THE OLD MAN'S
NEWSTAND
...never mind.
November 5, 1998; (CNET News.com)
Model Prevails in Playboy Case
A former Playboy model has won another round in her legal fight to describe herself online as a "Playmate of the Year."
Model Terri Welles, who was Playboy's 1981 Playmate of the Year, maintains a Web site where she sells photos of herself and advertises her services as a model.
In March, Playboy sued Welles for trademark infringement, saying she did not have the right to use Playboy's trademarked terms on a competing adult Web site. The company sought $5 million in damages, and asked a judge to force Welles to pull the Playboy references from her site immediately.
But thus far, courts have not been sympathetic to the adult publisher's arguments. In April, a judge denied Playboy's request for a preliminary injunction against Welles, saying the company had not shown it was likely to win its case. Last week, a Ninth Circuit panel of appeals judges upheld that decision, giving Welles the right to use the Playboy name online while the legal dispute is being resolved.
And continue it will, according to Playboy. "We feel very strongly about this, and that's why we're going forward," said Cindy Rackowitz, the company's president of Playmate promotions. "We feel the decision was procedural, and has no bearing on the merits of the case."
The company is even looking to expand the case. Attorneys asked the court late last month to add Welles's former Webmaster, Stephen Huntington, to the lawsuit. The company also wants to add a claim that Welles counterfeited its trademark by using the Playboy references on her site, according to documents filed with the court.
Welles said she would continue to fight the publishing giant, although she has already spent about $120,000 in legal fees on the case. "Especially with the judge's last ruling, why would I stop now?" she said.
The site has supported her for much of the last year, Welles added. "I'm a single mother, and this is the bulk of the money I use to support my life, and support my daughter," she said. "This is my business."
The company has aggressively protected its trademark online, suing several other companies that allegedly pirated its photos or used the Playboy name in HTML metatags in attempts to attract traffic.
Welles uses the Playboy name in her metatags, describes herself as Playmate of the Year and uses Playboy's "POTY" abbreviation on her site. But in the April decision, the judge said these terms aptly described Welles, and were not an attempt to mislead visitors.
"It is clear that [the] defendant is selling Terry Welles and only Terri Welles on the Web site. There is no overt attempt to confuse the Web surfer into believing that her site is a Playboy-related Web site," wrote district court judge Judith Keep.
"Given that Ms. Welles is the 'Playmate of the Year 1981,' there is no other way that [she] can identify or describe herself and her services without venturing into absurd descriptive phrases," Keep added.
A pre-trial hearing for arguments in the case has been scheduled for next April.
You really have to admire Playboy for its principled position, don't you? Playboy, standing tall in a cesspool of immorality, standing up for what is right!
What is it with these big corporations? I understand
the necessity to protect one’s trademarks and copyrights, but there must be a way to do it
that is less offensive than suing single moms.
Yeah, that “single mother” remark really got to me.
However, I am troubled to hear that some people are actually earning money from their web pages. Especially people as bereft of apparent talent as Terri Welles. Please feel free to send me some of your spare change. What the hell, I will send you a couple of pictures.
By the way, in case you are interested in the arithmetic, Terri was a “POTY” 17 years ago, suggesting that she must be pushing 40 (she was working as a flight attendant as early as 1977). Somehow, the limited selection of her pictures which a non-member is entitled to look at do not look much like a 40 year old woman. I am left with the sad picture in my mind of a vacuous woman sitting at her keyboard, a scanner and a pile of dusty photographs by her side, remembering “the good old days” (see picture, above) and supporting herself and her daughter by selling men like me the right to flash pictures of her youth (and more) on my screen for $9.95 per month.
It's a dirty job, but I guess someone has to do it.
Deadly Garbage Collapse in Philippines
MANILA (MSNBC; July 10, 2000) - A mountain of garbage collapsed at a Manila dump Monday then burst into flames, burying dozens of squatter houses and killing at least 31 people, officials said. At least 68 people were missing and 29 others injured. The victims were squatters who make a living by scavenging recyclable materials from the site.
It was not immediately known what triggered the fire that engulfed part of the area, called Promised Land. The dump often smolders from spontaneous combustion of rotting garbage.
Iranian Transsexual Unhappy With Experience As Woman
TEHRAN (Reuters; June 19, 2000) - An Iranian man who recently had a sex change to become a woman wants to reverse the operation because she finds life as a woman insufferable in Iran, a newspaper said Monday.
The 25-year-old Maryam, formerly Mehran, underwent a sex change last year, despite strong parental opposition.
But she soon regretted the decision, finding it difficult to cope with ``restrictions'' surrounding a woman's life in the conservative Islamic society.
``I can't go on living with the new identity, after years of living as a man with no restrictions,'' she told the daily Iran.
``First I thought I would get used to it, but life has become painful and intolerable. So I want a new sex change.''
Sex change operations are legal in Iran, but there are no provisions for would-be transsexuals to test out their new identity first.
The social reforms of President Mohammad Khatami -- elected in May of 1997 with overwhelming support of women -- have eased the lot of women somewhat.
But women still struggle under the burdens of a legal code and a value system that severely limits their freedom of action and subordinates them to husbands, brothers and fathers.
Iran has a mandatory dress code for women, requiring them to cover their hair and body. While men get on public transport through the front door, women must use the back door.
Courts give a woman's testimony only half the weight of that of a man and inheritance, divorce and child custody laws overwhelmingly favor men.
Official statistics show suicide rates among women far outstrips those of men -- the opposite of Western societies.
Man Freed After Night in Sex Shop
PARIS (Reuters; March 7, 2000) - A young Frenchman who dozed off while watching a porn film in a sex shop Saturday had to be rescued by police after he woke up in the middle of the night to find the shop locked and the owner gone for the weekend.
