I was listening to the rebroadcast of Forum last night and found that Lawrence Lessig was the featured guest, discussing the importance of copyright and copyright reform. Forum is broadcast by KQED-FM, San Francisco, a NPR affiliate.

Thu, May 6, 2004 -- 9:00am
Copyright & Intellectual Property
Listen (entire program, Real Media)
Forum discusses copyright enforcement and its impact on innovation.
Host: with guest host Dave Iverson
Guests:
  * Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford University and author of "Free Culture"
  * Jeffrey Knowles, partner with Coblentz, Patch, Duffy and Bass, representing artists and music publishers

The FSF Savannah server has been hacked. The statement indicates a similar attack vector as the exploit against the Debian systems. However, it had been hacked nearly a month ago and was not detected until December 1st. For those that are not familar with it, Savannah is the FSF version of Sourceforge, hosting both GNU and non-GNU Free Software projects. It has not yet been determined whether any of the projects' source code has been modified. Read the full statement for details. One thing is certain though, with Debian, Gentoo and now the FSF being exploited in the same month, the open source/free software community is clearly under attack.

I saw some coverage on KTSF's broadcast of NHK news this morning that was about Hiroshima. I wasn't sure why it was on until I saw at the end "58".

I recently saw another program on TV (I forget where exactly) saying that Truman had information from the Joint Chiefs that a US invasion of Japan would suffer light casualties (on the order of 10,000 allied soldiers), that the Japanese people were demoralized, that they had no infrastructure to defend themselves with, and so on. The US had total air superiority, with no Japanese air resistance to speak of. Even the Japanese military had recognized that they had lost the war at this point already. The Russians were asked to broker a surrender deal with the US that allowed the emperor to retain his position.

And yet they used the bomb.

Why? To keep Russia out of Japan. To test the atom bomb on an unspoiled city (and not a "Military base" as Truman said in his speech). To intimidate the world and the Japanese emperor.

This was truly a sad day in history.

-molo