Putting people first. As with earlier Microsoft mantras (ActiveX, Windows DNA), .NET means almost everything and therefore nothing in particular. The Redmond priesthood incants XML with the same mystical vagueness. No resounding amen has yet been heard from the hundreds of millions of souls who use Windows and Office, who were recently demoted from “knowledge workers” to “information workers,” and who were then reclassified as “first-class data objects.” Instead they ask, “What’s in it for me?” [read the full story][Jon’s Radio]

Obstruction of Judges. Why has it become next to impossible for a president — Democrat or Republican — to get a nominee to a federal appeals court approved by the Senate? By Jeffrey Rosen. [New York Times: Politics]

Hundreds accused of witchcraft in Central African Republic / But many deaths actually from AIDS [lnk.to]

Apple ‘Switch’ Star Flies High. Ellen Feiss, the young star of one of Apple’s new switch ads, is gaining a large following online. She’s the subject of fan sites, icons, desktops and Photoshop parodies. Can Mahir-like fame be far behind? By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

Time for Open-Source to Grow Up
The OpenSSH backdoor demonstrates that the community must get pragmatic about package verification, and fast. [Security Focus]

SSL defeated in IE and Konqueror. You have no security; get over it [The Register]

Sun revives Solaris for Intel. 8.0 next month, 9.0 next year [The Register]

Open source’s new weapon: The law?. Open-source advocates will unfurl a legislative proposal next week to prohibit the state of California from buying software from companies that don’t open their source code. [CNET News.com]

Dangers of the Google tool bar exposed. From annoyances to threats [The Register]

Gnutella bandwidth bandits. The file-trading network’s developers are discovering that even their wide-open, free-for-all technology might need a little policing. [Salon.com]

But from the beginning, Gnutella exhibited a frustrating reluctance to “scale” — to perform adequately for large numbers of users — and when Napster did eventually shut down, in 2001, Gnutella wasn’t ready for influx of refugees.