Online kidney auction stopped
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The bidding for a human kidney offered on the Internet
auction site eBay hit $5.7 million before the company put a stop to it Thursday.
Spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay stopped the auction because the seller broke
eBay's rules outlawing the sale of body parts. Selling your own organs is also illegal under
federal law, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison or a $50,000 fine. "Any time
you have an open trading environment with almost 6 million registered users, you're likely
to see somebody who tries to bend the rules, or to pull a prank on their fellow users,"
Pursglove said. The seller, identified as "hchero" from Sunrise, Fla., started the bidding at
$25,000 Aug. 26. See full story
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Internet's 30th birthday celebrated
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The computer scientists who pioneered the Internet and
entrepreneurs who are profiting from it celebrated the 30th anniversary Thursday of the
network's first primitive connection. Three decades ago, on Sept. 2, 1969, a small crowd
gathered inside professor Len Kleinrock's lab at the University of California, Los Angeles
to watch as meaningless bits of information silently flowed along a 15-foot cable between
two bulky computers. It was a test of the technology that remains the foundation of the
Internet. "In those early days, Len Kleinrock and his colleagues couldn't possibly have
foreseen they were on the ground floor of one of the most life-altering innovations of this
century," said UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale. |