The 25-year-old managed to amuse himself for most of Sunday, the daily Liberation said.
But by mid-afternoon his interest in the material available finally ran out and he phoned the police to free him from the shop in Reims, northeast France.
07:15 PM ET 07/15/99; Boston (AP)
Nancy Kerrigan Sues Internet Site
Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan filed a lawsuit Thursday against a company she says is using her name to sell sexually explicit pictures over the Internet. In a suit filed in Essex Superior Court, Kerrigan accuses FSX Network Communications Corp., of Staten Island, N.Y., of inserting her name 32 times into a 22-line text page in an effort to get search engines to point to the site whenever a computer user requests information on Kerrigan. The text page links to three pages where sexually explicit pictures are for sale.
In September, Kerrigan settled a lawsuit against a California company she accused of displaying false sexually explicit pictures of her on the Internet. And Polk said a lawsuit is pending against a company that had been selling such pictures on CD-ROM. Kerrigan, 29, won a silver medal at the Lillehammer Olympic Games in 1994.
A: Ooops! ...just a minute!!!
Friday, June 18, 1999; Los Angeles (Washington Post)
Glitch in Y2K Test Causes Spill of Raw Sewage
A glitch during a year 2000 computer test caused a large Los Angeles water treatment facility to spill 4 million gallons of raw sewage into a city park on Wednesday night.
Although maintenance workers had vacuumed most of the sewage by early yesterday morning, the incident serves as an example of the unforeseen problems that can occur as many organizations run their computer systems through elaborate simulations to prepare for 2000.
The problem began when technicians at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys conducted a drill to see how the facility's computers and other electronic systems would respond to a Y2K-related power failure. An emergency generator kicked in as planned, but a computer failed to open an "effluent gate" that controls the flow of sewage into the plant, said Cora Jackson Fossett, spokeswoman for the city's Public Works Department.
The failure to open the gate, which was not immediately apparent to plant operators, caused sewage to back up and spill out of a manhole near the plant. The waste water flowed into Woodley Avenue and then into nearby Woodley Park.
The Los Angeles Public Health Department yesterday ordered the park closed for two or three days, spokesman Jack Petralia said.
Public works officials are investigating the incident, Fossett said.
Technology specialists said such incidents could become more frequent as businesses and government agencies conduct Y2K drills to ensure that computers that use a two-digit date system will understand the year "00" as 2000 and not 1900. The tests involve not just rolling the computers' clocks forward to Jan. 1, but often include simulating power outages and telephone failures as well as the manual operation of devices.
Industry experts say it is preferable to identify and fix any problems now, even if they result in disruptions, rather than having them occur all at once on Jan. 1. "If it had to happen, we're glad it was now and not in January," Fossett said.
June 10, 1999; Standish, Michigan (MSNBC). A Michigan jury on Friday found the “cussing canoeist” guilty of violating an obscure 102-year-old state law against swearing in public in front of children.
Jurors deliberated less than one hour before ruling against Timothy Boomer, a 25-year-old computer programmer from the Detroit area who prosecutors said yelled the “f-word” as many as 75 times after he fell out of his canoe on the remote Rifle River. Boomer could face 90 days in jail and a $100 fine.
While many called the law outrageous, others argued it is a worthy attempt to enforce civility.
In his defense, Boomer had testified he wasn’t swearing in anybody’s face. But in Standish, Mich., a town with one stoplight and 1,300 residents, a jury decided Boomer’s words were illegal.
Prosecutor Richard Vollbach said the case was a simple matter of disorderly conduct. “He went on a three-minute profanity tirade in front of a 2-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy,” Vollbach said. “The mother literally covered the ears of her daughter.”
But defense lawyer William Street, handling the case on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the 1897 law is rarely enforced because police know it is unconstitutional.
“We’re talking about criminalizing ordinary, day-to-day speech — language that just about everybody in the country has used personally from time to time,” he said.
LAW UPHELD
Boomer refused to repeat the words he used, but he insisted they’ve been exaggerated. He said he didn’t see anyone but his friends around and that his shouts were in jest. “I never asked for any of this,” Boomer said earlier this year. “But I decided to fight this law because ... I just believe it’s a violation of freedom of speech.”
Boomer won a partial victory when Allen Yenior, the judge presiding over the trial, ruled in February that the 1897 prohibition on cursing in front of women violated the equal protection standards.
But Yenior upheld the law as it pertains to children, saying Boomer’s alleged expletives could be considered “fighting words,” which the courts have ruled lack constitutional protection.
“So many people think that morals and respect for each other don’t matter any more,” said Ladd White, who runs a canoe shop along the Rifle river. “That’s been the downfall of societies in the past. Maybe this will send a message that morality does matter.”
ENFORCING COMMUNITY STANDARDS
Experts argue this attempt to use laws to enforce civility represents the latest struggle in American society to balance the rights of the individual with the standards of the community.
“I think civility, like any other issue that people care enough about, can be legislated and enforced,” said Professor Bernard Beck of Northwestern University.
March 6, 1999; New York (Wired News)
Purple Rein-In
Although he no longer has a pronounceable name, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince does not want anyone using his old one, his image, his music, or even the quirky symbol he now goes by -- especially over the Internet.
The Artist, now referred to as The Symbol, has filed three separate federal lawsuits to stop businesses on the Internet from selling his music or using his various representations to sell other products.
The Artist Formerly ... you know the rest, wants nine Web sites, including one GeoCities community, to stop allowing their visitors to download bootlegged copies of his music, along with pictures.
A spokesman for GeoCities said he was not aware of the suits and could not comment. Other companies could not be reached for comment.
