This is the 42-year-old woman police accuse of "operating a house of prostitution at her home" on a manicured cul-de-sac in wealthy Howard County.

The woman with a PhD in sociology, an expertise in women's studies and a former career as a well-regarded college professor.

Britton says she's not guilty and denies the charges. She was framed, she says. It's a clever con job, perpetrated by her second husband.

The House With The Lights On

Most popular Internet communities, like Facebook.com or MySpace .com, measure their success by their ability to attract new members. A notable exception to this rule is aSmallWorld.net, an exclusive online community that is about to get bigger.

The Weinstein Company, the production business started by Bob and Harvey Weinstein after they left Miramax, has invested in aSmallWorld, the company will announce today.

A Weinstein Will Invest in Exclusivity

He's the mascot of the Canadian ethanol industry, promoting good will for corn-based fuel by attending events and handing out balloons and other goodies. But he was unceremoniously thrown out (on his ear) at Canada Day festivities in Ottawa last year, reportedly at the behest of Shell Canada, which had paid to be an exclusive sponsor.

Oh, Canada!

Who’s this 'Corn Cob Bob' guy?

There are few more enticing visions than that of the free and equal internet. Instead of a central authority or company deciding what anybody can put on a website or offer as a service, anything goes.

Almost as remarkable is the way that the internet – or the way that most people experience it – has steadily sped up. Things have changed from the days of narrowband modems and sites that would only load painfully slowly. Consumers in many countries now have extremely fast broadband connections that can stream video clips faithfully.

It is too soon to impose net neutrality | FT

How the search-engine giant moved beyond mere morality.

Google in the Garden of Good and Evil

Imagine a world in which millions of senior citizens and disabled Americans, among others, can have, if they want, their medical conditions monitored continuously by devices that communicate over high speed, broadband networks that can automatically alert them if they require immediate medical attention. Such "remote disease management" systems not only would be highly convenient for patients, but based on evidence from the Veterans Administration's use of systems that do not yet make extensive use of broadband, could lead to huge savings in health care costs. I have calculated in a recent report that the health care cost savings and the reduced need for institutionalizing seniors and the disabled could top $1 trillion over the next 25 years.

But there is a hitch. Remote disease monitoring — and telemedicine more broadly — cannot use broadband networks unless they are reliable. Even more important than not having your streamed movie interrupted by heavy traffic from other Internet users is not having your vital signs transmitted without interruption to the individual or computer that is remotely monitoring your health.

Yet perhaps without realizing it, those who are now advocating "net neutrality" — the notion that those who shell out the big bucks to build new much higher speed networks can't ask the websites that will use the networks intensively to help pay for them — could keep this new world from becoming a reality. Further, they could deprive the websites themselves of the benefits of being able to use the networks to deliver their data-heavy content.

Catching the Web in a Net of Neutrality -- Robert E. Litan

If today Internet-protocol television (IPTV) is a technological reality, then why aren't millions of Americans watching high-def movies on demand or viewing live concerts and sports events via their home wireless networks with user-controllable multiple camera angles on their screens? Why aren't more blog-minded citizens turning their homes into mini-broadcast studios?

The reason is that U.S. government policies and private corporate decisionmaking have fallen well behind the technological curve. We are paying a stiff social, economic and cultural price for our collective folly.

Why has the United States become a broadband backwater?

The software giant's plan to build datacenters the size of 10 Costcos, complete with electrical substations, signals a major shift in the industry's fundamental economics.

FAST FORWARD: Microsoft's cash versus Google - May. 5, 2006

With the Web booming again, Morgan's star analyst is riding high -- but her history illustrates a truth about investing: Over the long haul, everyone ends up looking average.

FORTUNE: Street Life: Mary Meeker 2.0 - May. 3, 2006

Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead

The Management Myth