Internet

The Soviet Union has been history for going on 17 years now, but there is one place where the former superpower continues to live on, even with the semi-endorsement of a major international standards agency. That place is of course the Internet, where for 500 rubles (around $25) per year, it is still possible to own a little chunk of Soviet real estate by parking your website at an official ".su" domain name.

Ah springtime: trees blooming, bats cracking, nerds ROTFLTAO. Last week, the Mets announced that their (filched) year-old tradition of an eighth inning, stadium-wide sing along of "Sweet Caroline" would be updated. They gave fans 10 pretty lame choices and, in true 21st century fashion, let them utilize the power of the Interweb to voice their preference. Of course, the following happened:

Newspapers are still struggling to find their place in a world increasingly overwhelmed by digital media. Readership is down, ad revenues are down, even revenues on the Web editions of many papers are down. Some papers—the Guardian and Telegraph in London, for example—have even experimented with a printable PDF version of their sites in an attempt to reach those who browse online but ultimately want a paper copy in their hands. At this intersection of print and Web comes another concept, one which is proving both popular with its readership and economically successful: the Flying Pickle.

Woe is the Internet on April 1. For it is on this day where sites large and small rack their brains for the perfect Fools' Day prank, briefly vindicating those that continue to hold the belief that the Web serves as nothing more than a sloppy ocean of untruths and nonsense.

An 81-year-old man constructed a machine that allowed him to remotely fire a .22 semi-automatic pistol, then set it up in his driveway and killed himself. Reportedly, the man's relatives had been encouraging him to move out of his home and into a care facility.

Instead, he did some research on the Internet and built what was only described as a complex machine—the local paper that broke the story is keeping wraps on how it actually worked.

Yahoo surprised analysts yesterday, announcing that it is on track to meet its expected earnings for 2008. This changes the fight between the Sunnyvale-based company and Microsoft, which recently offered to pay $42 billion to swallow it up. Now Yahoo has a bit more leverage, and may be able to convince investors that its not in such bad shape after all. The company says it expects to double its cash flow and increase its revenue by 50 percent, mostly from banner and video advertising.

Former prime minister of Poland Jaroslaw Kaczynski told members of his conservative party that people should not be allowed to vote online because the Internet attracts those who like to watch porn while drinking beer. Why is he talking about this? Poland is considering new schemes to get more people involved in the election process, and online voting is one possibility.

Perusing my cable/Internet bill this month from my local de facto monopoly, I picked my jaw off the floor and found myself on the horns of an ethical dilemma: To be a bandwidth thief, or not to be? That is indeed the question, as the fleetfooted Roadrunner has once again jacked prices through the stratosphere, leaving us folk on terra firma scratching our heads. The deal is, I get the same TV channels, and less bandwidth, but for more money. Genius! Tallying the rest of my monthly bills up against my humble paycheck, I started to get queasy, lightheaded and tired, and then I realized what it was. Ive got a full-blown case of Subscription Fatigue.

A handful of start-ups are getting ready to challenge Googles predominance in the Web sleuthing world by offering whats known as semantic search.

The companies—Powerset, Hakia, Cognition Search, Lexxe—are trying to develop a search technology that would allow you to look for material on the Web while writing like a normal, educated human, instead of just entering keywords, and dropping all the in-between stuff that gives us those wonderful things called sentences.

Undersea cables have made big news in the last few days, ever since several cables were cut last week near Dubai and Alexandria, disrupting Internet service all over the Middle East. (The latest news: It looks like a ships anchor sliced one of the cables. Oops!) The accident draws attention to how much our modern lives depend on unseen cables—just three inches thick and buried under sand—that most of us have never even thought about. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of these things snaking under our seas, with even more on the way.

It has been rumored for a while, and just became official. Microsoft made a bid to buy Yahoo. The price tag? A measly $44.6 billion.

Imagine a gadget that fits in your back pocket and lets you surf the Web anywhere, write documents, make VoIP calls, watch movies, and listen to your entire music library. That´s not exactly what Nokia had in mind when it released the 770 ($360; nokia.com), a PDA-size Internet tablet with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But because the device has an open-source operating system, anyone can build new programs for it, endowing it with nearly endless functions (we´ve nicknamed it the HackBerry).

What do you think happens when you connect your computer to the Internet? In less than an hour, it may not be yours anymore. While you're Googling your name and checking e-mail, a hacker, perhaps in Eastern Europe-let's call him Ivan-quietly takes over your machine. There are a dozen ways Ivan could do it, but he probably found you with a program he didn't get at Best Buy called a port scanner, which roams the Internet like a clumsy cat burglar, trying every doorknob until it locates one left unlocked.

The promise of Wi-Fi is freedom-the ability to bring your laptop or PDA away from the anchor that is your desk and into your life. With most wireless routers, however, your life had better stop at around 300 feet, and forget about heading outside. Between the noise generated by other local wireless devices and physical obstacles like furniture and walls, chances are your Wi-Fi signal is little more than a whisper by the time it hits your backyard. So I built a box that can pick up that signal and boost it another 200 to 300 feet.

For more on the proposed Web Toll, stay tuned to PopSci's podcast.