Microsoft Train Simulator Six highly-detailed train routes from around the world with over 600 total miles of rail, carefully recreated with accurate elevation and terrain data, to mirror the real-world scenery, industry, and towns along the routes. Routes include both historic and contemporary rail operations(they say it'll ship in "Spring 2001").

www.oreilly.com -- Predictions for 2001 Daylight hours are getting short, and it's time for technology predictions for the year 2001. Most analysts will bore you with pedantic articles about new businesses, consumer spending, investment, groundbreaking products, and connectivity speeds. Not this writer! I write about things we all really care about.

CNET.com - News - E-Business - Big Brother knocked in 2000 For privacy experts, 2000 looked more like 1984. Workplace surveillance was the leading privacy concern in 2000, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based nonprofit that performs research and educates the public on privacy issues.

Why Iraq's buying up Sony PlayStation 2s Both the U.S. Customs Service and the FBI are investigating the apparent transfer of large numbers of Sony PlayStation 2s to Iraq, according to military intelligence sources.

Disturbing Search Requests Ahhh yes. What do "daycare duct tape", "katie curic", and "Wallpaper Underware" all have in common? Are you sure you really want to know?

Language As A Network Protocol The internet is creating an American version of the British Empire, with the English language playing the role of the Royal Navy. In an information economy the vital protocol is language, written and spoken language.

xmloperator : an XML editor xmloperator is an XML editor. You can read and modify XML documents. xmloperator is a freeware. It can be downloaded freely and used without time limit. xmloperator is writen in Java. It runs (should be able to run) on any machine which supports the Java 2 platform. xmloperator includes an XML parser which has been developped by the Apache Software Fondation.

Scripting News: Dave's - "My Editorial" Dave Winer's take on the recent election circus. He describes it just the way I've been mumbling to myself about it, "While the Democrats mouthed the platitude "All votes must count," the Big Lie of this contest, of course they were working furiously to get Republican votes to not count. They must think we're stupid, or have no minds, or just like to vent or whatever. It worked, up to a point. However, when I heard anyone mouthe that particular homily I made a note. "There's someone who's not using their mind."

Florida Bumper Stickers:

[Order yours now--we've no idea how many are left.]

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FLORIDA: If you think we can't vote, wait till you see us drive.

FLORIDA: Home of electile dysfunction.

FLORIDA: We count more than you do.

FLORIDA: If you don't like the way we count then take I-95 and visit one of the other 56 states.

FLORIDA: We've been Gored by the bull of politics and we're Bushed.

FLORIDA: Relax, Retire, ReVote.

FLORIDA: Viagra voters do it again!

FLORIDA: What comes after 17,311?

FLORIDA: Where your vote counts and counts and counts.

FLORIDA: This is what you get for taking Elian away from us.

FLORIDA: We don't just cheat in football.

FLORIDA: We're number one! Wait! Recount!

Palm Beach County: So nice, we let you vote twice.

Palm Beach County: We put the "duh" in Florida.

Sign on I-95: Florida this way, no that way, 5 miles, wait 10 miles.

And finally:

In the spirit of biapartisanship perhaps President-elect Bush could appoint Vice-President Gore to be the Ambassador to Chad?

Foolproof Ballot for Palm Beach County Yep! This will solve all the voting problems in Palm Beach. Just ask the DNC!

The First Thanksgiving: (The Pilgrims Missed It) On April 30th four centuries ago, our ancestors, led by Don Juan de Oñate, reached the banks of El Rio Bravo (Rio Grande). The first recorded act of thanksgiving by colonizing Europeans on this continent occurred on that April day in 1598 in Nuevo Mexico, about 25 miles south of what is now El Paso, Texas. After having begun their northward trek in March of that same year, the entire caravan was gathered at this point. The 400 person expedition included soldiers, families, servants, personal belongings, and livestock . . . virtually a living village. Two thirds of the colonizers were from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands). There was even one Greek and a man from Flanders! The rest were Mexican Indians and mestizos (mixed bloods).

