...we don't arrest employees of Smith and Wesson when a gun they produced kills a police officer. We don't criminalize the production of VCRs just because some use their VCRs in ways copyright law would disapprove. No doubt, the use of tools to commit a crime often enhances the punishment for that crime -- use a gun to rob a store, and your sentence is drastically increased. But where technology has both a legitimate and illegitimate use, the law targets the illegitimate use, and not the technology.

Posted by at August 30, 2001 07:04 AM

Japanese superstition holds that by entering the tunnel under construction, women would arouse the jealousy of the mountain goddess, and cause disaster.

Posted by at August 29, 2001 05:40 PM

SEATTLE (AP) -- A woman leaped off a 50-metre-high bridge Tuesday after Washington state authorities closed a busy interstate because passing motorists were yelling at her to jump.

Posted by at August 29, 2001 05:37 PM

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating at the hands of Los Angeles police led to a trial verdict that triggered this city's race riots of April 29, 1992, was arrested Tuesday for allegedly being under the influence of PCP.

Wotta day.

Posted by at August 29, 2001 01:22 PM

Posted by at August 29, 2001 01:20 PM

Posted by at August 29, 2001 01:18 PM

Continuing a long tradition of stealing links from Ken Layne...

Posted by at August 29, 2001 06:13 AM

Posted by at August 28, 2001 02:03 PM

To play sounds into the Silo, make a selection from the list and then press the "play" button.

Posted by at August 28, 2001 02:01 PM

Posted by at August 28, 2001 07:49 AM

Posted by at August 28, 2001 04:43 AM

Posted by at August 28, 2001 04:35 AM

I could sense, in this supposedly "open" conversation, a terror barely masked, as if to step out of the proscribed male circle of heterosexual affect was to risk something profound.

Posted by at August 28, 2001 04:32 AM

Posted by at August 28, 2001 04:29 AM

Posted by at August 27, 2001 04:55 PM

Posted by at August 27, 2001 08:08 AM

We already live in an age of growing political dynasties, rampant nepotism, and creeping aristocracy. Keeping and expanding the estate tax is a small way to fight back.

Posted by at August 26, 2001 03:56 PM

Be among the first to hear the first song from Leonard Cohen's new CD

Buddha finally released Leonard. Sheesh.

Posted by at August 26, 2001 03:39 PM

In physics, for instance, I can finally explain why the second law of thermodynamics works--that is, why many physical systems tend to become irreversibly more random as time progresses. In biology, I now know how a lot of the complexity arises. I've discovered that many things we might have thought were special about life and intelligence, for example, can also emerge in all kinds of physical systems.

Posted by at August 26, 2001 03:38 PM

Posted by at August 24, 2001 06:52 PM

Posted by at August 24, 2001 06:42 AM

"There is a growing tendency in our society to medicalize problems that are not medical, to find psychopathology where there is only pathos, and to pretend to understand phenomena by merely giving them a label."

Posted by at August 24, 2001 05:43 AM

...the photographic works appearing on this website are a parody of Barbie and the values she represents.

Posted by at August 24, 2001 05:36 AM

I want one of these very very badly. I would settle happily for one of these, though. Or even one of these would be very okay.

Posted by at August 23, 2001 06:24 PM

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's lawyers are going to advise that its members sue Gator.com, the makers of a downloadable comparison-shopping tool that interferes with existing online advertising. When shoppers who use Gator.com get ready to make purchases, Gator serves pop-up ads from rival e-tailers. Gator also plans to introduce a service that superimposes rivals' banner ads over the banner ads that online publishers are running, and this possibility has publishers and advertisers livid, given that about eight million people use Gator. Attorneys for the IAB argue that Gator's ad-hijacking tactics are tantamount to stealing, because the company is poaching ad space that has been paid for by another party. IAB attorneys say that there are several possible legal courses, including taking the complaint to the Federal Trade Commission.

Posted by at August 22, 2001 08:13 AM

Posted by at August 22, 2001 06:23 AM

Posted by at August 22, 2001 06:21 AM

When the police arrived, Mr. Bryce's remains were smoldering and Ms. Jones was climbing out of the window, officials said.

