Last updated:Friday, May 23, 1997, 8:30 a.m.
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The weather is, um, interesting: A Japanese hacker is accused of taking over seven web pages of the Osaka-based television network Asahi Broadcasting Company on May 18 and replacing five of the seven weather charts on the pages with pornographic pictures. He says he was just trying to have some fun.

Not so funny is the access that kids have to porn via a "kids-only" computer hooked to the Net at a California library. Apparently the librarians there haven't heard of software that blocks prurient sites.

Innocent until proven guilty is one of the bedrock principles of American justice, and the fellow accused of trying to extort $5 million from Bill Gates says he's innocent. And we believe him. Unless the prosecutors prove otherwise.

This could be a good thing: Business executives in general don't use or like the Internet, complaining it's too slow and too hard to find information. The exceptions? Female execs under the age of 35.

Consistency is not his strong point: President Clinton is getting ready to announce his global Internet policy. This should be interesting: the regulations that the administration has backed so far give government a strong hand in controlling the Net, but sources say that Clinton wants a "hands-off" policy.

Disgruntled DEC shareholders have decided to take matters into their own hands. Institutional investors have organized a meeting to discuss the faltering company.

How'd we miss the first two? The third annual Digital Storytelling Festival is going to take place in Crested Butte, Colorado in September and if you're already booked for that weekend, you can still participate via the web. (Wonder if there's a short-short-short-paragraph-long storytelling division?)

We like stats: All those web authoring packages out there makes us wonder -- which is most popular? According to this survey, it's HotDog. (GMSV uses WebEdit Pro -- and hand coding. Of course.)

If you prefer BBEdit, there's a new plug-in that lets you build dynamic pages without programming. There's some tryout-ware available, but your server also has to run its software.

Always worth listening to is Esther Dyson, who speaks with John McChesney today about privacy.

Can you tell them apart? All those Net rags, we mean. C'mon, reading about the Net in delayed slick print? Who's that clueless?

Rough day at the podium: Informix chairman Phil White faced angry shareholders yesterday. White shouldered the blame for the stock drop in the past two months.

Those Win95 and WinNT patches? They don't work the way they should. Soft spots are still being reported.

Maybe you've noticed that Mercury Center's tried and true domain name (www.sjmercury.com) also works if you type in www.mercurycenter.com. Not so for other media enterprises. And by the way, we also have registered the domain name of www.gmsv.com.

I read ... that Informix laid off 100 people. I was sorry to see you weren't one of them.
-- Shareholder to Informix chairman Phil White >

In Mercury Center today:

Incompatibility increases with new browser releases
Apple to spin off Newton
Unfair competition in tech world
Even spammers have rights
Hacker steals 100,000 credit card numbers