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So, how long until we start seeing Doom III inspired school shootings?

Nigeria _is_ a rich and corrupt country. Many people there _are_ relatives of government ministers with access to huge, hidden bank accounts. Earthlink, Enron ... as far as we've come into the modern world we've got _nothing_ on Nigerians. Those of us lucky enough to be invited into their schemes should rejoice, open our bank accounts wide. The educational experience is priceless.
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Steve Ballmer comes across as a poor, beat down soul in the video deposition [...].

Geez, I almost feel sorry for the guy. Being the subject of grilling by hostile, powerful lawyers has got to be very stressful.

BTW, the CEO of Lindows is handling fairly well the Microsoft lawsuit against the company for allegedly stealing a common English word, kinda, but not really.

Clem.

http://www.uniontrib.com/news/computing/20011108-1 353-compressedgame.html>

It's not funny at all. There are already a lot of copyrighted laws that cannot be freely distributed. Check this link. Highlights:

* California and 47 other states have building laws that are copyrighted by one of three nonprofit organizations. [and they'll get nasty if you try to redistribute the text.]

* The federal government requires U.S. physicians to use a medical billing code that's owned by the American Medical Association.

This is one of the most insane things I have ever heard of. For some reason it is a little-known fact... probably because it's things like building codes, and not the traffic codes that everyone needs to know about. It's still unforgiveable.

This tells you the sort of high-powered executives they have over at NBC - they managed to make television less immediate than the newspaper...

For what it's worth, my mother, who was (and still is, so far as I know) a regular follower of the Olympics and other athletic events like the Pan-American Games, watched those events to see (surprise, surprise!) athletics. When US television began to run sappy human-interest sidebars instead of showing the competitions, she started watching the coverage on Mexican TV instead.

But then, that's just one woman (who's also a rabid soccer fan.) NBC must have done something right, considering that their 1996 Atlanta coverage got a 21.6 average rating, compared to 17.1 for the 1992 Barcelona games (see this old San Diego Union-Tribune article.). Oh, well. I'll stick to the newspaper reports.

There was an interesting article in the local paper yesterday about the police allowing more vocal critics to participate in training exercises. The general consensus seemed to be that the job was a lot harder than most people thought and that it's much, much easier to make claims like yours than to decide what would be "a measured and acceptable way" to act in the short amount of time available. This definitely did not mean, however, that everyone decided the cops were completely in the right, just that the problem is a lot more difficult than most people think.
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For the most part, Katz has raised some good points. Privacy is dead, or at least mortally wounded, and most people don't even know it.

Again, the largest threats to privacy are corporations whose only interest are the bottom line. I'm surprised Katz didn't mention grocery store discount clubs. Imagine tying your grocery store buying habits to your online shopping/surfing habits (thanks, DoubleClick) - and then linking that to your personal identity. It's not too farfetched.

From a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The data compiled by using those cards can be disseminated in a variety of ways. CalPIRG noted yesterday that there have been cases in which supermarket companies, using membership club data, offered customers' prescription information to drug manufacturers and provided law enforcement agencies with records of customers' buying habits to help in the creation of suspect profiles. One chain even allegedly threatened to detail the alcohol purchases of a customer who sued after falling down in one of its stores." Yikes!

Carnivore is worrisome, but not too unexpected - the FBI and other 3 letter organizations have been spying for years. Better the devil you know...

Finally, on company time I don't expect much privacy, except maybe in the toilet. It's their desk, not mine. It's their computer, not mine. It's their... see a trend?

At least by my reckoning of the English language. The resulting search puts an American-football team on top.