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Julie Amero Sentencing Delayed Again
Oh brother, this is getting to be routine. Julie Amero has hung in limbo since January waiting for the Connecticut DA to either put up ( and put her away for up to 40 years ) or shut up and let her return to picking up the pieces of her shattered life. Her conviction on 4 felony counts came after an unprotected classroom computer running Windows 98 began spewing porn pop-ups.
It’s hard to not feel bad for this woman. As we reported back in February, Julie had porn pop-ups run rampant on her computer during class time. Most reasonable people blame the lack of firewalls and the old OS, but of course the courts don’t see it that way.
Source: Download Squad
Google To Purchase Feedburner?
I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal.
Yes, this is just in rumor status. It would make sense for a lot of reasons though. Most notably the one with regards to Google wanting to own everything.
Source: Vecosys
Hewlett-Packard Garage Given National Landmark Status
Widely considered to be the birth of SIlicon Valley, the garage (along with the rest of the property) was snapped up by HP in 2000 to the tune of $1.7 million, and underwent an extensive restoration in 2004 — apparently one of the steps necessary for it to gain landmark status.
Quite impressive! If you happen to be in the Palo Alto area, you can drive by to check it out. I mean drive by as it’s not open for regular visitors. It’s noted that there are occasional tours however.
Source: Engadget
It’s Official: Starcraft 2 En Route
Over the past few days, Blizzard’s official site has been running a strange promotional story. Each day they’re updating with a different title from the company’s past. Starting with WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, released in 1994, the site’s progress is currently up to World of WarCraft, released in 2004. The only thing left is a glowing question mark.
Blizzard gave themselves away, but it’s sure to be intentional. Heading to Starcraft2.com will redirect you to their official website, which shows a time line of all the games they created. Can you hear that? It’s SC fans the world over cheering in unison.
Update: Now it’s even more official.
Source: IGN
LimeWire In Fight of Its Life
LimeWire, the peer-to-peer software that has turned this mild-mannered engineer into the music industry’s most-wanted geek. According to the NPD Group, in Port Washington, N.Y., LimeWire is the leading peer-to-peer (P2P) program—with 62 percent of the transaction share, ahead of programs such as BitTorrent and Kazaa.
I had assumed that BitTorrent was the predominant file sharing application, but LimeWire has that beat by a landslide. If the RIAA succeeds, it will go the way of the dodo. I am not sure what Judge will take the $150,000 per song violation request that seriously though.
Source: IEEE Spectrum
Vista Hacked Once Again
A hacker group known as NoPE somehow managed to create a cracked Windows Vista DVD that works immediately, out of the box, with no serial number or activation keys required.
Let’s face it. Vista has been out for almost four months now, so it’s no surprise that completely hacked versions will now exist. This is yet another example that nothing will stop the cracker.
Source: Gizmodo
Microsoft Pays $6 Billion For aQuantive
Microsoft is acquiring advertising network aQuantive, the parent company to Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas and DRIVEpm, for roughly $6 billion in an all-cash transaction, the company said this morning. aQuantive is a public company (AQNT) and had a market cap of just $2.8 billion as of yesterday.
The “big-three” seem to be in a buying war. Google bought Doubleclick just last month, then Yahoo! purchased RightMedia in the same month. aQuantive must have some apparent draw for Microsoft to pay twice as much as Google paid for the well known Doubleclick.
Source: Tech Crunch
Andy Warhol Painting Sells For $71.7 Million
A new record was set for work by Andy Warhol when a painting of a car crash sold for $71.7m (£36.3m) in New York. The 1963 painting, Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), depicts an overturned car on fire. It easily beat the previous auction record for work by the pop art pioneer, set last November when a painting of Chairman Mao sold for $17.4m (£8.8m).
How much money or how little self esteem would you need to plop over $71m for a painting? I admit I am no art major, but I certainly can’t see what it is that makes this painting worth so much.
Source: BBC News
iPhone To Be Available At 2000 Stores At Launch
“Apple affirmed its goal of June release for iPhone and expressed confidence in meeting its target of 10 million unit shipments in 2008 given iPhone’s superior user experience, which Apple referred to as ‘transformational,'” Neff wrote in a summary of his discussions.
