Reference:
The problem is not P2P file sharing. In fact, file sharing is a remarkable innovation that has enabled a worldwide community of music fans to build the greatest library of recorded music in the history of the world.

The problem is that artists are not getting paid. It is time to address the problem.
Fred von Lohmann

Notes:
Not really. The problem is that the music corporation executives aren't getting paid. Who cares about the artist, once the PR speeches are over, the legislators have been paid the legislation is in place. Ya know, it's almost impossible NOT to be cynical.

Reference:
Bush administration officials have been clear in saying that as the war winds down and they begin their campaign to bring political reform to Iraq and the Middle East, a critical step will be opening the region's markets to trade and investment.

Free markets and prosperity, they contend, will create a foundation for democratic change.
....
"Economically, this is the most isolated region of the world, and that includes sub-Saharan Africa," said Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative during the Clinton administration and now an international attorney. "And you have to keep in mind that Muslim nations do not even trade with each other. There is a degree of economic fragmentation you do not see in any other part of the world. There is a fear of opening in general. But this will be critical to anything else you want to do."

According to the International Monetary Fund, the economies of the Middle East have greater centralized state control than most of the old Soviet-bloc nations and among the largest state bureaucracies in the world. Because of the dependence on oil in most of these countries, they generally have the least economic diversity.
SFGate

Notes:
This hadn't hit my radar. The image of desert caravans produced the assumption that a vibrant trading culture continued. I was aware that there are issues of usury, which Muslims tend to adhere to much more so than westerners, but to what degree, I don't know.

On another note, how does this square with Eric Raymond's seminal open source screed, The Cathedral and the Bazarr?

Reference:
conformity, that refuge of anonymity
aflightrisk

Notes:
The toughest choice was determining what category to put this is: surveillance, nomad, or information.

Reference:
Neoconservative Richard Perle, a leading hawk in the Iraq debate, yesterday called for Congress to pass a "Syrian Liberation Act" modeled on the 1998 law that made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy.
Washington Times

Notes:
Gee, wasn't that during the Clinton Administrtion? Gosh and golly, those Democrats can't be all bad. Could it be that the backstabbing and subterfuge of the Clinton foreign policy by the neo-cons had more to do with prolonging the Saddam years than the supposed liberal mollycoddling? Wolfowitz criticized in Kosovo exactly what he enacted on Iraq.

Reference:
Tony Blair is facing the threat of a fresh rebellion from Labour backbenchers who are growing increasingly alarmed that the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will confirm that the war was illegal.

As a 1,000-strong Anglo-American task force of inspectors prepares to search hundreds of suspicious sites, Labour MPs are demanding an inquiry to establish whether MI6 misled ministers about Iraq's weapons programme.

Backbench Labour MPs who feel they were duped into backing the war on the basis of questionable intelligence want the cross-party Commons intelligence and security committee to carry out an investigation. One well-placed former minister said: "The intelligence committee is raring to challenge the veracity of what the security services told them about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons. They were told what he had and where it was. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for all this, but they don't seem to be able to find the stuff."
The Guardian

Notes:
And the Labour Party is Tony Blair's party. This would be like the Republican's questioning Bush.

It would be nice if the Democrats had even half the vigor in questioning the opposition party that the English party-of-power has in questioning its own leader.

Reference:
The company recently published a proposal that describes how it plans to embed "lawful interception" capability into its products. Among the highlights: Eavesdropping "must be undetectable," and multiple police agencies conducting simultaneous wiretaps must not learn of one another. If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over the intercepted communications to police in a descrambled form.
....
Q: The current draft does not include an audit trail. Could you do that by having your equipment digitally sign a file that says who's been intercepted and for how long? That could be turned over to a judge. It could indicate whether the cops were or weren't staying within the bounds of the law.
A: I'm not entirely sure that the machine we're looking at could make that assurance... In fact, the way lawful interception works, a warrant comes out saying, "We want to look at a person." That's the way it works in Europe, the United States, Australia and in other western countries. The quest then becomes figuring out which equipment a person is reasonably likely to use, and it becomes law enforcement's responsibility to discard any information that's irrelevant to the warrant. That kind of a thing would probably be maintained on the mediation device.
news.com

Notes:
First, if you're going to encrypt, then you can't depend on others to keep a secret. If you do, then you are depending on both the robustness of an analytical system and the perservance of people.

Secondly, how reliable is purely electronic communication data? It strikes me that there is no real way to detect changing the datastream from an intercept. Capture the "original" stream, modify it, then copy the stream to make a new "original". Not only should there be an audit of when, but an audit of what.

Reference:
Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Bush administration's foreign policy team, face a clear choice. It can outsource peacekeeping functions to the United Nations or close allies, at the cost of some constraints on foreign policy implementation. It can minimize the U.N. role and develop/train its own peacekeeping force. Or it can do neither and run into trouble down the road.
Drezner

Notes:
The Agonist was the go-to source for updates during the violence. Looks like this guy (Drezner) might be a good source for the observations about the peace.

Reference:
Until now, popular interest in photography has been in the long-term preservation of memories in treasured family albums. But with camera phones, the focus is more on sharing than storing.

"The images will be used to connect with one another, but they will be incredibly disposable. It is not about lasting memories," says Dr Palmer, of Melbourne University.
smh.com.au

Notes:

Reference:
A majority in the U.S. Congress has signed onto a lobbying campaign to limit the oversight role of Washington's three Quartet peace plan partners, seen by many of Israel's supporters as biased in favor of the Palestinians.
Reuters

Notes:
I'm getting really confused here.

First, this type of action clearly indicates that US foreign policy is driven by concern for Israel at the expense of all else, as the Arabs claim. The extension, that US foreign policy is driven by Israel, is only a short hop. Any contention that the US is approaching the situation in the Middle East even-handedly only appears as patent hypocricy.

Second, any Democratic complaining about unilateralism in Iraq is shown as mere tactical grousing. If 83 Senators have signed on to this position, then even if all the dissenters are Democrats (which I highly doubt), the majority of the party supports this unilateralism.

So is that how the game's to be played out, disagreeing on HOW we are to bully, not WHETHER we are to bully?

Reference:
Anonymity doesn't work in group settings. I need to be able to associate who's talking now with what's been said before. Reputation is not portable from one situation to another: someone who cheats on his wife may not cheat on his taxes. Ebay's linear metrics works well in a linear transaction system but not in non-linear conversation spaces. So, for social software to work, users have to identify themselves and there has to be a penalty for switching handles.
JOHO

Notes:
Anonymous transaction happen between individuals. Is there such a thing or a purpose for an anonymous transaction between groups?