What are we bid for stock in the world's online search king?
Google finally rolled out its much-anticipated initial public offering, and to say this one is a beauty is to say that Barry Bonds hits for distance. Google announced April 29 they would sell $2.7 billion in stock through an online auction it hopes will keep the unreasonable speculation down to the proverbial dull roar. Knowing the way Google's founding masterminds do business, that kind of novel IPO should have surprised nobody. "Google is not a conventional company," said Sergey Brin and Larry Page. "We do not intend to become one." And that includes not smoothing results just to match Wall Street expectations, while still continuing their usually high-risk, high-reward investment style...
Speaking of high risk and high (hoped-for, anyway) reward, the Senate got a little bit closer to hammering out a new Internet access tax ban proposal. Except that it isn't exactly going to be the sweeping ban supporters - including President Bush, possibly - had hoped to have. A group of Senators who pushed the thought that the ban equaled a needless subsidy for telecommunications and a "drain" on state and local revenues got changes that include changing "permanent ban" to "four-year freeze," and making clear that the "freeze" will not effect taxing Voice-over Internet Protocol, or Internet telephony. And the Senate is also going to let states now taxing Net access just keep on keeping on with it...
High risk is also what Norton Antivirus's makers are calling a Trojan horse aiming at Microsoft's IIS Web servers, the ones signifying that a worm is about to crawl in. Symantec believes there is an excellent chance that significant numbers of systems have yet to be patched against the suspected Trojan, known for now as backdoor.mipsiv and said to be managed easily enough for now. Systems running IIS without the ms04-011 patch are considered vulnerable; systems running Windows Server 2003 are not. For now...
Nothing on earth will patch this softly for Jack Wayne Rogers: he's going to the calaboose for 30 years, the result of his November guilty plea to federal child porn and obscenity charges, and that may not even be the end of it. The Associated Press says Missouri authorities are still probing charges that he performed surgeries to remove genitals, and he's awaiting a Boone County trial on first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license...
We don't dare ask what tools were involved in those alleged genital surgeries. But we do like to ask about new tools for enhancing and securing the Internet experience. And the answers these days include something known as the Net Threat Analyzer-Stealth (NTA Stealth), the brainchild of New Technologies Armor, Inc., which says this tool will identify past net activity on the entire hard drive of any computer, from a floppy disk or USB device, including automatically identifying child and adult porn activity.
"The Internet has become a haven for sex crime offenders with over 100,000 Web sites offering child pornography," said NTA chief Michael Anderson announcing the new tool. "Viewing of pornography on company time has also become commonplace in business and government. NTA Stealth allows probation and parole officers to easily monitor the Internet activities of convicted sexual offenders and for businesses and government to determine where employees are spending their time on the Internet."...
Viewing porn on the family computer's time is also a target - of Morality in Media, as usual. The group now says Kids First Coalition head Penny Nance has asked them to help round up some particularly pungent stories from supporters about their kids bumping into porn on the P2P - apparently unaware that parents can put the same kinds of P2P controls that they do on other Internet programs, not to mention being occasionally unaware of the dichotomy between their kvetching about porn on the P2P and their comparative lack of noise about kids pinching the copyrighted material off the P2P. Nance wants the anecdotes to bring along when she testifies to a Congressional hearing next week...
And viewing child porn on the home computer is sometimes enough to get a wife suspicious about a husband. Just ask substance abuse counselor James Paul Ferguson of Mesa, Arizona, whose wife brought detectives a computer hard drive telling them she was afraid he might have saved child porn therein and afraid for the welfare of the couple's three children. She found the hard drive, she told the detectives, in their shed - next to videos and magazines featuring "young themes." Ferguson is a Maricopa County jail on $500,000 bail...
Connecticut is looking to set new penalty guidelines for child porn possession, based on how many pictures the offender happens to have. The state Senate's proposal is up to 20 years in the can for fifty or more such pictures; up to ten years for 20 or more pictures; and, up to five years for up to 20 pictures, with all three instances various degrees of felony charges. The bill's proponents say the number of child porn cases thanks to the Internet makes such a set of guidelines necessary...
The numbers equaled $5 million in cash and stock for LookSmart to buy online filtering company Net Nanny's business and assets from BioNet Systems, in a deal announced April 29. "This acquisition is both strategic and prudent for LookSmart," said LookSmart chief executive Damian Smith, announcing the deal. "Strategic, because integrating our search technology into Net Nanny provides a stronger product for their users, while also providing LookSmart with a desktop platform from which to launch high margin search and paid listings applications. Prudent, because Net Nanny is expected to produce positive margin contribution for LookSmart in 2004."...
We're not so sure how smart this looks, but we'd like to leave you with a chortle if we can help it. Here, then, is an e-mail from Mathieu Guitard, whom the London Register says has hit upon the unlikeliest of cures for psoriasis, shown here in Guitard's own text:
Hi, My name is Mathieu Guitard Today I ask for your attention!!! so please read carefully
I guess when teenagers and their parents want to find informative pages on sexuality they are getting lost in an abundance of other dirty pay sites.
To improve the situation I brought many new domain names like SexEducated.com, ArtAndScienceOfSex.com, SexAndSmile.co...
I wish to develop them into free educational websites.
I already found Sexologists interested in providing free online consultation on AskSexDoctor.com
Unfortunately I personally live with a skin problem "psoriasis" witch often ruin any activity or works i'm into, by inflicting itching thus scratching then intense pain that consume all my energies.
There is a good web site about the Psoriasis disease PsoriasisConnect.com It could be solved simply by going to direct sunlight or by receiving massage therapy (I tried way too many sorts of cream and pills).
As I live in Quebec, the weather is cold... so I plan to move to the southern region very soon.
If you can't help me with any of the above your money can help. I just found an interesting new way to raise funds. An old well established company "Hustler" To boost payouts on its 4 newest sites give 100$ for every 3$ you put into purchasing (below).
I know it may be hard for some to go through the online form as it may induce you to consume pornography.
thus Thank You Very Much
Thank YOU. That much..
And we thought the word was that porn caused, not cured, who knows how many diseases? "That's right, honey - I'm only spending all this time at Sex.com and Vivid Interactive to cure that case of skin cancer I've come down with..."
