Distributed Library Project

I've been doing some work on the Distributed Library Project (DLP). It's a project to setup websites that provide for sharing/lending of books (and other resources) within communities.

The project is pretty new - so a lot of stuff remains to be worked out. I've put some of my notes up, including a detailed data model (which is pretty rough at this point).

The project has been setup as open-source, available on SourceForge, so PHP/HTML/MySQL developers might want to check it out.

Software Patents Bad

"Freedom of Speech in Software" by Phil Salin, is an article (dating back to 1991) arguing against patents for software.

Stealing the U.S. Presidency

Eric Blumrich has produced a two-minute Flash animation, "Grand Theft America", which explains Katherine Harris' role in illegally purging citizens from the Florida voter roles (helping Bush steal the presidency in 2000, and herself to take a congressional seat in 2002).

Some humans are evil.

(The animation is based, at least in part, on a report by Greg Palast dating from February, 2001)

Middle East analysis and perspectives

Robert Fisk's columns for the Independent.