European parliamentarians are expected to reject legislation on Wednesday on the patenting of computer-related inventions, ending a testy four-year debate without resolution.

I think this is good news...

European Parliament Fails to Agree on Computer Patents - New York Times

The Beijing government has joined the effort to fight spam by adopting the London Action Plan on International Spam Enforcement Collaboration, it emerged yesterday.

FWIW...

China Joins Global Effort to Can Spam

The U.S. government has announced today that it will indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet's root servers, ignoring pervious calls by some countries to turn the function over to an international body.

U.S. Government to Retain Oversight of the Internet's Root Servers

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, announced today that she was resigning, setting off what is expected to be a tumultuous fight over confirming her successor.

It begins....

O'Connor, First Woman on High Court, Resigns After 24 Years

In a pair of 5-to-4 rulings, the court said the display of the Ten Commandments in a 22-acre park at the Texas State Capitol was proper, but that the displays of the Commandments in two county courthouses in Kentucky were so overtly religious as to be impermissible.

The rulings, the first by the court in a quarter-century on the emotional issue of the proper place of the Commandments in American life, conveyed the message that disputes over such religious displays must be decided case by case, and that the specific facts are all important.

Hopefully, this won't throw too much fuel onto the fundies' fire.

Commandment Displays Allowed on Some Government Property

But scientists and public health officials say they are alarmed by the surge of attention to an idea without scientific merit. The anti-thimerosal campaign, they say, is causing some parents to stay away from vaccines, placing their children at risk for illnesses like measles and polio.

"It's really terrifying, the scientific illiteracy that supports these suspicions," said Dr. Marie McCormick, chairwoman of an Institute of Medicine panel that examined the controversy in February 2004.

This is classic. People fundamentally don't understand the scientific method or most basic ideas of probability.

On Autism's Cause, It's Parents vs. Research

Polls show that the conservative-backed candidates are not expected to do well in the elections today, and that they may not even make it into a runoff election, if one is required.

Good news?

Iranians Vote After a Campaign of Violence and Moderation

The staff at Victrola Café & Art is sick of talking about Wi-Fi. Given the opportunity, as at a recent cupping in the back of the store to smell and taste the latest in-house roasts, the group prefers to talk about cafe culture, or how to create a nuanced light roasted coffee.

This isn't exactly news. Once again, one can't legislate courtesy.

Some Cafe Owners Pull the Plug on Lingering Wi-Fi Users

VeriSign Inc.(VRSN.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the top manager of Internet domain names that allow people to find and surf Web sites, will keep control of Internet addresses that end in .net for six more years, the group that oversees Internet address allocation said on Thursday.

*sigh* ... these registries should not be run by for-profit companies.

Verisign keeps .net

In a nationwide advertising blitz, the Homeland Security Department has urged businesses and families to "Get Ready Now" for potential terror attacks or other disasters. But an internal audit released on Wednesday concluded that the department had fundamentally failed to follow its own advice.

Computer systems at 19 department sites that served agencies like the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard had no functioning backups or relied on obviously deficient or incomplete backups, the report by the inspector general of the department said. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is in charge of disaster recovery, was unprepared, the report said.

Audit Finds Security Dept. Is Lacking Disaster Backups