‘Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stepped in front of a group of tech executives in Washington this morning to deliver a caffeinated and surprisingly sharp defense of network neutrality. Pledging to use “every ounce of my energy to protect network neutrality,” Wyden had a message for ISPs who might be pondering new charges for various forms of access: “think twice.” If ISPs start down that road, they might soon find that they lose key legal protections including “safe harbors” and tax freedom.
Wyden delivered his ultimatum at a Computer & Communications Industry Association conference in DC, where he cast the entire network neutrality debate in terms of a legislative compromise. Years ago, Congress began protecting ISPs from the twin threats of regulation and taxation; in return, ISPs were expected to deliver an unimpeded connection to the Internet. A move away from a neutral ‘Net would undermine the “very philosophical underpinnings of what we fought for for the last 15 years,” according to Wyden. If that happens, he sees no reason for Congress to continue sheltering ISPs.’
This is a strategy browser based game similar in style to Civilization. You build towns, colonize islands, trade resources in markets, research new technologies and, of course, go to war.
It’s not a bad game at all. 🙂 It doesn’t take much time to play. You can instruct it to build new buildings and then come back hours later when the building is done to start the next one.
I’m currently playing in world Lambda, so you should all come and trade goods with me. But watch out, I might attack you with flame-throwing boats. Ha! 🙂 That’ll teach you.
‘I’m not even laughing! You coulda been raped in the butt!’
(13.3meg Flash video)
see it here »
<Ich> I’ve discovered that people on IRC don’t get offended or riled up by racism
<Ich> nor politically incorrect jokes
<Ich> nor feminism, nazism,
<Ich> nor goatse, or even tubgirl
<Ich> not even jokes about 9/11 get a rise out of anybody
<Ich> but as soon as I tell somebody that macs are better than PC’s, things get ugly
‘As upsets go, it ranks alongside the most extraordinary results in sporting history. When the New York Mets, one of America’s most revered baseball teams, asked their fans to select a new theme song, they could never have predicted that the winner would be a has-been Lancastrian pop star.
But five million people had apparently voted on the Mets’ website for Rick Astley and his 1987 classic, Never Gonna Give You Up. Organisers were, to put it mildly, puzzled. [..]
It was only when internet blogs began buzzing with reports of the Astley success that organisers realised that they had been “rickrolled”.
The Mets, it emerged, had become the latest, and most high-profile, victim of a bizarre web phenomenon aimed at ensuring that Astley’s 1980s single, made by the bubblegum pop producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, is played as often as possible.’
(1.4meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.
The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.
“We are seeing people affected,” says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. “It’s fortunately only a handful. It’s possible that people are just not reporting yet — people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast.”
The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.
The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users’ browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.’
People are cunts.
‘On a frosty Canadian morning, a masked crusader tromps across a parking lot, over a snow bank and onto the sidewalk. He has a loudspeaker strapped ominously to his chest.
He halts, aiming the speaker toward the building across the street. “This is a song by some dead guy,” he says. And then, music booms forth:
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.” [..]
“It’s a bit spooky, innit?” said Rick Astley, the singer who made the song famous in 1987 and who is not dead. With considerable help, including assists from RCA Records, the webmaster of Astley’s U.K. fan site, and his manager at Sony BMG, I tracked down Astley at his home in London last weekend. He spoke for the first time about the phenomenon called Rickrolling, best described by example: You are reading your favorite Hollywood gossip blog and arrive at a link urging you to “Click here for exclusive video of Britney’s latest freakout!!” Click you do, but instead of Britney, it’s a dashing 21-year-old Briton that pops onto the screen. You, sir, have been Rickroll’d.’
Apparently Creative sound cards barely work in Windows vista, and Creative won’t make drivers for them.
“If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.”
Some clever fellow has been writing his own drivers that have make the cards work as they should, but creative aren’t happy about it. Intellectual property and all that.
What follows is many forum pages worth of people telling Creative they’re stupid and claiming they’re never buying a Creative sound card again.
“My god, you guys got some balls on you, either that or you’r all bordeline mad.”
Hilarious. 🙂
‘Two hoax ads on Craigslist cost a Jacksonville man thousands of dollars in property Saturday and could land the pranksters in jail on theft and burglary charges.
The classified ads popped up Saturday afternoon on the Web site saying the owner of a home in the 7900 block of Sterling Creek Road was forced to leave the area suddenly and that his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.
The only problem is that Robert Salisbury has no plans of leaving his home any time soon.
Salisbury, who works as an independent contractor, was at Emigrant Lake when he received a call from a woman had stopped by his house to claim his horse.
On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.’
‘Marriage to a pokemon is nothing strange I feel, you an share love with them just as much as you can with a person.
However it would feel strange to me to marry my partner pokemon Houndoom, because it feels like we are of the same soul and same family, it would be like marrying my clone or something like that!
