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Document 2 of 3.

August 5, 1998

SECTION: News

LENGTH: 870 words

HEADLINE: INTERNATIONAL REVIEW- Net user faces death sentence

BODY:
A Chinese software company manager faces the death sentence for supplying email addresses to a Web-based Internet directory; Lin Hai of Shanghai was arrested by members of a special, 150-man police force in China's largest city who do nothing but monitor the Net, block Internet use of dangerous people, and seize computers of others; according to human rights monitors in Hong Kong, Mr Lin gave 30,000 email addresses to the Big Reference Web site, and to a pro-democracy magazine.

The US deputy secretary of defence gave us all something to look forward to; John Hamre told members of the US Senate that fixing the millennium bug problems are not going well at the Pentagon at all; "I will be the first to say that we are in for some nasty surprises," said the man responsible for nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other toys for big boys.

More than a quarter of a million Japanese have a window the world -- that is how many bought their copy of the Japanese Windows 98 in just two days after the software went on sale; that compared with sales of 200,000 copies of Windows 95 in its first four days; those figures do not include copies of the OS bundled with new computers.

3Com Corp bought its way into China with a promise to invest $ 100 million in the country; the world's second-largest maker of network equipment signed a promise to invest the money, and then announced plans to sell its PalmPilot in China and all over Asia.

The US Senate's finance committee approved a new law that bans all taxes on the Internet in America for two years.

Microsoft, after ripping off the PalmPilot hand-held success of 3Com, decided to name its slightly different machine PalmPilot; 3Com was not particularly flattered, and ordered a battalion of lawyers to take up briefing and torts positions; Microsoft backed down and decided to call its machine the Palm-size PC -- PPC for short; how cute. Microsoft joined Yahoo and America Online as primary pornography enablers, adding instant messaging software and servers to the Microsoft Network for cybersexers world-wide.

Compaq, which (remember?) owns Digital, paid $ 3.35 for the Web site called altavista; the name is the one picked by Digital for its spiffy search engine, but Jack Marshall of San Francisco had registered altavista.com long before then; the new agreement calls for Mr Marshall to turn over the keys to &LT;www.alta vista.com&GT; by the end of this month; in the meantime, the search engine is available, as always, only through &LT;www.altavista.digital. com&GT;

Microsoft Corp signed off on its agreement to pay $ 5 million to the company it stole the name Internet Explorer from; the small company went broke and then bankrupt while Microsoft tried to argue that the words were just common English words like, well, like windows; the judge didn't buy it, but by the time of the decision Microsoft had already put several women and children in the poorhouse.

Microsoft Corp was reported to be buying wheelbarrows for its top executives to help them walk, after it filed court cases against the attorneys general of 20 US states who had sued Microsoft for predatory practices; Microsoft's suit calls on the states to pay the company's lawyers while the suits are being heard.

The 2000 census in America will ask everyone if they use the Internet. Frencham Benoit Lecomte, who lives in Texas, is trying to swim across the entire Atlantic Ocean, raising money for cancer research on the way; naturally, you can follow him at the site &LT;&GT;.

Brazil sold its huge Telebras telephone system to a host of international bidders for $ 19 billion, 60 percent more than the government's minimum price; outside the stock exchange, police fired bullets and tear gas at thousands of demonstrators who set up burning barricades to note that Telebras was not the government's to auction, but belonged (past tense, now) to the Brazilian people; Spain's Telefonica took the biggest share of Telebras; other big buyers were Portugal Telecom, Telecom Italia and Canada's Telesystems In ternational Wireless.

Two California teen-agers pleaded guilty to charges of juvenile delinquency in a San Francisco court; prosecutors said the youngsters were the most organised and systematic hackers ever to attack US military computers; the whizkids supposedly admitted to a string of cyber-attacks last February which set of alarm bells in the FBI, the defence department and Nasa, the space agency.

The insect of the month for July at the Spencer Entomology Museum at the University of British Columbia is the June Beetle; you can check it out at &LT;&GT;

The telephone number of Britain's biggest Demon Internet provider is almost the same as the National Schizophrenia Fellowship; the phones at the Schizophrenia folks ring so often it makes their phones virtually inoperable, making them paranoid.

Does your Internet filter software, the one you put in to protect The Children, block a site called &LT;&GT;? Can you figure out why?

If carmakers developed technology like Microsoft, every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

Copyright(C) 1998 BANGKOK POST

LANGUAGE: English

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 1998