Posted by at August 22, 2001 06:18 AM

FireWire has many uses, but in television production it is used to connect digital cameras and video- editing equipment to a computer, and then shuttle images quickly and flawlessly back and forth.

Posted by at August 22, 2001 06:15 AM

Posted by at August 22, 2001 06:08 AM

The senior naval officer who admitted he used a military computer to look at Internet porn is getting his job back.

Posted by at August 21, 2001 08:19 PM

Posted by at August 21, 2001 09:15 AM

The electronics retailer could not explain Monday how the material got onto the site and stayed there, because the manager in charge of the site was out of the office.

Posted by at August 21, 2001 08:15 AM

The patent, which covers both the method of isolating the cells and the cells themselves, gives the Wisconsin foundation control over who may work in the United States with stem cells, and for what purpose. In turn, the foundation has granted important rights to a biotechnology company, the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif...

Posted by at August 21, 2001 04:15 AM

Posted by at August 20, 2001 07:43 PM

Cowboy Junkies - Greatest Hits Sometime this month RCA/BMG will be releasing a "greatest hits" compilation. We have absolutely nothing to do with this release. We have not been consulted about any details, from the track selection to the artwork, and we were only given the "courtesy" of a single phone call to let us know that this release was being contemplated.

This release is a huge insult to us and we ask that if you are a fan of the band that you please don't buy it. All of the tracks on this compilation are available on our other studio releases, which are available through the Junk Store. If you must have these specific tracks in this specific order then: find them on the Internet, download them for free and burn them on to a CD....you have our blessing.

Posted by at August 20, 2001 05:01 PM

Posted by at August 18, 2001 02:16 PM

Posted by at August 18, 2001 02:05 PM

Posted by at August 17, 2001 05:12 PM

Good hair day.

Posted by at August 16, 2001 09:49 AM

THE CUTTING EDGE OF EROTIC SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Posted by at August 15, 2001 10:04 PM

"Spyware" is ANY SOFTWARE which employs a user's Internet connection, without their knowledge or explicit permission, to collect information. That these information be personally identifiable or not is of no avail.

Posted by at August 15, 2001 08:37 AM

The derailment and subsequent fire severed cables running through the tunnel used by seven of the biggest net service providers to swap data. ...

Analysis by Keynote has shown that even at its height, Code Red posed no threat to the running of the net.

The worst thing about these virus/worm hypes is that I always feel inadequate when I don't get infected.

Posted by at August 15, 2001 07:54 AM

You can get into the act by joining the "bloggertariat," the growing number of people who want interaction instead of propaganda.

No, no, no. You blog so your family will think you are smart, and your friends will think you are sexy. It's all about personal propaganda .

Posted by at August 15, 2001 07:46 AM

Posted by at August 14, 2001 11:41 AM

Posted by at August 14, 2001 03:24 AM

"The situation in which Moscow's prostitutes have their own Web sites and federal ministries don't is a little strange."

Posted by at August 13, 2001 07:01 PM

"Getting your client in the front of the line was difficulty No. 1," says Kevin Brennan, a senior VP at Staubach & Co. "You had to sell the dream." Brennan succeeded in selling his client, Atlanta-based consulting firm iXL, to a landlord, but not before the company's chief marketing officer flew in to tout its potential. In June 2000, iXL got its 105,000-square-foot lease at 575 Market Street. The terms were onerous: $82 per square foot, a 15-year commitment and two years in rent up front in a letter of credit - essentially a security deposit of about $16 million.

Posted by at August 13, 2001 06:59 PM

Posted by at August 13, 2001 06:55 PM

Rarely do businesses have big piles of cash combined with clear warning of their own poor prospects as these firms did in late 2000. They are case studies in how to respond to the cockeyed capitalism of the tech boom.

Posted by at August 13, 2001 06:51 PM

Seventeen years since it began, 2600 remains a focal point of a subculture hated and feared by Microsoft, the military and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Free the information, so we can all continue to mostly ignore it.

Posted by at August 12, 2001 09:23 PM

Yes, the legal love drug Viagra is the proud sponsor of Earth, Wind & Fire's next tour.

Hey buddy, need any blues?

