robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."

VisualE writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will file a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance."

Esther Schindler writes to mention that one IT leader who came from big business found himself in quite another world when he transitioned into a smaller business, specifically with respect to the amount of attention from their vendors. He presents an amusing approach with a familiar twist. "Not only are the IBMs of the world leaving money on the table, they're also risking future sales. The IT leaders at small organizations will in many cases be employed by larger organizations someday. Why alienate them? Vendors could engage IT leaders in small organizations now and build brand loyalty. How could they make such a business model work? Let's imagine (with apologies to George Lucas) what Yoda might do if he were running a large consultancy."

pwizard2 writes "Gamepolitics reports that controversial Miami attorney Jack Thompson faces the start of an ethics trial this morning, a process which could ultimately see him disbarred. The review board has set aside the entire week to hear details on the case. 'Over the weekend, Thompson turned to the Florida Supreme Court in an apparent effort to block this morning's trial from moving forward. In one court filing Thompson asserted that he was willing to accept a 90-day suspension of his license to practice law. The embattled attorney claimed that such an offer had been on the table, but that the Florida Bar was now seeking his permanent disbarment.'"

ianare writes "Seagate plans to cease manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year and will focus exclusively on SATA-based products. Seagate is the first major hard drive manufacturer to announce such plans, though others will likely follow suit. That's not to say support for the 21-year-old PATA standard is going to vanish overnight; similar to how ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals."

I've been enjoying the Will it Blend videos forever. There's something about a labcoat clad crazy man putting things like marbles and soda cans into a blender and after reducing them to powder, warning you not to breathe in the particles. Well today they ask the ultimate question of the latest over-hyped internet sensation Will the iPhone Blend? Fans of these videos can probably guess the answer... and this story made my morning. I've been waiting for an excuse to link these forever. If you haven't seen these, you're in for a real treat.

Gamespot reports on the final passing of New York senate bill A8696, legislation proposed just last week, that now makes it a serious felony to sell or rent a violent game to minors. The bill makes it illegal to sell a console without parental control options and establishes a group to second guess the ESRB's rating decisions. "'This bill is impermissibly vague,' EMA president Bo Andersen said in a statement. 'A8696 seeks to apply real-world standards of violence to the fictional and fanciful world of video games, an environment in which they have no meaning. As a result, retailers and clerks will not and cannot know with certainty which video games could send them to jail under A8696. It was depressing to hear members of the Assembly note the constitutional problems with the bill and then state that they were voting for it.'" The senate seems to have no fear of possible overturn of the bill, and claims it's only thinking of the children.

An anonymous reader writes "The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now government agencies are only allowed to access your private communications under terms of FISA. 'As the Senate Report noted, FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it." The Bill ends plans by the Bush Administration that would give the NSA the freedom to pry into the lives of ordinary Americans. The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about 'modernization' and 'technology neutrality,' the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them.'"

eldavojohn writes "The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that a judge violated the constitution after placing a juvenile on probation for an expletive laden MySpace entry on the principal. The court decided that the juvenile's free speech rights had been unconstitutionally revoked, and the original judge had suppressed politically motivated free speech since the comments were directly attacking school policy. I think we are starting to see a fine line develop online as it did with print — bullying & slander are punishable while we have to allow criticism of ideas no matter how harsh it is."

dclayman wonders: " I've never sold a domain before. I just received a $400 offer for a domain I own (radicaltrust), but I don't know if I should sell it or auction it off. If I auction it, what site should I use? I could really use the extra cash, and I was hoping to get some ideas and advice from other readers. So, what's the best way to go about selling a domain?" Of course, selling your domain is only half of the issue. What's the best way to go about smoothly transferring the domain, once it is sold?

DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA is now optimistic Atlantis' fuel tank will be able to be repaired in Florida. Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing. 20 of the 28 tiles have been repaired and workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself. After it was decided that Atlantis needed to return to the VAB, NASA was unsure as to whether or not the tank could be repaired. But after bringing it back and doing more extensive inspections, the tank appeared to be in good enough shape that repairs could be done on the spot and a replacement was not necessary. This will allow for Atlantis to be launched late April for its construction mission to the ISS as well as not interfering with the remaining 4 launches planned this year. If the tank needed to be replaced, Atlantis would not have launched until June at the earliest."

Nurgled writes "The EFF, reportedly the only consumer rights organization to be granted membership of the Digital Video Broadcasting consortium, reports that TV and movie industry representatives have been pushing for DRM in the DVB technologies. This in itself is not entirely unexpected, but these talks have been going on in closed meetings. The EFF itself has been blocked from reporting on this until now as a condition of being allowed to attend. The proposed technologies allow rights-holders and broadcasters to severely hamper your ability to make use of broadcast television content, including the ability to retroactively blacklist any devices that consumers may already own that act in ways undesirable to the rights-holder or broadcaster. The EFF concludes that public interest and consumer rights advocates must fight back."

Forrest Kyle writes "A former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg has received multiple death threats for questioning the extent to which human activities are driving global warming. '"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor. "I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal." Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [...] recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."'"