Internet

The pinup girl is alive and well and living in cyberspace - along with a couple of pinup boys. From Teri Hatcher in sexy Superman togs to Scott Bakula and Alyssa Milano shirtless, and from sources as diverse as People magazine and Celebrity Skin, photographs of movie stars and models in various states of dress and undress are abundant and reasonably easy to distribute and collect on the Internet. The quality isn't always sterling, but the price is right - free. Graphics files account for a hefty percentage of Usenet news, the Internet's giant collection of bulletin boards.

The opening of the Internet superhighway for Neshaminy School District students has been cleared. The school board recently passed guidelines on using the service in schools. Though the new policy paves the way for Internet access in labs and classrooms, questions remain about how violations will be dealt with and how school e-mail accounts will be monitored. The guidelines cover everything from e-mail to unauthorized World Wide Web sites. The rules dictate use of the Internet for education only; and compliance with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Communications Decency Act, which prohibits taking or disclosing e-mail messages without permission.

As an individual with disabilities (paraplegic, with m.s.), I am a devout Internet user for advocacy, personal and professional reasons, and I have to take issue with the first half of Donald Kaul's column (Sept. 8). I am aware of the Carnegie Mellon University study finding increased levels of depression and loneliness in some Internet users, but along with questioning the study's design, I disagree with Kaul's statement that the Internet is "probably not a good thing for society.

For gardeners on the Internet, a Texas-based firm called Garden Escape is joining the ranks of others offering such services. Garden Escape's wares range from advice on planning and design to a broad selection of premium plants, supplies and accessories. Through Garden Escape's address on the Internet, consumers can order anything from perennials and roses to imported tools and hard goods at the touch of a finger. The program can suggest plants that attract butterflies or are especially fragrant, depending on user preference, or which hard-to-grow perennials will flourish in shade.

Leaving children unattended while they surf the Internet can be like inviting a stranger into your home. That's the message being sent to parents by a new awareness program, Children's Partnership, designed to ensure that parents are as Internet-savvy as their children. "There is never a 100 percent guarantee," said Lt. Dennis McCauley of the Abington Police Department. "But if you follow the general guidelines, monitor kids' use of a computer, become familiar [with the Internet]

The Internet has become the global corner bar, with every computer terminal a bar stool from which people can share their uncensored thoughts. Anyone who has ever heard an uncensored thought knows how ugly that can be, but that's the downside of free communication. The cacophony of voices can also be refreshing, enlightening and entertaining. The last thing the world needs is the ham-handed interference of the U.S. Congress, dominated by Republicans who ironically enough promised to keep government off our backs.

Time was when fathers were not even allowed in the delivery room. But on Tuesday, when a woman from Orlando, Fla., identified only as Elizabeth, gave birth to a 7-pound, 8-ounce baby boy she named Sean, the whole world was invited to watch on the Internet. More than 50,000 cyberenthusiasts who wanted to share the miracle of birth jammed the Web site of America's Health Network, a Florida cable station that set up the event. As a result, only 5,000 viewers could watch the four-hour labor and delivery at any one time.

One of the hottest topics in the hotel business today is one that was on few travelers' minds just a year or two ago: Wiring guest rooms and other places within a hotel for high-speed Internet access. Announcements about new Internet services available in individual hotels began with a trickle earlier this year. But in recent months, the floodgates seem to have opened and hotel companies large and small are revealing plans to help customers get online faster. In most cases, hotels are charging from $8 to as much as $20 a day for a guest to use the new high-speed service.

Martha and Lawrence Siegel have discovered a hard truth about the Internet - in cyberspace you can be mugged without ever knowing your assailants. The married lawyers violated computer etiquette last year by flashing an electronic advertisement for their Scottsdale, Ariz., law firm to about 6,000 computer bulletin boards. Furious bulletin board users fired back tens of thousands of pieces of electronic junk mail, most of it anonymous, and so much of it that the computers crashed at the company where the Siegels had their E-mail account.

Just as the Internet made Caleb "Kai" Lawrence McGillvary a cyber celebrity, viral news of him as a fugitive - wanted in the slaying of a North Jersey lawyer - led to his capture, law enforcement agencies said in interviews Friday. And while McGillvary, "the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker," lived large for months as a YouTube sensation, he looked slight and dazed Friday night as he heard the fugitive charge against him read on closed-circuit TV. Arraigned about 5 p.m. in Philadelphia before Magistrate Sheila M. Bedford, McGillvary responded, "I hear you," after she asked if he understood the charge.