The Symbol is no stranger to asking the courts to protect his good name. In 1984, Prince the musician tried to sue the then-maker of the Prince spaghetti products over a commercial that used a concert-like setting and introduced the Prince spaghetti product as a rock star.
He later dropped the suit.
February 24, 1999 (MSNBC)
“So many family activities take place right in the
kitchen, so we asked, ‘Where is a logical place for a center of communication?’ ” said
Frigidaire’s Tony Evans. “We decided it can be the refrigerator. There’s electricity, and
it’s always on.”
In its current form, the Screen Fridge still requires a little more human interaction. To that end, it is equipped with a bar code scanner, like those at the supermarket checkout counter.
“Say you’re eating your last Campbell’s soup,” said Roy Miller, a spokesman for ICL. “You just scan it. The fridge makes an itemized grocery shopping list for you. You can pull up, manipulate, print it out and take with you to grocer, or just send to the grocery store.”
You “send” it to the grocery store via your ISP or via e-mail. The “Screen Fridge” offers full e-mail and Web access, along with a TV tuner, so you can watch the game while you’re cooking.
But makers of the Screen Fridge think retailers might be more interested in the product than consumers. In fact, they might subsidize the costs, in exchange for in-depth demographic information about fridge owners.
“It’s the only appliance everyone in the family comes to,” Evans said. Why, you might wonder, wouldn’t you just put a PC on top of the fridge you already have?
“If you’re asking me if I want a PC in my kitchen, that would be taking up valuable counter space,” said Traflet.
February 22, 1999 (WiredNews)
AOL: 'We Want Your Credit Card'
Ted Leonsis has been reading his Orwell -- and taking notes.
The president of America Online's Studios said Monday the company will know enough about its customers, in the near future, to track their every move.
“We are this huge iceberg,” Leonsis told a group of institutional investors at the BancBoston Robertson Stephens Conference in San Francisco. “What you're seeing is the media property above the waterline. What's going on below the waterline is even bigger.”
What's going on below the waterline is a tremendous database of information on millions of consumers. Armed with that data, AOL can sell marketers an exquisitely tailored audience, turning the nozzle on a “very, very targeted audience to the consumers.” AOL now adds a million new members every 40 days.
With the pending acquisitions of Netscape Communications and MovieFone, the richness of the database will only grow.
Leonsis illustrated the point by describing a hypothetical customer experience with MovieFone, an online and telephone movie ticketing service that AOL agreed to buy. In Leonsis' example, a customer would log on to AOL's local channel -- Digital Cities, read a movie review, check local theater listings, then buy a ticket. A nice, convenient customer experience.
“That's the tip of the iceberg,” Leonsis reiterated. "What we want is your credit card.”
December 4, 1998; Nashua (N.H. Business Review)
Doughnut Lawsuit Dropped
A Manchester woman has dropped her lawsuit against a Merrimack doughnut shop she claimed served her doughnut holes shaped into male genitalia.
Sandra McRae, 56, filed suit in November 1997, charging she was humiliated when she brought the box of ‘Munchkins’ into work.
McRae’s suit survived an early effort to have the case thrown out. Merrimack Donuts, Inc., owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, argued that McRae had failed to make a legal claim, but a judge disagreed.
McRae sought $150,000 to settle the case, but there was no counter offer, according to court records.
McRae and her lawyer, David Nixon, in October filed a withdrawal, and a judge dismissed the case for lack of prosecution.
In court documents, the shop argued that any resemblance of its product to sex organs was purely coincidental.
A German couple out for a Christmas drive near Berlin ended up in a river - apparently because their luxury car's computer forgot to mention they had to wait for a ferry.The 57-year-old driver and his passenger were not injured in the accident, police said Saturday.
Several companies sell computer navigators, some of which are attached to dashboards and serve as electronic road maps. Some offer traffic updates and Internet connections.
The German couple was out driving Friday night when they came to a ferry crossing at the Havel River in Caputh, six miles from Berlin.
That information, however, was never stored in the satellite-steered navigation system they were using, police said. The driver kept going straight in the dark, expecting a bridge, and ended up in the water.
River traffic was stopped for two hours while the car was fished out about 13 feet from the river bank.
“You can't always blindly rely on technology,” a coast guard police officer said.
Monday November 30, 1998 (MSNBC; Reuters)But the harm from swallowed pennies only seems to apply to pennies minted in 1982 or after.
In an experiment, [Sara O’Hara, a pediatric radiologist at Duke University Medical Center] bathed 18 pennies in stomach acid, six of which were minted before 1982 and 12 minted in 1982 or later.
The pre-1982 coins showed no changes after a week in the acid and were found to be 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc. But the newer coins — which were 97.6 percent zinc and 2.4 percent copper — had been stripped of their copper coating and had holes in the zinc cores after just two days in the acid.
O’Hara said zinc reacted with stomach acid to form hydrogen gas and zinc chloride, which could lead to the formation of ulcers within days.
“If the coin does not show up in the stool within two days...an immediate visit to the emergency room or veterinarian is warranted,” O’Hara said.
And remember...check that stool, check those dates.
Wednesday December 16, 1998; LIMA (Reuters)
Guess Who Likes Airline Food
Pigs may not fly -- but in Peru they stuff their snouts with business class airline meals.
Pigs in Lima are being fed leftovers smuggled illegally from planes landing at Jorge Chavez international airport, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.
Police discovered that companies contracted to incinerate garbage from planes at the airport were diverting left-over meals to a clandestine pig farm, according to El Comercio.
The law stipulates all airline garbage must be incinerated to avoid the spread of disease.