Apple is not leaving things to chance as it seems most, if not all, AT&T outlets will have the iPhone ready for you at launch. The article doesn’t mention anything about Canada, but since the provider in those neck of the woods is Rogers, you can bet the largest outlets would have them ready for launch.
Source: Apple Insider
Latest AACS Protection Cracked Week Before Release
A new volume key used by high-def films scheduled for release next week has already been cracked. The previous AACS volume key was invalidated by AACS LA after it was exposed and broadly disseminated earlier this month. The latest beta release of SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD program can apparently be used to rip HD DVD discs that use AACS version 3.
Crackers are a persistent bunch. For it to be cracked that quickly, the algorithm or method could not have changed that much. At least HD-DVD owners know that they will not run into any hitches when the new releases use AACS version 3.
Source: Ars Technica
Modded Xbox 360s Banned From Live
Some consumers that try to login to LIVE who we detect have illegally modified their console will get an error code (Status Code: Z: 8015 – 190D) when trying to connect to the service. These users will not have their account automatically banned from LIVE, but they will no longer be able to access the service from the console they modified.
It’s hard to blame Microsoft for this one. Keeping the online playing field fair should only affect the cheaters. It seems that the console banning will affect those with modded firmware, so if you upgraded your hard drive through some hacks, you should be fine.
Source: Gamerscore Blog
Engadget Responds To Apple Mixup
For a reporter, this kind of thing — an internal memo to a company’s employees — is solid gold. You don’t often get inside information more sound than a memo stating plans — and it is not uncommon to see these sorts of internal emails quoted in mainstream newspapers and magazines — but we are still aware of precisely how dangerous it would be to leave any story at that.
I think most people would side with Ryan here. Anyone who is passed such an e-mail with killer news would be foolish to not run with it right away. This is a case of very bad luck.
Source: Engadget
5 Most Outrageous Inventions Ever
Kudos to the guys at TechEBlog for constantly being able to conjure up unique top lists. This one had me chuckling a few times. The craziest invention listed here might be the privacy scarf. When worn, it runs from your face to your monitor, covering every inch of viewable space. The wearable cell phone booth would be my close second.
Source: TechEBlog
Server 2008 Will Be Last 32-Bit Offering
Microsoft’s Alex Heaton has clarified the comment of Bill Laing, on which this story is based. “Bill Laing, a General Manager in the Microsoft Windows Server Division, has been quoted as saying that Windows Server 2008 will be the last 32-bit operating system. Bill is a server guy and indeed Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit server operating system – all future operating systems for server hardware from Microsoft beyond Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit,” Heaton said.
It’s important to note that this is directed towards Microsoft’s server offerings, not the Windows we use on our desktops. It would be hard to understand why post-Vista would not be strictly 64-bit, however.
Source: APC Mag
NYSE Moves To Linux
Francis Feldman, the vice president of the shared data center for Securities Industry Automation Corp. (SIAC), the NYSE’s technology arm, said the bottom line for the migration was the bottom line. He estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions, and though he wouldn’t detail how much that would mean on a yearly basis, he said it is “serious financial savings, very serious.”
It says a lot about Linux when a massive financial institution puts such faith in it in order to save them money. It’s not only reliable, but efficient.
Source: Search DataCenter
Zelda Series Becoming Dull?
Much of the regurgitation of content in Zelda, particularly with locations, characters and music, is related to the series’ huge nostalgic appeal. Zelda would not be Zelda if it didn’t have that main theme tune, right? Or if the master sword went unmentioned, or if the pointy-eared, green tunic-wearing hero never turned up for the event. As a huge fan, would you accept a Zelda game without these things?
This is one of the most difficult things that a developer of an on-going series can face. Zelda is undoubtedly one of -the- classics, so any major change could spell disaster. All I ask is that they don’t force the player to use even more of the Wii motion system.
Source: Computer and Videogames
Why Web Pirates Can’t Be Touched
But there are more practical reasons that sites like Alluc.org get away with what they’re doing. One is that there are simply too many of them to keep track of. Media companies’ lawyers rarely have time to police so many obscure sites, and even when they do, users can always upload the infringing files again. So the flow of copyrighted streaming video continues.