EarthWeb.com Phil Zimmermann: Programmer as Celebrity Meet Phil Zimmermann, creator of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption suite and one of the world's best-known cryptographers.. Zimmermann is probably the world's best-known cryptographer. He created the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption suite in 1991. Since then, it has come to dominate the market for programming protection of online confidentiality. PGP has been heralded for its role in protecting numerous political dissidents around the world, and earned Zimmermann the prestigious Norbert Wiener Award for responsible use of technology in 1996, as well as the 1995 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and a 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award from Secure Computing Magazine, along with at least a dozen other distinctions. It also brought him into highly public patent disputes with RSA Data Security Inc., and a nightmarish multi-year criminal investigation by the United States government.

U.S. Constitution in hypertext We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Presidential Election Law JURIST: The Legal Education Network presents this Guide as a public resource for voters, citizens, and observers of the US electoral process.

Fact Sheet-By One Vote! What difference is my one vote going to make?

Privacy Weblog It's a way to keep people informed about privacy issues. It's also a way for us - the ConsentCache team - to keep track of all the articles we like to point people to!

BookNotes News No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker

Speech without AccountabilityNew software makes it nearly impossible to remove illegal material from the Web--or to find out who put it there.Scientific American: October 2000

GEEK PRIDE FESTIVAL A 2 Day Celebration of the Geek Way of Life. Speakers, Quake, Music, Bouncy room, Movies, Nerf Battles for real this time, screeching violins, and a whole lot more!

BYTE Column - What The Heck Is SOAP, Anyway?, David S. Platt Given the heterogeneity of the Internet environment, our new programming strategy needs to separate the representation of the function call from the protocol used to transport the call from one box to another. For encoding this information, we'll have to find the lowest common denominator that everyone on the Internet supports. As international air-traffic control uses English (even in France), the lowest common denominator for data encoding on the Internet is XML, and this is what we'll use for representing our function calls.

FEED | RE: Ian Clarke talking about FREENET At first, the world at large ignored the Internet, missed its significance, scoffed, then jumped in with both feet, thinking it was a bandwagon, asked the wrong questions about how to make money with it, got too excited when it seemed to be something it wasn't, got too depressed when it turned out to be what it is. Mirrored fractal nets within nets: the collective intelligence of the human race unfolding in real time -- and for the first time, on its own terms. The Internet routes around obstacles; the bigger the obstacle, the more joyous the detour. The humorless power of the state, the iron-fisted control demanded by the corporation, the sexless desire insinuated by broadcast advertising -- all are falling to networked imagination.

National Fire News - Large Wildland Fires If you live in the west and smell smoke, this site will show you why. It will also tell how you can help.

Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music Microsoft: "During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play Fur Elise or It's a Small, Small World seemingly at random...This is a design feature..."

Claudia Schiffer is my Pilot!The supermodel's special-edition Palm PDA inspires aisles full of celebrity gadgets at K-mart.By Janelle Brown

I Bet You Thought The Record Companies Had It Bad? Taking a cue from music-bootlegging teenagers, sewing enthusiasts have discovered that they too can steal copyrighted material over the Internet, thanks to anonymous file-sharing techniques. Like the record industry, the sewing world has been unable to come up with any practical alternative to innovative file-swapping communities that proliferate online. Some of the same entertainment conglomerates whose music divisions are fighting Napster--such as Time Warner--are also feeling the pinch from the pattern-swapping.

IBM offers free tool for writing Linux software The tool, called "Sash Weblications," allows Web developers who don't have extensive programming experience to write software that runs on the increasingly popular Linux operating system. Big Blue has taken a keen interest in Linux in recent months. The company is attempting to position itself as a leader in the Linux market, should it develop into a sizable business, by offering the operating system on all of its computer systems. Last month, IBM sweetened pricing for Linux on its mainframe systems in an effort to remove some of the obstacles of running the operating system on large computers.

BetaNews - Stephen King Novel Downloads Break Records Internet distribution of The Plant, the new novel by Stephen King, topped 100,000 completed downloads in its first two days of online sales, Conxion, the Internet operator handling the e-book, announced. The download, the firm said, was a record for King's work, and a respectable figure for the digital delivery of books. Antonio Salerno, Conxion's CEO, said that King has become a pioneering author in digitally delivering his books directly to readers.

Fortune 2000 Retirement Guide: Introduction: Retire Rich None of it makes sense--the frantic saving, those grueling 18-hour workdays--without keeping the fantasy firmly in mind. The empty beach, soft as talcum under your toes. The breathtaking mountain retreat that's actually home, not a two-week hideaway. Retirement, on your terms. Yes, that's the goal. The task, however, is getting there in one piece.