What if you could file-share someone's consciousness? Would it be a violation, or the ultimate communication therapy?

That's all I'll quote. You go read the rest.

Truncat - A New Short Story by Cory Doctorow

Lenny Bruce was a comedian that dared to push the limits in his acts, being arrested several times for obscenity. However, the same laws that were used to prosecute him for using the word "cocksuckers" on stage still exist. Many might think that with the evolution of society, those laws would be useless, but read on...

Lenny Bruce's legal ordeal is one of the most shameful chapters in the cultural history of postwar America -- a persecution that obsessed Bruce, drained his creative energies, bankrupted him, and allowed the demons that always haunted him to take over. Bruce died of a morphine overdose in 1966, but as Vincent Cuccia, one of the New York D.A.'s who prosecuted Bruce's last obscenity case, said, "We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him."

On Aug. 7, Ashcroft's Justice Department announced a 10-count indictment against a porno production company called Extreme Associates. The owners of the company, Robert Zicari and Janet Romano (aka "Lizzie Borden") were charged with distributing obscene films and video clips through the U.S. mail and the Internet. The move was expected. The conservative groups that regard society's tolerance for pornography as a sign of hideous moral decay, and that make up the Bush administration's political base, have been critical of Bush for not launching an anti-porn war sooner. Attorney General Ashcroft is a fervent born-again Christian who met with anti-porn crusaders before Sept. 11; his planned crusade was derailed by the terrorist attacks. (Under Clinton, not surprisingly, prosecuting porn was a low priority -- and during those years, the industry took off in meteoric fashion.)

Lenny Bruce died for our sins

2003 Darwin Awards
In case you have been waiting breathlessly for this year's Darwin
Awards,here they are. The awards this year are, once again, truly
classic.

These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) that
individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the
most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. Just
think... until these events, these same people were walking the
streets like normal people.

5th RUNNER-UP:
Goes to a San Anselmo, California man who died when he hit a lift
tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on
a foam pad. The 22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Central
Mammoth Hospital.

The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's
department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski
run called Stump alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift
towers, said Lt. Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Dept. The
pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group
apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed
into a tower. It has since been investigated and determined the tower
he hit was the one with its pad removed.

4th RUNNER-UP:
Goes to Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St.
Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call the police, Puelo
grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without
paying. Police found him unconscious in front of the store. Paramedics
removed the six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to
death.

3rd RUNNER-UP:
Goes to poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, who shot a stag standing
above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it fell
on him.

2nd RUNNER-UP:
"Man loses face at party." A man at a West Virginia party (probably
related to the winner last year, a man in Arkansas who used the .22
bullet to replace the fuse in his pickup truck) popped a blasting cap
into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his
lips, teeth, and tongue. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the
blasting cap as a prank during the party late Tuesday night, said Cpl.
M.D. Payne. "Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery and
was trying to explode it." "It wouldn't go off and this guy said I'll
show you how to set it off." He put it into his mouth, bit down and it
blew all his teeth out and his lips and tongue off, Payne said.
Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive
facial injuries, according to a spokesperson at Charleston Area
Medical Division. "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like
that," Payne said.

1st RUNNER-UP:
Doctors at Portland University Hospita... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

2003 Darwin Awards

Oh, how I wish I were in the Bay Area just so I could go see this... sure, it may be depressing for some, but I think that some of our San Francisco memers should post a review for us!

To the kitschy annals of dot-com nostalgia, add the endearing farce of Rentalpuppy.com, a saga that starts and ends at Starbucks, with $50 million vanishing in between. Consultants, V.C.s, investment bankers and the dot-commers themselves are chewed up and sung out in a giddy production, the kind of show where "Norton anti-virus" is earnestly invoked in a lovers' duet.

Based in a SOMA loft with all the necessary office distractions, like foosball, air hockey, cellphones ringing to the tune of "Baby Got Back," Rental Puppy, as a company, seems to be mostly about office workers IM-ing their friends all morning before going out for a high-tech burrito, while they wait to vest. "I'm vesting. I'm vesting. Just four more years, then I'll be resting."

The real villain here isn't the hapless dot-commers themselves, whose main crime is just getting caught up in it all -- and, hey, who wasn't? -- but rather a nefarious investment banker from Stevenson Roberts, whose sterling credentials include sitting on the board of Enron and WorldCom, and the V.C.s so sexist that they have to have everything a woman says repeated to them by a man so that they can hear it.

It's never too early for dot-com nostalgia

Microsoft using a Linux service is ironic, given that Microsoft has identified Linux as its biggest competitor. In a conference call with analysts last month, company CFO John Connors ranked Linux as the #2 risk faced by the company. The #1 risk was the general economic environment, Connors said. Nearly one in five small and mid-sized businesses are using Linux on the desktop.

Heh, first the problems with switching from FreeBSD to Windows NT at hotmail.com, now having to eat crow and use Linux as a front end with the Blaster worm. I really hope that IT Directors figure out how much crap they've been fed by the marketing machine. Oh, wait, never mind. Peter principle.

Microsoft Is Using Linux To Protect Its Own Web Site

Men have eagerly embodied their reputation as the sexually enthusiastic half of the population, and yet this study seems to suggest that women, deep down, are really thirsting for more. But, according to one of the study's coauthors, Northwestern psychology department chairman J. Michael Bailey, the study really just reinforces what we already know: Men are sexually simple, and women are not. "I think it really shows us how much we don't know about women more than it shows us what we do know," he says.

Interesting article about sexuality and the different means of arousal for the various gender roles.

What do women want?

Hope died late Sunday of pneumonia at his home in Toluca Lake, with his family at his bedside, longtime publicist Ward Grant said Monday.

It is a sad day, indeed, though expected due to his age.

Entertainer Bob Hope Dies at 100

Except that a few things are very wrong. First, my gin and tonic is tinkling softly on the center console. Second, my copilot is an orange-and-white tabby. Third, a car alarm keeps going off nearby. Fourth, I don't have a pilot's license. Fifth, I'm not wearing pants.

An article raising the question that I've been wondering for quite some time - why bother taking flying lessons on a Cessna and asking how it differs from a 727 when you could just get the lastest copy of Flight Sim and see for yourself?

So far, The FBI doesn't seem concerned about the threat posed by flight-simulation games, but that may be because they've been focusing their attention elsewhere. The bureau's Civil Aviation Unit doesn't actively patrol the industry, relying instead on tips from concerned citizens. When I called the public relations office to ask them about the realism of my A320 simulation experience, an agent fielded the inquiry with a slightly patronizing tone until I directed her to a Web site featuring several screen shots of the virtual A320 flight deck.

There was a long pause. Then, with a nervous laugh, she said, "I've never seen this before."

Air Osama

Decius wrote:

] What systems are you using? How effective are they?

Personally, I'm using SpamAssassin with both the Bayesian Filters and Vipul's Razor. Razor is the implementation that creates a checksum on the message and compares it against a database of reported spam from others. This may be the collaborative system you were trying to remember the name of.

I have only once gotten a false positive with SpamAssassin, and that was in a message from Network Solutions. Go figure. Their email asking me to confirm that I wanted to transfer my domain away from them was ridden with spam-terms.

I still get about 10 spams per day that make it through the filters. If you're concerned about legitimate mail not making it through, you can change the sensitivity level of SpamAssassin from the default, which is 5.0 on a 10.0 scale, I believe.

Dolemite

RE: Spam Filtering

"People are going to get on our case again for this, but try to see it from our point of view just once," stated Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

Metallica Sue Canadian Band over E, F Chords