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Tech: Yahoo! News - Wall Street Welcomes Blackboard: “‘In many ways, I think Blackboard is the coming of age of a lot of the Internet opportunities,’ said April L. Young, a managing director at Reston-based Comerica Inc., a bank that provides financial services to venture funds. Young has known Chasen and Pittinsky for several years. ‘It was built the hard way: They raised some money, sold some software, raised some more money.’
The firm’s software helps instructors put course material on the Web. The company also sells technology to manage identity card transactions that allow students to make purchases on campus. The company estimates its software was used by about 12 million students, faculty members and others in 2003.”

Tech: Yahoo! News - Earthlink, Webroot Spot Spyware All Over: Try Spyware Blaster. Or GNU/Linux. “Nearly one in three computers scanned by EarthLink and Webroot in their second monthly SpyAudit were found infected with a Trojan horse or system monitor planted by spyware, the two companies said. Internet service provider EarthLink and Webroot, a message security software maker, scanned over 420,000 PCs during April, and found nearly 134,000 Trojans or systems monitors.”

USA: Yahoo! News - Report: WTC Towers May Have Been Weaker: “The World Trade Center’s designers may have severely underestimated the forces that wind exerted on the twin towers, leading them to design skyscrapers less able to handle the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report says. Wind tunnel tests conducted as part of litigation over the buildings’ collapse found wind loads 20 to 60 percent higher than those found in tests performed during the towers’ design in the 1960s, according to the report released Friday by a federal institute examining the collapse. The buildings would have been stronger and might have performed better during the 2001 attacks by terrorists in hijacked jetliners if the higher wind load numbers had been used, said Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. ”

USA: Yahoo! News - Plan Would Pay Tax Whistleblowers: “The proposed IRS Whistleblower Office is designed to give tax agents an inside advantage when fighting complicated, often invisible tax shelters developed for and used by wealthy taxpayers and corporations. It would go after individuals and corporations with more than $200,000 in income who use shelters that hide $20,000 or more. Informants who blow the whistle on tax evasion stand to win 15 percent to 30 percent of the recovered taxes and penalties if they contribute substantially to the case. Those who make less substantial contributions can win up to 10 percent of recovered money.”

Music: Cheese spreads it on thick with rock/rap parodies - The Honolulu Advertiser - Hawaii’s Newspaper: Kinda reminds me of Austin’s Recliners. “Still minty fresh from another stint as Las Vegas house band for ‘Last Call with Carson Daily,’ [Richard] Cheese and Lounge [Against the Machine] are Honolulu-bound for a couple of weekend shows at the Wave Waikiki. Having never played live here with his Lounge mates, frequent Hawai’i flier Cheese just about melted at the thought of a Waikiki gig. ‘Hawaiian music is such a large component of lounge music,’ said Cheese. ‘And I’m so looking forward to playing some of these great songs in the land of lounge … the land of Lava Lamps.’”