MetaFilter

Is the Internet in danger of collapse from a disaster or terrorist attack? The Internet was a product of DARPA and designed during the Cold War because it was thought that the centralized phone system networks providing most or all of the National Defense communications networks- used at that time would not survive a nuclear attack disabling our ability to communicate with our troops. At the suggestion of the RAND Corporation and a number of Scientists the design scheme was to make the Internet a system with no central control in order to make it difficult for an enemy to disable our countries ability to communicate during a War. Has the decentralized Internet now become a threat to our very Centralized Goverment that initially created it-and other Goverments? Why would terrorist organizations want to destroy something that they in fact use themselves? Or perhap the researchers are right that the emergence of large centralized hubs brought forth by the increased commercialization of the Net has in fact made the Internet more vulnerable to attack or disaster! Perhaps there are lessons in this story regarding the whole Centralization/ Decentralization dichotomy that Goverments, and Individuals can learn from?
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:24 PM PST - 9 comments

First Human Clone to be Born in January. Discuss.
posted by McBain at 11:15 PM PST - 39 comments

boxplorer
one of the most interesting website interpreters i've ever seen. i'll just quote the site: The Internet BOXPLORER browser offers a rectangular view of the World Wide Web. It abstracts web page layouts to produce what are frequently rather colorful compositions. BOXPLORER purifies the Web, making it safe for children of all ages -- free from controversy and advertising. Translation - very interesting graphic renditions of any site you enter.
posted by tatochip at 8:00 PM PST - 25 comments

Linguistics in Bashkortostan. Russian philology within the Republic of Bashkortostan.
posted by plexi at 7:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72 at 6:52 PM PST - 11 comments

Andrew McCrae, 23, surrendered without incident about 10 a.m. after a standoff this morning. He alegaledly confessed to the murder of Police Office David Mobilio of Red Bluff, CA on San Francisoco's IndyMedia website yesterday. Before the standoff ended, he told a Concord Monitor reporter "I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in an effort to draw attention to police brutality." [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:19 PM PST - 42 comments

Run Ricky Run. Ricky Williams, running-back for the Miami Dolphins, gets an A for effort for designing and maintaining his own website. He keeps a journal where he sounds off on everything from battling fame and the perks that come with it, to meeting his idol (Jim Brown). He even talks about money problems, just on a much larger scale then you or I would have.
posted by Starchile at 2:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Bush Pardons Turkey. Ratio of the number of pardons George W. Bush has issued turkeys to those he has issued human beings : 2:1
posted by four panels at 2:32 PM PST - 35 comments

Does anyone here remember Daniel Ellsberg of the PentagonPapers fame? Well he may be relevant again and not only that, maybe essential.
posted by donfactor at 2:16 PM PST - 15 comments

Ever Try Getting Wine Shipped in the U.S.? Looks like Montana had set up a "wine connoisseur" rule that allowed for some shipping into the state if you filled out some paperwork, blah blah blah. PAIN! As someone who enjoys a good wine and wanted to order a bunch of it earlier in '02 when I was in Sonoma, CA and have it shipped home, only to be crushed when I couldn't have it done, I'm looking for a way to get this to work. Anyone else come across these various laws? Anyone else live in a state where they CAN get wine shipped in to them? 13 states allow reciprocal shipping from other partner states, and 14 others have some strict rules about it. Will opening these rules up allow minors an easy way to get alcohol? Some great links at the bottom of the article, too.
posted by djspicerack at 2:12 PM PST - 30 comments

Sex Crimes and equal treatment "under the law." (pun anyone?)

Outraged prosecutors said Thursday that they will appeal the sentence given to Edwin "Ed" Mann, a former Orlando Police Department sex-crimes detective, for having a sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl who had earlier dated his son.

Mann, a former leader in Cops for Christ, pleaded guilty last week to four felony charges resulting from an ongoing sexual relationship he had with the girl two years ago when he was a sex-crimes detective.

Do you think being "religious" and policeman merits special treatment from a judge?
posted by nofundy at 11:46 AM PST - 37 comments

"A placid boat ride past sets of harmonizing, doe-eyed dolls just doesn't cut it for kids raised on Quake and MTV." Epcot's new Mission: Space to feature intense g-force and weightlessness simulation. How is this possible and still be Disney-safe? Even though that caught my attention, the article is really about how Disney's creative engineers are having trouble staying a few steps ahead of the tech-savvy kiddies.
posted by archimago at 11:40 AM PST - 15 comments

They call it "PTSlaveryD": Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder. A Boston psychologist says "Black and Latino males are showing up in droves" with the symptoms. The Wall Street Journal invited readers to take it a step further - Post Traumatic Big Bang Disorder, anyone?
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:11 AM PST - 40 comments

My Tivo thinks I'm a gay pregnant man! This article documents the struggles that some people have gone to in order to gear Tivo's programming to their interests. As one man said of himself: " [I] often [order] cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of [me]. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer,".
posted by Raichle at 9:47 AM PST - 33 comments

