying to determine who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer.

In an expected ruling, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that held in contempt Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times for refusing to testify.

Time and the Times Tuesday said ---- { what an intereresting pharse, almost poetic ~~tp ] ---- they would appeal the decision to the full circuit and possibly the Supreme Court, and would seek a stay to keep the reporters out of jail.

The publications had tried to quash the subpoenas based on the First Amendment and reporters' privilege to protect confidential sources under federal common law, which is based on practice than on statutes.

In October, District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled against them.The decision prompted calls from Floyd Abrams, attorney for both reporters, and groups such as Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, for Congress to enact a federal shield law to permit reporters to protect confidential sources.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
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A Federal Court Rules that the First Amendment to the US constitution, means that no authority can restrict the flow of ANY information to any citizen

~~ A Federal Court Rules that the First Amendment to the US constitution, means that no authority can restrict the flow of ANY information to any citizen, even if that citizen be in jail. I think that is very good. ~~ tp

Guess Who WANTS Junk Mail?
Wed Feb 2, 2005 10:08 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Some Americans might think of junk mail as cruel and unusual punishment, but a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that prison officials may not stop bulk mail and catalogs from reaching prisoners.

The case stems from a lawsuit against Washington state's Department of Corrections, which had barred its inmates from receiving such mailed materials.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling and rejected arguments that banning bulk mail makes it easier to run a prison and reduces the risk of fire.

"Publishers have a First Amendment right to communicate with prisoners by mail, and inmates have a First Amendment right to receive this mail," Arthur Alarcon wrote for the three-judge panel.

The "ban on non-subscription bulk mail and catalogs is not rationally related to a legitimate penological interest and is therefore unconstitutional," he added.

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NIH to Ban Deals With Drug Firms

~~~: It is about time ! The drug company –U.S. government axis is proving to be a great danger, with too many pharmaceuticals going to market and into American bodies, before being fully and objectively tested ~~TP

NIH to Ban Deals With Drug Firms
By David Willman, L.A.Times Staff Writer .

WASHINGTON Feb. 1 2005 — Under a far-reaching reform to be announced today, all staff scientists at the National Institutes of Health will be banned from accepting any consulting fees or other income from drug companies, and the employees must also divest industry stock holdings, officials said.

Associated Press : Microsoft Corp. offered Wednesday to begin alerting the world's governments early to CyberThreats....."l

Microsoft Corp is big , very big. ~~tp

Microsoft Offering Gov'ts Early Warnings
02.02.2005, 04:25 PM

Associated Press : Microsoft Corp. offered Wednesday to begin alerting the world's governments early to cyberthreats and security flaws in its attack-prone software.

So far three countries, Canada, Chile and Norway, as well as the U.S. state of Delaware, have been engaged in the new project, Vanzini said.
"Prevention of cyberdisruptions and improving our capacity to respond to incidents are critical to securing both our economy and public safety," Anne McLellan, Canada's Minister of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness, said in a statement.

Microsoft said it is currently in discussions with a number of countries about their possible participation in the program.
Governments currently under a trade embargo with the United States are not eligible to sign up to the program, which is provided free of charge.

====================================
===

"The Bush administration suffered a legal setback over its conduct of the war on terror yesterday..." : Guardian www.guardian.co.uk ;;;

~~~ Below another example of how the Bush Team really does not understand to foundations of American Democracy. Dictatorships do detention without trial. In the USA , everyone --- no matter their legal or citizenship standing --is entitled to their day in PUBLIC courts when accused of a crime. ~` ~~~ ~` TP

Guantánamo tribunals ruled Illegal
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday February 1, 2005
Guardian / http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The Bush administration suffered a legal setback over its conduct of the war on terror yesterday when a US federal judge ruled that the special military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay were unlawful.
The judgment was seen as a victory for the 540 detainees in Guantánamo, and for civil rights organisations which have campaigned for three years for inmates to have the right to challenge their detentions in court.
"This means that these folks are actually going to get a hearing," said Barbara Olshansky, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights. "[The judge] is saying that the rule of law in this country cannot be disregarded by executive fiat - despite what this administration might want."
The judgment was highly critical of the Pentagon's military tribunals, set up in June last year to decide whether to continue holding the inmates at Guantánamo.
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"HP claims molecular computing breakthrough",,James Niccolai, IDG News Service, Paris Bureau

~ ~ Electronics are gonna get smaller and smaller in size , while growing bigger and bigger in power.

