privatemusings writes "Wikipedians are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over throughout the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing around. The Register has this fantastic writeup — read it here first." The article says that some Wikipedians believe Jimbo Wales has lost face by supporting the in-crowd of administrators and rebuking the whistle blower who leaked the existence of the secret mailing list.

mattnyc99 writes, "It's a huge challenge: how to store digital files so future generations can access them, from engineering plans to family photos. The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of readability down the line. And as technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?" From the article: "[US national archivist] Thibodeau hopes to develop a system that preserves any type of document — created on any application and any computing platform, and delivered on any digital media — for as long as the United States remains a republic. Complicating matters further, the archive needs to be searchable. When Thibodeau told the head of a government research lab about his mission, the man replied, 'Your problem is so big, it's probably stupid to try and solve it.'"

eldavojohn writes, "In Holyoke and Northampton, Massachusetts, the police have a new member on the team. It's facial recognition software that will mine the 9.5 million state license images of Massachusetts residents. From the article: 'Police Chief Anthony R. Scott said yesterday he will take advantage of the state's offer to tap into a computer system that can identify suspects through the Registry of Motor Vehicle's Facial Recognition System.' The kicker is that this system been in use since May and has been successful." An article from Iowa a few weeks back mentions that software from the same company (Digimark) is in use to catch potential fraud in applying for driver's licenses in Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas. But offering the software and photo database as a resource to police departments raises the stakes considerably. I wonder what the false positive rate is.

blkros writes: "Over on Wired there's an article about Deja News and the plans to try to get Google to open source the Usenet archives it got when it bought Deja News. Part of the plan is to have the Library of Congress oversee it and put it on university mainframes. Google has taken the archives off the web for now Aaagh!"