Catch a ride to COMDEX
Hey, techno whiz kids: zip on over to Iomega's home page (http://www.iomega.com) and register for a chance to be the company's guest at COMDEX.
The Roy company plans to give five students age 14-18 free two-day trips to COMDEX, which is the computer industry's largest tradeshow, Nov. 17-22 in Las Vegas.
Iomega is taking only online entries; the deadline for the contest is Friday. At the Web site, entrants or nominators must write a 50 words or less essay describing the techno kid.
Iomega says a techno kid is someone who has used a computer to develop a PC-based business, to participate in community service or has helped friends, neighbors or a school become PC savvy.
Gamma ray mystery solved?
Physicists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, may have solved one of the great puzzles of astronomy: the origin of "gamma ray bursters," enormously powerful explosions of high-energy gamma rays. The blasts are so enormous they are detected from distant galaxies.
Wlodzimierz Klunzniak and William Lee reported Sept. 19 at a gamma-ray burst symposium in Huntsville, Ala., that they have developed a theory in which a neutron star is torn apart by a black hole, releasing the ferocious blasts of energy. In their view, a neutron star - a collapsed remnant of a normal star, an extremely dense object that is mostly neutrons - is circling a black hole.
Lee said the neutron star would be nearly pulled apart by the overpowering gravity of the black hole. The star "comes close and a little matter is dumped on the black hole." That produces enough energy to release a brilliant burst of gamma rays, which can travel for millions of light years.
While the process is violent, sometimes it does not destroy the neutron star immediately.
`Serial Killer Kit' killed
Murderer Keith Hunter Jesperson no longer offers the "Self-Starter Serial Killer Kit" or sordid comments about how he killed eight women on an America Online Web page.
The online company banished the page featuring musings of serial killers after Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer brought it to the attention of AOL President Steve Case. AOL also received complaints about the page from Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly was abducted from her home and killed in 1993.
Jesperson is locked up in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he is serving life sentences for the murder of three women in that state. But he managed to reach beyond his cellblock to cyberspace by sending letters to Sondra London, a Florida woman who belonged to AOL and posted them on the Web for him.
Jesperson, known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he decorates his letters with smiley faces, detailed his crimes in the Web postings.
He described how he killed his victims, referring to them as "piles of garbage." And he offered tips for would-be murderers.
Geringer told Case he was "disgusted that the AOL services allow this subhuman to mock his victims and flaunt his crimes." The Wyoming governor wants to try Jesperson for the January 1995 murder of Angela Subrize.
AOL reviewed the Web page and found it violated company standards to not "promote or transmit obscene, threatening, violent, unlawful, harmful, vulgar or abusive content."
It asked London to remove the "Serial Killer Kit" content, and then, after further review, closed down the page completely.
"We certainly believe in the individual's right to speak," said spokesman Rick D'Amato. But in this instance and others found to violate the company's service agreement, it chooses not to "force ourselves to be associated with that speech."