] Citing problems with truancy and youth violence, the Los
] Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance
] restricting the hours during which minors can visit
] Internet cafes and requiring the shops to install video
] cameras for security.

I wonder how much of this is real and how much of this is the typical pattern of mindless news media sensationalism feeding back into a government which clamps down on youth activities because it has nothing better to do and no political reason to think twice.

Of the cyber cafes in LA, what percentage of them actual have a real problem with violence. Is this any different from the number of problems at video arcades, non internet coffee shops, or other youth hang outs?

"86 percent of the people arrested at cybercafes were juveniles and 93 percent were for truancy or curfew."

So in other words there is almost no problem here? All that this statistic tells me is that young people like to play video games. Curfew isn't illegal for adults. Personally, I don't believe it ought to exist at all. In any event, if you already have a curfew, which you are enforcing, then why do you need a new curfew law for internet cafes? What percentage of these cases were truancy?

In either case this is simply people hanging out at the cafe when ditching school or "when they ought to have been in bed." Oh please, please, nanny state, save us from this horror.

How many people hanging out at bars in Los Angeles have been arrested in the past year? How many for violence? Why don't you require bars to have closed circuit television?

Los Angeles clamps down on cybercafes | CNET News.com

] Rocket plane SpaceShipOne reached an altitude above 62.5
] miles (100 km) during its brief flight Monday morning,
] making it the first privately built craft to fly in
] space, controllers said.

] Shortly after, the space vehicle landed safely at the
] same place from which it took off.

Welcome to the era of corporate space. Lets hope science fiction has properly prepared us.

CNN.com - Private craft flies into space - Jun 21, 2004

... Until the president is willing to employ carrots as well as sticks, he will make little headway in changing Iranian or Syrian behavior. The president's lack of initiative on this point is especially disappointing.

... and now you know the rest of the story.

Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb

] his paper documents the use of pictorial images in social
] network analysis. It shows that such images are critical
] both in helping investigators to understand network data
] and to communicate that understanding to others.
]
] The paper reviews the long history of image use in the
] field. It begins with illustrations of the earliest
] hand-drawn images in which points were placed by using ad
] hoc rules. It examines the development of systematic
] procedures for locating points. It goes on to discuss how
] computers have been used to actually produce drawings of
] networks, both for printing and for display on computer
] screens. Finally, it illustrates some of the newest
] procedures for producing web-based pictures that allow
] viewers to interact with the network data and to explore
] their structural properties.

Carnegie Mellon: Journal of Social Structure: Visualizing Social Networks

] The reason these net people get away with all kinds of
] stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up
] with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous, but
] it symbolizes what the Internet is becoming.

Becoming?

] The Internet has become a sewer of slander and libel,
] an unpatrolled polluted waterway, where just about
] anything goes. For example, the guy who raped and
] murdered a 10-year old in Massachusetts says he got
] the idea from the NAMBLA Web site that he accessed from
] the Boston public library. The ACLU's defending NAMBLA
] in that civil lawsuit.

Focus on what you will..

] So which is the bigger threat to America? The big
] companies or the criminals at the computer?
] Interesting question.

Just in case you didn't think O'Reilly was an idiot..

FOXNews.com | O'Really??

quoted:

As we shiver in the shadow of war, waiting to be shocked and awed by the malevolent magnificence of militarism in action, some in the antiwar movement are calling for "direct action." What this amounts to is what happened the other day in downtown San Francisco, when about 200 people marched to the Pacific Stock Exchange, and a few dozen of these sat down on the steps, refusing to move, while their brethren disrupted traffic and tied up the downtown area for hours. Why did they do it? Let Warren Langley, former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, and newly converted to antiwar activism, explain it in his own words:

"It's my history and my lifetime. This war seems very wrong for the entire world. I decided I was willing to do whatever it takes to show a strong stand against it."

Me, me, me, it's all about Me! Langley's narcissism is embarrassingly apparent. Like someone standing there with his fly wide-open, happily unaware, he perfectly embodies the unabashed self-absorption of the "direct action" movement. In nominating themselves for sainthood, the direct-actionists are acting out their personal fantasies on the political stage. In their little morality play they are the stars, moral paragons who, by the sheer power of their goodness and bravery, will shut down the war machine.

This Isn't About You, by Justin Raimondo

] My experience trying to "sell" the concepts of swarm
] intelligence to the commercial world is that managers
] would rather live with a problem they can't solve than
] with a solution they don't fully understand or control.
] So the mindset is a big barrier to adoption.

A lot of whats going on these days in computing is related to these ideas. Of course, the difference between Ant and People is that an Ant will tell the colony if it finds food, whereas People will secure the "food" and charge access. The difference is that Ants don't compete with eachother for resources. They don't have to. Their resources are infinite. This, of course, is the reason these questions are so interesting in terms of information. Information isn't scarce.

OpenP2P.com: Swarm Intelligence: An Interview with Eric Bonabeau [Feb. 21, 2003]

] Perhaps Thompson's most disturbing charge is aimed at the
] American people -- only half of whom exercise their right
] to vote. "The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public.
] And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny," he says. "I
] think that's what worries me."

Actually, the "oligarchy" does, in fact, need an educated public. However, I'd agree that the nation prefers tyranny. They seem to externalize it. Like Tyranny is great because its not going to effect me. And I'd offer that the people prefer to be uneducated. Thinking is hard. Its easy just to do what you're told.

Salon.com News | Hunter S. Thompson

] As of next Monday I will be on tour. So, in an effort to
] cut myself some slack from the few precious civilian days
] remaining, I'm opting to post the following talk, which
] I gave last year at the Vancouver Art Gallery. VAG had
] mounted an ambitious if oddly titled (The Uncanny) show
] around the theme of "the cyborg". Since this seemed to be
] "the cyborg" as academics understand "the cyborg", and
] not just a cyborg, or cyborgs, as you or I might
] understand cyborg(s) I took it upon myself to lower the
] tone of the proceedings with the following.

What were things like before television?

William Gibson: In the Visegrips of Dr. Satan (w/ Vannevar Bush and Google)

] WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 After a weekend of antiwar
] protests that many participants say signaled an expansion
] of public opposition to military action against Iraq,
] some organizers are facing criticism, much of it from
] within the movement, about the role played by their
] group, International Answer.
] Attendance at rallies in Washington and San Francisco
] last Saturday was in the tens of thousands, and reflected
] a mix of views that spanned the social and political
] spectrums. Many protest organizers say the presence of
] labor unions, religious groups, business people and
] soccer moms showed a growing mainstream opposition to the
] war.

Some War Protesters Uneasy With Others