But i still love him very much <3'
‘Less than a week after losing in the latest U.S. spectrum auction, Google Inc. has started pitching its plan to use TV “white space” — unlicensed and unused airwaves — to provide wireless Internet.
In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission released by Google on Monday, the Internet search giant pressed the government to open up the white space for unlicensed use in hopes of enabling more widespread, affordable Internet access over the airwaves.
“As Google has pointed out previously, the vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilized,” Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media lawyer, wrote in the letter. “Unlike other natural resources, there is no benefit to allowing this spectrum to lie fallow.”
Google said the white space, located between channels 2 and 51 on TV sets that aren’t hooked up to satellite or cable services, offer a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans.”
In addition, opening up the spectrum would “enable much-needed competition to the incumbent broadband service providers,” Whitt wrote.’
‘An 81-year-old man has used an intricate suicide machine to shoot himself remotely, after downloading the plans from the internet.
The Gold Coast man, who lived alone, left notes of his plans and thoughts as he struggled to come to terms with demands by interstate relatives that he move out his home and into care, the Gold Coast Bulletin reports.
He spent hours searching the internet for a way to kill himself, downloaded what he needed and then built a complex machine that would remotely fire a gun. [..]
The machine was attached to a .22 semi-automatic pistol loaded with four bullets.
It was able to fire multiple shots into the man’s head after he activated it.’
‘You are bidding on very elusive and now discarded pieces of Hillary Clinton’s character. According to media reports and her own campaign’s statements, Mrs. Clinton has apparently decided to severe all ties with her class and dignity after her loss in the Iowa primary.
Lucky for us, we were able to find this highly sought after item stuffed in a garbage can at Des Moines International Airport. Apparently, it was discarded minutes before the Clinton camp’s private jet whisked her out of Iowa.
This is truly a one of a kind piece of political memorabilia, as it has barely seen the light of day and it’s mere existence has been the subject of much debate for years.
Along with the class and dignity, you will also receive an 8×10 photo(copy) of a timeless portrait of Hillary with some of her biggest donors and supporters, including but not limited to Mr. Insurance Company, Mr. Drug Company, along with Mr. and Mrs. Ceo of Wall Street.
Good Bidding…and free shipping, too!’
‘Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users. [..]
“It’s monetizing the anarchy,” says Peter Jenner, head of the International Music Manager’s Forum, who plans to join Griffin on the panel.
Griffin’s idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers — something like $5 per user per month — and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists’ popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.’
‘A primary school has been accused of being alarmist for covering up the faces of pupils on its website – apparently to protect them from paedophiles.
Bizarrely, the images have been altered with the type of smiley faces popular during the Acid House dance craze of the 1980s.
The decision was taken at Cann Hall Primary School in Clacton, Essex. [..]
Headmistress Clare Reece said yesterday: “The public nature of the internet is an issue we feel strongly about.
“Not all parents want their children’s picture on there.
“You can’t say what is going to happen with any of those pictures.”‘
This is the 10,000th post on this site. Another arbitrary milestone that amuses me for no real reason.
That is all.
‘Footage of a mother repeatedly raped in front of her screaming children posted on YouTube has sparked calls for the video sharing website to be moderated.
The 25-year-old woman, who said her glass of champagne was spiked by three teenage boys when they visited her London home in November, said the three-minute mobile phone footage of of her horrific ordeal was watched by 600 people.
The woman said she was unable to move, but fully aware during the hours-long attack.
“They just hurt me the whole way through. They had no respect,” she told Sky News.
“Afterwards one pissed on me, like I was nothing. [..]
“Putting (the video) on the internet was an abomination,” the mother said.
“I was raped on film and you could hear my daughter and four-year-old son crying. I cannot understand how any website could show such a thing.”‘
‘A website promoting the town of Mildenhall has been shut down after it unintentionally became the recipient of hundreds of classified emails, including messages detailing the planned flight path of President Bush.
Over more than a decade, www.mildenhall.com received emails detailing all kinds of secret military information that were intended for official Air Force personnel. One detailed where Air Force One could be found in the air during a planned visit to the region by President Bush. Others included battlefield strategy and passwords.
“I was being sent everything from banal chat and jokes, to videos up to 15mb in size,” Gary Sinnott, owner of mildenhall.com, said in this article in EDP 24. “Some were classified, some were personal. A lot had some really sensitive information in them.” [..]
Sinnott says he brought the SNAFU to the attention of Air Force officials but was never able to get the problem fixed. At first, they didn’t seem to take the matter seriously, but eventually, they “went mental,” he said. Officials advised Sinnott to block unrecognizable addresses from his domain and set up an auto-reply reminding people of the address for the official air force base.’
‘I cannot let the irony pass with out commenting. A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube’s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan’s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan’s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.’