A SPECIAL REPORT
THE OLD MAN FOCUSES ON THE CONTINENTAL CONSTABULARY.
Tuesday December 1, 1998; MUNICH (Reuters)
Police Attempt To Stop Suicide Ends In Tragedy
A German policewoman called to help a man cope with his brother's suicide threats shot them both dead, her superiors said.
Senior police officers told a news conference the 23-year-old Munich policewoman shot twice at a 48-year-old man who stormed toward her through his flat, wielding a knife.
One of the shots passed through the paranoid schizophrenic and hit the head of his brother, who had earlier called the police for help.
Prosecutor Manfred Wick said he saw no reason to charge the police officer, who was not named and was sent on indefinite leave. Wick said she appeared to have fired in self-defense but with tragic consequences, having failed to see the second man.
Tuesday December 1, 1998; BRUSSELS (Reuters)
Belgian Police Slammed For Dissolving Body
Belgian detectives who dissolved a human body in cleaning fluid while investigating a crime came under fire Monday from newspapers which said their methods showed no respect for the dead.
Brussels police, investigating allegations a Hungarian clergyman murdered up to 20 people and dissolved the bodies in cleaning agent, performed an experiment to see if it was possible by placing a dead body in a vat of Cleanest.
Within 24 hours the body, which had been donated to medical science, disappeared without trace.
Daily tabloid Het Laatste Nieuws quoted two professors of ethics who said they had “serious reservations” about the experiment.
Monday, November 30, 1998; SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Reuters)
Hard Time About To Get Harder For Inmates
Talk about hard time. Beginning next year, Santa Clara County's jails will ban cigarettes, stop handing out sugar and begin charging for coffee, too.
“If you stay with us, you're going to have to change your whole lifestyle,” Tim Ryan, the county chief of corrections, told Monday's San Jose Mercury News.
Ryan said the new regime going into effect on Jan. 1 was aimed at improving inmates' health.
“If they don't like it, hey, they don't have to come back,” he said.
Studies indicate that about 70 percent of the county's inmates use nicotine, the Mercury News said. County jails also have provided free coffee with the inmates' breakfast, along with sugar to sweeten it.
Beginning next year, those days are over. Under the new rules, tobacco will be banned while only those inmates who can afford it will be allowed to buy instant coffee and packets of artificial sweetener from the jail commissary.
Jails will stop handing out sugar altogether in an effort to stop inmates from making “pruno,” an alcoholic beverage concocted out of stolen fruit and hoarded sugar packets, officials said.
Officials estimated that eliminating coffee from the menu would save Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, some $50,000 annually while banning smoking would cut prisoner health care costs.
But advocates for prisoners' rights voiced concern over the plan, pointing to evidence that the cigarette ban could cause inmates to become “grumpy, sleepy, constipated and unruly.”
“It could create unnecessary stress for people who are already in a stressful situation,” Amanda Wilson, an attorney with Public Interest Law Firm, told the Mercury News.
“I'm not sure whether it's the smartest management decision.”
I guess that “pruno” must keep ‘em cleaned right out.
Friday November 27, 1998; MOSCOW (Reuters)
Rats Gnaw Through $6,000 Stashed In Home
Rats gnawed their way through $6,000 in U.S. dollar bills from a Russian family's savings which were stashed in a glass jar in a cellar for safety, NTV television said Thursday.
The family, which like millions of other Russians distrust the crumbling banking system and prefer to keep their savings at home, had to turn to a local bank in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk for help, it said.
“They came asking to exchange the damaged dollars,” a local bank expert told NTV television, holding up some of the banknotes with large pieces missing and rodents' teeth marks. The rats had chewed through the glass jar's lid.
Notes with more than 50 percent of their surface damaged could not be exchanged. The family lost about $6,000, but the bank exchanged the remaining $24,000 for new dollar bills.
Russians are believed to keep between $30 billion and $60 billion “under the mattress” at home, a trend accentuated by the near-collapse in recent months of the banking system. Most keep their savings in dollars, distrusting the vulnerable ruble.
NTV said another popular way of keeping savings, tucked away behind the fireplace, could also prove risky. It said there had been several cases of people's hard-earned cash going up in flames after unwitting relatives or friends lit a fire.
Wednesday November 11, 1998; MIAMI (Reuters)
Candidate Alleges Voodoo Attack
A Florida state senator accused a campaign worker for a political opponent of using voodoo to try to sabotage a ballot recount in their election race, police said Tuesday.
“It's not a common thing but it's not a rare thing, especially down here in Miami,” said officer Heriberto Mercado, who filed a report on the incident but made no arrests.
Monday's vote recount confirmed that the candidate making the allegations, Republican state Sen. Alberto Gutman, won reelection Nov. 3 by 301 votes.
While election supervisors counted the ballots, Gutman called police to the elections office and complained that someone had covered his car with splotches of a thick beige substance with an oatmeal-like texture, police said.
Gutman described the splotches to the Miami Herald as “voodoo crap” and accused a campaign worker for Democratic candidate Agustin Garcia of marring the car in a ritual aimed at putting a hex on the ballot count.
He told police the campaign worker also attempted to put a spell on him at a precinct station on election night last week.
He alleged that in the first incident the campaign worker “uttered some words, I guess pertaining to witchcraft or voodoo and she threw some substance on him, more like the stuff that was on the car,” Mercado said.
The suspect, who was also watching the ballot recount, denied the allegations and consented to a police search of her purse, which turned up no evidence linking her to the oatmeal-like substance, the officer said.
For some more serious political observations from The Old Man, read The Old Man’s Political Rants.
And for a whole pile of “voodoo crap” and other political crap, check out The Old Man’s Tailgate Edition and The Old Man’s Archive.