  Show us your face. That's my solution to the online issue of incivility to which Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie recently fell victim at Philly.com. Vitriolic postings about his recent marriage illustrate the need for media-sponsored websites to implement the same rules that apply to a speaker sounding off in the town's square: Say what you want, but the public gets to see who you are. John Featherman, a Philly.com columnist, reported that as soon as word of Lurie's nuptials to a woman of Vietnamese heritage was published, a blogosphere barrage began.

DAN ROITMAN, chief executive of the Center City -based Stroll, is no fan of the Marketplace Fairness Act, the so-called Internet sales-tax bill expected to be voted on in the U.S. Senate on Monday. The legislation would empower states to reach beyond their borders and compel online marketers - like Stroll - to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases. The sales taxes then would be sent to the state where a shopper lives. Stroll is an Internet-based marketing platform that sells audio language-learning products and had more than $80 million in revenues last year.

This weekend is my mother's birthday. A big one: 80. We will do little to celebrate. She has been gone for an eternity, 16 years. My daughter was then in diapers, scampering over the hospital bed, giving my mother her last moments of unbridled bliss. My mother - Barbara to people who didn't know her, Bobbie to those who did - adored the new. Babies, trends, the latest anything. She was an enthusiastic, early adopter of gadgetry, some of it questionable, which she was often slow to master.

WASHINGTON - The Senate moved closer Thursday to passing a bill to tax purchases made over the Internet, but a final vote was delayed until members return from a weeklong vacation. Although opponents hope senators will hear from angry constituents over the next week, they have a steep hill to climb to defeat the bill. The Senate voted, 63-30, to end debate, setting up the final vote May 6. That vote will require only a majority, so 14 supporters would have to flip to stop it. President Obama supports the bill, but it faces an uncertain fate in the House, where some Republicans consider it a tax increase.

A friend who is raising money for Jeff Bauman - pictured bloody and ashen in a photo that has defined the Boston Marathon bombing - has collected more than $205,000 in two days. The sum grew by the minute Friday as donations arrived from around the world to "Bucks for Bauman!" - set up by the sister of Bauman's best friend. The fund-raising goal was increased from $200,000 to $1 million as money poured in. Bauman, 27, grew up in New England but has extensive family ties to Philadelphia and South Jersey.

Described as a "dangerous sexual Internet predator," the Virginia man who befriended a 13-year-old Radnor Township girl online and lured her out of state was sentenced Tuesday to 15 to 30 years in jail after pleading guilty to sexual-assault charges. Investigators continue to look for other possible victims. After pleading guilty to involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated assault, and corruption of minors, Ashley Ryan Hareford, 20, will also have to register for life as a Megan's Law offender.

WE ALL remember the heady days when the internet was an ingénue, at our door with candy and flowers and utopian come-ons about the free flow of information. Well, as much as we like Ms. Web - can't live without her, after all - it turns out that she's not Ms. Perfect and, frankly, we're having second thoughts. And we're not the only ones. Behavioral scientists who scrutinize news feeds and social filters believe that we're becoming more blinkered in our thinking. Others studying online comments see that trolls make all readers more reactionary.

Meg Hoechlin is an average teenager. She plays several sports, is involved in her school, and likes to hang out with friends. There's just one thing. Hoechlin is not able to hang out with a lot of her friends in person because she has never met them outside of a computer monitor. Many of her friends live in far-flung places across the country. And she met them through social media. "Some of the people I trust most in the world are Internet friends, simply because they are judgment-free," said Hoechlin, a 17-year-old senior.

A possible meteor that blazed briefly but spectacularly across the Friday night sky was reported all along the Eastern seaboard, including the Philadelphia area. On Twitter, Alyson White of Philadelphia excitedly announced that she had seen a "huge shooting star. " "It was crazy," she wrote in an e-mail to The Inquirer. "I saw it at about 7:53. There was green, blue, and white rays coming off of it, and it was soaring through the sky, then it just like exploded and it was gone.