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Journal SPAM: FBI Raids Home of Suspected NSA Leaker 608

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

During the very time Congress was debating codifying the Bush administration's wiretap lawbreaking by revising the FISA law the Gonzales DOJ was raiding the home of a former Justice official to identify the person who first brought the illicit program to light.

As Newsweek details the FBI raided the home of Thomas M. Tamm, former official of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) within DOJ.
The Courts

Submission + - Supreme Court rules Ebay sale binding. (smh.com.au)

Submitted by Slurpee
Slurpee writes: The NSW Supreme court has ruled that making an offer of sale on Ebay is legally binding. In other words — you can't change your mind. In a case that reached the NSW Supreme Court, Peter Smythe sued Vin Thomas after he changed his mind on the sale of a 1946 World War II Wirraway plane after the eBay auction had ended. "It follows that, in my view, a binding contract was formed between the plaintiff and the defendent and that it should be specifically enforced," Justice Rein said in his decision. The judgment sets a precedent for future cases and means eBay sales could now be legally binding (At least in Australia).
Data Storage

Submission + - What OS/FS to use for 16TB storage array? 1TBx16!!

Submitted by
Dan Cabrera
Dan Cabrera writes: "So I just took delivery of a large package (pickup truck bed sized box) labeled 'server' — turns out it's the one I've been waiting for a while from a client. We had some miscommunication and I assumed this was a 2-4, maybe 5TB system for use as a production content shared drive, but it turned into a real monster, SuperMicro SC-836 with HighPoint 2240 Controller and *16*x*1TB* Hitachi drives in a RAID5 array. It's got WinXP64 loaded, but there must be a better solution after reading of ZFS and related technology now available as open source, no? Looking forward to your comments and suggestions! I'll repost with some benchmarks as this puppy grows up (into the wee hours of the morning I'll work :) Happy SD'in! PS: Just need a large drive to save rendered projects to and backup music/other projects (This is for a world known DJ, so the each tour/show can involve a LOT of media!) ...and, how the heck am I gonna do off-site backup for this in event of disaster? Ay-yay-yi!"
Music

Submission + - The Revolution of Greed and the Music Industry (theflashbulb.net)

Submitted by JoeZeppy
JoeZeppy writes: An independent musician details how ITunes, BestBuy and the record labels beat him out of %85 of the price of every album, and what he's doing to combat it.

"A decade ago, while being an amateur musician and daytime computer technician, a tech-savvy friend of mine called me raving about MP3s. He even sent me some files on my painfully slow dialup connection. The technology impressed me, but I didn't worry about it either. I thought to myself:

"Surely nobody is going to spend 40 hours downloading an album at a horrible audio quality."

Of course I didn't speculate how advanced the internet would become 10 years later. Those who did either fought it or became millionaires.

Now before you start getting excited about being part of a music revolution, I'm going to share my rendition of it, which isn't going to be inspirational in the least bit. The point of all it all is, well, that nearly everyone involved is unethical and greedy. From the largest corporation all the way down to the consumer."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Lawmaker Upset by iPhone Termination Fee (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
Inquisitor911
Inquisitor911 writes: "The Apple iPhone has enjoyed favorable reviews since its recent debut, but it came in for some rare criticism on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
The phones, which cost between $500 and $600 _ are usable only on AT&T Inc.'s wireless network and will remain that way until 2012.
Even though the phones become expensive paperweights if customers quit AT&T's wireless plan, the company will still charge a $175 early termination fee, said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of a House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.
Markey described the phone as a "Hotel California service. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave _ you're stuck with your iPhone and you can't take it anywhere."
The issue arose at a hearing on whether Congress should grant the cell phone industry's wish and pre-empt states from regulating wireless phone companies. State public utility commissions have no authority over pricing on wireless plans, but do have the authority to regulate the terms and conditions of wireless service agreements.
The wireless industry opposes what Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein called "patchwork, utility-style regulation" as "unnecessary and harmful."
Verizon wants a national framework for wireless oversight that would take authority away from state utility commissions while still allowing state attorneys general to protect against unfair and deceptive industry practices.
Tony Clark, a North Dakota public utility commissioner and chairman of the telecommunications committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said the states should be allowed to maintain their enforcement authority.
"The bottom line is that state regulators are seeking a middle ground that relies on each level of government doing what it does best: the federal government setting standards that apply to all and the states enforcing those rules and tailoring them to specific emerging issues," he said.
Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia University and commentator on technology issues, described the cell phone industry as "spectrum-based oligopoly" where customers have given up their property rights.
"Imagine buying a television that stopped working if you decided to switch to satellite," Wu said. "Or a toaster that died if you switched from Potomac Power to ConEd."
The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering rules that will dictate how a valuable swath of spectrum to be auctioned in the next six months will be used. Among the proposals is a requirement that one block of airwaves being auctioned be accessible to all wireless devices _ which would include the iPhone."
The Courts

Submission + - Antigua attacking U.S. IP law

Submitted by
XO
XO writes: "This article from The Register points out that, in response to the WTO's earlier decision that the U.S. is violating it's commitments with regard to online gaming, "Antigua and Barbuda ... has formally requested that the WTO allow it to suspend its intellectual property obligations to the United States". Here is more from the International Herald Tribune. If the WTO allows this, it could mean that the tiny island of Antigua could resell billions of dollars of U.S. produced copyrighted material, perfectly legally."
The Internet

Submission + - Digg/Slashdot Clones - Is there room for more?

Submitted by davidwarona
davidwarona writes: So lately i've been doing some research about Digg/Slashdot-clones, primarily because i'm interested in developing one of my own. I've come across some open source software which would drastically cut down on development time, and it seems others have taken this approach too. Some of the clones i've seen are pretty crappy, but others have good design and unique content. Just to give some examples of what I consider to be "good":
http://www.ttiqq.com/
http://www.videosift.com/
http://www.dealigg.com/
Anyways, my question to you guys/gals is...there seems to be many clones out there, and i'm just wondering if I would be wasting my time developing another one? Do people such as yourselves look at these clones and automatically think 'ugh...another clone'? or is it more, 'if the site has content i'm interested in, i'll stick around'?
Cheers,
Dave

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