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Lisl will spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't commit This site outlines Lisl Auman's case. Her case is being supported by Hunter S Thompson. She will be appealing the ruling this spring. There are links to Thompson's articles on espn.com, as well as Lisl's site.
comment posted at 10:43 PM on Mar-25-01

Seattle private school to make laptop purchase and use mandatory . Lakeside School -- well known as the alma mater of Bill Gates -- is making laptop ownership a precursor to grades 7-12 beginning next year. Some parents are up in arms despite a glowing pilot program assessment and a somewhat cloying letter from Lakeside's head of school, who also assures families on financial aid that help will be available. Is this just one school getting a jump on the future of education, or a corporation-driven attempt to lock in younger and younger consumers?
comment posted at 2:44 PM on Mar-25-01

If you are downloading from Napster or some other service, the RIAA is tracking you. Here's a screenshot of the Recording Industry's secret weapon.
comment posted at 3:23 PM on Mar-23-01

A taste of Nostalgia... while it's not really an informative MeFi posted link, the list of commercials brings back memories. It's too bad there aren't any clips. Are any of these familiar to you?
comment posted at 11:52 PM on Mar-25-01

April 3rd is "Take Back the Net" day. Only 12 days until they ask you to buy something from your favorite online store, or buy stock in the company to send a message to the world that the Internet Economy will survive. Does anyone smell a cute marketing scare tactic? "I gotta buy TiVo, or Amazon will die and I need my books and movies $3 cheaper!"
comment posted at 11:36 PM on Mar-22-01

Capitalism wins! Does anyone need more proof than seeing sponsors in Russia's mission control room?
comment posted at 12:28 AM on Mar-23-01

can standing up for your 1st amendment rights go too far? the independent florida alligator, the independently owned and run student newspaper of the university of florida, where i go to school, has entered into a lawsuit with the orlando sentinel trying to gain access to and copy the autopsy photos of dale earnhardt... saying that the injunction issued at widow teresa earnhardt's request by the state to block the public from access to these photos is a violation of the sunshine laws and their first amendment rights, they have thrown compassion to the wind in a self-righteous publicity stunt, and it's funny that their only supporters are other editors, writers, etc. is this going too far? i know writers live by their reputations, and this will certainly make them known, but how low is low? what do you guys think?
comment posted at 4:11 PM on Mar-22-01

Another School Shooting This time, it's in the same school district as the last one. Is this some new, sick trend?
comment posted at 3:16 PM on Mar-22-01
comment posted at 3:46 PM on Mar-22-01

reboot? is MetaFilter or are any metafilterians taking part in this? I think it sounds kinda fun. But I don't know what I'd do on a week without MetaFilter....work?
comment posted at 3:56 PM on Mar-22-01
comment posted at 12:41 AM on Mar-23-01

A Chicago Trib reporter logged all of the ads she saw in one day. It makes for an interesting and kind of scary read. [via obscurestore]
comment posted at 12:17 AM on Mar-26-01

"The Most Dangerous Piece of Software in the World." With his usual hyperbole, Calcanis of SAD calls WebWasher a scary product. We all know that net advertising is not profitable (i.e. Salon going to subscriptions) and as products like WebWasher proliferate, we can be truly assured that none of these net business models are worth anything. Of course software to kill ads on the web has been around for years but is this the one that will break into the mainstream?
Better sell your DoubleClick stock (like it was worth anything to begin with ;)
comment posted at 7:57 AM on Mar-22-01
comment posted at 11:33 AM on Mar-22-01

Salon's new strategy: make the banner ads AS ANNOYING AS HUMANLY FUCKING POSSIBLE. Now it's either the subscription model or horrifying Flash ads that take up more column inches than the articles. Are they on crack, or merely dumb?
comment posted at 11:32 PM on Mar-21-01

Proposal to make ecstasy sentencing harsher than heroin passed despite opposition from the Federation of American Scientists (Acrobat req'd). One of these opponents from the Federation served as Nixon's drug czar. Why is the government so hard on ecstasy? What effect will this have on the drug war in general? And is this anything but an empty (but harmful) political move?
comment posted at 10:14 PM on Mar-21-01

3Com kills Audrey. Although the little guy (gal?) was released just this past October, it's a goner. Is anyone willing to pay $499 for a net terminal? Was this just too far ahead of its time?
comment posted at 3:41 PM on Mar-21-01

Mad cow disease (possibly) strikes "diary sheep" Read the first paragraph carefully...
comment posted at 11:14 AM on Mar-21-01
comment posted at 11:24 AM on Mar-21-01

ever wish those new laptops were a little cheaper? hackers have found a simple way of changing the prices on e-commerce sites and then submitting a purchase order with the new price...all in the "edit page" feature of your browser... suddenly network security is not the only thing to be aware of with online transactions.
comment posted at 9:31 AM on Mar-21-01

a white man speaking black truths After the California school shooting, ther had been a number of discussions and some links to the idea that blacks don't do school shootings. The article dealing with this issue elicited a huge response on-line by blacks to the piece, written by a whiteman. Here is how many blacks responded.
comment posted at 11:32 AM on Mar-21-01
comment posted at 4:01 PM on Mar-21-01

