TIME.com

Edgar Ray Killen called himself a Baptist minister, but he worshipped in the church of the Ku Klux Klan. So when Killen, a native of Philadelphia, Miss., became his local Klan’s Kleagle (a top commander) in the 1960s, he finally felt ordained with genuine power–and he allegedly used it to recruit and organize more than a dozen Klansmen in the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.

This is long overdue. It’s amazing to me that only 70% of a local television poll showed support for his arrest. Unbelievable.

I.T. Vibe

We recently reported on how Microsoft have released a beta version of their new anti-spyware product. This product is based around the Giant Anti-Spyware product, a company that Microsoft bought out recently.

Anti-spyware/virus software from Microsoft. I would trust this as much as I do their firewall or their browser, which is to say: not at all. For goodness sake Internet Explorer is terrible with respect to blocking/preventing/alerting users to spy/malware. Why would I pile more crappy code onto my computer?

Wired News

“No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist,” he told News.com.

The comments show just how out-of-touch Gates is with a large and growing community of people who have embraced the ideas of open source and building on one another’s creative works, proponents of copyright reform say.

Gates ?= Joe McCarthy, maybe if Gonzales doesn’t get the appointment…Bill could replace Ashcroft.

BusinessWeek online

Everywhere you look, signs of life are emerging in startup land. Entrepreneurs are huddling in their garages and dens, tapping out software code. Venture capitalists prowl Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, checkbooks in hand. Then there’s the fairy-tale rise of Google (GOOG ) from obscurity in 1998 to a recently public, $50 billion colossus that stands tall among tech’s titans.

BusinessWeek online

Technology can now let even the smallest companies conduct customer-service surveys. Here are some do’s and don’ts to ensure success

New Scientist

Felten is concerned that Congress might revive a piece of legislation called the Induce Act, which would outlaw file-sharing networks, and he wrote Tiny P2P to make a point. At just 15 lines long, it is around 1 per cent of the size of regular file-sharing programs like BitTorrent. “It shows how little it takes,” he told New Scientist. “P2P can be simple and written very quickly, so to try to ban or prevent the technology is not feasible.”

Wired News

Throughout the history of the AIDS epidemic, a few lucky people have avoided infection despite being exposed again and again. Now, researchers are traveling back in evolutionary time to understand why some people are resistant — and in some cases virtually immune — to the AIDS virus.

Studies released this week and last year suggest that the roots of AIDS immunity extend back for centuries, long before the disease even existed. Our ethnic backgrounds and the illnesses suffered by our distant ancestors appear to play a crucial role in determining whether our genes will allow HIV to take hold in our bodies.

Wired News

Now in its eighth year, Wired News’ annual Vaporware Awards celebrate all the wonderful gewgaws of 2004 that sadly never saw the light of day. And 2004 was a very good year for vaporware. A vintage year, indeed.

BusinessWeek Online

Low prices and the need to replace at least some old gear and upgrade big software systems are pushing many businesses into spending mode

Fast Company Now

Synectics, an expert on innovation and change, counts 17 ways. I’ll name the top ten and encourage you to get the book yourself.

1. See it coming and quickly change the subject.
2. Ignore it. Dead silence intimidates all but the most enthusiastic.
3. Feign interest but do nothing about it. This at least prevents the originator from taking it elsewhere.
4. Scorn it. “You’re joking, of course.” Make sure to get your comment in before the idea is fully explained.
5. Laugh it off. “Ho, ho, ho, that’s a good one, Joe. You must have been awake all night thinking that up.”
6. Praise it to death. By the time you have expounded its merits for five minutes everyone else will hate it.
7. Mention that it has never been tried before. If the idea is genuinely original, this is certain to be true. Alternatively, say, “If the idea’s so wonderful, why hasn’t someone else already tried it?”
8. Say, “Oh, we’ve tried that before”–even if it’s not true. Particularly effective with newcomers. It makes them realize what complete outsiders they are.
9. Come up with a competitive idea. This can be a dangerous tactic, however, as you might still be left with an idea to follow up.
10. Stall it with any of the following: “We’re not ready for it yet, but in the fullness of time…” — “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but right now…” — “Let’s wait until the new organization has settled down…”