An anonymous reader writes "Wrath of the Lich King is official! BlizzCon is in full swing, and celebrants there are already enjoying the Northrend-themed imagery. For a look at what's going on, Joystiq has a liveblog of the opening ceremony up. Games For Windows magazine, meanwhile, will feature WLK its next cover. The post on the 1up site has a number of details on the next expansion, including the introduction of the Death Knight, the first new class since WOW's launch 'World of WarCraft's first Hero Class is a plate-wearing tank/DPS hybrid that works a little something like this: When players hit level 80, they'll be able to embark on a quest (similar in difficulty to the Warlock's epic mount quest, back before the level cap was raised to 70) that unlocks the ability to create a Death Knight character. The Death Knight starts at a high level (somewhere around 60 or 70, though Blizzard isn't certain yet), so you won't have to grind your way back up all over again. It's intended as an alternative, advanced class for end-game use only.'."

An anonymous reader writes "You probably already knew that the FBI was data mining Americans in the "search" for potential terrorists, but did you know that they're also supposed to be looking for people in the U.S. engaged in criminal activity that is not really supposed to be the province of the federal government? Now the feds are alleged to be data mining for insurance fraudsters, identity thieves, and questionable online pharmacists. That's what they're telling us now. What else could they be looking for that they are not telling us about?"

roelbj writes "The full trailer for Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers movie is now finally available on Yahoo. Unlike the teaser trailers that have only hinted at what the final effects would deliver, we can at long last get a much better feeling for how the live-action CGI Transformers will look."

xvx writes "Verizon is claiming that they have the right to hand over customer information to the US government under the First Amendment. 'Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.'"

AlHunt writes "A fire started by a homeless man knocked out service between Boston and New York on the experimental Internet2 network Tuesday night. Authorities say the fire, which also disrupted service on the Red Line subway, started around 8:20 p.m. when a homeless man tossed a lit cigarette. The cigarette landed on a mattress, which ignited and led to a two-alarm fire."

phyrebyrd writes "How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health."

el_flynn writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on a new submarine cable system that will link South East Asia directly with the USA. Designated Asia-America Gateway (AAG), the project will involve a consortium of 17 international telcos, including AT&T Inc, India's Bharti AirTel, BT Global Network Services, CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia) and Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia). Led by Telekom Malaysia Berhad, the project is slated for completion in 2008, where 20,000km of cables will be providing a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth. Interestingly, the fibre-optic cable system will be taking a different route from many existing cables to avoid quake-prone areas and a repeat of the disruption to Asian web access caused by a tremor off Taiwan four months ago."

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has submitted a resolution, HR 333, to impeach VP Dick Cheney on charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The charges were submitted on 24 April 2007. Congressman Kucinich has posted his supporting documents online, including a brief summary of the impeachment procedure (PDF), a synopsis (PDF), and the full text (PDF) of the impeachment resolution.

Operator writes "While Firefox has been in the spotlight for some time now, Thunderbird has yet to enjoy the same wide adoption or glowing praise despite being an excellent email client. It's no surprise that a popular topic has been Firefox's best (and worst) extensions while Thunderbird add-ons have gone largely unnoticed. In celebration of the recent release of Thunderbird 2.0 here are the best extensions for the program along with some honorable mentions."

bluephone writes "Colin Barrett, one of the new Mac geniuses, and an Adium developer, has posted an entry on his blog offering an open call to all Mac users of Firefox asking them, 'What sucks about Firefox on the Mac?' He says he already knows about and is trying to solve such things as: 'Native Form Widgets (currently scheduled for Firefox 3), Keychain Integration, Firefox should have a Unified toolbar (not completely hopeless, it turns out), Performance...', but he wants to hear what else Mac users want from Firefox. So please, if you're a user of Macs and the interwebs, then RTFA, unclog your tubes, and send him your ideas."

zentigger asks: "I work for an ISP that supports internet in several dozen remote areas. Our POPs are typically fairly small shed-like structures, with a couple racks of equipment. For the most part, we can manage this stuff in-band, but frequently we need to have a local agent physically access the equipment for some minor maintenance work or adjustments. As time goes on, the shuffle of keys is becoming farcical and expensive. What we need is an electronic lock of some sort that can be reprogrammed remotely (preferably from a remote console via serial or directly via ethernet) that will stand up to extreme weather. Google certainly turns up lots of glossy brochures — although I don't see how they can -all- be 'The heaviest duty lock you can buy!' Does anyone have good experiences with any particular products or perhaps other means of dealing with the key shuffle?"

Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"

Ernest DeFarge writes "Apple recently announced that they've pulled several key programmers from the OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and assigned them to the iPhone in order to get it done on time. In doing so, they delayed Leopard for 4 months. Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS? Or is it just capitalizing on the current state of Apple's fanbase?"