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Comment Re:Looks Legit (Score 5, Insightful) 461

by milamber3 (#25067877) Attached to: Graduate Student Defends Right To Own Chicago2016.com

Did you even go and look at the site? This guy did not know they would definitely want this domain, he wanted to start a site that was for discussion of the economics behind a bid for the Olympics. He's a student at a very good business school and that seems like a perfectly reasonable site for him to have created. Just because you think he wanted it for no good reason doesn't make it so.

McCain Asks Supporters To Campaign On Blogs 889

Posted by CmdrTaco from the new-era-of-campaigning dept.
Vote McCain in 2000! writes "McCain is not the stranger to technology some think him to be. McCain is now asking supporters to stump for him on blogs. Republican Web 2.0 consultant David All was effluent with praise for this outreach, calling it 'smart' and 'unique.' McCain's blogger outreach section has a handy list of political blogs which might be interested in hearing about McCain, such as the DailyKos, Crooks and Liars, and Think Progress. You can even report your posts to the campaign and 'receive points for your success,' though the page doesn't say what exactly the points are good for." Slashdot is not on their suggested blogs list. Can't imagine why.
The Internet

Canadian TV to Adopt DRM-Free BitTorrents 229

Posted by Zonk from the would-love-that-from-pbs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Canada's public broadcast network, CBC, is to adopt DRM free BitTorrent distribution of one of its major primetime shows, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister. The effort has already been hailed by Canadian copyright guru Michael Geist, who expects the decision to add fuel to Canada's net neutrality debate. A CBC producer behind the show told CNET that the motivation for the move was that CBC 'wanted the show to be as accessible as possible to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in.' As for DRM, she said 'I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don't realize it.' She added that 'if it's bad for the consumers, its bad for the company.'"
Networking

Comcast Kicks Tires On 100-Gig Optical Links 61

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the that's-a-lot-of-torrents dept.
Balistyx writes to mention that Comcast has announced the first test of 100-gigabit-per-second optical networking equipment designed to carry data over a production fiber network. The trial equipment will connect Philadelphia and McLean, VA. "In November, Verizon said it completed the first field test of 100-Gbps optical transmission on a live 312-mile network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami. The telco's test used a live video feed from the FiOS TV network, and optical equipment from Alcatel-Lucent. Comcast's test is different, according to Schanz, for several reasons: It's running live traffic, and the 100-Gbps wavelengths in the Comcast trial are running over the same physical fiber as its existing 40-Gbps wavelengths, which are handled by Cisco Systems gear."
Software

AOL Opens Up the AIM Instant Messaging Network 209

Posted by Zonk from the horse-of-a-different-color dept.
AVIDJockey writes "In a pleasantly surprising move, AOL has changed its tune when it comes to third-party access to the company's chat network. America Online has recently launched a service called OpenAIM 2.0, which provides open, uninhibited access to services like Meebo, or all-in-one IM clients like Pidgin, allowing them to freely and easily use the AIM instant messaging network. 'At the moment, multi-platform IM desktop clients like Pidgin or Adium (the popular Mac client) generally rely on hacking and reverse engineering access to chat networks run by AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others. Not only is that bad for developers since it means more work, it also means that such clients often can't use all the features of a particular network.'"
The Courts

Submission + - Judge rejects RIAA 'making available' theory (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory, which is the basis of all of the RIAA's peer to peer file sharing cases. In Atlantic v. Brennan, in a 9-page opinion (pdf), Judge Janet Bond Arterton held that the RIAA needs to prove "actual distribution of copies", and cannot rely — as it was permitted to do in Capitol v. Thomas — upon the mere fact that there are song files on the defendant's computer and that they were "available". This is the same issue that has been the subject of extensive briefing in two contested cases in New York, Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Judge Arterton also held that the defendant had other possible defenses, such as the unconstitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory and possible copyright misuse flowing from the record companies' anticompetitive behavior."
Censorship

Submission + - Phoenix sheriff arrests newspaper reporters. (phoenixnewtimes.com)

Submitted by SnotBob
SnotBob writes: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-10-18/news/breathtaking-abuse-of-the-constitution/1

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1019newtimes1019.html

From the AZCentral.com story:

Phoenix New Times owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were arrested Thursday night by Maricopa County sheriff's deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information, a misdemeanor.