Apple's own 'Switch' parody ads with Will Ferrell.
posted by Sal Amander at 9:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Watch Bill Plympton create his new animation Hair High right before your eyes! I left the ani-cam on yesterday and the only conclusion I came to was that it takes a really, really, really long time to draw animations.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:16 AM PST - 7 comments

Caley Meals, is a sex columnist. What seperates her from the crowd of them, is that she is published in a college school newspaper. Jokingly, in her first column she states that, "I will try to keep the students of Madison with their heads in the right place: the gutter." She then goes on to cover imortant topics such as, how to work the college sex life around a roomie, the drunken bootie call, fornication with food, female domination and many others. Is it real journalism or only riding on pure shock value? "Writing about sex is about as interesting as talking about sex, which is to say it's not interesting at all compared to the real thing. But at least it can be a little naughty."
posted by Recockulous at 8:43 AM PST - 38 comments

Philosopher John Rawls dead at 81. Highly regarded philosopher and Harvard professor John Rawls passed away Sunday at age 81. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Concept of Justice. You can also see his bibliography.
posted by xmutex at 8:14 AM PST - 15 comments

Clown Crack. Pointed, political, possibly offensive cartoons.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:33 AM PST - 40 comments

Wilson A. Bentley spent half a lifetime photographing snowflakes. The Smithsonian rejected his huge collection of photographs, on which his book was based. Now Buffalo, New York, a major snow capital, will feature Bentley's work in its "Winter Wonders" exhibit. More snowflakes can be seen on Cal Tech's snow crystals site (last cited in MeFi last January). Another city obsessed with snow is Asahikawa, Japan, home of the Austrian-inspired Snow Crystal Museum. The scientifically inclined may prefer this paper on the formation of ice-crystal patterns.
posted by SealWyf at 6:58 AM PST - 11 comments

When you take a good storyteller with keys to much of campus, a desire to get into everyplace else, and a need to bring about change through "constructive vandalism" and then wait for the statute of limitations to pass, you wind up with the published stories of Stealth Force Beta. Those folks who never had fun in college didn't get isolated in the middle of the desert with a bunch of nerds.
posted by ewagoner at 6:49 AM PST - 6 comments

"Yo, homeboy, are you hungry for some mad hip hop flava? Sink your grill-piece into Master P's Platinum Bar-B-Que. Want somethin' sweeter? Lil' Romeo's Bar-B-Quein' with Honey! If cheese is the flava you need, try Warren G's Cheezie Nacho!"
The most bizarre niche snack marketing since Arafat's cheese puffs.
posted by mikrophon at 6:33 AM PST - 30 comments

Some of the best comics ever are online. Some independent, some ubiquitous, and all too cool for syndication. Does anyone else know any good online comics?
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:41 AM PST - 43 comments

Hooray! Great news for those who love to communicate - Microsoft have released a new version of their popular Windows/MSN/.NET Messenger software! So, let's glance at the new features: there's a great new look with a spinny logo thingy, and... and, erm... well... it's had some features removed... like the ability to use third-party add-ons... and, oh but wait, there's new pop-up advertising and alleged spy-ware! Oh...
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:29 AM PST - 20 comments

The World Currency Gallery at Banknotes.com is excellent for old, new, and obsolete banknotes, and the dmoz.org currency result is enormous. [more]
posted by hama7 at 5:05 AM PST - 7 comments

We all know about the new Department of Homeland Security, but did you know about the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency?
posted by JoanArkham at 4:31 AM PST - 9 comments

Pamie returns! In an update to this old thread, Pamela Ribon is once again writing online. As some may know, Pamela's original site was named Squishy (a.k.a. Pamie's Panties), and it was part of the first generation of online journals.
posted by gd779 at 3:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Scott Kim's Inversions - an inversion is a word or name written so it reads in more than one way.
posted by mhjb at 2:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Where To Stay In Portugal And Spain: You could do worse than try Secret Places, an ambitious and delightful website that has the advantage of emphasizing unusual and charming accommodation. I don't know about Spain, but the places they recommend in Portugal, the Azores and Madeira are top notch and not at all touristy. These are the fairly priced rural inns, private homes and hotels we Portuguese repair to when our batteries need recharging. Although Portugal is a big tourist destination and there are loads of accommodation websites, I'm sorry to say that this is the first I've seen that's any good. I'm not so sure about the other hotel chain websites highly praised in a New York Times article [ registration required; with pop-ups], although the Ian Schrager Hotels [with pop-ups] one is quite attractive (in an early Nineties way) and very efficient reservation-wise.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:57 AM PST - 37 comments

Ages back there was a link, here at MeFi, to a project aimed at creating a DVD full of PC demos from back in the day. Well, they've finished. (They say if you pre-order now you'll get it in time for Christmas.)
posted by krisjohn at 12:51 AM PST - 3 comments

Interview with Google Nate Tyler, Public Relations Manager at Google Inc. answering a few interesting questions.
posted by jayantk at 12:50 AM PST - 2 comments