Posted by at August 12, 2001 09:16 PM

It's an ON/OFF SWITCH for privacy that downloads right into your Internet Explorer toolbar. Just click it anytime you want privacy and security while surfing!

Posted by at August 12, 2001 06:04 AM

"My children both are very little," he said. "I don't know if they understand what happened."

Posted by at August 12, 2001 06:02 AM

"We are practicing civil disobedience," explains Jimenez. "They system has robbed us. And we are using these services for our camp and for the struggle, to support ourselves here."

Posted by at August 11, 2001 05:27 PM

"We're past grief, we're past the anger, maybe we're starting to look back on the dot-com era with fondness," Askew said.

Posted by at August 11, 2001 05:21 PM

Posted by at August 11, 2001 10:53 AM

The challenge for physicists is to unearth the signatures of order from the apparent chaos of millions of nodes and links. Following this path, in the last few years we have learned that the tools of statistical mechanics are particularly well suited to this task, offering an unexpected perspective on the structure and dynamics of many truly complex interacting systems, including the Internet and its offshoot the World Wide Web.

Posted by at August 11, 2001 07:22 AM

Posted by at August 11, 2001 05:46 AM

"We met for a beer the next morning," he continues, "and I said, 'Well, good luck. At least it didn't turn violent'." "Yes," Max said. "At least it didn't turn violent."

"I kept repeating that consoling phrase to myself when he'd gone, but then the fog of liquor began to clear, and I suddenly remembered Max lifting the table up and hurling it at me, with all the glassware, whoomph, in my chest. Still," Fish adds. "At least it didn't turn violent."

Fr chrissake, go somewhere -- CDNow or Amazon or whatever -- and get as much by these guys as you bloody well can. And if you happen to be anywhere at all near London, go see them, and give them money, so that they don't stop.

Posted by at August 11, 2001 04:37 AM

Banning human cloning simply ensures that only unethical scientists will clone, and those are the ones we're most worried about. Any other stance is based on a hopelessly naive view of human behavior which I find difficult to ascribe to our political leaders.

Assuming the above is true, and I strongly believe it is, the right to clone must be extended as freely as the right to reproduce. Last time I checked, there was no entrance exam for contributing to the human race beyond a functioning testicle or access to the contents of one, a functioning womb with an accessible cunt attached -- and, of course, adequate lack of compunction about whether or not you've got any business reproducing (which you probably don't).

Posted by at August 10, 2001 05:08 PM

Because of its own successful campaign against water, The Olive Garden has recently sent a powerful message to the entire restaurant industry - less water and more beverage choices mean happier customers.

As a side effect, overall check averages should increase, and remember, increased check averages mean higher profits for the restaurant and more cash in servers' pockets.

"Side effect".

This incredibly twisted nonsense was linked to from Ken's blog, but the story itself had vanished from the original Coke site -- just not from Google's cache.

Posted by at August 10, 2001 09:37 AM

"This is a place for people who realise that ana is a lifestyle and a decision, not an 'illness' to be fixed," wrote the founder of the Proanasanctuary club on Yahoo. "For people who are/want to be anorexic," announces another Yahoo site, Proanorexia.

Posted by at August 09, 2001 06:28 PM

Here is an account of a typical lunch hour I spent as assistant year head in a state school in 1998. During those 60 minutes I was required to: negotiate with a boy who had stolen wire-cutters from his technology class and had been seen using them to cut through the school fence; investigate a game of touch football that had led to one boy being beaten up by eight others; find and deal with the boys behind two separate muggings of year 8 children...

Posted by at August 09, 2001 06:06 PM

First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth" in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient -- associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it.

Posted by at August 08, 2001 03:55 PM

Posted by at August 08, 2001 02:07 PM

In this case, the concern over the loss of privacy comes from the very individuals, federal judges, who will shape the rules of the new information era.

Posted by at August 08, 2001 05:39 AM

Learn about computer virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hysteria, and the implications if you believe in them. You can also search a list of computer virus hoaxes from A to Z.

Posted by at August 07, 2001 08:01 AM

Shares of Geron, one of a handful of companies conducting stem cell research, have fallen more than 10 percent following the U.S. House of Representatives' vote on Tuesday to outlaw human cloning.

