Pretty sweet implementation of 20 questions. It was able to guess I was thinking of something to do with drugs. :)

quoted:
===
The game you are about to play is a test of the next generation of Twenty Questions.

20Q - Play 20 Questions Against an AI

March 2003 issue - Some Rights Reserved

Cyber-law activists devise a set of licenses for sharing creative works

By Gary Stix

In a book published in 2001, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig decried the threat to the Internet from both large media interests and burgeoning intellectual-property laws. In Lessig's view, the Internet should serve as a commons, a medium that encourages creativity through the exchange of photographs, music, literature, academic treatises, even entire course curricula. Lessig and like-minded law and technology experts have now decided to go beyond making academic arguments to counter the perceived danger.

On December 16, 2002, the nonprofit Creative Commons opened its digital doors to provide, without charge, a series of licenses that enable a copyrighted work to be shared more easily. The licenses attempt to overcome the inherently restrictive nature of copyright law. Under existing rules, a doodle of a lunchtime companion's face on a paper napkin is copyrighted as soon as the budding artist lifts up the pen. No "©" is needed at the bottom of the napkin. All rights are reserved.

The licenses issued through Creative Commons have changed that. They allow the creator of a work to retain the copyright while stipulating merely "some rights reserved." A user can build a custom license: One option lets the copyright holder specify that a piece of music or an essay can be used for any purpose as long as attribution is given. Another, which can be combined with the first, permits usage for any noncommercial end. Separately, the site offers a document that lets someone's creation be donated to the public domain.

Scientific American: Some Rights Reserved

'nuff said

Man Cuts Off Penis, Tosses It to His Wife

Welcome to Reasonably Clever's LEGO Tarot. Possibly the goofiest attempt at a custom-made tarot deck. Ever.

Why a LEGO Tarot?

Out of all the different things out there, why the heck would anyone take the time to make a tarot deck out of LEGO? Well, mainly, because I hadn't seen it done yet. And I did quite a few searches looking for them on-line.

Plenty of Star Wars and Star Trek out there. There's even a masterfully done deck featuring the Peanuts Characters. But no LEGO. Oh, there were a couple of places where people suggested making a deck out of them, or had them on a "to do" list. But nothing concrete...

...Until now, that is.

Reasonably Clever Presents the LEGO Tarot! Another waste of time that's REASONABLY CLEVER

] Three weeks ago, in a stunning raid, Russian hackers
] seized control of the servers that support one of the
] Internet's largest online gaming operations, demanding a
] ransom. It was a real-life, high-tech version of the
] movie Ocean's Eleven. By the time the ransom was paid,
] one key server -- the one containing all operational data
] for 120 Internet gaming sites and a long list of
] consulting clients -- seemed to be stripped of its data.
]
]
]
] At stake were all the operational records of a gambling
] empire. "We didn't even have the names of customers,"
] says Juan Bonilla, executive vice-president of Grafix
] Softech F.A. of San Juan, Costa Rica. "We lost
] everything." To make matters worse, little, if any, of
] the data had been backed up off-site. Grafix Softech was
] losing an estimated US$75,000 a day in profits, and the
] incident left it open to lawsuits from customers whose
] businesses relied on Grafix Softech's services. What
] could have been a major disaster became a bump in the
] corporate road. In an amazing feat of ingenuity, CBL Data
] Recovery Technologies Inc. of Markham, Ont., managed to
] recover all the lost data. It was a close call, admits
] Bill Margeson, president of CBL

Russian hackers raid largest online gaming operation

FEBRUARY 27--Joe Millionaire has been marked down to $15,000. But if that's too rich for your blood, his purported lady love is available for a mere ten grand. In a move to milk what's left of their 15 minutes, Evan Marriott and Zora Andrich have signed with an agent who will deliver the reality TV stars for personal appearances nationwide. Booker Mike Esterman told TSG that interest in Marriott is high and that the below sales pitch has already yielded 10 "tentative" dates for the half- millionaire. What will you get for 15k? There will, of course, be no speech, just a few hours of autograph signing and posing for pictures with the 28-year-old ex- underwear model. Esterman explained that the salary gap between Marriott and Andrich is purely market driven: nightclubs, for example, would rather be packed with women looking at Marriott than men ogling Andrich (because if a club is jammed with gals, the guys will invariably follow). How much for both of the TV lovebirds? Esterman said he is willing to negotiate the fee for a joint appearance. No word yet on whether "Joe" runner-up Sarah Kozer--star of those wonderful bondage and fetish videos--is also for rent. (3 pages)

The Smoking Gun: Joe Millionaire for Rent

Heist 'geniuses' got $100m gems

The haul from Belgium's most spectacular diamond robbery in Antwerp earlier this month was worth more than 100 million euros ($107m), Belgian police have said.

In what police authorities have called the heist of the century, 123 of the 160 vaults at the Antwerp Diamond Centre were emptied.

Antwerp's judicial director, Erik Sack, called the crime on 16 February "a piece of genius in its simplicity".

He said the gang had learned to circumvent the alarm system and had copied master keys after renting an office in the Diamond Centre in the name of a phantom company.

During the theft, they taped over security cameras and may have put old videotapes in the surveillance system, police said.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Heist 'geniuses' got $100m gems

NOTE: The ISO news servers are still up, but currently have no nameservice. As soon as they do, I have a hunch the non-American servers will be back online, with nameservice. How pointless..

quoted:
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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had seized a website that offered information on bootlegged video games and movies, but the site remained available to many Internet users.

The Justice Department said it had taken over the Iso News site after its owner pleaded guilty to selling computer chips that would enable users to play bootleg video games on Microsoft Xbox consoles.

Some visitors to the site found a warning against copyright infringement and a link to the Justice Department's computer-crime division, but others were able to reach a version of the original site, which serves as a meeting place for Internet users.

Wired News: Government Fails to Block Bootleg Site

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Fred Rogers, better known as television's "Mister Rogers," a cultural icon and kindly neighbor to generations of American children, died Thursday at the age of 74.

Rogers died at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after a brief battle with stomach cancer, according to a spokeswoman for his production company.

David Newell, a Rogers family spokesman, told The Associated Press that Rogers was exactly as he appeared on TV.

"He was so genuinely, genuinely kind, a wonderful person," said Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on the show. "His mission was to work with families and children for television. ... That was his passion, his mission, and he did it from Day One."

CNN.com - 'Mister Rogers' dies at age 74 - Feb. 27, 2003

This looks fantastic. Christopher Guest is a genius.

A MIGHTY WIND