Here is a story on Yahoo which is just too good to pass up. There is a private Roman Catholic secondary school which currently has a condom machine that was placed there for the students (age 15 to 18) to use to make waterbaloons or whatever else they can find to do with those things. Now there is a stink:

But the Catholic Church in Rome, alerted by a number of concerned letters from parents, said giving students access to a condom machine ``took all the sense out of a Catholic education, took responsibility away from students and teachers alike, and legitimized behavior which was not acceptable.''

I served a year or two in catholic school myself when I was young. Ever since I caused them to evacuate the building when I was in 1st grade things just havent been the same.

Its just been one downer after another over at Microsoft. Bill Gates is reportedly in a deep depression after the announcement over on news.com that he is now only the 2nd richest man in the world. It's a sad sad day. Thanks Patrick Jansen.

Based on the closing prices of Oracle and Microsoft stock, Ellison is worth $53 billion, compared to Gates’ $51.75 billion.

In case you had any doubt that porn is what makes the internet go around, check out this Salon report talking about a particular Canadian government office that did an audit of employees web surfing habits. It showed the average employee visited porn pages 7 times a day. Good enough for government work eh? eh?

Just because Triumph the dog from Conan is such a icon around here (The poop on dog!) , I figure you guys would think this is funny. The Pets.com folks are trying to file a lawsuit claiming Triumph was created to 'defame' the Pets.com mascot. What is just sad though is that Triumph was created well over a YEAR before the Pets.com mascot. I'm hoping the Conan show will file a countersuit claiming that Pets.com is trying to defame Triumph and soften his image. Thanks JayZee. update: (Thanks Saeger) "Actually, Triumph's creator threatened first, claiming pets.com infringed on his trademark by using a dopey puppet ripoff... but he didn't sue first, Pets.com did. "

Just wanted to share with you late night readers my trip to WinHEC with a bit of a pictorial. The three of us (Sean from Stomped, Kyle from HardOCP) over the AMD booth. We then of course made our way right over to Intel. Following that we payed a visit to Matrox and checked out the 450 card. Next up was the ATI folks and their new Radeon256 which looked great. We then started feeling bad for the S3 folks and stopped over there as well. What is a visit to WinHEC without paying a visit to the Microsoft evil empire though right? We then rouned out the visit with a stop over at 3dfx and finished the day before leaving checking out Creative Labs.

I've got a few more (serious) pictures and some video footage coming up for you guys later.

Here is some funny stuff, Microsoft is reworking their advertising campaign and now want to be known as the happy smiley approachable company. If you still watch TV the commercials will start showing up on TV next week. They are going to focus on the MS brand name instead of particular products.

The latest campaign under the new strategy tries to put a friendly face on Microsoft, a company that has been labeled by a federal judge as a "predatory" monopolist.

I hate to poopoo on the MS parade but if someone views MS as a predatory commercial bully, I doubt a few spots on TV is gonna change that opinion.

Got a couple of follow-ups for you guys today. Firstly you probably remember the FBI nabbed some canadian kid for doing those DOS attacks on CNN, eBay etc. Well now they are trying to figure out how to punish him. Some experts are saying 'take it easy' on him since he's just a kid. Also, Our favorite rapsta Dr. Dre just a day after filing a lawsuit against napster experiences some bad karma, he gets a lawsuit slapped on him from LucasArts. Here is a bit on the Canadian kid:

"He's 15 years old. One would hope he'd learn his lesson." Ozancin, who secures clients' computer networks, believes kids like Mafiaboy should -- to some extent -- get a break.

Oh yeah, get this. While they were investigating the Mafiaboy his father gets nabbed for setting things up with a hitman to snub a rival business.

The unappetizing story of the day comes from California where a team is looking at taking toilet water and trying to purify it for 5 years and then send it back into the public drinking water system.

``This is human waste,'' said Lori Dinkin of the Valley Villagers Homeowners Association in an interview with the suburban Daily News newspaper. ``I'm very uneasy about that.'' Dinkin was unimpressed by assurances by the DWP that the water was safe, telling the paper: ``They also said that about Love Canal. And they have said all these lovely things about Agent Orange. I don't like to think about this.''

Napster is catching a lot of flack lately. Most recently Metallica filed a lawsuit against the company, and most of you guys remember the proggy getting banned from a cablemodem company. Now Dr. Dre is 'lashing out' at Napster giving them till the end of the week to stop allowing his music. "Dr. Dre has not committed to suing them, but that would be the logical conclusion if they don't take it off their site"

``We wrote a letter yesterday on behalf of Dr. Dre to Napster basically putting them on notice that the listing of his songs and masters on Napster and the facilitation of the transfer of those files constitutes an infringement of his copyrights,'' said Howard King, an attorney who sent the letter on behalf of Andre Young, known as Dr. Dre.

