Vanishing ministers and trolls among the supplicants – such are the devils besetting the Church of Fools, backed by the Methodist Church, a 3D virtual church launched last week and already buffeted by the kind of problems unheard of in the days of Jesus. Visitors were said to be stunned when they saw a priest turn to face a wall and then disappear at one service, for starters. Turned out the actual priest suffered computer meltdown and his character was wiped off the matrix, his body flushed down the pipe.
Meanwhile, there are those getting their characters to behave more like Satan's spawn than Christian soldiers, forcing the church to bring in some new old-fashioned cybersecurity wardens logging out the trolls after "a brief inquisition and time in a comfy chair," not to mention removing the shout function to quiet down the place. The church has finally posted a notice: "You are entering a church... please respect this space. This may feel like a chat room, but please do not swear, practice your chat-up lines, or harass others." Heaven help us…
Speaking of pirates, California's state Senate has passed a bill aimed at making Internet music and film pirates walk the plank by forcing them give up their e-mail addresses. The bill was written by Sen. Kevin Murray (R-Culver City), who said it would let law enforcement use the addresses to track the pirates down, with failure to disclose true e-mail addresses punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine up to $2,000, with kids fined $250 for first or second offenses and a third costing them up to $1,000 and a year in the brig…
The thing of it is, the kids are going online pirate a lot more these days, according to Harris Interactive. Their latest poll shows 88 percent of those kids who responded know popular music is copyrighted but more than half (56 percent) download anyway – and they worry more about picking up computer viruses than they do about fighting the law when it comes to online music…
Wonder what they think about a rock ‘n’ roll music label hooking up with a church to fight Internet porn? Flicker Records said May 19 they partnered up with XXXchurch.com for the label's "Flicker Rocks Harder" anthology CD, with 17 tracks from nine label artists including Pillar, Everyday Sunday, the Swift, and Kids in the Way, a disc that includes X3 Watch, a free filtering tool from the church aimed at keeping the kids from the cyberporn. It'll sell at $6.99 to spread the songs and the filter to the widest audience possible, Flicker said…
There's another flicker in the war on spam, this time from Yahoo. They've set up DomainKeys, a new e-mail standard said to stop spammers from hiding unwanted messages behind legitimate e-mail addresses. If adopted widely enough, according to ZDNet News, this could also help Internet service providers block the mass spam now said to equal two-thirds of all e-mail traffic a little more simply. DomainKeys, Yahoo says, would embed outgoing messages with encrypted digital signatures matched to a signature on the server computer that sends it, and ISPs could check the signatures on the incoming and block whatever doesn't match…
Yahoo and its search rival Google are being set up for yet another litigation battle, this time from insurance giant Geico, which accuses Google and Yahoo-owned Overture of violating Geico trademarks in search-related advertisements. Geico said the two companies are infringing Geico trademarks by selling them as keywords to Geico rivals so protected terms could show up in sponsored search results. Geico's May 4 suit accuses Overture and Google thus of causing consumer confusion, violating the primary federal law covering trademark registration…
Not that Google is necessarily afraid of a battle. Google wants to bring forth a new, powerful file and text software search tool for finding what's stored on personal computers, which the New York Times calls the clearest sign yet that Google plans to extend business to compete directly with Microsoft's dominance of desktop computing. Improved searching on PC is said to be a critical feature of Microsoft's much-delayed Windows version known as Longhorn, the paper said.
The good news: The Internet is making it a lot easier for parents to adopt children. The bad news: It also makes it easier for scammers to prey on such hopeful parents. "The Internet has changed adoption to its core by speeding up the process and also providing wonderful educational tools and support resources," said Adoption Nation author and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute executive director Adam Pertmanute to Forbes. "[But a]nyone can hang a shingle by buying a Website, and I tell people to carefully check references. There are ways to make money off of illicit adoption."
New Jersey authorities can vouch for that: they are said to have kicked off a probe a few years ago after several complaints about an adoption agency that was begun by a man who once designed hardcore adult Websites. Other problems with online adoption connection are said to include too many details about adoptable children, which critics fear might equal a massive invasion of privacy.
