The Associated Press reports that The New York Yankees have agreed to a deal with Infinity Broadcasting for radio broadcast of all Yankee games in the New York City market. Broadcasts will be heard on WCBS AM 880, an all-news radio station. This marks the end of a 21 year relationship between WABC and the New York Yankees.

This is a deal with huge implications in the New York media market. WABC had made its Yankees broadcast the centerpiece of its line up from March to October. It is possible Infinity's ability to carry both English and Spanish broadcasts on major radio stations played a significant role in the final agreement. It is also likely that the previously announced agreement between the Yankees and CBS for local TV broadcast of Yankee games also played a role. CBS and Infinity Broadcasting are both owned by Viacom.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another article that Camworld pointed to this morning was published in The Economist, entitled America the Unready. It criticizes the majority of Federal efforts to improve security and preparedness for future terrorist attacks, while praising certain local efforts.

We agree. Even with the effort expended to improve security in commercial aviation, major airports are still not screening all checked baggage. Who among us really feels comfortable getting on a coast-to-coast flight these days?

In addition, the focus on passenger screening on scheduled flights has the feel of "closing the barn door once the cows have left". It is reasonable to suspect that the next major terrorist attack attempted will not involve the use of commercial aviation, at least in the same manner. And even if it does, the security measures actually implemented so far do not sufficiently mitigate the problems that the September 11 attacks pointed out.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times reports that New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave a farewell address yesterday at St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The church is very close to the location of "Ground Zero", the former site of the World Trade Center.

Giuliani used this opportunity to call for a "soaring, monumental" memorial to be built on the site of the World Trade Center. In doing so, he is representing the feelings of a large percentage of people in the New York Metropolitan area who know someone who was lost in the attack on September 11, and will never be able to return to that place without thinking of that terrible day.

We would be remiss if we did not take this opportunity to point out that Rudolph W. Giuliani was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2001. There is no one who is more deserving of such an honor, and it only underscores the respect and admiration that the nation has for him.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a holiday trip to Michigan, Cameron Barrett of Camworld suggests that the radio industry develop and implement a metadata standard for descriptions of programming. He focuses on music, but as much information could be provided about information-oriented radio programming, like financial advice and political talk shows.

Because some of us are very active listeners to radio, CTDATA has some interest in the subject. Read on for an explanation of what we know about the subject, and where we think technological progress is most likely.

We have experienced the state-of-the-art in Europe: the Radio Data System standard which provides a bit of the information that a full-blown metadata system would ultimately provide. The RDS system is interesting, if you understand how radio broadcasting is organized in the European Union, and if you understand the information that your radio is trying to deliver to you. It would have been helpful to have the PDF document that we linked into this paragraph as a reference when we traveled to Switzerland, Italy, and France this past July.

It should be noted that the Radio Data System has never gotten any traction in the United States. A few radio stations have attempted to implement the RDS travel announcement feature, but there were never enough car radios compatible with it to make it a useful service.

We think that with the consolidation of traditional radio broadcasting in the United States into larger and larger networks, it would be easier to implement such a metadata standard than it used to be. However, our understanding of the way consolidators like Clear Channel Communications operates is that they acquire stations and to achieve economies of scale in delivery of audiences for advertising. (This is documented in the book It's Not the Big that Eat the Small, It's The Fast that Eat the Slow, and in the "Clear Channel Creed" on their web site.)
As such, we expect technological advancement to be greatest in this area and not in the area of describing the programming to the audience.

Another factor in any radio metadata development would have to be the potential emergence of satellite radio in the United States. This is currently being implemented by XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. We have never used these services and wonder if they have implemented some sort of metadata subcarrier for their services already.

Nevertheless, we expect that the European market will continue to drive any progress in this sort of technology for the foreseeable future. It is much easier to sell the broadcasters, advertisers, and the public on enhancements to a system that already works at a minimal level than to try to create a market for such services in places where most consumers do not yet see the benefits of any similar technology.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Online Journalism Review has produced a three week study of the 15 most popular news-oriented web sites. The author added several other news-oriented web sites from the United States and the UK which have somewhat less traffic, but are often looked at for breaking news.

