Yahoo has a Full Coverage section on U.S. campaign finance reform.

A researcher at Georgia Tech has devised a game that can be used to reveal the identities of people you meet online. “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Maybe not.

Here’s an interesting development–Microsoft has purchased Visio, the makers of the diagramming tool that of the same name. I honestly think Microsoft can make Visio a lot better, it’s one of the worst applications I’ve ever used. But more interesting to me is the fact that Visio’s CEO has defended Microsoft on any number of occasions when people charged them with being monopolists. It will be interesting if Microsoft will use their purchase of Visio to launch an attack on Rational Software, one of their other staunch defenders.

The Power Mac G4 stinks.

To get around the self-imposed spending caps that were put in place way back in 1997, Senate Republicans are planning on just adding a fictional month to the next fiscal year. Makes sense, right?

Bill Rosenblatt has written a review of Po Bronson’s latest book, The Nudist on the Late Shift, a collection of stories about the Silicon Valley. I’m going to have to read this one soon; I love Po Bronson’s writing. (Bombardiers was the funniest book I’ve read since Liar’s Poker.)

Salon has an article about hair braiding that has nothing to do with technology, the Web, or anything else I’m usually interested in, but is important nonetheless. In California, you can get busted for hair braiding if you don’t have an expensive cosmetology license, which is dumb. Unfortunately, no cosmetology programs teach hair braiding, and hair braiding isn’t on the licensing exam. That’s dumber. They actually have police stings (like anti-prostitition stings) designed to bust these unlicensed hair braiders. Even if you’re not interested in hair braiding, imagine what this kind of licensing stupidity could do to your field of endeavor.

IBM is making the ThinkPad 600E Linux compatible. That’s great news, since that’s the laptop that I have. Unfortunately, that won’t include a Linux driver for the nasty DSP modem in the laptop, so Linux users are still stuck with PC card modems.

In the same vein as some of the articles I’ve posted links to recently, here’s an editorial cartoon about the rising income gap here in America.

Handspring’s new PalmOS-based handhelds will be announced today. I assume you’ll be able to look here for details after the announcement is made. I wonder if there’s any chance Palm and Handspring would merge after Palm is spun off, since Handspring was founded by the guys who originally founded Palm in the first place.