Watercooler Stories

U.S. Valentine's sites have heart attacks

NEW YORK, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Several major electronic greeting card Web sites suffered multiple "heart attacks" Tuesday, unable to keep up with the demand for Valentine e-cards.

In Cleveland, American Greetings Corp. had a peak of 500,000 people an hour sending Internet Valentines through its sites, including BlueMountain.com, The Washington Post reports.

Sally Babcock, senior vice president of the company's interactive division, said at least 5 million e-cards were sent, making Tuesday its busiest day of the year.

Hallmark Cards' Web site also was overloaded and crashed several times, a spokeswoman said.

Even Meish.org, a blog that publishes anti-Valentine's Day cards was so inundated, it collapsed twice, its author Meg Pickard said.

Despite the popularity of the e-cards, sales of traditional paper cards hasn't diminished, the newspaper said.

The Greeting Card Association says U.S. sales of traditional Valentine's Day cards has held steady at about 190 million, with 85 percent of them purchased by women.

U.S. senators lukewarm to free iPods

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- A Washington lobbying group that plans to give U.S. senators free iPods is being met with many "No thank-you's" before they've even been shipped.

The Intellectual Property Action Committee is a group of tech-savvy activists working for more lenient intellectual-property laws and greater consumer rights to cultural content. They're opposed to proposed "broadcast flag" restrictions on the replaying of digital content on iPods, TiVos and other devices.

IPAC plans on shipping them next week, loaded with public domain, pro-free speech and liberal songs by the likes of the Beastie Boys, DJ Danger Mouse and other rap and rock acts.

But The Hill reports at least six senators targeted to receive IPAC's first round of the $324 devices are already passing on the gift.

Jason Klindt, campaign spokesman for Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said Burns "is very tech-savvy, but he gets his Hank Williams fix from the stereo in his trunk," and said Burns would return the iPod once it arrives at his campaign office.

Sheriff wants rap out of Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Las Vegas Sheriff Bill Young has asked Sin City's casinos to quit booking gangster rappers, including top acts such as Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent.

An editorial Young wrote for the Las Vegas Sun taking the entertainment industry to task for glorifying violence and violent acts has apparently hit home with state gaming regulators, AllHipHop.com reported Wednesday.

Gaming regulators issued a warning this week that casinos would be held accountable for violence during rap performances.

"The entertainment industry should be ashamed of itself for promoting this gangster rap genre that espouses violence, mistreatment of women, hatred for the authority of police officers and emulates drug dealers and two-bit thugs," Young said in the Sun. "It's not a good message for our young people, and it's not a good message for our community."

Young singled out 50 Cent as "one of the worst" purveyors of violent messages, calling him "a mentor for all of the other gangster rappers in the making."

Young made his comments in the wake of the shooting death of Sgt. Henry Prendes, who was killed by rapper Trajik of the Las Vegas gangster rap duo, Desert Mobb, on Feb. 1. Trajik was also killed when he fired an assault rifle at officers responding to a domestic call along the Las Vegas Strip.

Gates: Impossible to censor Internet

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Chairman Bill Gates, of U.S.-based Microsoft, says laws are needed to govern Internet business in other countries but total censorship of the Web is impossible.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates defended Microsoft's compliance with the Chinese government's orders to block the Web sites of users of its blogging service, where anti-government messages were being posted.

"We're not involved in self-censorship. We are following those orders, which have come up once or twice," he said.

He said unlike Yahoo!, Microsoft does not maintain servers inside China, and so does not risk being forced to hand over personal information about its users.

And as the U.S. Congress debates Internet business regulation, Gates said laws could only achieve so much because of the nature of the medium.

"It is not possible to block information, it is just not," he said. "I think people have to (understand) what an open tool the Internet is despite any firewall stuff, or any takedown orders that get given."