This is a well written guide to the strengths and weaknesses of many of the sites. However, the article is not as comprehensive as it could have been, because it does not characterize all of the sites that were covered by the survey and no statistical information was provided.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Associated Press reports on another huge lake-effect snow storm in Western New York. This is the second such storm to occur this week. Among other things, the article points out: "It's been a drastic change for a community that enjoyed its first November on record without snow, and recorded only 11/2 inches before Christmas Eve."

Perhaps it's an irreverent thought, but this may be one of the best recent examples of The Law of Averages.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his latest Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg criticizes Microsoft for continuing to tie new features in its products to its own services in an exclusive manner. Many examples of this exist in Microsoft's new operating system, Windows XP. About this tying, Mossberg writes:

So what, some might ask? Isn't it common in a free market for companies to use one of their products to cross-promote another? Doesn't AOL use its online service to boost the movies made by its Warner Brothers studios? Doesn't The Wall Street Journal run ads and plugs for its sister publications and Web sites? The difference is that these other companies aren't court-certified monopolies, and when you're a monopoly, you have to follow different rules, as the appeals court said.

The best example is the security hole that Microsoft mistakenly left in the Universal Plug and Play Service. We wonder why security companies must place such stern warnings on the web sites about Microsoft product features: not only the original version which contained the vulnerability, but also the version that purportedly mitigates it? What other operating system services, buried deep in Windows XP for the supposed benefit of computer users everywhere, are vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited?

We don't know because Microsoft has not been forced by the U.S. Government to do business in the open. This has traditionally been the price companies have paid for being allowed to continue to operate a de facto monopoly. Microsoft should carry the same burden as AT&T and Standard Oil did in their respective haydays.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times reports that Irvington, NY-based iWon.com has purchased the remaining portions of web portal Excite.com for less than $10 million. The Times article essentially defines the story as an example of a sort of "last-mover advantage," in that iWon.com did not begin operations until 1999 and has never had more than 230 employees.

Oh how far the mighty have fallen! In the documentary Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet, produced in 1998, the founders of Excite are briefly seen writing code for their portal. The code, visible on the computer screen, was Perl. How successful could those original developers have been if they had grown their site organically, focused on performance improvements, and not gone hog wild with acquisitions?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times reported that the recording industry is losing large amounts of money because new releases from previously popular artists are failing to sell in expected volumes. The article does mention Internet piracy as one of the drags on industry profits, but it also lists four other major issues: lackluster album sales, eroding profit margins, skyrocketing marketing expenses, and executive salaries.

In our view, the problems that the recording industry is experiencing are quite similar to the ones that are affecting the movie industry: mediocre product. Neither unrelenting hype, nor piracy protestations from Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen can prop up these important American industries if the new product pipeline is filled with bilge.

Many of these problems would be fixed if the established artists and industry executives were paid solely on the basis of their performance. The record companies must also rationalize their organizations and find a new distribution model that embraces the Internet and does not insult customers by treating all of them as if they are thieves.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an article that really ought to interest people running small high tech companies, CIO Magazine profiles Lew Goldstein, sound supervisor at C5 Inc. in New York City. Goldstein built a 1.5 Terabyte storage area network from individual components for less than $35 thousand. Martin O'Donnell has been preaching this approach to server construction for several years now. It's time to take another look at this approach, in light of the economic realities that most of us are facing.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Julie Aiello pointed out that The New York Times has reported that Monteria Ivey died two weeks ago at age 41. Ivey and his comedic partner, Stephan Dweck, appeared regularly on the Imus in the Morning radio program, to which many CTDATA.com readers listen regularly.

Monteria Ivey was a graduate of Dartmouth College, and was obviously an intelligent observer of the contemporary social scene. However, he will be most remembered for a type of joke made at a friend's expense that he called a "snap". One example from his obituary:

When he was growing up, his family was so poor they used to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken to lick other people's fingers.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over on ZDnet, Eric Knorr wrote an op-ed piece comparing enterprise-level Content Management systems to ERP systems like SAP. We have made similar analogies for some time, calling Content Management systems the equivalent of industrial robots that can be used as key pieces of an assembly line, but largely useless on their own.