While on the subject, here is an interview with the CEO of Napster. Thanks OxygenTank

Incredibly exciting day eh? Well, pretty much 'recovered' from that whole RazerCPL event. Good fun. The QIL3 teamplay finals are coming up next in California in just a couple of weeks.

Isnt this one just amazing. Some 7yr old kid drove off in his parents car using 'skills learned at a computer game' going through busy intersections and traveling 3 miles in search of some Cheerios because he ran out at home. General Mills heard about the kid and is gonna hook him up with a year supply of the cereal now. Anyone else find it curious how the press glosses over the fact that the kid could have easily gotten killed? Oh yeah, he could have at least been after a good cereal. Cheerios? WTF? Get some fruity pebbles or Froot Loops or something.

It feels like the calm before the storm right now. There are a few interesting stories floating around the web that might be of interest to you guys though. Topless sailor chicks (but no pictures, doh). Some dude was looking sexy to an ostrich during mating season, so much so that he got bruised ribs. Oh yeah and check this one out, some people are pissy about honoring the creator of Playboy because he gained his success "on the backs of women"

Here's a story I cant say really excites me much. Congress is looking at passing a bill concerning 'electronic signatures' that basically make being anonymous on the internet pretty damn difficult.

... For example, a site selling beer online may ask for proof of age. Current digital certificates would not provide that information but would identify the user by name or an ID. [snip] The situation becomes worse because digital signatures are not 100 percent safe from theft... [snip] "They assume that strong encryption gives you strength, but it's like building a vault door into a cardboard box."

The Sunday internet companies have too much money story from CNET is pretty crazy. A start-up web company with lots of cash has actually bought another countries internet suffix. Why did they do it? Well the suffix is .TV from the Island of Tuvala. The island was pretty low on cash and apparently didnt have very big plans for the domain.

"It's the most recognizable two-letter symbol on the planet," DotTV chief Lou Kerner said. "When you marry 'dot' with 'TV,' you become something very meaningful on the Internet."

Here's your Saturday story that makes me want to pick up smoking and move to Florida. A Florida jury ruled on Friday that America's cigarette makers injured three sick smokers and awarded them a total of $12.7 million in compensatory damages. Thanks Ben Trook

. Next, the jury will consider punitive damages which could total as much as $300 billion for the illnesses of all Florida's sick smokers.

Just because its a touching story of romance, have a look at what this couple did on an airplane recently which seemed to surprise quite a few passengers and employees. When you gotta you gotta. You should also check out this chick filing a lawsuit against Nike.

You might want to sit down before you read this one. The crazy stuff continues over there in Europe. I'm sure you guys remember that little (heh) story about condom sizes, well it looks like a hotel in Germany isnt even letting Germans pee standing up anymore. Poor aim I guess.

Germany's reputation for precision has taken a knock judging by a ban on urinating while standing slapped on tenants in an east German apartment block, the daily Bild reports. Landlords, complaining that misdirected urine is causing their radiators to rust, have ordered male tenants to answer the call of nature off their feet.

btw, looks like that condom story is expired off of yahoo, if someone could dig it up would be appreciated.

This is just getting freaky. A new virus has made its way onto the net although not spotted very much it is something to be concerned about. It's an almost 'self aware' virus that searches the net for computers with sharing turned on, copies itself over to other machines. It even in some cases uses your modem to dial out 911. There is also the problem of getting your C: deleted as always. Here is a detailed description. Thanks ArsTechnica for spotting it.

Damn, I'm funny. Any clever April Fools pranks you saw/played today? Mention them in the good ol' comments. Maarten'll be the lone updater for tonight as a bunch of us are going out on the town to feed Steve's chick lots of alcohol and see what happens.

The great internet spring cleaning has hit the quake 3 forum. The bad news: All old articles were classified as junk and removed. The good news: You can post your own polls on the new forum.

Maarten is a lucky man, it looks like a Dutch insurance agency somehow accidently sent out a bunch of porno tapes to their customers instead of the planned much more 'conservative' videotapes on pension plans. That = oops.

"Painful, very painful. Not only for ourselves but notably for our customers," a spokesman for the company, Nationale Nederlanden, told Reuters.