] Brian Robertson was just months away from graduation at
] Moore High School in Moore, Oklahoma, last year when he
] found the beginnings of what he thought was a short story
] on a school computer. He copied the file to another
] computer, added some paragraphs to the initial text and
] then promptly got arrested.
]
] Robertson, who was 18 when he wrote the story, was
] charged with a felony count of planning to cause serious
] bodily harm or death. The story he wrote, titled
] "Evacuation Orders," (PDF) described preparations for an
] armed invasion of his school that included directions to
] unnamed fellow commandos to kill the senior class
] principal and then plant plastic explosives around the
] campus.

what the hell is going on in this country?

Write a Story, Go to Jail

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

] It came and went before anyone knew what happened.
] Nashville's first "flash mob" took place at the Mall at
] Green Hills on Saturday

Penny took this picture as I was 'mobbing'

Nashville Flash Mob

] Little by little, we're turning into a planet of techies.
]
] Which should come as no surprise. It has happened before.
] Time and again, attractive new technologies have trickled
] out of the labs and into homes and offices, forcing
] ordinary users to develop skills that once would have
] seemed far too advanced for them. Early automobiles were
] so unreliable that drivers carried tool kits and learned
]
]
]
] to fix the balky machines. Early radio sets were
] handbuilt by avid hobbyists. "This is all part of a
] fairly predictable pattern," said Harvard Business School
] professor Debora Spar, author of "Ruling the Waves,"

We're all geeks now

] In the two years since the noisy collapse of the telecom
] and networking industries, little to nothing has been
] heard from the 10 giant Silicon Valley telecom and
] networking start-ups that had been funded with hundreds
] of millions of dollars during the Internet bubble.

In case you were wondering about all those vendors you used to have.

The rise and fall of telecom, networking

] It was the RIAA. It seems that many New Yorkers were file
] sharing yesterday, so the decision was made to implement
] Sen. Hatch's plan of nuking file-sharer's computers.
] Unfortunately they got a little carried away.

They found the cause of the blackout

] Unreliable software exposes California recall to fraud

Hack the vote

] In an era of double-digit percentage increases in health
] premiums and a general consumer backlash against
] insurers, it's a pitch that has been gaining traction in
] recent years. American Healthways manages the equivalent
] of approximately 850,000 health plan members, more than
] double what it did two years ago. The new business helped
] American Healthways nearly triple its earnings in 2002,
] and analysts expect profits to grow in excess of 50% this
] year. Annual revenues are expected to eclipse $160
] million.

American Healthways creating a buzz

] The upper temperature limit at which life can exist has
] been extended to 121°C, 8°C higher than the previous
] record holder. The hardy organism, given the preliminary
] name Strain 121, was found at a "black smoker"
] hydrothermal vent on the floor of the northeast Pacific
] Ocean.

This is cool. Its amazing to think that there is an organism out there whose DNA doesn't degrade at such temperatures, and whos proteins stay folded correctly. It will be neat to see what comes out of this research, as proteins found in organisms such as this can be put to use creatively in biotech.

New Scientist

RENO, NV, August 13 - Reno police arrested a local man for possession of stolen property after a traffic stop involving a motorized bar stool.

Reno police pull over speeding bar stool