If you clone a human embryo are you cloning a human being?

Posted by at August 06, 2001 09:54 PM

But Universal replied Tuesday that it was the Motion Picture Association of America--not fearful studio execs--that flushed their promotional partnership like a used, well, you know. Studio spokeswoman Terry Curtin says the MPAA rejected the jimmy-enhanced TV spots because its ad policy prohibits condoms from being shown in commercials aimed at the general public.

Posted by at August 06, 2001 08:00 AM

Posted by at August 05, 2001 07:03 PM

Posted by at August 03, 2001 04:49 PM

Posted by at August 03, 2001 04:43 PM

There is something truly significant happening today. A new movement is slowly taking hold on college campuses, among left-wing groups in Europe and human rights groups throughout the world. The protests in Seattle in 1999, the IMF-World Bank protests in Washington, DC, in 2000, and the continuing presence of agitation wherever corporate entities gather to determine global economic and environmental policies do not, as the media portray them, merely reflect the work of fringe radicals and anarchists. Such events arise out of a broad-based coalition of students, environmentalists, unions, farmers, scientists and other concerned citizens who view the decisions made in these cabals as the frontline in the battle for the future of this planet.

Hopefully, this new movement can continue survive without the lesser intolerance of the Clinton years.

Posted by at August 03, 2001 07:18 AM

Posted by at August 02, 2001 06:52 PM

The typical sale price of one of the 1,250 original copies ranges from $40,000 to $50,000, said a local rare-book expert, and at Christie's auction house in London, a copy recently sold for almost $72,000.

Posted by at August 02, 2001 06:50 PM

Dozens of couples across the country tied the knot on the first day of new legislation pushed through by Gerhard Schroeder's center-left government, despite bitter opposition from some conservatives.

Posted by at August 02, 2001 06:40 PM

Kevin defends his new movie, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, against accusations of being homophobic.

POINT BY POINT: STATEMENTS BY GLAAD ADDRESSING OUR CONCERNS WITH HE UPCOMING FILM JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK

I'm definitely going to see this movie, because if it's like any of the rest of his films I'll laugh a lot and be enriched. Plus, I've always had a not so secret crush on the big silent one.

Posted by at August 02, 2001 03:37 PM

...there are now major international - indeed world class - museums and collections in which the new "Head of Museums" is at third or even fourth tier of responsibility, who have little or no effective control of, and little influence over, policy or finance, and are paid salaries that are a mere fraction of those of just a few years ago, (which in turn means much fewer promotion opportunities and far lower salary prospects for other staff of these devastated museum services).
[...]
They then considered chopping them into pieces, an idea they ultimately nixed because it might bring ``bad karma,'' Mrozek said. Tierney eventually turned them over to business associate, James Little, who stored the paintings in a rented storage unit, planning to hand them over to the insurers after several years. At one point, Little threatened to sell the paintings for money,
[...]
Beer cans, vodka bottles, candy-bar wrappers and empty packages of Marlboro cigarettes littered the scene. A dozen large buckets, work gloves, a small shovel and a saw lay strewn near the edge of the holes, along with a wooden-frame screen for sifting. Tucked in the back, on a small rock ledge, was a roll of toilet paper. "Pigs," Applegate muttered. "What pigs." It wasn't just the mess they left that angered the Western Kentucky University archaeologist. It was the damage done. In what may have been a day's worth of digging, more than 2,000 years of history was destroyed.
[...]
"Unfortunately, those shopkeepers don't tell you important information [like the fact] that you can buy these items, you can use them, you can possess them -- but only on the territory of Ukraine. It is forbidden to take them elsewhere."
[...]

Posted by at August 02, 2001 03:37 AM

Posted by at August 01, 2001 04:43 PM

The program featured a montage of video clips showing Mercer as a roving Canadian reporter who gets unsuspecting Americans to congratulate Canada for finally legalizing insulin, for instance, or to agree that the seal slaughter in Saskatchewan should be stopped.

Posted by at August 01, 2001 09:26 AM

A Continuing Edge Project Exploring Software, Computation, and the Beginning of Everything

Posted by at August 01, 2001 04:15 AM