"To prove this point we are offering a totally free one gigabyte per month account to everyone. Click here to activate your free account. If you don't have a news client we suggest you pick one from our NNTP news client download page."  
 
I get free newsgroup access from my ISP, so I haven't tried this. Just thought some of you out there might want to. And as for a client I use the freeware Xnews, which they link to.  

What Does Your Shopping Support?  
 
A searchable database for investigating companies' historical records on a variety of issues. By Co-op America.

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.  
 
Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to figure out who and where you are. Tor's technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against "traffic analysis," a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

Suzanne has been referred to as the "Mother of the MP3" as it was her voice that was used as the model for Karlheinz Brandenburg's compression algorithm. From Business 2.0 Magazine:  
 
"To create MP3, Brandenburg had to appreciate how the human ear perceives sound. A key assist in this effort came from folk singer Suzanne Vega. I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm, Brandenburg recalls. Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing [Vega s song] Tom s Diner. I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice.  
 
Site also has quite a few sample MP3s.

"PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Using a proprietary Matching Engine, PubSub is able to read millions of data sources on your behalf and notify you instantly whenever a match is made.  
 
The heart of the PubSub service is a powerful, proprietary Matching Engine that makes it possible, for the first time, to match millions of search queries against thousands of new pieces of information every second.  
 
Traditional search stores data and then allows you to find documents within that store of data. PubSub operates by first storing your subscription query, and then watching for new information that matches it. Your query will be checked against every piece of new information passing through our Matching Engine.  
 
Today, PubSub reads over 3 million weblogs, more than 50,000 internet newsgroups and all SEC (EDGAR) filings. In the coming months, we'll be adding many more streams of data, so stay tuned!"  
 
Read related article

The site has all the latest adfilters for Adblock extension in Firefox.  
 
Download the latest filter(latest at bottom of page), and then import the .txt file you want with the Adblock menu.  
 
Also if anyone gets any ads with Filterset.G, please  
email G (pierceive [at] yahoo) with the site that has ads on it.  
 
[Instructions] [Image] [Latest Changelog]

This little dragon appears to be looking at you. But if you rotate the base this way or that the dragon's head appears to turn the other way...  
 
Or if you stand the dragon on a shelf and walk about, the dragon's head follows you around the room. And yet it is simply a sheet of paper, cut and folded in a certain way. How does it work?  
 
When we see a solid object rotating, there are all sorts of clues that tell us what is going on, which way it is rotating, etc. The dragon gives us the wrong clues, because we mis-interpret what its shape is. The nose of the dragon appears to be pointing out towards the viewer, but in fact the dragon's head is concave.  
 
Includes a link to a video showing this interesting illusion, and a JPG file so you can print and assemble your own paper Dragon.

I don't quite know how it started, but 3 years on I'm still doing it. Shortly after Salon.com changed their layout to the way it appears now, I became enamored by their clever and well designed front-page category images. Periodically I would stop and save images that I liked, ones that caught my eye, or any that appeared to have something interesting about them. After 3 years I've amassed quite a collection, over 750 of them. It's neither complete nor well organized, but it's still a fun archive to browse. I've posted a page (in roughly but not quite chronological order) of my collection.  
 
[cc: some dude/some chick, blogs & zines, the wired]

Comprehensive Listings of Worldwide Shortwave broadcasts in English and Other Languages

The largest archive of Jon Stewart clips in one place I've ever seen. It seems to be primarily a political blog, but is also chock-full of Stewartry.

Tired of endless lists of Web search tools that give you no guidance as to which ones to use? Or that were last updated when Gophers were alive? I'm inviting you to look over my shoulder and use what I use every day for Web searching in an academic library. I keep up with this stuff so you don't have to!

Media Matters for America will document and correct conservative misinformation in each news cycle. Media Matters for America will monitor cable and broadcast news channels, print media and talk radio, as well as marginal, right-wing websites that often serve as original sources of misinformation for well-known conservative and mainstream media outlets.  
 
this site is not fighting fire with fire. it's fighting it with water. the best way to combat lies is truth.  

An interactive collection from vision specialist Michael Bach. Includes explanations and technical background.  
 
Most demonstrations require Flash or QuickTime; some graphics are in PNG format.  
 
Related LF post here.

scarily prophetic -- Published May 22, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times  
 
"Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.  
 
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.  
 
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.  
 
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden. . . . "  
 
continued

The official source for news stories concerning the United Nations.