The Null Device
2000/3/7
Interesting technological gimmicks: Genuine Olympic merchandise will be marked with DNA-based ink -- based on an athlete's DNA: (WIRED News)
The ink derived from the undisclosed athlete's DNA has been placed on each piece of official Olympic merchandise to thwart counterfeiters. The ink is invisible, impossible to reverse-engineer, and easy to check with special scanners no larger than a garage door-opener.
The War of Verbals again: Onionesquely bozotic French Government attempts at defining non-English Internet jargon: (Reuters)
If the finance ministry has its way, the French will stop calling new Web companies ``les start-up'' and use the term ''jeunes pousses d'entreprises'' (young sprouts of companies). Stock options would become ``options sur titre'' (options on a share) and marketing managers would be ``directeurs de la mercatique,'' according to a ministry list unveiled on Thursday.
The War on Drugs, Russian-style: (NYTimes)
In the lawless vacuum that afflicts much of Russia today, Mr. Varov and Mr. Kabanov regularly incite acts of vigilante violence against drug dealers. They have also founded a drug treatment center where addicts are forced to withdraw from heroin use cold turkey while handcuffed to their beds -- or sometimes just to the nearest radiator.
They are up-from-nowhere street toughs, gang leaders or sportsmen who in the last decade have muscled their way into one business or another. As their power and wealth have grown, they have embraced religion or taken up public causes... "We are all for killing drug dealers on the spot without trial because they are poisoning our children," says Mr. Kabanov, 40, a onetime professional card player and former heroin addict himself, who built a yacht club for the region's nouveaux riches.