Articles by David Vranicar

Good luck finding a nice, clean entry point to discuss quantum computers It should come as no surprise, of course, that something called "quantum computers" would be tricky to talk about. The inner workings of computers are plenty complex to begin with. When melded with a dizzying branch of physics -- quantum mechanics, which dissects the world of ...

Behind the Paywall, Part 2: You Gotta Have a Gimmick Fan sites are immune from many of the Achilles' heels that plague other media outlets.

Behind the Paywall, Part 1: Fan Sites Play Ball If recruiting followed porn's lead into the world of 900 numbers, it did the same on the Internet. Porn was among the first and most successful industries to charge for content online, supplying a different type of fix for an equally zealous audience.

The University of Florida coaching staff was short on selling points when it set out to recruit high school football players in early 1990. For starters, the head coach was brand new, his predecessor having been unceremoniously dismissed in the middle of the '89 season because of rule infractions. What's more, one of the best players in school his...

Field of Streams, Part 2 When ICE identifies a site that is violating copyright and/or intellectual property laws, it obtains a warrant from a United States court granting it the authority to seize the URL. At that point, ICE takes down the streams and throws up an intimidating warning that is overlaid on a red background with the word "SEIZED" wri...

Field of Streams, Part 1 Anyone who has watched a sporting event on TV has heard something along the lines of, "Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without express written consent is prohibited." ...

Tommy Thompson's concept of football fandom is derived from his 28 years following the Kansas City Chiefs. He was weaned on scenes from Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium, where tens of thousands of people congregate for their own Sunday service, replacing wine and bread with beer and barbeque. With hair that matches the Chiefs' bright red uniforms a...

Search History: Google and Germany, Part 2 Google's privacy-conscious initiatives are often born in Germany. Heeding the objections to Street View, which rained down from national authorities and wary Germans, Google introduced an opt-out feature that allowed people to officially request that their homes be blurred out of the Street View -- nearly ...

Search History: Google and Germany, Part 1 Following Germany's reunification, victims and villains alike wanted to forget the country's past, observed Konrad H. Jarausch, a historian and professor living in Berlin. And this, for everyone, required privacy....

From the clothing ads that dance around in epileptic flashes to the constant requests for your credit card number, email service from the German website GMX.net has some shortcomings. You can get 1 GB of memory, but you'll need a credit card for anything more -- a 5 GB allowance runs about US$4.50 per month, and for 10 GB, you pay about $7.50 per month.