That's what members of the Harvard University Openlaw project hope to find out. The project aims to create legal arguments for high-profile cases using public input and debate, in much the same way open source software projects like Linux are created. Members of the public are encouraged to contribute research, lines of argument, cases of precedent and other information that may be of use in fighting Openlaw's legal battles.

Of course, whether lawers can work together as harmoniously as computer nerds remains to be seen.

For more information or a list of cases under investigation by Openlaw, see http:// eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/.

Oh . . . click my button!

As you can well imagine, we get quite a few different products to try out here at CDN. Each one tries to tap into a certain region of the user's desire. Some offer more speed, others more security and some try to grab attention with more storage capacity. But the latest peripheral to grace our in-box offers something a little different — sexual depravity.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, CDN is less than proud to present you with the SexyMouse, the world's first computer mouse designed to look like a female human torso (we'll leave the placement of the buttons up to your imagination). Sculpted out of sickly off-flesh coloured plastic, this mouse seems determined to appeal to sweaty-palmed frat boys and dirty old men throughout the computer user marketplace. And guess what — they're looking for distributors and retailers. Have to know more? Well, take a gander at www.sexymouse.com.

Big Willy

CNN recently held an online interactive interview between Wolf Blitzer and U.S. President Bill Clinton. It sounds pretty dry, but a minor technical oversight allowed something a little unorthodox to happen.

CNN's IRC server, grossly underpowered for the number of online users tempted to ask the president questions, crashed a number of times over the course of the interview. Following one of these crashes, one of the participants in the chat noticed that the president's typist, who was using the nickname "President_Clinton," hadn't signed back onto the server yet.

Seizing this opportunity, the participant quickly changed his nickname to "President_Clinton" and wrote "Personally, I'd like to see more porn on the Internet."

About five seconds later the typist for Wolf Blitzer reconnected to the server. The stand-in President_Clinton asked, "Wolf, how about you? Are you all for more porn on the Internet?" At this point, CNN's crack cyber-security team twigged that something was amiss, and the user was kicked off the CNN IRC server, but not until the posted messages had circulated far and wide over the Net. The prankster responsible has posted a Web page of his own, detailing the prank, at www.boredom.org/cnn/.

— Compiled by Owen Ferguson