Personally, I want a PDA that cleans my house. and an MP3 player , plus a cellpone in my bi-focals .
~~TP

“The researchers said their technology could lead to computers that are thousands of times more powerful than those that exist today.”
IDG News Service 2/1/05
James Niccolai, IDG News Service, Paris Bureau
"HP claims molecular computing breakthrough"


Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) have created a molecular-scale device that they say could one day replace the transistors used in today's computer chips.

In a paper to be published Tuesday in the Journal of Applied Physics, the three researchers from HP's Quantum Science Research Group describe how they created a tiny device that can perform one of the essential logic functions in computing devices that measure just nanometers across.

The technology could eventually be used to complement and even replace current transistors, which are expected to hit certain physical limits in the coming years that will prevent them from being made any smaller. The researchers said their technology could lead to computers that are thousands of times more powerful than those that exist today.

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You would think “Freedom of information” would mean “Free Information”, right ? ~ TP

~~~: You would think “Freedom of information” would mean “Free Information”, right ? ~ TP

Feds ask group to pay almost $373,000 for records
By The Associated Press
02.01.05

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department says a group that wants to see secret documents about the detention of people jailed after the Sept. 11 attacks first must pay nearly $373,000 to cover the cost of searching for the information.

And the advance payment won’t guarantee anything that’s found will be released.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, government agencies must provide the public with access to government documents, unless the information falls under certain exemptions. The first two hours of a search are free. Agencies then charge for searches, the rate dependent on the level of the employees who do the work.

People for the American Way Foundation, which sued for the records last year, accused the Justice Department of making the cost exceedingly high to deter its request.

“Unfortunately it’s part of a pattern of the Justice Department trying to foreclose access to this kind of information,” Elliot Mincberg, the group’s legal director, said yesterday.

More info at : http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/


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“Employees to be billed for personal Net use?” ,By Munir Kotadia , www.news.com/,

~~ Below-- “Employees to be billed for personal Net use?” -- another example of how the Techno-Age is invading our private lives.

Employees have always drank from the water cooler, make personal copies, and used the phone to call their doctor, & etc.

Work is a job, and not prison, therefore companies have to allow employees to do needed life tasks.

Why should CEO’s and senior executives get all the perks

? And how often do you hear employees complain about being asked to do personal tasks for their bosses.

Hopefully most companies will see that charging for bandwidth will simply cause employees extra life-stress and as well cost them loyalty & morale among their employees.~
~ tp

By Munir Kotadia
http://news.com.com/Employees+to+be+billed+for+personal+Net+use/2100-1030_3-5558818.html
Story last modified Tue Feb 01 09:13:00 PST 2005
Employees to be billed for personal Net use?


Employees who surf the Net at work could receive a bill each month for the cost of borrowed bandwidth and wasted time if Australia-based Exinda Networks' URL- and bandwidth-monitoring system takes off.

Exinda Networks says it's developed a system that allows a company to monitor exactly which Web sites are visited by each employee and how much bandwidth has been used--in terms of a cash loss to the employer. Con Nikolouzakis, director of Exinda Networks, said the URL- and bandwidth-monitoring system was designed to ensure that employees are held responsible for the cost of misused bandwidth and time……….Additionally, the employee could be presented with a bill.

"Theoretically, individual employees could be charged a fee for non-business-related Internet usage on a monthly basis, if an employer wanted to get tough on staff abusing their Web access but didn't want to block them altogether," Nikolouzakis said.

However, not everyone agrees that charging employees for personal bandwidth is a good idea.

James Turner, industry analyst for security and services at Frost & Sullivan, said that charging employees for personal bandwidth usage would stir up a hornet's nest because bandwidth is relatively cheap and employees get a "morale boost" from having some freedom to surf at work. http://www.news.com/

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"Shrinking, Detroit Faces Fiscal Nightmare" By JODI WILGOREN

~ ~ Below is an article on Detroit’s ongoing & dramatic population loss – a flight of the wealthier & better educated. It serves to remind us that societies , cites , and even nations – can over the long term, be very transient entities. ~~TP

"The 139-square-mile Motor City now has a population of 911,000, less than half its 1950's peak”

By JODI WILGOREN
By JODI WILGOREN http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/national/02detroit.html
Shrinking, Detroit Faces Fiscal Nightmare

DETROIT, Jan. 29 - In the decade after he finished law school, Dan Varner watched with mounting exasperation as his black, middle-class peers defected from Detroit, beloved city of his birth.

He was the relentless city booster telling college-bound teenagers to come home after graduation, the one urging far-flung friends to move here, the man always talking about rebuilding the city while others abandoned it.

Then, one day, Mr. Varner said he realized "there was really no one to have dinner with." He said he "could count on one hand in the four blocks around me the number of men my age who had families." Enough became enough one spring day when he drove his children home past a band of teenage boys chanting profanity.

"As a dad and a husband, you have an obligation to try to provide the best life possible," said Mr. Varner, 35, who in August moved his family to Ypsilanti Township, 45 minutes away. "That was just something we couldn't find in Detroit."