Tuesday November 10, 1998; LONDON (Reuters)
Prince Charles launches website, asks for views
Britain's Prince Charles launched his own Internet website Tuesday and invited websurfers around the world to send him messages and comments.
The life and work of the heir to the throne, who turns 50 this week, is described in detail over 354 pages with 250 pictures. His major speeches dating back to 1968 are reproduced in full.
But his late wife Princess Diana is consigned to a footnote in history and his lover of more than 25 years, Camilla Parker Bowles, rates a single mention.
Charles and Diana's ill-fated marriage and divorce, which riveted the public around the world for 15 years, is dealt with in a few brief sentences.
Parker Bowles is mentioned as joint author of a statement with Charles denying either of them had cooperated in a recent book that painted an unflattering portrait of Diana.
“He is not really into publishing anything about his private life. It is a factual website and it is not there for tittle-tattle,” said one of the prince's aides.
The aides promised that Charles, whose popularity has risen since the death of Diana in a car crash last year, would take notice of comments visitors can leave on the Online Forum page. They held out the possibility that he might answer some of them himself.
Charles's website is linked to the official Buckingham Palace website, which was launched 18 months ago and took more than 100 million hits in the first year.
(2)On the other hand, if you are looking for tittle-tattle, check out The Old Man's Tailgate Edition or The Old Man's Archive. But those are no longer being updated; frankly, The Old Man has gotten tired of it.
Thursday November 12, 1998; LONDON (Reuters)
Lots of visits to Charles on the Web
The launch of Prince Charles' website proved to be a huge success on the Internet with 1.75 million hits recorded in its first 24 hours.
The heir-to-the-throne, who celebrates his 50th birthday next week, attracted reactions from websurfers as far afield as Australia and the United States for his views on everything from architecture to agriculture.
Usually, a new area code is a minor annoyance, necessitating minor costs in reprinting stationery and business cards. But in about 10 years, the number of phone lines needed will exceed the capacity of a three-digit area code with a seven digit phone number. Jones suggests a five digit area code and a nine-digit phone number to allow up for to a trillion individual phone lines — enough for several phone numbers for every person on the planet.Problem solved? Nope. Millions of software applications in the United States can handle only three-figure area codes and seven-figure phone numbers. To upgrade them all will be cumbersome and expensive.
And, as if that weren't enough to worry about...
[T]he United States might run out of Social Security numbers.Numbers assigned to U.S. citizens are not reused once someone dies. The current nine-digit system provides a maximum of about 1 billion numbers. Since 1936, when the first number was issued, more than 381 million numbers have been assigned, with about 6 million new ones issued each year.
It’s easy to add a digit, but thousands of computer programs that expect nine-digit numbers will have to be modified.
The grandchildren of today’s programmers will be solving that one, when the current numbers run out around 2075.
Monday November 2, 1998; Nairobi, Kenya (Reuters)Kenya millennium bug report to finish in April 2000
The Kenyan government has formed a committee to investigate problems that may be caused by the so-called millennium bug -- but its final report is due to be published months after the much-prophesised collapse of non-compliant computer systems.
The Daily Nation newspaper reported that the government formed the committee on October 19, 1998 and ordered a final report on the consequences of the millennium bug in 18 months time.
“This fixed the deadline at April 2000, four months after the bug will have taken effect,” the paper said.
November 3, 1998; (TechWeb)
Microsoft Scrambles For Windows 2000 Trademark
One week after changing the name of Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000, Microsoft has discovered that someone else owns the trademark on the name -- specifically Robert Kersten, former chief financial officer of McCaw Cellular. Microsoft had a similar trademark problem with Internet Explorer earlier this year, but resolved it.
Tuesday, October 27, 1998; Washington (Reuters)
Microsoft rivals played Roosevelt, Stalin in e-mail
Even chief executive officers want to have fun.
The Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial heard Monday that the top officers of Internet browser maker Netscape Communications Corp. and America Online Inc. liked to think of themselves as World War II allies against Microsoft.
In an Oct. 19, 1995, e-mail introduced into the court record, Netscape Chief Executive Jim Barksdale addressed his AOL counterpart Steve Case as "Steve (a k a Franklin D.)," a reference to wartime President Franklin Roosevelt.
Barksdale signed the e-mail as ``your comrade Joseph Stalin,'' adding in parentheses: "I don't like playing this part. He was not very p.c. (politically correct). From now on I want to be Winston C.," referring to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
"Did you ever get to be Churchill?" asked Microsoft lawyer John Warden on cross-examination.
"No," replied Barksdale.
October 21, 1998; By Teresa Riordan, ABCNEWS.com Patent Columnist
High-Tech Obit Delivery
The idea for an obituary database first occurred to Gilbert Arbuckle when he learned he had missed the wakes of a couple of friends. He was, shall we say, mortified.
“It’s hard to keep up,” laments the 68-year-old Arbuckle, a retired philosophy professor living in Quincy, Mass. “You have to monitor the obituary pages every day. It can be tiresome and tedious and sometimes depressing.”
[Arbuckle] recently received U.S. patent #5,651,117 for an obituary database that will notify you by e-mail as soon as one of your friends or business associates heads for greener pastures. When you sign up for the service—preferably paying in advance, because you never know when your own number will be up—you supply a list of people to monitor. Arbuckle figures he can easily scan the obituaries of more than 100 newspapers that are now online.
October 21, 1998; Amsterdam (Reuters)
Dutch mourners to view cremations on the Internet
Distant Dutch mourners with a burning desire to attend loved ones' cremations will shortly be able to watch the bulk of the ceremony on the Internet, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Wednesday.
The manager of the Internet site said the idea was aimed at helping people who were not able to attend in person.
