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Do Celebrity Endorsements on Google+ Require Disclosure? 79

Posted by timothy from the everyone's-a-critic dept.
theodp writes "According to the FTC, 'celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.' So, would the ringing endorsement of Zeppelin tour operator Airship Ventures that Sergey Brin gave to his 200,000+ Google+ followers last week fall into that category? 'Since getting to know the folks over at airshipventures.com,' posted Brin, 'I have had the pleasure of flying with them several times and this loop in the south bay is arguably the most scenic. I will probably give it another go when they get back to SF in October.' Forbes calls Brin 'an investor in Airship Ventures,' and others have speculated about a possible Google connection."

Comment Re:Two words (Score 1) 3709

by zanyterp (#25652889) Attached to: Barack Obama Wins US Presidency
well...you are assuming we still have a country in 4 years to be able to vote in. whether that be due to the loss of our right to vote or we will have been destroyed by some faction or another is yet to be seen. i hope that we will have a place to vote and that we will still have that right in 4 years, but i have my doubts. here's to hoping for the best.
Security

Submission + - SPAM: Identity crooks have 50-50 chance of going to jail 1

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: If you're a convicted identity thief, you've got about a 50% chance of avoiding jail time. That's one of the findings of a new study of closed U.S. Secret Service case files, released by Utica College's Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service's data. The study's authors based their findings on an analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

Submission + - WARNING: driver updates causing Vista deactivation (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
KrispySausage
KrispySausage writes: "After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

How can this ridiculous situation occur, and what is Microsoft's response... read on."
Handhelds

Nokia responds to iPhone by Promoting 'Open' 278

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-interesting dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has responded instantly to the iPhone update-bricking fiasco by running a series of flyposter ads pointing out its own hardware and software is open. While this is to be applauded, it'd be better if companies like this opened their products because they truly believed in openness, rather than to beat the competition over the head. After all, Apple itself used open source with OS X (kernel, web browser) mainly because they knew it would irritate Microsoft. Since that initial blow, they've been a lot less eager to promote open source."
Google

Google Video Store Shutting Down 155

Posted by CowboyNeal from the calling-it-quits dept.
babbling writes "Google is going to close the Google Video Store, leaving users who bought videos that used Digital Restrictions Management without their purchases. The users of Google Video Store will be compensated with Google Checkout credit, but it seems they will be out of luck if they don't happen to be Google Checkout users."
Censorship

Federal Anti-Obscenity Program Comes Up Limp 321

Posted by CowboyNeal from the excellent-use-of-resources dept.
kotj.mf writes "The New York Times reports that the Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group, has yet to result a single prosecution for obscenity, despite having generated more than 67,000 citizen complaints. The group, better known for its campaign to have Cosmopolitan removed from supermarket checkout stands, is pushing the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue cases against what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.'"
Biotech

Journal Journal: So Long, Baiji 175

Journal by ozmanjusri
After 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292932,00.html.

"It's a relic species, more than 20 million years old, that persisted through the most amazing kinds of changes in the planet," said marine biologist Barbara Taylor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. "It's been here longer than the Andes Mountains have been on Earth."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - SCO Fiasco Over for Linux, Starting For Solaris? (desktoplinux.com) 1

Submitted by
kripkenstein
kripkenstein writes: "We have just heard that the SCO fiasco is finally going to end for Linux. But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at DesktopLinux.com points out that the favorable result for Linux may cause unpleasant consequences for rival open-source operating system OpenSolaris:

At one time, Sun was an SCO supporter. [...] Sun's Jonathan Schwartz — then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO — said in 2003 that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" to Unix.

SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris. "We have seen what Sun plans to do with OpenSolaris and we have no problem with it," McBride said. "What they're doing protects our Unix intellectual property rights."

Sun now has a little problem, which might become a giant one: SCO never had any Unix IP to sell. Therefore, it seems likely that Solaris and OpenSolaris contains Novell's Unix IP.
It should be noted that we have no idea if Sun doesn't already have an appropriate license from Novell (if they even need one at all). But, if not, we may see some messy business between Sun and Novell, and correspondingly OpenSolaris and Linux."

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