In a revelation that perfectly demonstrates the nexus between moral posturing and greed in America, MSNBC reported Friday that tracking data on student web-surfing is being sold by one of the largest manufacturers of content-blocking software -- and in the name of protecting kids, of course. That software is called Bess, and it restricts the browsing of more than 12 million students -- and thanks to the noxious Children's Internet Protection Act passed by Congress last year, that number is going to get much higher. Guess who one of the first customers was? The U.S. Department of Defense. [Note: jamie posted about this last Friday as well. Read on for Jon's take.]

If you need to escape Hype Sunday, or even if you don't, go see Shadow Of The Vampire.The odd and the slightly twisted will go nuts over this film by E. Elias Merhige. William Dafoe is astounding as the vampire Count Orlock, and John Malkovich is his wonderful icky and obsessive self as the director whose only moral value is getting his film made at any cost. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, no endings. A brief and useful Nosferatu primer is included, free of charge.

A new study finds computers have become a fixture in many kid's lives at an unbelievable pace -- 72 percent of U.S. households with kids now have computers, many times the number five years ago. But the study by the Packard Foundation also finds an outrageous gap in computers and Net access between rich and poor kids at home and in schools, an issue that has so far failed to arouse campus activists, the tech industry, or President Bush, who outlined his educational initiatives this week without once even mentioning computers or technology. The study also has new stats on kids and computer use by age and activity. (Read more).

This is the last in our retrospective on the columns that Jon Katz began writing after the killings at Columbine High School in 1999, followed by another handful of the many impassioned comments and emails that those columns drew, a few of which at least give hope that it is possible to tame the Hellmouth.

That much software sucks -- perhaps most of it -- is hard to dispute. Except for the simplest programs, it seems like the price of complexity is a tendency to failure. Commands don't work, user interfaces are neglected to the point of ruin, and components of even the same piece of software often clash with each other. And once you start combining them and try to use more than one application at once, sometimes the best you can hope for is an operating system that neatly segregates the problems so that your word processor doesn't take down your web browser, your IDE or your e-mail client. At least those are desktop applications for individual users, though -- the trouble compounds briskly when the common faults of software manifest in multiuser environments, where one machine going down means a wasted time and frustration for a lot of people at once. In an effort to outline the ways that software could suck less is coding, reading and writing dervish chromatic.

How will the new President affect the tech universe? In short: Fat times in the Corporate Republic, and possible abandonment of the Microsoft prosecution. Big media, telcom and chip-maker CEO's: go out and play, boys. The feds may go after "hackers" again, as Bush I did. Digital civil liberties issues will heat up as the Net Culture Wars return with a vengeance. Scientific research and politics will mix, as with RU-486 and some gene mapping issues. Open, de-centralized, bottom-up Net media will mushroom. Good times for tech defense workers and the makers of blocking software. Jump in with your own predictions.

If a movie could have ADD, Snatch would be it. An eye popping, furiously-paced melange of graphics, jump cuts and freeze-frames, it's a black-humored (very black-humored) look at the underside of London, as experienced by an exotic band of thugs, promoters, thieves, gypies and hustlers. Warning: Plot is discussed but nothing is given away. Please add your own reviews, as usual.

The latest media-transmitted meme about technology and the Net is that the tech world is in the midst of a slump. This is true only if you define technology's overall status by dotcom stock prices. If the dotcom era is really over, good riddance. Maybe we can forget about dog and cosmetic sites, venture capitalists, copyright and lawsuits for a bit. Some of the tech world's most interesting innovations -- from the Net and Web to mom and pop online retailing to countless individual web pages to file-sharing to Freenet to P2P programs, AI to gene mapping -- have been developed far from venture capital cash. (Read more).

Below: More comments spawned by Jon Katz' columns on the events in Colorado. These words speak for themselves.

The U.S. codified the idea of constitutionally-guaranteed privacy, but other countries do a much better job of protecting it these days. Many Europeans own their own data, and Canada actually has a privacy commissioner. That's not likely to happen here anytime soon. In the U.S., we may never be able to control our own data again, or protect ourselves from the indiscriminate use of databases and unaccountable institutions to make decisions that affect our personal, financial and work lives. Nor do many people seem to care if corporations own and sell the details of their lives.

