An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times runs an article about the spammers' choice of presidential candidate. From the article: 'According to Secure Computing Corp., spammers were nearly seven times more likely to slap Obama's name in the subject line than McCain's during September. The bulk of Obama's lead in the spam wars came from a massive blitz early in the month.' Secure Computing released additonal numbers for the past weeks, and McCain was able to close the gap in the latest spammers' poll."

Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from CNet: "Google's vision of tomorrow's wireless network is in stark contrast to how wireless operators do business today, setting the two sides on a possible collision course. Earlier this week, the search giant filed a patent application with the US Patent Office describing its vision of an open wireless network where smartphones aren't tied to any single cell phone network. In Google's open wireless world, phones and other wireless devices would search for the strongest, fastest connection at the most competitive price. Essentially, wireless operators' networks would be reduced to 'dumb pipes.'" The full patent application is available as well. Google founder Larry Page recently asked the FCC to free up portions of the broadcast spectrum for this purpose.

Hodejo1 writes "Former MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson offers commentary at The Register saying any attempts to build a sanctioned digital music site today is doomed from the outset. 'The internet companies I talk to don't mind giving some direct benefit to music companies. What torpedoes that possibility is the big financial requests from labels for "past infringement," plus a hefty fee for future usage. Any company agreeing to these demands is signing their own financial death sentence. The root cause is not the labels — chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it."

thepacketmaster writes "The International Boundaries Research Unit has recently published a new jurisdictional map of the Arctic, using geographic and legal definitions. Now it appears Santa Claus could potentially be Danish. But as pointed out in an article at The Star, more important than St. Nick is 'an area thought to contain one-fifth of the world's undiscovered and recoverable oil and gas resources,' and from this map, Russia has a huge claim in that."

dstates writes "The Columbus Post Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio is suing Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold) over malfunctions in electronic voting machines. Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages."

PoliTech notes in a journal entry that "Vista is the gift that just keeps on giving." "Speaking during SanDisk's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and [CEO] Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid state drive makers. 'As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,' he said... 'The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,' he said. 'Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year.' Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. "We have very good internal controller technology... That said, I'd say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment.'"

penciling_in writes "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new Top-Level Domains — a move that could drastically change the Internet. 'We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,' said Roberto Gaetano, an ICANN board member. The future outcome of this decision was discussed on Slashdot a few days ago. It also seems, based on this post on CircleID from last month, that ICANN was already in preparation mode of mass TLD introductions. The new decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names (TLDs). For instance, Microsoft could apply to have a TLD such as '.msn', Apple apply for '.mac', and Google for '.goog'... The decision was taken unanimously on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris."

Now.Imperfect writes "In its last day of session, the Supreme Court has definitively clarified the meaning of the Second Amendment. The confusion is whether the Second Amendment allows merely for the existence of a state militia, or the private ownership of guns. This ruling is in response to a case regarding the 32-year-old Washington DC ban on guns." This is one of the most-watched Supreme Court cases in a long time, and Wikipedia's page on the case gives a good overview; the actual text of the decision (PDF) runs to 157 pages, but the holding is summarized in the first three. There are certainly other aspects of the Second Amendment left unaddressed, however, so you can't go straight to the store for a recently made automatic rifle.

Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that a new study from Forrester Research is taking a crack at what seems to have become a hobby for so many, predicting Apple's market strategy. Specifically, Forrester is predicting that Apple will become the 'hub of the digital home by 2013.' "Forrester predicts that Apple will offer eight key products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the TV-stereo infrastructure in consumers' homes. A 're-engineered' Apple Store will expand into in-home installation services to deliver what Forrester describes as a 'fully integrated digital experience.'"

Fallen Andy noted a Physorg story that says "Engineers and applied physicists from Harvard University have demonstrated the first room-temperature electrically-pumped semiconductor source of coherent Terahertz (THz) radiation, also known as T-rays. The breakthrough in laser technology, based upon commercially available nanotechnology, has the potential to become a standard Terahertz source to support applications ranging from security screening to chemical sensing." "What did you do at the office today, honey?" "Oh, I just demonstrated the first room-temperature electrically-pumped semiconductor source of coherent Terahertz radiation. How was your day, dear?"

cynagh0st writes "A Pew Internet & American Life Project report indicates that of an overwhelming majority of Chinese people that believed the Internet should be 'managed or controlled,' 85% want the government to do this managing. This is resulting from surveys on Internet use over the last seven years in China. 'The survey findings discussed here, drawn from a broad-based sample of urban Chinese Internet users and non-users alike, indicate a degree of comfort and even approval of the notion that the government authorities should control and manage the content available on the Internet.' The report goes further into describing the divide in perspective between China and Western Nations on the matter and discusses the PRC's justifications for Internet control."