Cool project alert: Freenet is an anti-censorship tool based on a network of distributed servers. When a resources is added to a Freenet, it becomes virtually impossible to remove, since it can exist on any or all of the servers, and there’s no way to know which servers it’s on. The bigger the Freenet becomes, the harder it is to control. Neat stuff. There’s also a News.com story about Freenet.

All I want to know is, will this agreement get me any closer to getting broadband to my residence? Cable modems, DSL, two cans and a high bandwidth string … at this point I just don’t care any more as long as it’s better than a modem.

I want to be merciful to Bill Gates, because I really do respect a lot of things he’s done, especially in the world of philanthropy. Unfortunately, interviews like this one just make me go ballistic. Here’s the worst quote: “We need to have our research people, our Office people, our Windows people all in one group taking breathtaking risks on this breakthrough user interface that is delivered in this next phase of the Internet.” In other words, they need a competitive advantage that’s unavailable to anyone else in the software industry. I think that’s why they’re in court in the first place.

RealNetworks has joined the list of companies embedding Mozilla in their own products to provide HTML rendering functionality. Netscape really dropped the ball by not building Navigator using this architecture in the first place. IE made huge inroads with their embeddable HTML rendering component. I think Mozilla can take back a lot of that ground because it’s cross platform, but it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Tim O’Reilly’s speech Beyond the Book illustrates why I have such admiration for Tim and his company. While many companies try to fool people into thinking that they’re trying to do the right thing when what they’re really trying to do is line their own pockets, O’Reilly and Associates has really been guided by its conscience and has been richly rewarded for it.

Here’s an interesting post from the Motley Fool message boards. It’s about AOL specifically, but really it’s about choosing stocks in general. If more investors had the outlook of this writer, the stock market may be less exciting, but companies would be managed a lot better.

Q dug up this report on Elian Gonzalez by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It contains a lot of detail about the life of the boy and his family prior to the shipwreck that isn’t found in the mainstream news articles. The more I learn about this case, the worse the relatives in Miami (and their co-conspirators) look.

Web Techniques has an overview of PHP 4.0, which is now out of beta.

Well, the governor of Maryland has signed the UCITA bill, as everyone knew he would.

Rogers Cadenhead passed along the news that Phil Katz died on April 14 at age 37. He was the founder of PKWare, and the author of utilities nearly everyone has used — PKZIP and PKUNZIP. Best wishes to Phil’s family.