Well, that guy from ZDNet’s pundit stable did, but as we commented on that story and as Wired News correspondent Leander Kahney wrote, “…the Net responded magnificently; it was just a matter of knowing where to look.” And furthermore: “mmediately after the attack, community websites, discussion groups and mailing lists lit up with vast amounts of information about the attacks.

While nothing was available from traditional news sources, such sites as Slashdot and Scripting News crackled with all kinds of information, from dramatic eyewitness accounts to frightened pleas for information about missing friends and relatives.”

Tuesday’s attacks have led to a surge in business for disaster-recovery companies, reports CNET News.com. Comdisco says it’s now supporting 35 corporate customers who have had their computing facilities affected by the attacks and related government actions across the country. Rival SunGard has dispatched more than 750 employees to assist 82 companies with declared or looming data-related disaster operations. Between the two companies, over 39 emergency computing data centers have been opened to support the needs of customers and keep business running smoothly.

The earliest date for a full repoening of the U.S. stock markets is Friday, with some securities trading as early as tomorrow. Federal regulators and exchange leaders say that U.S. government securities trading will resume at 8:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, with full or partial equities trading expected to resume “as early as Friday and no later than Monday.” Restarting the markets, the value of the dollar is expected to plunge sharply, and the Federal Reserve Bank has dropped $38 billion in cash reserves into the U.S. banking system to ward off the effects of a possible bank run should that prediction come true. While the European markets staged a modest rally today, most analysts predict that sharp declines are ahead for the U.S. markets. Reuters has the complete story.

CNET News.com reports that nationwide Internet providers America Online and Earthlink are working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to find information that may be relevant to Tuesday’s terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. AOL admitted that it allowed the FBI to install its Carnivore survelliance system on its networks to analyze customer communications. Earthlink says it was served with a warrant compelling them to turn over information, but adamantly denied that it had allowed the FBI to install Carnivore for unfettered network access.

Commentary from ZDNet News: “On Tuesday, more people were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York than were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor 50 years ago. At the same time, our newest medium–the Internet, which was touted only a few years ago as our best news source, better than television or radio–collapsed.” Only if you didn’t know where to look, but we can’t let common sense get in the way of a good rant, can we?

“PLIP (Parallel Line Internet Protocol) is simply a protocol to link two computers point to point through a PC parallel port, through which it exchanges IP datagrams. It is not a standard protocol; you will hardly find it outside the Linux operating system or covered in books about networking. It uses, however, a widely available cheap cable commonly known as a Laplink cable or a null printer cable. It provides a full network connection between two computers and, through routing, allows access to and from the rest of the computers, if the two linked computers are on a more complex network.” Full article at Linux Journal.

Posted at PR Newswire: “MontaVista Software, the company powering
the embedded revolution, today announced that it will deliver VisualAge(TM)
Micro Edition 1.4 (VAME) for Hard Hat(TM) Linux(R) 2.0.
The new VisualAge(TM) Micro Edition 1.4 from IBM/OTI is a development and
deployment solution for building multi-modal Java(TM) applications and the
embedded devices that run them. The IBM tool-kit offers embedded applications
developers all the benefits of Java technology in a high performing, reliable
and robust environment.”

Slashdotter WrinkledShirt reviewsProgramming Linux Games, the latest title from author John Hall and No Starch Press. Says the Shirt: “…even though it gets slightly schizophrenic in its attempt to be both an introductory text and a definitive reference, this is the sort of book that could kickstart a new movement in Linux game development.”

What started out as an April Fool’s Day joke has become reality. Check out version 0.0.1 of Parrot, the Perl-Python interpreter. More information available at use Perl.

The lists are at PRNewswire.