Many of our customers in the Financial Services business have used enterprise content management systems like Vignette and Interwoven to deliver major Web Sites. Development of these sites turned out to be much more difficult than expected, because these publishing systems don't work at all if workflow is not created around them.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The O'Reilly Network, a service of the technical book publishing company, has chosen its best technical articles for 2001. A number of these articles, including Performance Test: 802.11b Takes a Lickin' and Keeps on Tickin' and the meta-article Using Tomcat, look useful despite the fact that they were published several months ago.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Associated Press reports that St. Nicholas' Greek Orthodox Church will be rebuilt. St. Nicholas is the only church destroyed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that took place on September 11. Prior to its destruction, was only 22 feet wide, 56 feet long and 35 feet high.

Over $2 million has been raised to permit the reconstruction. This includes a donation of $500 thousand from the parishioners of Basilica di San Nicola of Bari, Italy. Bari's patron saint is St. Nicholas.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Money.CNN.com reports that Judge Michael Telesca ruled that Palm's Graffiti handwriting recognition system infringes on a Xerox patent. The case now moves to the damages phase of the trial, where fines and/or terms of a license agreement may be imposed.

This case has been underway since 1997, when Palm Computing was a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, the modem manufacturer later acquired by 3Com. Of course, 3Com later spun Palm off into its own company.

This is also an indication that Xerox will benefit financially from fundimental computing research which took place at the PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. Xerox PARC also invented the Graphical User Interface, laser printing, and Ethernet.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Computerworld reports that Microsoft is expected to use its stake in AT&T Comcast to push for policy changes. High on the list, apparently, is the right to use virtual private networks (VPNs) at the consumer price point. Comcast has prohibited VPN use on its consumer-grade service since the Summer of 2000. AT&T Broadband does not prohibit it, but also does not provide technical support.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that an unidentified flight instructor in Minnesota contacted the FBI in August to report that Zacarias Moussaoui was taking instruction on a Boeing 747 flight simulator. According to the article, agents from the FBI arrested Moussaoui the next day. He was subsequently charged with the commission of six felonies by the U.S. Government.

Although the Minneapolis office of the FBI did pick up Moussaoui, Minnesota congressman Jim Oberstar said that the office's response to the flight instructor's calls was so "bureaucratic" that a less-determined tipster might have stopped calling.

Apparently, the same flight school's Phoenix, AZ office contacted the FAA earlier in the year regarding the training requested by Hani Hanjour, believed to have been at the controls of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Although the FAA observed Hanjour in class, it seems they were more concerned with ensuring that Hanjour learned English than assessing the purpose of his training.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rush Limbaugh and The House Ear Clinic have announced that Rush Limbaugh has undergone successful cochlear implant surgery in Los Angeles. This was the next step in the treatment regime for Auto-Immune Inner Ear Disease (AIED), an ailment that began to affect him several months ago. An FAQ about the surgery and its expected outcome was also posted at RushLimbaugh.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The BBC reports that Fernando de la Rua has resigned as President of Argentina. This is the latest development in a nationwide series of riots over the deepening financial crisis gripping the country. de la Rua was forced to flee the presidential palace in a helicopter after tendering his resignation.

The BBC has done an excellent job assembling background information on the entire crisis. This Q&A on Argentina's Economic Crisis is a particularly good overview for those readers who are unfamiliar with the situation.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a brief guide to the conventions used in CTDATA.com stories.

Parts of a story

Body Text is generally used for stories longer than three or four paragraphs, although there is no hard-and-fast rule about the maximum length of the Intro Text section of a story. It is not necessary to end the Intro Text block with a <P> tag unless the text visible to the reader in the Intro Text block is less than 3 lines.

If a story continues into the Body Text block, the Intro Text should generally end with a paragraph that invites the user to read on, and summarizes what else is contained in the story. For example:

Read on for a summary of the article and some thoughts on what we've noticed in looking at our sites....

This example is taken from http://www.ctdata.com/cm/2001/12/19/0620244.shtml.

Importance of the first link in a story

The implication of this is that we do not generally provide links to the main page of the subject's source site. For example, if a CTDATA.com article points to an article that appears in the New York Times, the first link in the Intro Text section of the CTDATA.com story is to the URL of the specific New York Times story, not to the home page of the New York Times itself.

