A student who wrote a violent short story on a school computer may face 10 years in prison. Prosecutors say they are trying to prevent more school massacres; the student's defenders say they're fighting attempts to criminalize thought. By Kim Zetter. via [Wired News]

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p dir="ltr"> Boy, am I …

Also in EWeek, Spencer the Kat reports that at at a recent conference, during his keynote Don Box spotted Miguel de Icaza and called "Miguel, I brought an employment application. Your ass is mine!" Do you think Jack Messman laughed or blanched when he heard?

EWeek reports that IT workloads are rising and the cause is an increase in new projects and not so much from layoffs. This from a survey of 1,400 CIOs by Robert Half Technology. But about 2 pages later, they have articles that convincingly forecast flat IT budgets for 2004 …

Somewhat disappointed by last night's Marin premiere of "Step Into Liquid," the surfing documentary whose original trailer was just about the best 5 minute film I've ever seen. The highlight of the trailer was a sequence in which the basso profoundo announcer says "And including..." (sea begins to rise) "...the …

The August CACM contains an article "Understanding email interaction increase organizational productivity" (not online) which finds that it takes about a minute to resume work after being interrupted by an email notification. Which is kind of problematic if you set your email to check for new mail every five minutes …

I'm skeptical about J#. via [Eric.Weblog()]

I'm not. As I say in the current SD Times, the thing about J# is that it serves two very real niches: the bet-hedgers and the Java "pragmatic believers." Bet-hedgers are those people who have decided not to jump to .NET, but who …

I've made a concerted effort to try programming in my "off hours" on the Tablet PC...in slate mode...without a keyboard...or external monitor. (Yeah, sounds crazy, but I really wanted to understand what it's like.) How's it going? It's passable. via
[Incremental Blogger]

F'ing A -- I've begun receiving bounced email messages indicating that someone's using my email address in the "From:" line of I-Worm.Sobig.f spams; you know, the one that says "re: Your application" and stuff like that. Is there any protocol for me sending out "No, no, that's not me …

As I'd been hoping, Brad Abrams confirms that the gimmes at this year's PDC will include:

- Longhorn (Windows v.Next)
- Whidbey (Visual Studio v.Next)
- Yukon (SQL Server v.Next)

I would've been pretty angry if we'd spent \$1700 to go learn about these things, and then not been able …

Well, that's one way to lose 6 pounds in 3 days... I went diving on the 1st and by Wednesday I realized I had an ear infection. Went to the Doctor and got drops. No biggy. And then Thursday, it was like my head exploded: both ears swelled entirely shut …