August 28, 2001 - My Turn: My Principles Have Landed Me in Jail - By Vanessa Leggett NEWSWEEK. If I were to comply with the FBI's subpoena, I'd betray my book research and my sources' trust. I won't do it I am not a gambler or a murderer. I am a 33-year-old college English teacher and freelance writer. Yet since July 20, my home has been an 8-by-10-foot cinder-block cell at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston...

  August 20, 2001 - Computing the cost of computers - By Mitch Albom, SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM. We've become a nation of zombies, click-click-clicking away. Twenty years ago, IBM gave birth to the home computer. It's been downhill ever since. Oh, sure, our speed is up. Our efficiency is up. We can talk to people in Thailand with just a few keystrokes. And any patient who has ever needed medical information will swear by computers and the Internet. But in so many ways, computers in our homes have changed us forever...

August 1, 2001 - A Passport to Disaster - By Hiawatha Bray. Last week, I griped about my growing dislike for the all-devouring appetite of Microsoft Corp. Turns out I'm not the only Microsoft sympathizer who feels this way. US Senator Charles Schumer, who used to argue that Microsoft deserved a good leaving-alone, has now come out in favor of delaying the release of the upcoming Windows XP operating system. Schumer worries that the software's features will devastate rival software makers, in the same way that Microsoft's Web browser smashed the opposition...

August 2, 2001 - How Microsoft licenses hurt kids in East Timor--and you! - David Coursey, Executive Editor, AnchorDesk, Mircosoft needs to reevaluate its licensing terms to allow customers--we are their customers, after all--to do reasonable things with Microsoft's intellectual property while still protecting Microsoft from rampant piracy. The new authorization scheme for Microsoft Office and Windows XP is, like this dispute with the Australians, tilted way too far in Microsoft's favor. These things need to change...