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I read the headline the same way-- a walking skyrocket went to the emergency room while distracted.

I couldn't figure out what the heck this was about, but I figured it was a reprint from News of the Weird.

I read the headline the same way-- a walking skyrocket went to the emergency room while distracted.

I couldn't figure out what the heck this was about, but I figured it was a reprint from News of the Weird.

For weird news, I usually go to News of the Weird

It's only a once-a-week newsletter, but it's still great.

I prefer http://newsoftheweird.com/ These are taken from newspapers around the world. When I found the site, I did double check several stories to determine that they were printed in actual newspapers.

In the US, there is a high incidence of serial killers with the middle name "Wayne".

So as I understand it, they have just gone from possibly legal mass mailings - depending on the nature of the products they are hawking & the formatting - to extortion/blackmail and Misappropriation of computer services (DDOS) both Federal Crimes in the US & at least the extortion/blackmail claim has a history of successfull extradition.
This is the kind of briliant manuevering I have only seen from SCO's lawyers and the News of the Weird site.
FBI - moron
moron - FBI
you 2 play nice now.

Martin Bishop : Organized crime?
Cosmo : Hah. Don't kid yourself. It's not that organized.

There's a bell curve, as with a lot of things. Some of the bad guys are extremely well educated, and experienced in their business. Some are dumb as bricks, and thereby keep some news(?) reporters in beer money.

If you're talking about Glen A. Reed, here's the real scoop, from http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html:

"Said Glenn A. Reed, 31, upon being sentenced in Waco, Texas, in July to 99 years in prison as a habitual criminal (after rejecting a plea bargain that would have meant a 15-year sentence): "There's things I choose to do, like, if I go in a store and choose to take a Snickers bar, if you catch me, you catch me. If not, I'm going to go home and eat it up and go on about my business, dog."

It was in "News of the Weird", the September 12 edition.

News of the Weird

Look for the "least competent criminals" heading.

If there is life, it'll be...weird

I think we've already proven that here on Earth...

That one was reported by Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird, and he's generally pretty good about checking his sources.

and the guy who rubbed fresh lemons on his face before robbing a bank because someone told him that if you did that, the cameras could not pick up your image. True story according to "news of the weird", a syndicated feature found in many independent newspapers here in the US. They have stories like this all the time.

News of the Weird can be found here. Its a very good weekly read that has tons of these exact type of stories.

ah that explains this: (i.e. no need of more since we know where the money is coming from)

And in April, the Treasury Department's agency that investigates allegedly illegal financing across U.S. borders was revealed to have only four agents working on money traceable to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but 21 agents working full-time on violations of the U.S. embargo of Cuba. [Southland Times (Invercargill, New Zealand), 3-18-04] [Toledo Blade-AP, 4-29-04]

The clip came from news of the weird.

Stupid patent announcements are geting to be like those News of the Weird items that get retired because they happen so often they are no longer weird. The people at the USPO seem to be determined to screw up the rest of the world for the benefit of a few greedy jerks who bother to fill out the proper forms. If anybody has any ideas for replacing or eliminating the patent office, now's the time to start your campaign.

The best part of it is that the content comes from a much more diverse set of sources than I'd ever be willing to surf on my own. I'd like to see a full list of the sites they're crawling, but I've been happy with their results so far.

• CNN has become progressively worse. It used to be a large page of stories, and I could find out what was going on in the world in a single page load. Now things are down to (something like) two links per catgory, and you have to dig to find your news.

• MSNBC has stuck with their layout (to their credit), but there's all those menues (or interstitial ads) to deal with -- ick.

• Salon is a giant editorial page, not news. I'm not even going to comment on their in-your-face ads (oops, I just did...)

• Fox News, ABC, USA Today -- I never had any desire to read their sites for some reason.

• Newspaper sites are often too regional (local papers), or require registration (NY Times, Washington Post), so I just didn't read 'em. They'll learn eventually that registration = less readership = less banner ad revenue. Give 'em time, the clue will come.

• NPR is nice, but usually rather thin on the news. I go there to stream audio, not read stories.