However, stories that are driven off of content from other Web Sites are quite often attributed in the following manner:

Qwest Stops Expanding DSL Service Areas

Posted by dave_aiello on Dec 20 2001 6:45AM
from the no-competition department.

EE Times reports that Qwest has halted the expansion of the number of central offices where it deploys DSL service equipment. Qwest acquired USWest a while ago, and is now the Regional Bell Operating Company for the Northwestern United States....

Example is from http://www.ctdata.com/broadband/2001/12/20/0645238.shtml.

Link Text

Note that link text is pulled out by the Slash engine and stuck into a Slashbox called "Related Links" that appears on each story page. Therefore, link text should be kept as concise and in context as possible.

Other information typically printed in bold

• names of companies or institutions
• names of people
• name of CTDATA or CTDATA.com

• If following the bolding rules seems overly repetitious, then bolding of the above items should occur once in the story.
• Elements that are normally printed in bold may be turned into links at the author's option. However, the link should only be made once, and it should occur as high in the story as possible.

Use of CTDATA versus CTDATA.com

• CTDATA builds Slashcode based Web Sites.
• We have added a new feature to CTDATA.com.

Use of First Person versus Third Person

• Whenever a story is submitted by a registered user of CTDATA.com or an Anonymous Coward and their personal reflections or insights add value to the story.
• When a story is created entirely by an author and the story loses impact if "I", "me", or "my" are removed.
• When a story is created entirely by an author and its viewpoint deviates from the established corporate position of CTDATA. This can only be determined by the general sense of previous postings on CTDATA.com.

When first person stories extends into the Body Text block, that block should begin with "Name of person continued:". The rest of the story should be written inside of <blockquote> tags.

Third person viewpoint is used on all other stories.

Note: If you think that an article written in third person have any political implications, be sure that they agree with positions taken in other articles on CTDATA.com that are written in third person. If there is any non-trivial difference, rewrite the article in first person, and attribute it to yourself.

To be continued....

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Managing CTDATA section of CTDATA.com exists to convey useful site administration information to people who are joining the web site as authors. Experienced authors may contribute information to this section, but generally won't find much they don't know here.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EE Times reports that Qwest has halted the expansion of the number of central offices where it deploys DSL service equipment. Qwest acquired USWest a while ago, and is now the Regional Bell Operating Company for the Northwestern United States. Qwest CEO Joseph Naccio reportedly blamed the decision on the 1996 Telcommunications Reform Act, and added that it is unfair to incumbent local carriers, since cable TV multisystem operators do not have to allow broadband competition.

Of course, there are areas in Qwest territory where neither DSL nor cable modem services are available. Some people living in those areas had reasonable expectations of broadband access in the near future, due to the competitive market that appeared to be developing in 1998 and 1999. With this decision, many of those people's hopes are dashed.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Over the past few weeks, we have covered the Excite@Home bankruptcy, Comcast's and Cox's virtual private network restrictions, and the merger of AT&T Broadband and Comcast. We believe that stories like these will be of on-going interest to our customers and friends. As a result, I created the Broadband Internet Access section of CTDATA.com."

"When we have time, we will relocate the stories that logically belong in this section and add directives to our web server to help people find those articles in their new homes. Please let us know if you have any comments or questions about these new features of our Web Site."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Broadband Internet Access section of ctdata.com is a place to document our experiences with cable modems, DSL, and other high speed Internet access services primarily designed for residential or small office customers. We will also report news affecting these markets in this section

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Washington Post reports that Argentine President de la Rua declared a state of siege in order to put down riots in cities across the country resulting from a downward economic spiral that has lasted for more than three years. Argentina has been struggling to make payments on over $132 billion dollars in public debt, the by-product of years of runaway government spending.

Argentina had been the leading economy in South America because the rest of its economy has been run in a very sound and responsible manner. Because of the paradox of unchecked government spending and a hard currency economic policy, 18 percent of its able-bodied workers are jobless and 40 percent of its population is now at or below the poverty line.

