I just added a new update to my XML New Products column for the IEEE’s Internet Computing: The World of XML Tools
.

This update features
XML-enabled P2P Applications, along with a
table of over 52 companies in 21 different product categories.

Here’s a friendly easter story from the Sacramento Bee:
Jack rabbits attack walkers in Sonoma County; man bitten, woman forced to evade jack rabbit.

Here’s a nice piece by Eliot Van Buskirk for CNET on the SSSCA2 that provides a bit more background than some of the other articles to date:
Senator “Fritz” wants your bits.

Here’s a NY Times article by Chris Gaither covering the latest developments in Walter Hewlett’s battle to save HP’s future, despite its own shareholders:
Hewlett Heir Files Lawsuit to Overturn Merger Vote,
by Chris Gaither for the NY Times.

Michelle Delio takes a look at the latest in a long history of Windows Media Player exploits. See the Wired News story:
Next Virus Exploit: Media Player?.

Let’s hope he can figure out how to get all of the votes counted this time around!

Here’s an Businessweek interview with the DNC’s new head techie — Mark Walsh:
Getting the Dems Up to Web Speed.

Hmmm. Here’s a very interesting Plastic discussion about whatever the hell is going on right now during Bush Administration’s re-org over at the INS:
Plastic: House Dems, GOP Agree to Dismantle INS, Bungling Continues.

Here’s an article by Anne Eisenberg for the NY Times that explains why the latest results of Brown University’s rhesus macaque monkey experiments are particularly significant:
Don’t Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick.

In the experiment, performed on three monkeys, the team implanted a tiny set of 100 miniature electrodes in the motor cortex, the part of the brain just under the skull that commands how the arms will move. Then they threaded the wires from the electrodes through a hole in the skull and connected them to a computer.

When the monkeys played the pinball game, their brains made characteristic signals that were recorded as the neurons fired near the electrodes. The team wrote a program that paired the spiky patterns the neurons made as they fired with the related trajectories of the monkeys’ arms as they moved the cursor.

Then they were able to substitute a signal that translated brain-wave data into joystick output, so that when the monkey thought about a move, the cursor actually made that move.

Dr. Donoghue said that the electrodes tapped up to 30 neurons, and that only three or so minutes of data were needed to create a model that could interpret the brain signals as specific movements.

In the experiment, the pinball game was switched intermittently by the researchers from hand to brain control. It took slightly longer for the monkey to succeed in hitting the red dot with brain control, but the difference was negligible, he said.

Related experiments by other researchers, Dr. Donoghue said, have required extensive training for the monkeys to bring a cursor under their mental control. “In our work, we had immediate substitution of the program for hand control,” he said.

The experiment demonstrates the plasticity of the brain in adapting itself to new jobs, said Dr. William Heetderks, director of the neural prosthesis program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, one of the agencies financing the work at Brown.

Dr. Heetderks said he expected the animals to learn to control the cursor mentally. “But the speed and quality with which the monkey learned to control the movement of the cursor was a surprise,” he said. “It was minutes, not weeks.”

The title of the LA Times article by Henry Weinstein says it all:
Oregon Jury Finds Against Philip Morris.

Here’s an LA Times piece by Jon Healy about one of Monday’s important developments in the Napster case (the other one being the Anti-trust investigation OK):
Napster Ruling Is Upheld.