"That can be people who are abroad, or people who cannot leave home through illness or other reasons," he said.
He said the site, which will soon stage a trial run for the media, was a sign of new ways of thinking in the funeral business.
The general public will not be able to tune in to watch cremations, however, as only relatives and friends will be given the password to log in.
"The page shall absolutely not be available to the masses," he said.
We have live cams...why not death cams?
was a dangerously arbitrary process that produced large excesses as well as small absurdities like the fracas over a government directive requiring peanut-free zones on some airline flights to protect passengers with allergies.
Monday, October 19, 1998; RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters)
Doctors kept dead politician's heart
Surgeons who treated the late Brazilian politician Luis Eduardo Magalhaes kept his heart in a jar after he died to protect themselves from any repercussions, Magalhaes's father was quoted as saying.
Magalhaes, former Congressional chief whip, was 43 when he died during emergency surgery after suffering a massive heart attack in April.
He had been a key player in the backroom deal-cutting that traditionally accompanies key votes in Brazil and his death dealt a severe blow to the government's drive to reform the unwieldy structures that hamper the economy.
His father, Senate leader Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, was quoted in local newspapers as saying his son's heart had been removed during an autopsy without the family's knowledge.
He said doctors had kept the organ as a safeguard against possible future legal inquiries into the treatment they provided.
The elder Magalhaes said he had learned of the removal of the heart eight days after the funeral and had told no one else about it to avoid upsetting family members.
``It's hard to believe,'' Magalhaes said. ``Not even his friends who dressed the body knew this.''
He said he would now have to tell his son's widow about the heart, which is preserved in formaldehyde in a jar at a Brasilia hospital, and consult her about what to do with it.
October 2, 1998; TORONTO (Reuters)
Canadian golfer has close encounter with meteorite
A Canadian golfer was rewarded this week for having a close encounter with a meteorite -- so close that it whizzed by his ear.
Orville Delong, a 57-year-old maintenance worker from Cambridge, Ontario, told Reuters Friday he was golfing on July 12 when he heard the "eerie sound" of a meteorite the size of a baseball as it shot by his left ear.
It was estimated to be moving at about 124 miles per hour. "At first we thought somebody was shooting at us," he said.
The University of Toronto, which wanted to study the meteorite, rewarded Delong with a free season's golf pass, worth over $600, at a Kitchener, Ontario, golf club.
The meteorite probably originated in an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, said University of Toronto geology professor John Rucklidge.
Delong is no stranger to near-disaster on the links. In 1977 he was struck by lightening on a golf course as he ran for cover under an oak tree during a thunderstorm.
"I'm having trouble getting partners to play with," he joked.
September 28, 1998; BONN (Reuters)
What's in a name? Adolf Hittler can tell you...
Let's face it, if your surname happens to be Hittler and your parents christen you Adolf, life isn't going to be easy.
But a retired Austrian truck driver was quoted in a German newspaper on Sunday as saying he never changed his name out of respect for his mother and father.
"I often thought my life would have been a lot easier if I had had another name," 60-year-old Adolf Hittler told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"No one ever believed that my name is Adolf Hittler. I get anonymous calls in the middle of the night from people who say 'Heil Hitler' or 'We have someone here for the gas chamber'," he said. "But I never changed it because I am proud of my parents."
Hittler was attending a conference "for people with infamous names" in Braunau, an Austrian town just across border from Germany and the birthplace of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
He said the name once cost him a construction job at a dam project in Austria. An engineer asked the workers what their names were.
"The first in line answered 'Tony Sailer', the same as the famous skier," Hittler said. ``The next answered 'Andreas Hofer', the same name as the Austrian freedom fighter. The engineer was growing annoyed because he thought they were pulling his leg.
"And when he got to me I tried to warn him about my name, but when I said 'I'm Adolf Hittler' he threw us all out."
Hittler said his son had adopted his wife's surname.
"I accepted that but it still hurt me a little bit," Hittler said.
I had a friend once who collected odd names from the phone book when he was traveling, including Turalura Lipschitz. But the best one, I thought, was Romeo Gonad.
Check out The Old Man's name page.
Sept. 22; LONDON (MSNBC)
World on Clinton video: Oh, please
International audience wonders if America has gone crazy The release of President Clinton's videotaped testimony garnered only passing interest in Russia.
With near anonymity, the world on Tuesday reacted with dismay to the airing of President Bill Clinton’s videotaped testimony. From Moscow to Tokyo to Mexico City, the collective reaction seemed to be that the U.S. Congress had gone too far.
September 24, 1998; LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
Hustler Mag's Flynt Offers Starr Job As Porno Aide
If independent counsel Kenneth Starr ever wants a new job after investigating President Clinton, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt has just the position for him — adviser on pornography.
"After a reading of the Starr report I am impressed by the salacious and voyeuristic nature of your work,'' Flynt wrote to Starr Wednesday offering him a job with his group that publishes magazines specializing in sexual subjects.
"The quality and quantity of material you have assembled in the Starr report contains more pornographic references than those provided by Hustler Online services this month,'' his letter said.
Flynt, who in the past has fought legal battles over pornography and freedom of speech, went on to praise Starr's report on Clinton that graphically describes the president's affair with his former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"I congratulate you for having opened the doors of libraries and schools to pornographic literature," the publisher wrote. "Those of us at Hustler need your assistance in extending the parameters of pornography to a wider community of adults. You have opened a new era in promoting explicit sexual materials."
By including such explicit references in his report to Congress that could form the basis for impeachment proceedings against Clinton, Flynt said Starr has helped alter community standards in accepting pornography.