The situation in Argentina is nothing short of a disaster. Much more attention would be paid to this issue, if the terrorist attacks on the United States had not taken place and war had not subsequently broken out.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

802.11b Networking News reports that a new company has been launched to integrate public WiFi networks in the United States. Boingo Wireless founded by Earthlink founder Sky Dayton, will offer a software layer that will integrate independently-owned wireless networks being built by independent businesses with which Boingo hopes to partner. In effect, Boingo will provide a roaming service for WiFi networks.

Boingo's software will provide single user login, WEP key management, WiFi network profile management, preferred network priority, VPN (virtual private network) service to Boingo's public servers, quality of service (QoS) tracking, and connection logging. These are most of the services that would be necessary to establish a nationwide wireless internet service based on the 802.11b protocol, provided the physical infrastructure is built.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CBS Marketwatch is reporting that AT&T has accepted Comcast's revised offer for AT&T Broadband. The complex deal is valued at $72 billion. The new company resulting from the combination of Comcast and AT&T Broadband will be called AT&T Comcast Corporation.

This appears to be an excellent deal for shareholders of both companies. AT&T reduces its corporate debt substantially. Its shareholders gain financial and voting control over the biggest cable company in the United States. Comcast shareholders gain a substantial interest in the largest cable company in the United States. They also gain a true voting interest in the future of that company, which they did not have in Comcast if they were Class "A" shareholders.

The announcement indicates that AT&T paid approximately $4,100 per cable subscriber in assembling the AT&T Broadband unit. The agreement with Comcast apparently values each AT&T Broadband cable subscriber at $4,500.

In a way, this brings a close to the Excite@Home bankruptcy saga. AT&T Broadband and Comcast will undoubtedly merge the backbone infrastructures that they are building to replace the @Home Network.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NewsForge reports that ActiveState has shipped Komodo 1.2 an Integrated Development Environment for Linux and Windows. According to the article, "It is optimized for programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Tcl and now features cutting-edge XSLT and PHP editing and debugging capabilities."

CTDATA holds a commercial license on the product and is currently evaluating it as a Perl development tool.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Kuykendall pointed out this National Review article Red Stars Over Philly, subtitled "The Mumiacs and their cause". This is an article that was written about the antics of Mumia Abu-Jamal's supporters during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000. Describing the press conference that occurred at the Old First Reform Church, on July 24, 2000, the article said:

Their message was clear: The state is a murderer, George Bush is a murderer, America's claim to be a democracy is a sham. "Stop State Killing," said the big banner behind the speakers. Posters showed a police-style picture of Bush, with the words, "Wanted for Murder." Jamal's image was everywhere, as Che Guevara's used to be, so long ago....

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the San Jose Mercury-News, columnist Dan Gillmor asks Congress to scrap the Tauzin-Dingell Telecommunications Bill. Tauzin-Dingell is an attempt to modify the terms of the telecommunications laws written in 1996 to allow Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) to offer high speed Internet access without allowing competing companies to offer the same service using their lines. Gillmor argues, quite convincingly, that the RBOCs have not earned the right to close off their networks to competition.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Wegmans Food Markets will open two supermarkets in southern New Jersey, and one in Chester County, PA, within the next year. Wegmans is a Western New York-based supermarket chain which has expanded into Northeastern Pennsylvania and Central New Jersey over the past few years and has redefined the concept of food retailing in these areas.

Prior to the arrival of Wegmans, supermarkets in the area were generally smaller and carried less selection than supermarkets in other demographically similar parts of the country, such as the San Francisco Bay area. Now, supermarket chains wanting to compete in the lucrative Princeton, Bridgewater, and Manalapan, NJ markets must build big stores and add services including restaurants, catering, and on-site child care. This is also going to become the case in the communities where Wegmans plans to build in the near future.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our friends at Camworld.com pointed out this article on The O'Reilly Network that talks about designing web sites for accessibility by the handicapped. We have an interest in this because we know a visually impared person who is very interested in using the Internet, and because we want our sites to be as accessible to all audiences as possible.

Read on for a summary of the article and some thoughts on what we've noticed in looking at our sites....

The article gives a number of interesting tips to web publishers looking for a quick gauge of how well they are doing in this regard:

• View the site through a text-only browser like Lynx, make sure the content renders meaningfully, and that the site is still navigable.
  