The Varners are emblematic of the exodus that is plunging Detroit's government and school system into a fiscal nightmare, resulting in not just the slashing of staff and services, but also, for the first time, a fundamental right-sizing for a new, shrunken reality. The 139-square-mile Motor City now has a population of 911,000, less than half its 1950's peak.

With the city facing a $389 million shortfall over three years and the threat of receivership, Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick announced this month that Detroit would soon lay off 686 people and eliminate 237 vacant jobs, cut employees' pay 10 percent across the board, end overnight bus service and close the aquarium.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/national/02detroit.html
[~~ But you got to pay the New York Times $2.95 to read the whole thing .
Unless you get Lexus-nexius for free at the school library or office ~` TP ]

Half of bankruptcy due to medical bills-US study; Source: Reuters , By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

~~ Today in the USA , “half of bankruptcy [is] due to medical bills.” [see below article] . This country needs to insure equal access to equal health care for all it’s citizens & residents. It is a basic human right to be humanely cared for by your fellow human beings and their governments.

To have to look at your paycheck, and then to realize that you must choose between necessary medical needs & paying for food and rent, is a wrenching & terrifying experience. And there is no reason for it to be this way for millions of Americans.

The Insurance companies suck all the wealth out of the American health care system, but actually provide no real health services -- other than handling the $$$ !! Getting the Insurance companies -- and their need for gross profits --- out of health care system is a must-do for America’s health. ~~TP

02 Feb 2005
Source: Reuters
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

Half of bankruptcy due to medical bills-US study


WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance, researchers said on Wednesday.

The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, estimated that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans every year, if both debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children, are counted.

"Our study is frightening. Unless you're Bill Gates you're just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who led the study.

"Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick. Health insurance offered little protection."

She said many employers and politicians were pressing for what she called "stripped-down plans so riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions that serious illness leads straight to bankruptcy."

http://www.alertnet.org/printable.htmURL=/thenews/newsdesk/N01733473.htm

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Reuters: .."...but no WMD have been found in Iraq and U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer i...."

~~ Saddam Hussein while in power easily qualified as one of the worlds most dangerous men. He killed tens – if not hundreds – of THOUSANDS of his own country men every year, and Saddam was the major obstacle to the political & democratic stabilization of the Mid-East. But did that justify going in after him with the full force of the U.S military? Well maybe it did.
But the Bush administration did not think Saddam slaughtering his own people, nor his perpetual torturing the Kurdish nation, was a strong enough argument to justify toppling Saddam. So the Bush Administration exaggerated --and it seems even fabricated --the Weapons of Mass Destruction [WMD] threat, which today the CIA admitted never were there. ~~ tp

CIA Rectifying Prewar Estimates on Iraq WMD
Tue Feb 1, 2005 06:47 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA is publishing a series of classified reports revising its prewar intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, an intelligence official said on Tuesday.

A Jan. 18 report, titled "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s," concludes that Saddam Hussein abandoned major chemical weapons programs after the first Gulf War in 1991.

Former CIA Director George Tenet, who resigned last July, told Bush that finding WMD in Iraq would be a "slam dunk" according to journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack."

But no WMD have been found in Iraq and U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer is expected this month to issue a final addendum to his September report concluding that prewar Iraq had no such stockpiles.

"The CIA has finally admitted that its WMD estimates were wrong," Rep. Jane Harman of California, ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement.

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The Secret of Getting to Sleep? Music

The Secret of Getting to Sleep? Music
Wed Feb 2, 2005 10:47 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Having trouble sleeping? Don't bother with a cup of cocoa or counting sheep -- listening to music at bedtime is the way to get a restful night, Taiwanese researchers have found.

In a paper published in the February issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, a team from Taiwan's Tzu Chi University said they studied the sleep patterns of 60 people aged between 60 and 83 who had difficulty sleeping.

Half were given relaxing music to listen to for 45 minutes at bedtime and half were given no help to sleep.

The team found that those who listened to a selection of soft, slow music experienced physical changes that aided restful sleep, such as lower heart and respiratory rates.

"The difference between the music group and the control group was clinically significant," said lead author Hui-Ling Lai, vice director of nursing at the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital and assistant professor at Tzu Chi University.

"The music group reported a 26 per cent overall improvement in the first week and this figure continued to rise as they mastered the technique of relaxing to the sedative music."

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Take a break from the news & visit :

http://www.myspace.com/radamhalperin

The president's challenge to friendly dictators.; By Duncan Currie [ an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard..]