The charges stem from a story published under their byline in the Thursday edition of New Times, in which they describe a subpoena the paper reportedly received from a grand jury convened by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

The alternative weekly newspaper, in its cover story, said the subpoena was part of an investigation orchestrated to get back at its reporters and the critical stories they wrote of County Attorney Andrew Thomas' political ally Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The scope of the subpoena is unusually broad: It not only demands information from the reporters but also information about all the online readers of the publication since Jan. 1, 2004, including their Internet domain names and browsers and what other Web sites they visited before reading New Times.
Media

Submission + - Radiohead Made $6-$10 Million on Album (wired.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Thom Yorke's representative told me that the band have "decided not to give out any figures" for sales of Radiohead's In Rainbows album, but that isn't stopping people from making their best guesses based on what little information is available.

The Seminal estimates that Radiohead sold about $10 million-worth of albums as of 10/12, assuming that their source was correct that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead)."
Privacy

Submission + - Hacker builds tracking system for Tor pedophiles

Submitted by Anonymouse
Anonymouse writes: Hacker HD Moore has devised a series of "countermeasures" for pedophiles using public Tor servers to search for and download child pornography. Moore's system, which will be released as an open source project, uses patched Tor servers and a decloaking engine to pinpoint the exact location of a pedophile within an organization or residence. From the article: "At this point, my server is able to determine the internal address of the user, the external address from which they access the internet, and the ISP they use to provide DNS resolution, as well as the IP address they come from through the TOR network. This information, along with the unique tracking ID, allows me to identify a specific workstation within an organization or residence."
The Courts

Submission + - Developments in the Julie Amero case

Submitted by Arrogant-Bastard
Arrogant-Bastard writes: Julie Amero has a new attorney who is requesting a postponement of sentencing. Steve Bass of PC World has summarized the case. There are at least two blogs covering this: State v. Amero and Julie Amero. The latter is run by Julie's husband, Wes Volle, and is accepting donations to help with her defense. Please spread the word, and please contribute: this woman is facing 40 years in prison over pop-ups.
Google

Submission + - Google screws over Owner of popular OSS project

Submitted by buhatkj
buhatkj writes: The guy who runs the popular OSS 3d engine project Irrlicht just got banned from Google AdSense, after an accusation of click fraud!
From the Blog Post:

"Maybe you've noticed, for the last few days some google ads appeared on this blog, but they have disappeared now again. That's because I just got banned from google adsense for life time (as it seems), although I didn't do anything wrong."

Not only that, but they are witholding monies already earned by his ads prior to the accusation.

"In that mail, they did not even tell me any information about their problem with my ads, only "invalid clicks or page impressions". No IP adresses, no channel ID, no website, no time or date, no amount of clicks, nothing. No way for me to find out what was wrong. There was the possibility to contradict, and I tried to explain some possible causes like the sudden increased amount of traffic, but they ignored me. The interesting thing: They now even won't pay out the money I already earned before the occurance of their 'invalid clicks' assert. "

Check out the full story HERE
Television

Submission + - Food Network using subliminal advertising?

Submitted by
spoco2
spoco2 writes: "Is the Food Network using subliminal advertising now? From the always interesting Something Awful forums comes this interesting nugget:

"I was sitting around waiting for Battlestar Galactica this evening watching Iron Chef America. I had seen the commercials for tonight's episode, and it looked neat so I set it up to record. Towards the end, when they're going over the iron chef and the challenger's entries a McDonalds logo popped up for a single frame."
There's a video of the offending portion."

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