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biohack writes "An analysis of site-visit statistics offered by a TIME columnist points to a surprising reshaping of online landscape. The 18- to 24-year-olds today are apparently too busy chatting with friends to look at online skin.

Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth. If you chart the rate of visits to social-networking sites against those to adult sites over the last two years, there appears to be a strong negative correlation (i.e., visits to social networks go up as visits to adult sites go down).

"
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1678586,00.html

The NYT is reporting that Verizon has banned text ads based on controversial content. While many would agree that, as a private carrier, Verizon have every right to so do, there are other concerns. For instance, from the article, "The dispute over the Naral messages is a skirmish in the larger battle over the question of "net neutrality" — whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers." What makes this more interesting is these are not push messages, but messages requested for one time delivery by the customer. If Verizon is going to play Big Brother and censor customers content, perhaps that is one more reason to move to AT&T, even if it does not provide equal service.

Evidently, loosing the DSM-750 Extender for Windows Media Center just wasn't enough for D-Link, as the firm seemingly felt the need to give loyal (and to-be) owners of the DSM-520 Wireless HD Media Player a nice bonus. Starting today, buyers of the aforementioned digital media adapter will have access to "more than 200 online channels," as the unit can now take advantage of active-TV technology. The service reportedly "allows easy access to internet video and entertainment sites with a remote control," and it also uses a "content aggregator developed by MediaMall Technologies." Some notable channels include Comedy Central, CinemaNow, Google Video, Movielink, ROOtv Music Videos, Akimbo, MTV, Musicmatch, Napster, VH1, ESPN and FOX Sports, and there's also international content out there for those willing to branch out. The expanded DSM-520 should be shipping momentarily for $249.99, and existing owners can snag the update gratis on October 4th.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/161778887/

An anonymous reader writes "Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. ... the judge said, the U.S. attorney general's office was ''asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Patriot-Act-Lawsuit.html?_r=1
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3657070"

New Zealand is now on the top of my list for cool governments. They've opened a wiki allowing the populous to craft a new version of their Police Act, the legislative basis for policing in New Zealand. Stuff.co.nz has an article about it here.

!wintel writes "James Reinders is Intel's Chief Evangelist for Intel's Software Development Products. In a recent interview on Devx.com he stated: "If I could get ONE wish fulfilled would be for OS scheduling to focus on processes, and not threads, for scheduling. And demand that processes manage their scheduling of threads. Why? Because an effective parallel program is going to assume, in general, that all threads are either running or stopped. It is messy to write a parallel program when the OS may be scheduling and unscheduling individual threads which are trying to cooperate. [...] There is a lot of opportunity for operating systems to offer these types of control in the "running of applications" interfaces. I'd like an OS to let me specify the 'world' my application runs in (which processors, how many, etc.) These interfaces are available in Windows at run time (the task manager will let you adjust where a running task can go). I'd like to have more global tools to specify and adjust policies (8-core machinerun "only Outlook" here, run applications on these 4 cores, OS only here, explorer here, etc.)""

imamac writes ""Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is aggressively pushing for prompt revisions to the 700 MHz open-access rule — even before the agency completes a review of the various regulatory challenges to the full 700 MHz decision, according to industry sources who suggest the behind-the-scenes activity is tied to Verizon Wireless' lobbying.""
http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070926/FREE/70926006/1005/rss01

jbrodkin writes "Only one percent of the TJX data breach victims will receive the free credit monitoring and identity theft insurance offered in a widely publicized settlement. The TJX data breach affected 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers, but the company is offering monitoring and insurance only to 455,000 people who returned merchandise to TJX stores without receipts and subsequently had their personal information stolen. The other 45 million victims will have to settle for $30 coupons."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/092607-tjx-credit.html

mzamora25 writes "Seems like isohunt.com has gone the way of torresntspy.com (http://www.torrentspy.com/US_Privacy.asp)

From Isohunt: "As of earlier today, we have disabled access from users in the US to our trackers, until further notice. This goes for ALL trackers (torrentbox, podtropolis) we run. This is due to the US's hostility towards P2P technologies, and we feel with our current lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we can no longer ensure your security and privacy in the US.""

SomePoorSchmuck writes "If you thought the torrent/P2P model of only providing indexing and not maintaining user data in nonvolatile memory kept your downloading activity relatively anonymous, think again. In a dogfight between popular site TorrentSpy and the MPAA, a federal judge has for the first time ruled that server RAM is subject to discovery by MPAA lawyers. The MPAA seeks records of TorrentSpy's server RAM to track the site's file transfer activity. TorrentSpy's attorney Ira Rothken explains that now "any company currently being sued — even before any liability has been found — could end up having to collect and turn over RAM data at great cost." Given its past strong-arm tactics, one can't help but wonder if obtaining RAM data is the MPAA's real goal, or simply increasing the power of the lawsuit as an administrative nightmare for the defendant."
http://www.law.com/jsp/LawArticlePC.jsp?id=1181639142254

David Kellam writes "A Global Obligation is a startup charity founded by two tech entrepreneurs. It aims to provide universal primary education by 2015 in line with the Millennium Development Goals. In so doing, it will only accept $1 donations and the entire system from blueprints to lesson plans will be created, modified and shared as open source and open content.

A Global Obligation seeks to revolutionalise the way charities administer themselves through an ultra-low-cost online-only approach. It aims to raise awareness of charities and the problem of education in the developing world and plans to eliminate duplication of effort by open-sourcing everything it does.

Please support us!"
http://www.aglobalobligation.org/

perreira writes "Flickr is now censoring all pictures which are marked as "moderate" or "restricted" for users in Germany, Singapore and elsewhere. The censorship in germany might have been caused by pictures appearing on flickr containing Nazi-symbols which are illegal in germany. But the filter is going too far and censoring stuff which is perfectly legal to view. Discussion is happening here: — http://www.flickr.com/groups/404938@N23/discuss/72 157600347681500/ — http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/42597/"
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/91085

An anonymous reader writes "The LA Times reports that AT&T has announced plans to work with the Hollywood movie studios and major recording labels to implement new content filtering systems on their network. The plans raise many troubling legal issues including privacy concerns, false positive filtering, and liability for failure to filter."

LinucksGirl writes "Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP form the basis of the LAMP architecture for Web applications. This third article, the last in a series of three, focuses on tuning the database layer for maximum efficiency. The first article covers the basics of LAMP, while the second article focuses on steps you can take to optimize Apache and PHP."

Spamicles writes "AT&T has joined with Hollywood studios and recording companies in trying to keep pirated material off its network. It started working with studios and record companies last week in order to develop new anti-piracy technology. AT&T is the United States' largest telephone and Internet service provider. It also operates the biggest cross-country system for handling Internet traffic for its customers and those of other providers. This cooperation of AT&T with Hollywood comes after AT&T has begun to sell pay TV services and movies."
http://www.lawbean.com/2007/06/13/att-to-begin-targeting-pirated-content-on-its-network/