I’m back from my trip and a few days of not reading the paper or watching the news. I’m only checking in to say that you wouldn’t think this kind of shit could happen in a first world country in the year 2001.

One item before I go: Joel says software takes 10 years to complete.

I’m going to be away for the computer until July 23, you’ll have to scrounge up your own news until then …

Ben Silverman at Dotcom Scoop sent me an email pointing out that they’ve broken over 200 stories. I guess I should have said that they hadn’t broken any stories this week.

Where is this whole Internet thing headed? Michael L Lewis makes some pretty astute guesses in his interview with Salon.

Philip Morris commissioned a study that proved the economic upside of smoking in the Czech Republic. Any costs to the government from smoking are more than made up for by the fact that smokers die young and thus don’t use up their pensions or undergo years of expensive medical treatment. Encouraging smoking is, I suppose, the twenty-first century equivalent of dragging the old and infirm past the borders of the village at nightfall so that wild animals will eat them.

Katharine Graham died today after a fall, at age 84. She was one of the greatest journalists and businesspeople of our time, and holds a number of impressive “first woman ever” titles.

Does it really make sense to call your site Dotcom Scoop when you don’t have any scoops? If you’re just linking to stories already published by other news outlets, then Dotcom Recap or Dotcom News Review seems more appropriate. It’s pretty bad to be outdone by a Talking Moose.

Obligatory link to anti-NMD article at Wired News. Someone quoted in the article compares NMD to the Maginot Line, a comparison that I’ve made before (though unfortunately not on this page). If we bring up the Maginot Line every time someone argues in favor of NMD, maybe this whole nasty idea will go away. Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling that the same aspect of human nature that brought about the arms race insures that NMD will never go away.

Salon has a story on David McOwen, the guy who was charged with a crime for running the Distributed.net client on some computers at DeKalb Technical College. I have a strong feeling that this is going to wind up being a huge black eye for the state government of Georgia.