• Use the <em> (emphasis) tag if you mean to emphasize something, rather than <i> (italics) tag which only indicates a display style.
  
• Use XHTML or HTML 4.01 to better separate form from content.
  
• Provide long form descriptions of graphics, forms, and applets in separate HTML files. Don't depend on conveying the entire purpose of an object in the <alt> text.
  

With respect to our Slash-based sites, CTDATA.com and RCNJ.org, we looked at this issue six months to a year ago, realized that viewing them through Lynx was a reasonable approach, and found that our content came across pretty well.

It seems that thinking about rendering key web site content in RSS and VoiceXML makes all developers more aware of the issues that visually impared people would have with the presentation of most Web Sites. We view these XML content formats as important to expanding the audience for our web sites via content syndication. So, the fact that the technical requirements have the side-effect of improving site accessibility is a "win-win", as far as we are concerned.

The author's suggestion to substitute <em> (emphasis) for <i> (italics) confuses us a little. We don't find that italics provide enough visual emphasis for emphasized text. Our style uses bolded text for things like publication names and the names of people or organizations. We wouldn't switch in this case because we think that people reading a syndicated feed and sight-impared users don't lose much readability or context if they cannot detect the fact that certain words are bolded. On the other hand, visitors to our sites that are able to see definitely would lose some readability if the bolding was changed to italics through the use of the <em> tag.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Associated Press reports that the death sentence imposed on Mumia Abu-Jamal has been overturned by U.S. District Judge William Yohn. The judge denied all of his other appeal claims, including a request for a new trial. According to the article, "The judge said jurors should have been able to consider mitigating circumstances during sentencing even if they did not unanimously agree that those circumstances existed."

The judge ordered the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to conduct a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal within 180 days or to sentence him to life imprisonment. We fully expect him to be sentenced to death again, after the judge revises his sentencing instructions.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now, on to something really important... a number of sites have reported on this date in 1987, Perl 1.0 was released. (Reports / information: PerlMonks | use.perl.org | history.perl.org )

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, Cameron Barrett, operator of the Camworld web site and nominee for Blogger of the Year in the Scripting News Awards, called the awards The Dave Winer Big Ego Awards. This is more strongly worded than our critique, which we published yesterday. But, it finds fault with many of the same issues that we did.

Update: Camworld publishes reader comment on the article, including a comment submitted by Dave Aiello.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Last week, we criticized the Government of France for demanding that the United States not execute Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who has been implicated in the conspiracy surrounding the September 11 terrorist attack. At that time, we asked what right the French government had to oppose the death penalty in a situation where over 3,000 Americans had been killed in a coordinated terrorist attack?"

"Two weeks ago, The Christian Science Monitor reported on the latest burining issue in France, and perhaps this gives an insight into the depth of the hypocracy of the French position on the death penalty. On November 28, France's highest appeals court ruled that children who are born with Down's Syndrome had a legal right to be aborted and can sue the doctors who attended the pregnancy for financial support."

"The implication of this ruling is truly chilling, and not inconsistant with other recent judicial decisions in France. Andre Vingt-Trois, Bishop of Tours said, 'I think with great sadness of all families who have welcomed Down syndrome children, who have showered them with love and received great love in return. This ruling amounts to a declaration that such love was worthless.'"

"Then, there is the article written by Siegfried Mortkowitz of Deutsche Press-Agentur and republished yesterday by The Drudge Report which says that France has undergone an unprecedented crime wave in 2001, prompting likely presidential candidate Charles Pasqua to call for a reimposition of the death penalty."

"The French position on the death penalty is not indicative of their government's great mercy toward those who are guilty of crimes against society. Taken together with the news accounts I've pointed out here, they are an indication of a severe social values crisis that goes well beyond anything that has been experienced in the United States recently. The only coherent approach for the U.S. Government to take is to listen politely to French envoys, and then to continue to do what they know is right."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "After a hiatus of over two weeks, Plastic.com has made (what I hope will be) a triumphant return. I liked this site from the outset, regardless of the fact that I know the people who built it. Apparently, it went on hiatus because Carl Steadman took it off Automatic Media's hands and it took a while to move it and get the kinks out. Probably this is Carl's avocation."

