Pearsall's Books

PZ Myers slaps down the absurd anti-science arguments of creationist/'intelligent design' proponents.

The case that is currently in front of the Supreme Court, MGM vs. Grokster, is the latest front of the music and movie industries war on peer-to-peer services. The major record labels and Hollywood movie studios have been desperately trying to stuff the P2P genie back in the bottle for years. It hasn't worked yet, but they are hoping that this time they will succeed. To be completely honest, their efforts so far have been completely counter-productive, encouraging a constant refinement of p2p technologies. The shutdown of Napster begat Audiogalaxy, the shutdown of which begat the various Gnutella-based clients, Kazaa, Grokster and so on, until the development of Bit Torrent, which is, to my mind, the best p2p technology by some distance. Articles to read: Slate, The New York Times, Salon, plus Boing Boing and Wired are providing constantly updated coverage.

Wired has a story about a group of High School students from Phoenix, all illegal immigrants from Mexico, who won the national underwater robot championships, even beating the team from MIT.

CNN has a story up about how Islamist terror groups maintain a presence on the web by outfoxing the various security services that try to shut them down.

And, finally, a man in Shanghai stabbed another man to death for...selling his online RPG sword.