When the leading scientist on space and time comes out and tells you to do or not do something, its usually a good idea to do more than take it under advisement.  He isn’t smarter than you, he is smarter than you and all your friends…put together.  Ok, maybe thats a stretch, but I still take the words of advise from Stephen Hawking a lot more seriously than all the people on TMZ.  So when he says do not talk to strangers, I say, OKEY DOKEY!

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Also this week, why journalism shield laws don’t protect criminal activity at Gizmodo

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This week in history

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The news of the weird, including a banned ebay category that its just SICK it has its own name.

Mike Thinks News is coming, right at ya!

When reading a news story, it is very important to consider the source.  Many times in our busy online lives, we start to take a site for granted, and believe that the content put forth is done so in good faith and with the readers best interest and the truth all rolled up into one concise package.  Sometimes however, this faith is misplaced, and once lost, it is hard if not near impossible to regain.  Such a loss of faith happened to me this week when I read a story on Tech Dirt, by a Mike Masnick.  I can’t be sure if the slanting of the facts was just a case of sloppy journalism, deliberate deception, or the worlds worst effort to make a punchy headline and then having the headline leak its sensationalistic tone through the entire posts.  I can however assure you that the headline ‘Booksellers Claiming That Competition and Lower Prices are Bad for Consumers‘  is not only a complete distortion of the facts, it also is in direct and complete opposition to the actual story, which is one about how booksellers don’t want a few large companies to monopolize the market, limiting customer choice, and very likely, resulting in higher prices from less competition.

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We also take a look at why some contracts have some very strange, and far reaching language…nearly to infinity…and beyond