"One question that this raises is, did any of the Plastic staff make the jump with the acquisition? I haven't seen a post from Joey Anuff yet. Hope to see one soon...."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over on Scripting News, Dave Winer decided to start a series of awards for weblogs called The Scripting News Awards. This type of thing is important, if only to give people who are not running a weblog at the moment a sense that this is a large movement within the web publishing community.

There are, however, a couple of fairly obvious issues with the process defined by Dave, and the subsequent nominations for the awards. Read on for more...

In no particular order, the issues are:

• Extremely Manila Focused

  
  One of the questions that people outside the Manila community often ask is, how much discussion of non-Manila sites actually occurs on Scripting News? Some insight might be gained from an analysis of the nominees for the Scripting News Awards. Excluding the category which is limited to Manila sites, 20 of 31 nominees (64.5 percent) are running Manila.

  
  Of the non-Manila sites whose engines we could identify, two are Blogger, one is Post-Nuke (PHP), one is Greymatter, one is CityDesk. That leaves out a lot of web publishing platforms.

  
  

• Narrow Subject Matter

  
  A number of sites are focused on gee-wiz technologies, or exclusive clubs to which most webloggers relate with great difficulty. Among them:
  

  
  
  • Segway News, about the gyroscopic scooter. Live since December 1. Worthy of an annual award already?
    
  • ICANN Weblog, not a Manila site, but, definitely for the Internet insiders.
    
  • Davos Newbies, Lance Knobel's web site. Yes, we are capitalists. But, the new world order stuff is a little too much during the war.

    
    

  
  
• Many Better Dead Weblogs From Which to Choose

  
  So many sites have died in 2001 that were valuable. How could 80 percent of the "Gone But Not Forgotten Category" be Manila sites? What about:
  

  
  
  • Feed
    
  • Plastic, although it seems to be back now.

    
    

  
  ...just to name a couple? Maybe Feed was not a Weblog, in the classic sense. But, we can come up with a number of dead weblogs that were at least as good as the ones that Dave nominated that exist outside the Weblogs or EditThisPage communities.
  

We are not looking for a nomination for CTDATA.com to any of these awards, although people tell us that the War On Terror coverage was particularly interesting in September and October.

What we are saying is that when we heard about the possibility of a set of annual weblog awards, we expected more diverse technological bases, and more different points of view (from a content perspective). Maybe the nomination process should have been opened up as well.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Washington Post reports that remnants of al Qaeda forces are fleeing the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan after being routed by the Northern Alliance with U.S. Special Forces and air support. Unfortunately, there is no sign of Osama bin Laden in the area, contrary to some previous reports.

At U.S. Central Command headquarters, General Tommy Franks refered to to the battlefield situation as "confused" and said that it would take some time to assess the situation.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the weekend, Tomalak's Realm pointed out a Crypto-Gram article which reported that two judges separately punished a U.S. Government agency and three corporations for lax Internet security. A Federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior to disconnect some of its computers from the Internet because an Indian tribe proved records could be altered and funds diverted. In a separate case, a Texas state judge issued an injunction against three customers of Exodus Communications for permitting a denial of service attack (DOS) to take place.

Bruce Schneier, the author of the article says, "I like this kind of stuff. It forces responsibility. It tells companies that if they can't make their networks secure, they have no business being on the Internet. It may be Draconian, but it gets the message across."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Friday CNET News.com reported that Microsoft released a patch for Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 that is meant to close a dangerous hole in the browser. CTDATA originally reported on this flaw last Wednesday. The patch apparently fixes several problems that, if left unpatched, may not become apparent at the same time.

The flaw that is present in IE 6.0 appears particularly dangerous, in that an attacker can "alter HTML information in a way as to trick IE to open a damaging executable file without asking the {user} for confirmation."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Washington Times reports that countries with al Qaeda training camps have become more willing to work with the United States to disband them. Somalia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Yemen, and Sudan are all seen have all announced their commitment to crack down on terrorists, or have approached the United States for aid in doing so.

According to the article, "Western nations, such as Germany and Spain, can largely handle the problem themselves, aided by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement... Poorer nations such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Yemen and possibly even Sudan will need more direct aid by the CIA and the Pentagon."