Blogs of Note

Wired News Here's what I found of interest in the last half-an-hour, surfing the Wired site.

Flying Saucer - the US Navy is again putting some money behind research into building a flying saucer. This time around, they're funding a Russian group that claimed to have built and tested a flying saucer in the 90s. This is more than just optimizing on the lessons learned from down aliens ;-) -- there's actually some cool physics involved.

Kazaa isn't to Blame - here's a shocker for you. A Dutch court threw out a case suing Kazaa for copyright infringement. Apparently, the Dutch thinks software is OK -- what people do with may not be. I like to use the analogy of WMD -- WMDs don't kill people. Saddam does! ;-)

Another Blow for the Music Industry - a US federal appeals court threw out a lower court ruling that allowed the RIAA to force ISPs to reveal the identifies of their users. The mass suing of their customers just got a tad harder.

Free Your Information - some Universities are betting that 'cheaters can be winners.' Well, cheaters may be too strong a word -- they're encouraging the sharing of information, including academic works, so that they can be modified, or used in the works of others down the road -- like students using the works of students in the past to help them get an A. The idea behind all this is that sharing and cooperation is a lot healthier for society than competition. Looks like people are finally figuring out that 'together we stand, divided we fall,' actually does mean something.

Defending the Cows - the US Homeland Security department just allocated $33M to study ways of fending off terrorists from attacking America's food supply. OK, it's a scary thought. But aren't there more pressing concerns where that money could be spent?

On a Lighter Side - I always like these little quips from Wired. The latest is about the US holding in custody, three friends who traveled to Iraq to visit its holy sites, and bombarding them with loud rap music for days. Funny thing, the guys like rap -- and didn't complain about it, as the US may have switched to Jazz.