The guy who runs textfiles.com is working on a documentary on the BBSes that preceded wide availability of home internet connections. Updates to the list of BBSes are being collected.

NASA is looking at more ways to commercialize space. (Update 10/18/2001: Spaceref has the draft of the space commerce plan available). Stories at CNN, The Houston Chronicle, and Space.com. At the same time, Russia has turned down Mark Shuttleworth's bid to be the second space tourist because of "unreasonable demands".

The Terascale Computing System has been installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. For now it's the largest unclassified research computer. Stories at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Wired.

Even before 9/11, video surveillance of public areas was growing in the U.S. England is way ahead of us in this area. The New York Times Magazine looks at what that's bought them. [via /.]

The Alaska pipeline leak has been plugged, after 285,600 gallons leaked out of the bullet hole.

Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilzations, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993. Also, a review of his 1996 book of the same title, published in The Journal of World-Systems Research. [via Alamut]

Haiku Movie Reviews [via Metafilter]

Asia Times reviews a 1999 book by two Chinese Colonels, War Beyond Limits (or Unrestricted Warfare), which forecast the war against terrorism. (Update: Here's the second part of this article). A summary translation in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) was prepared by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and archived by FAS. There is also a translation available in PDF from C4I. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ran an article on the book in its Nov/Dec 1999 issue, focusing on the implication that China would not consider itself bound by conventional rules of war, but would focus on asymmetric warfare: terrorism, guerilla war, and cyber war. [via Interesting People]

OMB Watch lists information which has been removed from government sites in the wake of 9/11. [via net.narrative environments]

The public case that Blair laid out against bin Laden. [via wood s lot]

Did the White House Give the Taliban $43 Million? This article, reprinted from the Boston Phoenix, asserts that it didn't happen: that in fact the grant was set up to bypass the Taliban by distributing it through UN international agencies and NGOs. Here is Powell's statement at the time and the Q&A that followed. [via wood s lot]

An American military operation name generator. [via wood s lot]

Photos from Afghanistan, December 1978. [via kottke.org]

Maps of Afghanistan

A new location for Stratfor's Situation Reports. [via Bushwacker]

Florida's continued alert status critized. [via Bushwacker]