In his letter, Flynt compared the Starr report with his own Hustler Online Magazine for its content. This month's magazine, for example, had 44 graphic references to genitalia, while the Starr report had 50, Flynt wrote.
October 4, 1998; WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Larry Flynt Thinks Sex Scandal Makes for Good Readin'
Larry Flynt offered Starr a job as adviser on pornography with his magazine group (see above)
Hustler Magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt, offered up to $1 million on Sunday for stories from individuals who can prove they committed adultery with members of Congress or high-ranking government officials.
"Have you had an adulterous sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?" Flynt asked in a full-page advertisement published in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post.
"Can you provide documentary evidence of illicit sexual relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder?" the advertisement asked.
Flynt said Hustler would pay up to $1 million "if we choose to publish your verified story and use your material." Flynt's offer was published just one day before the House Judiciary Committee was to vote on whether there should be a formal congressional impeachment inquiry over President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Flynt's ad said "all calls and correspondence will be kept strictly confidential" and it provided a toll-free number and an e-mail address for respondents to use.
The advertisement said the offer expires on May 1, 1999 "if not sooner revoked." This was not the first time Flynt said he was willing to pay big bucks for information relating to a controversial dispute. Flynt's adult magazine previously offered a multimillion-dollar reward for finding who he claimed were the true assassins of President John Kennedy.
September 21; SHANGHAI (Reuters)
Gas stations offer fill up with flair
Enterprising gas stations in western China have taken service to new heights by offering sex with a tank of gasoline.
Some of the more than 1,000 filling stations in the region of Ningxia have been luring motorists with the services of a prostitute along with petrol and diesel oil, an industry publication said.
``Sometimes there is no clear dividing line whether the customers come for gas or sex, but the sex service is based on the condition that you have to buy petrol first,'' said China OGP, which is published by the official Xinhua news agency.
``The term no money, no honey has changed into no petrol, no honey,'' it said.
Other ``corruptive tricks'' used by gas stations to entice customers include the offering of gold necklaces, television sets and mobile phones for filling up, the newsletter said without elaborating.
Undated;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters)
Argentina asks Germany to take home trouble
The Argentine government has asked Germany to send home a juvenile delinquent holidaying in Buenos Aires with his tutor as part of a rehabilitation program, after high-profile press coverage of his exploits.
The Foreign Ministry said Friday it had summoned a senior diplomat at the German embassy to explain the presence of the boy, said by Clarin newspaper to have committed 170 offenses at home. He was sent with a tutor by the city of Darmstadt.
``At the request of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the German official said he would inform his government of the convenience of the minor and his tutor abandoning Argentine territory as soon as possible,'' said a ministry statement.
Argentina asked that ``such cases do not happen again.'' The ministry said it took action as a result of press coverage.
Clarin, Argentina's biggest selling newspaper, made a front page story out of the boy. It said he was 15, Italian-born and had drug problems. The boy was staying at a hotel in Olavarria, in Buenos Aires Province, where Germany authorities sent 70 such troubled youths for rehabilitation between 1990-1996.
The German embassy said officials were not immediately available for comment.
(2) You are advised of the convenience of your getting your freaking ass back to Germany, gracias.
(3) Quaere: Was this youth really any worse than your average German tourist?
Tuesday November 10, 1998; PARIS (Reuters)
Tourists flee Club Med holiday hell
A group of 287 tourists flew back to France Tuesday after being held hostage for three days by striking workers at a Club Mediterranean resort on the Caribbean island of Martinique.
The vacationers were blocked inside their village complex last Thursday and were only rescued Sunday night when police in riot gear were called in to break through the picket line.
The tourists, who were originally due to fly home last Saturday, were then bundled aboard buses and whisked away.
“There was a lot of aggression. [The buses] were hit by axes and clubs. Young children and elderly people had to run the gauntlet of very high emotions,” one unnamed tourist told French television after arriving at Paris airport Tuesday.
Another tourist said stone-throwing strikers had smashed the windscreens of two buses.
A Club Med spokeswoman said the holiday group would write shortly to all the customers, offering compensation for their ordeal. “The exact terms of the compensation are being worked out at the moment,” she said.
Club Med said in a statement that the Boucaniers village would remain closed until further notice. Workers at the island resort went on strike to press their demand for an eight percent pay hike. Management have offered them three percent.
Wednesday, September 9, 1998; DHAKA, Bangladesh (MSNBC)
Bangladesh capital on full flood alert
Nearly 200,000 lack food, drink polluted river water
The Bangladeshi capital was placed on full alert on Wednesday as massive flood waters threatened to break through a vital embankment protecting more than one million of the city’s residents.Weather forecasts said more rain was in store while all the country’s major rivers rose again on Wednesday.
At Halipur, six miles from Dhaka, hundreds of trucks had been stranded. Health officials said diseases including diarrhea, caused by polluted water and rotten food, had already infected more than 170,000 people.Yet residents of Halipur and the nearby Mirpur area were seen buying and eating at flooded shops and restaurants, where virtually nothing was dry or clean.
“Life goes on,” said one man coming out of a food shop.
He very logically suggested, in his ever strident tones, that - instead of taking food to the starving people du jour - we take the starving people to the food. He then got down on his knees before an imaginary desert dweller (it works in flood-ravaged regions just as well though), and - letting imaginary sand sift through his fingers - he explained to him that we had deserts in America but WE DON’T FREAKING LIVE IN THEM!
Without for a moment meaning to make light of the tragedy of Bangladesh or any of the other tragedies that we need only nibble at on the evening news, I do wonder why an area that floods so reliably and so completely is so intensively populated.
