In a move not too surprising, the RIAA has begun targetting students. You know something's wrong when businesses start going after their own customers.

Over in Iraq, hopeful signs for humanity come in news of an Iraqi lawyer and wife who risked their own lives to help US troops rescue Pvt. Lynch. The lawyer not only risked his life walking up to a bunch of Marines, but he returned back to the hospital to gather crucial information. Perhaps not all lawyers are crooks after all.

In the little town I live in, nobody seems to be concerned by SARS, but CDC chief says it may become a pandemic. Is this more FUD? Well, some of the reasons raised include: highly infectious from person to person, little or no natural immunity, no cure. Sounds bleak indeed.

Conclusion: War, disease, and a record industry on the loose. Sheesh, is this the Middle Ages or something?

IlohaBlog: Can't say much yet, but there may be some real big news coming up ahead (like, in 3 months).

In this article Marius Andreiana says:
Please stop developing and using some obscure application when there are better alternatives. Not happy with them? Fix what's wrong, [...]. Reusing and improving existing code, not making your own, is the way. Drop the "not made here" syndrome and your 15 minutes of fame on freshmeat [...]. Starting a new project is a good way to learn to develop software, but you can also learn by doing bugfixing, unit testing, and development of new features and optimizations of existing applications. Sourceforge should start removing projects with less than 1% activity for the last six months [...].

I must admit that I'm guilty of the crime described in the article. When I started working on IlohaMail there already were alternatives out there that did at least some of what I wanted. But I went ahead and wrote everything from scratch anyway.

But why did I do this? Because I felt like it. I didn't feel like changing an existing system, even though that may have saved me time. It wasn't about practicality, it was about scratching that itch. It certainly wasn't about fame... hell, I didn't even start thinking about publicly releasing my work until 1.5 years after I started.

Three years later, the project currently has an activity percentile of 93%, but even more importantly, I've learned so much. I won't trade that experience for anything, no matter how inefficient or futile it might seem to others.

It's happening. The government has disappeared a citizen by simply labelling him a "material witness". Maher Hawash is held in solitary confinement with limited access to lawyers or his family, and completely stripped of his legal rights. A website has also been set up to fight for his freedom.