Even in death Arthur C. Clarke would not compromise his vision.
The famed science fiction writer, who once denigrated religion as "a necessary evil in the
childhood of our particular species," left written instructions that his funeral be completely
secular, according to his aides.
Clarke died early Wednesday at age 90 and was to be buried in a private funeral this weekend in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. (Blog: In praise of Arthur C. Clarke)
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Friday, March 21, 2008
Sci-fi guru Clarke to have secular funeral
How To Make Your Phone Untappable
In 1991, Philip Zimmermann developed a humble-sounding electronic encryption technology known as Pretty Good Privacy. In fact, it was very good--so good that not even the federal government has been able to crack it, a fact that has made Zimmermann a folk hero to privacy advocates and a headache to law enforcement.
Now Zimmermann, a fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, has found himself back in the fiery debate between federal investigators and those who oppose their snooping--this time thanks to ZRTP, a technology for encrypting Internet telephone calls. ZRTP throws a wrench in the Bush administration's controversial warrant-free wiretapping program and its proposed legal immunity for the telecommunications companies. So far, not even teams of supercomputers and cyberspies at the National Security Agency have cracked ZRTP. That means anyone who uses Zimmermann's Zfone software, a ZRTP-enabled voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) program available for free on his Web site, can skirt the feds' wiretapping altogether.
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The Vatican's new sins
From Vatican official updates ways of sinning: drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation :
Sinning has gone global, according to a Vatican official who has singled out genetic experiments, pollution and mind-damaging drugs as among today's new sins.
Also receiving fresh attention by the Vatican are society's injustices, along the lines of the age-old maxim: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer."
After last year's "Ten Commandments" against road rage and other sins committed behind the wheel, the Vatican has provided its latest update on how God's law is being violated with modern means.
"The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice," Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview published Sunday.
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