~~~ ~ : America has never based it’s diplomatic relations with other nations on the standards of freedom in those nations. Our Foreign Policy has always been , based on whether the Government –-- [which could be either a dictatorship or a republic or some other political hybrid] -- generally supported American Business interests and American Military policies. This has been true since the inception of this nation.

To be fair , the USA is not unique here. This Morally Blind Foreign Policy of ; “As long as you do not help my enemy, you are my friend ! (Even if you are a murdering crook)” , seems more to be an axiom of history than a particular American invention.~~ TP

Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Washington (The Daily Standard) -:

The president's challenge to friendly dictators.
By Duncan Currie [ an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard..]


FDR REPORTEDLY SAID IT FIRST, though the story could be apocryphal. Sizing up Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's brutal (but pro-American) dictator, Roosevelt quipped, "Somoza may be a son of a b-tch, but he's our son of a b-tch."

Prescient words, if he in fact spoke them. During the Cold War, America, through sheer necessity, cultivated ties with lots of SOBs, including military regimes in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Spain, Zaire, South Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines.

Conservatives often justified such alliances by the lesser-of-two-evils canon. To wit, forging pacts with nasty pro-American dictatorships prevented the rise of even nastier pro-Soviet dictatorships. So it was both moral and pragmatic to prop up "our SOBs," lest "their SOBs" take power.

But when the Soviet Empire jumped on the fast lane to the ash heap of history, many felt the our-SOB principle should go with it. Absent a global Communist threat, they reasoned, how could America continue to support despots? Then came September 11, and the subsequent war on terror. Few questioned the prudence of warming up to Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf. If "coddling" Musharraf helped snuff out the Taliban--and it did--then we could overlook the general's autarchic rule. Likewise, hardheaded geopolitics demanded we keep our close links with tyrannies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Despite his pro-democracy rhetoric, Bush had to pick his battles wisely. And toppling U.S. enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq took precedence over nudging nominal U.S. allies toward liberalization. (Still, it was hard not to wince when Bush hosted Saudi crown prince Abdullah at his Texas ranch.)

Does the president's second inaugural mark a change in course?
President Bush would do well to follow suit. For, alas, we still need our SOBs. And we'll need them long after Bush leaves office. That may not be morally satisfying. But international politics has ever been thus. As Charles Krauthammer once observed, "The essence of foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to support and which to oppose--in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy . . . is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion."

Duncan Currie is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.

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