April 24, 2002

Viruses with more bark than bite Truth is you probably won't get a virus on your computer, but that shouldn't stop you from owning virus protection software.  I suspect I will never have my house burn down, but I still have insurance.  However there is a very good chance that your hard drive will fail, yet you don't back up the hard drive nearly often enough do you? ( seen on Slashdot) In 1995, there were only a handful of computer virus' in the wild.  Today with the new payloads delivered in email, there is a much better chance you could download something bad. This is a real case of better safe than sorry.  [ CNN ] 12:33:59 PM

Cardinals agree on 'one-strike-you're-out' policy in future sex abuse cases Even though the Pope is not making any hints that homosexuals have anything to do with the current scandal, conservatives in the church would like to make this very dangerous link. Adam Cardinal Maida of Detroit says that behavioural scientists think "it's not truly a pedophilia-type problem but a homosexual-type problem."  He said bishops need to "cope with and address" the extent of a homosexual element in Catholic seminaries.  This is EXACTLY why the church is in so much trouble.  The failure to recognize the problem and deal with it immediatly.  If the very simple concept that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." was in place from the start, there would be no scandal. In the same way that not all catholic priests are child abusers, not all homosexuals are child abusers.  In fact not all child abusers are homosexuals!  However all pedophiles are child abusers.  When Maida figures that out he will take a big step towards healing the church.   11:22:33 AM

Journey to the Internet's Depths There might be a lot more (400 times more) information on the web than you can possibly uncover, mostly because you can't find it.   Maybe it is time to update the old adage:  "If a web site is published on the internet, but there are no links to it, does anybody read it?" Experts estimate that the "surface Web" contains 1 billion to 2 billion documents, while the "deep Web" could contain as many as 550 billion. Put another way, the surface Web contains about 19 terabytes of information, while the deep Web contains about 7,500 terabytes. A terabyte is the equivalent of about 1,000 gigabytes. About 95 percent of the information on the deep Web is available to the public, but many surfers cannot find this data because it generally is not well linked across the Web. [ Newsfactor.com ] 8:43:21 AM