"Thirteen Days" is fascinating history, but the movie isn't remotely as gripping as the near-Armageddon it portrays. Ironic that nuclear bombs are much more likely to go off today than 30 years ago, but pols don't worry about it much. The film evokes a pre-digital time when media wasn't a talk-show-driven hysteria machine, diplomats saber-rattled via teletype and the only way to make absolutely sure something was a missile was to fly a plane right over it. WARNING: plot is discussed but everybody knows the ending here. Next week: "Antitrust," the film allegedly inspired in part by the Microsoft mess.

Rack up a debt or crime, no matter how minor or how many years ago, and you're tagged for life, sometimes unfairly, sometimes erroneously, in mushrooming, linked databases used by credit and collection agencies, banks, governments, insurers and employers. In recent months, I've been getting a ton of e-mail offering fresh horror stories from people -- many of them students -- snared by information-tracking programs disgorging past debts and misdemeanors to unaccountable, indiscriminate business entities. This is just a taste of how privacy (and dignity) are being eroded by technology. (Note: First of a two-part series.)

If exponentiality is fatality, as one writer suggests, then information is creating a new kind of ecosystem that violates natural laws of selection and survival. Modern media have no predators, and are not subject to biological or Darwinian-style selections -- the Regulon. Thus media can proliferate eternally, overwhelming coherence and reality. There is no Regulon in the Semiosphere, is one new theory about information.We could use some help from physicists and biologists here.

Traffic is a blistering movie with a timely message: our drug policies are a disaster. Steven Soderbergh drives this home in an innovative movie (told in three cinematically different but concurrent parts, with 129 speaking roles). One of the best of the year. WARNING: As always, I talk about plot, but don't give away endings. (Read more).

Early visions of the Virtual Community haven't come to pass for a variety of reasons. The idea is powerful and enduring, but is in need of reconception and redesign. VC's of the future may have to draw from the backyard fence, the tavern and town hall, water cooler, and the old-fashioned office. Is the Virtual Community a real possibility? Can it survive the growth, size and commercialization of the Net, as well as flamers, thieves, vandals, fakers and digital anarchy? What ought to be the responsibilities of members? How would you design or redesign it?

This is the seventh in our continuing reprint of Jon Katz' series beginning with his column "Voices From the Hellmouth," which serves to illustrate how deeply problems can lurk even under apparent normality.

A series of new studies of Napster users suggests everything you've been reading about music file-sharing systems is baloney. You're not thieves and pirates, it turns out, but marketing pioneers and music lovers quite willing to pay for music. These new stats suggest that file-sharing could have enormous implications for the selling of content, culture and information online, none grasped by dunder-headed corporations like the record labels. They are also a reminder not always to believe what you read. (Read more).

Happy New Year! Lots worse things to be doing (at least in the snowbound regions) than talking movies. How do you think this holiday movie season is shaping up? I've seen three outstanding ones so far: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Unbreakable. WARNING: Some plots are briefly summarized below -- for those movies I just named and and in reviews of Cast Away, State and Main, What Women Want, Finding Forrester, Proof Of Life and All The Pretty Horses. No endings are given away. (I haven't yet seen the much-ballyhooed Traffic or the Nosferatu-inspired Shadows Of the Vampire, about which we can jaw over the next couple of Sundays).

Virtual communities that only offer information, data and text-based messaging are sometimes fragmented, brittle and cold. They don't allow the kind of sequential communications and storytelling vital to any community, work or personal. Those that emphasize human contact are too limited. The Virtual Community of tomorrow may have to incorporate both. (This is the third in a series.)

In the early 90's, the Net was relentlessly criticized for everything from undermining authority to promulgating porn and depravity, even aiding and abetting nuclear terrorism. The handful of writers and journalists defending the idea of cyberspace sometimes got myopic about it, romanticizing ideas like the Virtual Community and the impact of the network on politics. The dotcom era made everybody a bit more hard-headed. Today, online communities increasingly focus on information and data, not human interaction. But the idea of the Virtual Community has never been redefined, and needs to be. (Second in a series).