Fashion giant Bennetton is sponsoring a campaign against the death penalty. As part of the campaign pictures of two people on Nebraska’s death row will appear on billboards and in ads world-wide. The link was emailed here along with heated comments against Benetton, stores that carry Benetton products and the "harm" this would do the victim. The death penalty seems to offer three things over life without parole. One, the death penalty keeps someone who’s wrongly convicted from proving their innocence –they do exist, witness the recent movies The Hurricane and The Green Mile. Two, the victim –if they’re alive–, the victim’s family and society get to experience vicarious revenge. Three, politicians get to grandstand about "being tough on crime". Every study that we’re aware of says the death penalty doesn’t deter other crimes. Figures also show there are no cost savings associated with the death penalty. So, you’ve got to ask what the death penalty accomplishes. And what is the right term for a society that is so hungry for revenge that the death of innocents is considered an acceptable risk. The Bennetton campaign seems to designed to remind everyone that no matter how vicious the crimes, those on death row are people. They’ve got parents, perhaps a husband or wife, maybe children. If you found yourself innocent and on death row, would you or your family consider your immanent death an acceptable risk in someone’s re-election campaign?

Transmeta, the secretive company running on the money of Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame) and a talented brain pool including Linus Torvaldes (of Linux) is scheduled to announce more details of their first product –Crusoe– this Wednesday. ZDNet has a summary of what's known so far.

Wanna get rich quick? Why not swipe a few credit card numbers from a website? ZDNet has an eye-opening article. The problem seems to be especially common for sites running Microsoft’s SQL Server. The article is probably a follow-up to the attempted blackmailing of CD Universe by someone who stole 100,000 credit card numbers from them.

Critics to the left of me, critics to the right of me… Just as Apple has had a lot of commercial success recently, they've taken a lot of critical heat for their new interfaces. First, it was the new hard-to-use QuickTime. Now, a number of critics are pointing out problems in the interface for Mac OS X. Ask Tog may not get every point right, but he knows his stuff.

Scientists are working on an inplant that wires a small video camera directly to the brain to give the blind limited sight.

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