And then I think of all the places on this Earth that are so much less hospitable than ours, all the places where opportunities which are so taken for granted here can not even be imagined... and I wonder, how many Einsteins, how many Hawkings, how many Beethovens have been born into fly-infested, mud huts only to die of malnutrition or some epidemic that the simplest antibiotic might have dispatched? What a strange and varied species we are. And how blind is fortune in passing out her blessings.
Tuesday, September 8, 1998; BOSTON (Associated Press)
Physicist says he’ll clone himself
A physicist with three Harvard degrees but no medical license said he is ready to begin the first step toward immortality: he will clone himself.
Richard Seed, who provoked controversy earlier this year by announcing plans to clone humans, said that the first person he will try to copy will be himself, The Boston Globe reported.
Seed said his wife, Gloria, has agreed to carry an embryo that would be created by combining the nucleus of one of his cells with a donor egg, the newspaper said.
“I have decided to clone myself first to defuse the criticism that I’m taking advantage of desperate women with a procedure that’s not proven,” the 69-year-old physicist said Saturday at a meeting of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, a group of academic researchers.
Seed declined to give his wife’s age, but described her as “post-menopausal.” He refused to give details of how the pregnancy would work.
The Chicago scientist has three Harvard degrees, including a Ph.D., but no medical degree, no money and no institutional backing. He has vowed to produce a pregnancy with a human clone within 2½ years.
Cloning would be the first step in discovering immortality, Seed said during his talk. He also said he has received hundreds of calls, including many from parents of dying children who want to clone them.
People at the conference said cloning could be used to produce a child for an infertile couple, to replace a dead child or to produce a child who could donate bone marrow or other vital tissue to a sick family member.
Two states, California and Michigan, have outlawed human cloning and dozens of other states are considering bans.
A five-year moratorium on cloning is apparently being observed by mainstream scientists, but Congress has failed to act on legislation to outlaw the procedure.
Seed has said that if Congress bans cloning, he will move his operation to Tijuana, Mexico.
Friday October 2, 1998; LOS ANGELES (AP)
Nevada Mom Freezes Dead Son's Sperm
A Nevada woman has had the sperm of her 19-year-old son harvested and frozen, hoping that some day it can lead to a grandchild, the doctor who carried out the procedure said Thursday.
According to news reports, 38-year-old Pamela Reno had asked to have the sperm frozen so that she could find an egg donor and act as its surrogate mother.
Reno's son Jeremy died when, after a night of drinking with friends, he apparently shot himself playing Russian roulette.
Wait a minute. Was that by-line Los Angeles?
How many Harvard degrees does she have?
November 17, 1998; Manchester, NH (WMUR-TV)
Whitehouse Charged With Murder
A former Rochester [New Hampshire] man is behind bars. Charles Whitehouse was arraigned in a Biddeford, Maine courtroom yesterday, accused of murdering Regina Trogdon. Police say he strangled her with the cord from his sweatshirt, then put her body back in the car they had been riding in, propped her up in the passenger seat, ordered coffee from the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru with her body in the passenger seat, and drove on to Maine. A sheriff's deputy made the gruesome discovery when he stopped Whitehouse for speeding. Trogdon and Whitehouse had had a stormy past, her landlord saying he had kicked him out for abusive behavior. Trogdon had a restraining order against Whitehouse.
Isn’t the idea to evade capture after you have committed a serious crime? If you are planning to murder anybody, here is a tip from The Old Man: To avoid police detection, do not - I repeat - do NOT prop up your victim’s body next to you, then speed away from a donut shop.
Thursday September 3, 1998; 5:37 PM EDT; FRANKFURT (Reuters)
Runaway kangaroos confound authorities
A second small runaway kangaroo is confounding German authorities just days after they mounted an elaborate operation to capture another marsupial.
``Manni,'' an 80-centimetre (31 inch) tall kangaroo described by his keeper as harmless unless grabbed by the head, was spotted Thursday hopping around 500 meters outside his zoo in Bad Pyrmont, northern Germany, the zoo chief said. He has been missing for several days.
``We've sent people to catch him, I know someone who's got an anesthetic dart gun,'' said Gerhard Gruene, director of Bad Pyrmont's animal park.
Meanwhile 250 kilometers (155 miles) away in the town of Erkelenz, police were still trying to identify a kangaroo detained Monday after a three-day chase in which firemen illuminated an entire cornfield one night.
``We have to hope some owner suddenly realises he's missing a kangaroo,'' said Wilfried Fussangel, police chief in Erkelenz near the Belgian and Dutch borders.
Initially, the Erkelenz kangaroo was believed to have been the missing marsupial from Bad Pyrmont zoo, but officials doubted that a small kangaroo could hop that far across Germany.
The Erkelenz kangaroo was tough to catch. ``At one point a hunter fired two anesthetic darts at him and hit, but they had no effect and he jumped away,'' said Fussangel.
The kangaroo was finally caught when the hunter put more a more powerful dose in his anesthetic darts.
Friday September 11, 1998 5:20 p.m. ET (2121 GMT) STOCKHOLM (Reuters)
Man charged after sex with cows
A 50-year-old man from western Sweden has been charged with cruelty to animals after having sex with two cows, Swedish news agency TT said Friday.
The man from Alingsas near Gothenburg, who has admitted the crimes, became excited after watching a pornographic film and set off for a nearby farm armed with a vibrator and other sex aids, as well as a camera, to abuse the cows.
A few weeks later he returned for a second visit, TT said, quoting the local Alingsas Tidningen newspaper.
But when he tried to get his films of the cows developed, the local photo company alerted the police, who arrested the man and seized his sex aids.
The county vet has examined the photographs of the cows and determined the animals suffered both physical and psychological damage, TT said.
For background on this important story, see The Old Man's Archives.