The answer there is simple. There are far too many online pirates and too few lawyers. Once one site is shut down, another is started. It’s a complicated circle.
Source: Forbes
Firefox Gaining Too Much Weight
Why is the elegant, community-built application suddenly behaving badly? In our poll, readers rated Firefox’s mysterious habit of gobbling up every remaining scrap of a computer’s memory their No. 1 gripe about the browser. Complaints of slow performance and instability ranked highly as well.
I have found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with Firefox performance, even though I run a rather speedy system. Personally though, I run into more bugs than I do performance issues, such as when a website will break out of the actual browser, causing it to crash.
I too, would like to go back to the old days of a slimline browser. Of course, extensions are not helping anyone either.
Source: Wired.com
Using Your Drivers License To Pay For Gas
Instead, after entering her driver’s license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she’d be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver’s license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number.
If this catches on, it should benefit gas buyers everywhere. The fact that you could pay with a drivers license might rid the need of another card in your wallet, and because the gas stations will save money, they pass those savings on over to you.
Source: Business Week
Amazon Announces DRM-Free Music Store
Amazon dropped the bomb today by announcing its DRM-free music store. The previously-rumored store will be launched sometime “later this year” and offer unprotected MP3 files for purchase. The Amazon music store, which does not appear to have a name yet, will offer “millions” of songs from over 12,000 record labels.
The only downside right now is that it’s not yet available until later in the year. As long as there are decent bitrates being offered, it sounds like a win win. Of course, the prices have yet to be disclosed.
Source: Ars Technica
Halo 3 To Be Released On Sept. 25
In a year when Hollywood is launching its biggest blockbusters ever, a video game is set to conquer them all. Halo® 3, the final chapter in the groundbreaking Halo trilogy, is set to shatter day-one entertainment sales records when it is released worldwide beginning Tuesday, September 25.
Almost two years after the 360 release, Halo will finally make a debut. I am not too much of a Halo fan, but this new version is looking sharp. For a quick look at some intense multi-player action, be sure to check out the video recently posted at Bungie.
Source: Xbox.com
10 Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid
So here we are in the era of Word’s red-underline “wrong spelling, dumb ass” feature and Outlook’s Always Check Spelling Before Sending option, and still the mistakes proliferate. Catching typos is easy (although not everyone does it). It’s the other stuff — correctly spelled but incorrectly wielded — that sneaks through and makes us look stupid. Here’s a quick review of some of the big ones.
Few listed are Loose for lose, effect for affect and lay for lie. It’s too bad this was not a “popular spelling mistakes” list. I could fill up an entire database with entries.
Source: Scribd
“Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!â€
During this period, my ad was displayed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times. That’s a click-through-rate of 0.16%. My Google Adwords campaign cost me only €17 ($23). That’s €0.04 ($0.06) per click or per potentially compromised machine. 98% of the machines ran Windows.
It’s almost too easy to create a malicious website and then just wait for visitors to become infected. 98% of the users were running Windows… and $0.06 per infection sure doesn’t sound like such a bad deal. Pays to pay attention.
Source: Didier Stevens
Flickr = Censorship Follow-Up
Yesterday, we posted about _Rebekka, a Flickr member who was censored on their site and threatened with a terminated account simply because she complained about a company that was ripping her off. Well, there is more to the story now, but the fact remains, Flickr crossed a line.
Today I have been in contact with OnlyDreemin and asked for clarification on this issue. I was saddened to learn they have received death threats over this matter, proving once again just how passionate people are, no matter how misguided, when it comes to this type of theft. It turns out that _Rebekka is not the only one who has been taken advantage of. This is a portion of an email I received from OnlyDreemin today.
Source: Rusty Lime
New York Sues Dell for Poor Customer Service
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is suing Dell, alleging bait and switch financing tactics, false advertising, and ‘numerous other deceptive business practices relating to their technical support services, promotional financing, rebate offers, and billing and collection activity.’ According to Cuomo himself, ‘At Dell, customer service means no service at all.
Harsh words, but true for the most part. I’ve had good luck, so I can’t complain too much. However, I am sure many will disagree. If I had to complain about anything, it would easily be the fact that customers who pay good money for their computers are forced to dial into a Country where they speak broken English.
Source: Slashdot