general news Articles


1000 Stories

Wow.... As I was submitting story number 999, I realized that I'd cranked out 1000 of these since January of this year, when I decided to start this little site. My guess is that there have been fewer articles read than written, but that's quite alright, as I'm not looking …

McDonald's asks suppliers to cut back on antibiotics

The Washington Post is reporting that McDonalds restaurants is asking their meat suppliers to cut back on the use of antibiotics. The move comes as a reply to the growing concern that antibiotics in the food chain are contributing to the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a growing health concern. McDonald's …

Whiteness studies?

The Washington Post has an interesting article on a growing trend (about thirty campuses in the US right now) to offer so-called Whiteness Studies courses in colleges. The idea has raised quite a bit of controversy on some campuses, due to the nature of the subject matter and the way …

Industry group urges UK to steer clear of GPL

An article from CNet details the efforts of Intellect (an industry group made up of IBM, Microsoft, BAE Systems, Intel and others to get the UK government to steer clear of allowing GPL licenses for government funded projects. It's pretty common for governments (including the UK and the US Federal …

Can't use a slingshot? Try a trebuchet!

An article from CNet tells of a dilemma caused by the anti-terrorism fervor in San Francisco. Apparently, the fine folks in SF decided that sling shots were a likely terrorist weapon, so they banned them, leaving Sun's James Gosling (Java guru) without his traditional implement of T-shirt flinging at this …

eBay felon gets 3 years

According to an article from Reuters, Chris Chong was sentenced by an LA court to a three year sentence for his eBay fraud. The man was convicted of swindling users, PayPal and Bank of America for over $600,000. During the three years, he will sleep in the prison and …

Unfortunate URLs and searching for web misspellings

From ANTI-NEWS at NTKNow: Web sites with unfortunate URLs: Powergen Italia (www.powergenitalia.com) turned out to be not as funny as originally thought Go Tahoe (www.gotahoe.com) and, use Google to see who can't spell: Osama Bin Laden (Osaka Bin Laden) Saddam Hussein (Saddam Hussies) George Bush (Gorge …

Draft of EU constitution ready to go

BBC News reports that the EU Constitutional Convention has rolled out an agreed-on version of the EU Consitution for perusal by EU leaders at their upcoming summit next week. Key points of the constitution as proposed: Separate presidents of the EU and EC working together Primacy of the EU over …

Sex.com case fails to interest the Supremes

The Supreme Court decided not to take on an appeal of the Sex.com case, according to this article on CNet. The original judgment will stand, with the registrar not being held financially liable for the fraud committed on the part of the person who stole the domains (who, himself …

Oldest human skulls found

Science Daily is reporting that skulls found in Ethiopia have been dated at 160,000 years, making them the oldest examples of modern humans that have been found to date. The article is very thorough and I won't rehash it here, but the gist is that it fills in a …

Al-Jazeera hacker pleads guilty

CNET is reporting that John William Racine II, the man who convinced Network Solutions to give him control over the AlJazeera.net domain in the opening weeks of the Iraq War, has signed a plea agreement with prosecutors in California that would let him off with three years probation and …

The decline of service in sales

I was listening to an article this morning from The Wall Street Journal on Audible.com (by the way, a great way to get the front page in the morning) when it dawned on me that I was hearing more evidence against value-priced retail. Circuit City, one of the early …

Iranian protests

I haven't seen much about this in the press in the US, but BBC News is carrying a report about a protest in Iran by students against the Muslim clerics that now run the country. Not surprising that students like to protest against whatever is going on. In the late …

EU puts VAT on the European customers

Until July 1, 2003, companies that sold online-only products (such as digital downloads or subscription services) to European customers paid no VAT (Value Added Tax). According to an article on Wired, that's going to change after the first. To create a level playing field for companies in the EU (who …


When is a Kentucky horse from New York?

Apparently, the answer is when you conceive the horse in Kentucky and it is born in New York, as happened with Funny Cide. For those who care about horse bloodlines (and after today's third-place performance, I'm sure there are even fewer of us), it is some interest that Funny Cide's …

Microsoft changes California settlement

A settlement between Microsoft and the state of California has been changed to avoid complaints by Apple Computer. According to this article in The Detroit News, Microsoft has dropped the proposed provision that would require that much of the money be spent on Microsoft products. Apple had rightly claimed that …

Xerox FreeColorPrinters still a good deal

Last year, I found an article somewhere that pointed to FreeColorPrinters.com, a site where you could go to get a "free" color printer. Being one to always be skeptical of getting anything for free, I checked it out to find out what the real deal was. Much to my …

Editorial content on Gaige's Pages

Over the last few weeks, I've been trying to balance between providing pointers to interesting information and editorial content. I've received some complaints that there are too many story references, and not as much original content and editorial about the stories on the Pages as there used to be. So …

Comparative book shopping

I asked the question a few days ago: "Where can I go to get pricing from multiple sources for books by ISBN?" My queried friends did not know, nor did I. Amanda pulled up BookSense, but it is dedicated to just searching off-line booksellers and requires a fair amount of …