] Officials at a mall where a man was arrested for refusing
] to remove an anti-war T-shirt asked Wednesday that
] trespassing charges against him be dropped.
]
] Police said managers from Crossgates Mall called and
] asked that the complaint against Stephen Downs be
] withdrawn. Police Chief James Murley said he would
] support the mall's decision.

ABCNEWS.com : Mall Wants to Drop Peace T-Shirt Charges

Legal reference for the "Guy Arrested in Mall with Peace T-Shirt".. looks like the US Supreme Court is on his side. Basic summary is they rule that shopping centers are public forums and that people have a right to petition people politically within them. Wow, whoda thunk it.

quoted:
===

We postponed jurisdiction of this appeal from the Supreme Court of California to decide the important federal constitutional questions it presented. Those are whether state constitutional provisions, which permit individuals to exercise free speech and petition rights on the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited, violate the shopping center owner's property rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments or his free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Appellant PruneYard is a privately owned shopping center in the city of Campbell, Cal. It covers approximately 21 acres -- 5 devoted to parking and 16 occupied by walkways, plazas, sidewalks, and buildings that contain more than 65 specialty shops, 10 restaurants, and a movie theater. The PruneYard is open to the public for the purpose of encouraging the patronizing of its commercial establishments. It has a policy not to permit any visitor or tenant to engage in any publicly expressive activity, including the circulation of petitions, that is not directly related to its commercial purposes. This policy has been strictly enforced in a nondiscriminatory fashion. The PruneYard is owned by appellant Fred Sahadi.

Appellees are high school students who sought to solicit support for their opposition to a United Nations resolution against "Zionism." On a Saturday afternoon they set up a card table in a corner of PruneYard's central courtyard. They distributed pamphlets and asked passersby to sign petitions, which were to be sent to the President and Members of Congress. Their activity was peaceful and orderly and so far as the record indicates was not objected to by PruneYard's patrons.

Pruneyard Shopping Center vs Robins

] ROSEVILLE -- Michigan's Adopt-A-Highway program has a new
] partner: the National Organization for the Reform of
] Marijuana Laws.

That is, if thy can get off the couch long enough.

Holy smokes! Pot fans take high road - 03/05/03

] Britain's The Observer newspaper has published a memo
] that purportedly orders increased espionage against U.N.
] Security Council diplomats. The memo is likely a forgery:
] It includes un-American spellings, and the writer
] apparently lacks understanding of the U.S. intelligence
] community's structure.

Observer story likely faked.

] NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union is
] under fire for making the very same privacy gaffe it has
] lambasted other groups and companies for: Revealing
] personal e-mail addresses to everyone on a mailing list.
]
] The advocacy organization that crusades for the
] protection of privacy rights sent its online "Safe and
] Free Newsletter" out to about 860 people last week but
] mistakenly made every recipient%u2019s e-mail address
] available to everyone else.
]
] The ACLU sharply criticized pharmaceutical giant Eli
] Lilly for making a similar error two years ago. Last May,
] Eli Lilly agreed with the Federal Trade Commission to
] submit to audits and upgrade its privacy and security
] practices, among other orders, after sending out a mass
] e-mail with the personal information of every subscriber
] to its Prozac information service.

FOXNews.com

] An on-ice hockey fight could end up in criminal court. It
] all started as a rec league hockey game in Franklin, but
] detectives say it quickly escalated, and now there are
] assault charges against a player.

I have a few things to say about this:

1) I know both players and I'm shocked.
2) I know both referees and they are extraordinary
3) Southern Ice is usually considered a creme puff league compared to Sportsplex, so this is also surprising
4) Considering some of the stuff that's gone on at Sportsplex, I'm surprised that this made the news and that someone is pressing charges
5) I'm REALLY glad I wasn't there, either playing or ref'ing!

Ice Hockey Fight Could End Up in Criminal Court

For those who can't get away from the Windblows world, a place to check on that new software you just installed.

Spychecker - Whats in your wallet, er, pc?!

One dead fly with one microprocessor implanted into the fly body. The chip is a fully operational web server on the internet, and enables online viewers to enter and exit the fly corpse.

Small web server mounted on a dead fly!

Some interesting IT job statistics. Don't move to San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, or Detriot... Move to Miami, San Diego, or Las Vegas... Follow to palm trees. Also, demand for Novell Netware is rising (?!?#!)

I can only image that the environment is so bad that whatever slight increase in need for Netware people might have occured looks huge in comparison to everything else. Just because you're the only thing going up doesn't mean your "hot." That may go for the cities listed as well...

[IP] IT job trends: Move where the palm trees are

Google. It's not just for making yourself seem smarter than all the other 1Us3rS.

Net Hacker Tool du Jour: Google