PETA tries to ride yet another publicity bandwagon. Man, could they be more pathetic in trying to milk the news for desperately-needed attention?
comment posted at 6:41 AM on Mar-21-01
comment posted at 11:39 AM on Mar-21-01

Say farewell to the geeky white guys. The new generation of Internet users looks a lot like the folks who cruise Wal-Mart-and then some. How the hell did that happen?
comment posted at 1:37 AM on Mar-21-01
comment posted at 12:03 AM on Mar-22-01

W. Post: Follow the Money Or, rather, are TV stations gouging political advertisers -- and is this, the price of advertising, the quandary rather than reforming the financing of said campaign or issue advertising? Quite intriguing.
comment posted at 11:23 PM on Mar-20-01

Salon admits banner ads don't work and asks for subscriptions, with the alternative being bigger, new (probably flash-enhanced) banners. I wish more companies did this, allowing users to pay to get rid of ads. I've paid for Eudora 5, and I'll be paying Salon for the same luxury. Will Salon be the first of many or the last? (via rc3)
comment posted at 12:50 AM on Mar-21-01
comment posted at 6:00 AM on Mar-21-01

Here's your reparations money, now shut up! Another POV in the slavery reparations debate: From the conservative National Review, an argument that paying off black Americans would be worth it "if they could no longer play the race card."
comment posted at 1:23 AM on Mar-21-01

Strathclyde Police, Scotland, given the right to take DNA samples from anyone arrested. Previously DNA samples were taken only from those suspected of murders, sex attacks or serious assaults.

Sir John Orr, Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, denied that compulsory testing would infringe people's human rights. He said: "The tests are not invasive, not intrusive and not against civil liberties. The vast majority of people will be asked only to give a simple mouth swab, which can be done in seconds. This is a magnificent tool which will help detect crime and the public should be very pleased."

Read: you have nothing to fear if you're innocent...
comment posted at 6:25 AM on Mar-21-01

Boston area school divided by its namesake... Students and principal call for Agassiz Elementry to change its name, due to the racist evolutionary theory spun by the 19th century naturalist. "Reading about Agassiz was so painful I had to step back for a while." [says the student heralding the renaming effort]. A sample of Louis Agassiz's mindset "I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race, and their lot inspired compassion in me in thinking that they were really men." A new namesake has already been found-- Maria Baldwin, first black principal of the school [and first to preside over an all-white school in the Northeast in 1889].

Should namesakes of public institutions have a "clean" record? Why did it take 126 years to mobilize a renaming effort?
comment posted at 10:16 PM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 12:17 AM on Mar-21-01

Hailstorm! "Web Services" like Ebay on your im app, email, phone, whatever. Is the era of the "universal login" finally here? (Microsoft or not).
comment posted at 5:58 PM on Mar-19-01

Lincoln a dysfunctional, racist, manic-depressive? This is the latest proposed Hollywood revision of history. So what's been the most egregious example of movie distorting or ignoring historical fact? JFK? Amistad? Gladiator?
comment posted at 11:11 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 12:46 PM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 12:56 PM on Mar-19-01

Campaign finance reform gets 2 weeks of debate in the Senate starting today. It has become a battle between the McCain-Feingold bill and the Dubya-D-40 backed Hagel-Landrieu bill. Will anything meaningful get passed? Will it matter if it does?
comment posted at 10:46 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 10:49 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 11:07 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 1:28 PM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 1:33 PM on Mar-19-01

Coca-Cola on tap at home? New recipies that include "2 cups of Coca-Cola"? Taking this a step further makes it interesting, with all manner of juices being available on-call.
comment posted at 11:05 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 11:19 AM on Mar-19-01

Geeks (like me), welcome the new Palm m505 -- all the style of the V series, with an improved color lcd screen and an expansion slot! Yum.
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Mar-19-01
comment posted at 1:42 PM on Mar-19-01

You think American teevee is bad? You ain't seen nothing yet, boy. Japanese teevee, in additional to being obsessed with human degradation and suffering, is also blatantly and inappropriately racist at times. Now the crap they show on Fox doesn't seem so bad in comparison, does it?
comment posted at 10:09 PM on Mar-16-01

Scientology Strikes Again Last Saturday a comment was posted on Slashdot by an anonymous reader that contained text that was copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. They have since followed the DMCA and demanded that Slashdot remove the comment. After consulting with their lawyers, that's exactly what Slashdot did, but posted the above page with oodles of links to anti-Scientology resources. Will Scientology stop at nothing to silence its opponents?
comment posted at 3:17 PM on Mar-16-01

second teen sentenced to life including the election, this is obviously florida's year.
comment posted at 2:24 PM on Mar-16-01

Comic Relief hits the UK yet again. This is a fundraising event based around comedy and comedians that attempts to take the worthiness out of charity by making the day entertaining. Generally it fails. However, highlights of the event this year (both on and off the web) include: A celebrity version of Big Brother. The pairing of Graham Norton and Sarah Ferguson. Hot Naked Robbie Williams doing The Fast Show's Ted and Ralph. And finally: Mo Morgan will donate £1 for every page impression he gets. Let's bankrupt the bastard.
comment posted at 3:48 PM on Mar-16-01