The National Security Archive has published documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing the degree of the United States’ foreknowledge of the Rwandan genocide, and the options that were considered before deciding to do nothing. The price of our complacency is, of course, well known: 800,000 people brutally murdered.

Someone must have written a tool that allows you to launch a Denial of Service attack on Windows 2000 machines via the IR port, because Microsoft has released a patch that fixes the problem.

Jesse Helms may be headed out to pasture, but unfortunately there are always more loathesome bigots around to pick up where he left off.

Windows XP is set to go gold on Friday in a big, stupid PR event. Windows XP definitely seems ready for prime time to me. The buggiest thing in RC1, from my experience, is Internet Explorer 6.

According to today’s USA Today, if you drive 10 miles to buy a Powerball lottery ticket, you’re 16 times more likely to die on the way than you are to actually win.

Sometimes it’s good to sit on a story for a few days, rather than blowing up over it and putting one’s fit in one’s mouth. For example, yesterday I read this LinuxFreak story about a guy in Oklahoma who is being prosecuted for doing a good deed. Today, I read that the guy wasn’t performing a good deed at all, he was rifling through files on a competitor’s web server in a malicious manner.

ContentBiz is running a detailed interview with Salon’s COO, Patrick Hurley.

CNet is reporting that Excite@Home might have to file for bankruptcy. I don’t want to be melodramatic, but what’s happening to the broadband revolution? The Bells aren’t rolling out DSL very quickly, Covad has bitten the dust, and now Excite@Home, one of the big cable modem players, is in deep, deep financial trouble.

The city of Houston is planning on offering free Internet access and other computing services to all its citizens through publicly accessible terminals. Not only will they get free email accounts (which they can get anywhere, anyway), they’ll also have free file storage and access to productivity software. It looks like an interesting experiment, at least.

Dubya’s minister of faith-based initiatives (I made up that title), John DiIulio, has quit. I’d love to know the inside reason why, although perhaps it’s true that it’s just because the commute sucks and he was feeling run down.