In April, Sir Roger Penrose, a British math professor who has worked with Stephen Hawking on such topics as relativity, black holes, and whether time has a beginning, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, which Penrose said copied a pattern he created (a pattern demonstrating that "a nonrepeating pattern could exist in nature") for its Kleenex quilted toilet paper. Penrose said he doesn't like litigation but, "When it comes to the population of Great Britain being invited by a multinational to wipe their bottoms on what appears to be the work of a Knight of the Realm, then a last stand must be taken".

In May, Great Britain's Home Office, deciding on the proper compensation for a man who served 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, ruled that he was entitled to about $1.1 million, but said he would have to reimburse the prison about $63,000 for 11 years' room and board. Said the outraged Michael O'Brien, 34, who had been freed by a Court of Appeal in 1999: "They don't charge guilty people for bed and board. They only charge innocent people." [BBC News, 5-23-02]

You make joke, but apparently Karaoke bars in Manilla have stopped playing Frank Sinatra's "My Way" because of the amount of violence and death that ensues.

Well, according to the current News of the Weird, you can obtain decent results by merely thinking about exercise.

...there's no reason video games shouldn't fall undre this category. Every few months at the News of the Weird, there's a new story about someone who's bottling their urine, or putting a homeless guy in a glass box, or something even more stupid. And all of this is considered art.

I think that just about anything that people put their "heart and soul" into - anything that has different appeal to different people - can be considered an art, from creating a masterpiece painting to choosing the fastest line at a shopping mall during the Christmas rush. The question is whether people will care about this art, and what the best forum for the artists are. I think that mailing lists and web pages are probably the best places to showcase your coding art, as those are the places that your audience will most frequent. A painter wants his work displayed in a gallery because that's where the painting afficionados hang out.

That being said, I have little appreciation for paint as a medium of artistic expression, and that's why I don't visit galleries. Perhaps branching into atypical mediums will give galleries and museums a more universal appeal?

In other words, first, you're quite right when you say that "It's interesting to not that Mr. Gielda doesn't cite corporations or the US Government as the biggest problem, but instead cites ordinary people...", a point a lot of other posters here missed.

But I think we can all do more than not hold our breaths until the day when "we'll actually show enough responsibility to deserve the rights we have". First of all, that day will never come. Look at the most recent News of the Weird", where we read that, recently,

"A 34-year-old man was shot to death over a piece of sweet potato pie (Atlanta, January). A man was stabbed to death allegedly by his girlfriend when he brought her home a McDonald's ham, egg and cheese bagel instead of the two Egg McMuffins she requested (Martinez, Calif., March). A 48-year-old man was shot to death, allegedly by his wife, after a fight over their satellite-TV controls (Orlando, April). A 37-year-old man was beaten to death, allegedly by his roommate, in a fight over the thermostat setting..."

My point being, people are reliably inclined, all over the world, to lose all sense of proportion over things wackier and less important than usenet posts.

And, given this, my real point is: The source of the problem is technical! The internet has given us a wonderful system for facilitating communication, but it's immature. How can we (technogeek slashdotters) make it better? How can we implement noble ideas like "anonymous with accountability"? How can we get real free speech to places like China or Saudi Arabia, while still doing something to increase the responsibility of people who unleash ddos attachs and the thousand and one more interesting forms of abuse mentioned in the original article?

How can we, that is, truley best support and protect the work of those noble few who keep the net running from the inevitable depths of human nature?

Ron Obvious

Here's an interview where Willis talks a bit about his take on the movie. He was, apparently, surprised by the ending when he read the script. And he talks about hero theories a little bit, parenting, etc.

He claims to be a daily web surfer and refers to News of the Weird, which he says he consults every day for his dose of "paranormal" news.

* As Russia's economy and drive toward democracy falter, consumption of vodka increases, but drinking habits long ago created a public health crisis for the country, according to a June Boston Globe story. Life expectancy is down to 59; average vodka consumption is three bottles a week; and two-thirds of all adult men are in fact drunk when they die.

What if Mozart could only use the triangle?

What if Van Gogh only had watercolour?

You let people use what they are happy with, they do more...

Running a server/gateway/network is not about what your clients use to connect.

I'd relegate this to 'News of The Weird' for nerds... href

News of the Weird recently had an article about this. Aparently, a British company wanyts to market these as a way for gay men to meet discreetly in public. The name- Gaydar