In the wake of NBC's profoundly stupid, panic-inducing "Y2K" movie, here's a chance to take a rational stand on the eve of the 21st century and take a sane Y2K pledge. Feel free to offer personal upgrades. (more)

The Human Genome Project, often referred to on this site, may be the most inspiring and disturbing technological project in contemporary history. It embodies the often tragic drama of contemporary technology: well-meaning people trying in the noblest way to improve the world; setting in motion forces few ordinary people understand, agree upon or are prepared for.

No surprise that Friday's The Message from Seattle column drew some heat here. But as happened after Columbine last year, the resulting testimony and e-mail - about Seattle (and Slashdot, too, which has become a model for some of the protester's software) - was powerful. Here are some of those perspectives, and a bonus -- you can listen to the riots in realtime with WinAmp:

The news from the Yuppie capitol wasn't nearly as anarchic or confusing as much of the media has suggested (not surprisingly, they are already blaming the Net). In fact, it was angry, focused, and overdue. The big battle of the 21st century - corporatism vs. the individual - is now officially underway.

It's ironic that "End Of Days" arrives in theaters the same day as the brilliantly conceived and executed "Toy Story 2," as original and technologically dazzling a film as "End of Days" is boring and ludicrous. One suggests the end of an era, the other a beginning. Review of EoD and a wrap-up of a few other holiday movies: "The Insider" "Dogma," "Being John Malkovich," and a true gem, "American Movie." Please add your own comments about these movies and any others.

In the past couple of decades, anti-technology has become something of a trendy national political movement, especially among journalists, politicians, academics and other intellectuals. But a new survey says the vast majority of Americans are profoundly optimistic about the next century, and technology is the reason why.

Tom Christiansen , perl god, writer, and the guy that once kicked me out of #Perl for asking a question about sockets has written us another excellent feature. This one talks about modern keyboards, and the problem with them. It's an entertaining piece with gratuitous Who references so it's all good by me.

Thanks to the miracle of e-mail and a few administrators outraged at the latest law enforcement intrusion into American schools, we present below the FBI's Geek Profile, the agency's secret checklist of potentially violent characteristics being distributed to educational institutions in the United States and Canada. I'm turning myself in.

This week Bruce Perens ^[?] learned the hard way that Open Source development has become a popular spectator sport. Or, as I described it a few days earlier, a performing art. Like it or not, things are changing with Open Source development, with the Internet, with the way online news is gathered and spread, and with Slashdot. More ->

C|Net recently made waves with its "Top 10 Hacks" story which seemed to say that Hack==Website Defacement. Derek Glidden found that wrong. And I'm glad he did because he's proposed that we do our own top 10 hacks. He's written a fabulous article, and challanges us to come up with a real list of hacks: The good stuff. Not the script kiddie stuff that the media likes to use to generate extreme headlines. Read this story. Its a good one.

A wave of significant legislation seeking to regulate electronic commerce and culture is now before Congress, marking a significant new era in the history of the Net. The rationale for earlier efforts to control the Internet was the largely mythical specter of the online Pervert. Now, it's the poor Consumer who's on the local news every night getting ripped off online. So corporations and Congress are teaming up to fence off the Wild Frontier.

The original concept of free, Open Source software was that of programmers writing software they wanted for themselves and sharing it with their peers like poets writing work that only other poets would ever read. Now Open Source and free software are getting major attention. There is suddenly an adoring public out there beyond the footlights. And the presence of this audience is changing the entire Open Source "movement." (more below)

Disney's eerie model of the community of the future -- abandoned for decades in a darkened Tomorrowland tunnel -- might well be the perfect locus for the tragic view of technology.

We all know about Mozilla. It's one of the major 'poster children' for the entire Open Source concept. Build 9, Build 10, Build 11, and so on. Someday there will be a Mozilla that will run without crashing, and we'll love it. Someday. Then there's Opera's Linux - and BeOS, Mac, EPOC and OS/2 - ports. Over the last week we've had 100+ readers submit the news that (proprietary shareware) Opera for Linux is close to beta release. But there's another potentially exciting Linux browser in the works that has hardly gotten any publicity. (continued)

Thanks to the many geeks and nerds who answered my SOS the other day about how to use Orlando as a way to write about technology and the future. One of the many standout e-mails was from a genuine Disney Imagineer, with whom I had a clandestine and revealing meeting last night on a deserted EPCOT bench. This was only one of several mystical and powerful encounters with pilgrims flocking to the world's new techno-mecca. Next: Disney's Carousel of Progress and the lost model of his dream city of tomorrow.

Xiong Jiang sent this to us from Beijing. We're running it exactly as he wrote it, without a single word changed: The curiosity from the world on Linux and China is so high these days. :) Yes, I am a Chinese and I am curious on other parts of the world, particularly, the Linux world, as you are never the less curious on China. :) These days the business of Graphon Corp. with some China companies makes a tremendous fuss on slashdot and LinuxToday." (More --->)

I'm heading South today to try an experiment in non-technical open source writing. The subject is Orlando and the tragedy of technology, woven through Disney's imagined worlds and some of the other bizarre places there. The idea is going to be a magazine article, but I'm wondering if it might be a book as well. I could use some help.

On the Net, the notion that Microsoft is predatory and monopolistic is old news, but this was sure a stunner to most Americans, who've been reading all those adoring profiles for more than a decade. Judge Jackson's findings of fact drew big headlines and flooded the talk shows all weekend. Microsoft's fat stockholders won't have a happy day today either, as brokers and analysts weigh in after a busy weekend of reading. As one said on CNN yesterday: the judge's report isn't pretty.

As soon as Judge Jackson's decision was available for download (from this mirror site, among others), I was on the phone with Washington DC attorney Don Weightman, who often serves as the informal "Slashdot legal interpreter" on federal law, especially for antitrust and regulatory matters. Click below for a transcript of the phone conversation Don and I had as we read the decision together. Don makes some great points!

Quite a number of people have been writing to us about Dave Whitinger's column that ran on LinuxToday and was sent over here as well. Dave's contention is the browser compatibility is a crucial battle for the success of Linux - and things don't look so good. Click below to read the column, and contribute your thoughts.