‘bloodninja: You gotta do better than that!
bloodninja: Your picture was really bad.
sweet17: HARRRRRRRRRRRR’
‘The Australian Government is contemplating introducing ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ laws for online copyright offenders.
Broadband minister Senator Steven Conroy told the Sydney Morning Herald that such an approach, with ISPs being required to first warn offending users, then suspend their access temporarily, then cut off access altogether, was being seriously considered by the government.
The proposal is said to mirror similar suggested policies in Britain, though the details leaked of that plan suggest that the exact model for prosecution hasn’t been finalised. Using a system that mimics baseball also seems a tad un-Australian, though presumably being bowled out on the first offence would be even less popular.’
‘The “Cult of the Dead Cow” hacker group – cDc for short – has published a tool that searches for vulnerabilities and private information across the web. Using well-chosen Google search queries, Goolag Scan discovers links to vulnerable web applications, back doors, or documents inadvertently put on the internet that contain sensitive information.
This kind of “Google hacking” is already well known: a hacker using the pseudonym Johnny has already published quite a collection of these “Google Hacks” or “Google Dorks” on his web site ihackstuff. What cDc has done is create an automated tool that allows an unskilled hacker to use these same techniques. [..]
Goolag Scan is cDc’s latest attempt to rub salt into the wound. “Private individuals, firms, and even governments are putting more and more stuff on the web, and nobody cares what it means for security”, explained cDc member Oxblood Ruffin to heise Security. cDc says it is publishing this tool now to let everyone check their own web site for vulnerabilities, and do something about them.’
‘Reminiscent of the “good” Nachi worm unleashed in 2003, Microsoft researchers have touted the idea of “friendly worms” to issue software patches, which has been labelled “stupid” by security experts.
In a research paper entitled Microsoft’s Sampling Strategies for Epidemic-Style Information Dissemination, the software giant looks at optimising the dissemination of data over a large-scale network by sampling computers in a subnet or IP address block — a similar technique to that used by worms — to identify computers that contain a known vulnerability.
“My focus is fundamental research on improving the efficiency of data distribution of all types across networks, and isn’t limited to certain scenarios or types of data but investigating underlying networking techniques,” Milan Vojnovic, researcher at Microsoft UK, told ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet.co.uk. [..]
However security expert Bruce Schneier said the concept of using worm-like techniques to distribute software patches is “stupid”.
“Patching other people’s machines without annoying them is good; patching other people’s machines without their consent is not,” wrote Schneier in a blog post.’
‘Hey gang. You may have noticed that I recently joined The Facebook. Maybe we are friends? Travolta convinced me to join, so I made him my “Top Friend.” However, I am only number four on his “Top Friends” list, behind Tom Cruise, L. Ron Hubbard, and a leg of lamb he has recently become fond of.
Newspapers tell me that social networks like The Facebook are revolutionizing the way we communicate with one another. I tend to agree. Never before have we had so many different ways to let tangential acquaintances know that we are interested in having sex with them.
For instance, if I post something like “Where have you been all my life?” or “Happy birthday!” on your Facebook Wall, that means that I would likely be interested in penetrating you in any number of different ways. And I can think of a lot of ways, because I’m Christopher Walken.’
‘A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.
F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.
Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized.’
‘Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, is refusing to remove medieval artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, despite being flooded with complaints from Muslims demanding the images be deleted.
More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad. But the defiant editors of the encyclopaedia insist they will not bow to pressure and say anyone objecting to the controversial images can simply adjust their computers so they do not have to look at them.’
‘A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who’s the father.
Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names, a spokesman for a court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said Wednesday.
“The woman wanted to discover which one of the men had made her pregnant,” the spokesman said. “So she needed their contact details. Of course, if they’re not willing to go along with the gene test, she’ll have to take them to court.”‘
So, the war on $cientology continues with real life protests meant to be happening all over the world at the moment.
The internet is pretty funny some times. 🙂
For now, here’s a video of 100’s of people marching and yelling in Sydney and Melbourne..
There should be more videos if there’s more protesting. Hilarious. 🙂
(1.9 and 17meg Flash videos)
see it here »
‘The world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracking site, The Pirate Bay, won’t be going to Davy Jones’ Locker, even if its four operators are convicted of facilitating copyright infringement, one of the defendants said in an interview Friday with THREAT LEVEL.
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the four Swedes charged in Sweden on Thursday, said in a telephone interview that the site has set up a clandestine, double-blind operation with its servers spread throughout the world — and out of reach of the Swedish authorities.
“The Pirate Bay is not in Sweden,” the 29-year-old Kolmisoppi said.
Where are the servers?
“It’s a distributed system. We don’t know where the servers are. We gave them to people we trust and they don’t know it’s The Pirate Bay,” Kolmisoppi said. “They then rent locations and space for them somewhere else. It could be three countries. It could be six countries. We don’t want to know because then you’ll have a problem shutting them down.”‘
