[OT] Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US – Agency France-Presse

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday. “We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
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Privacy commissioner slams Ticketmaster for collecting private info – Edmonton Journal

Canadians buying tickets through Ticketmaster will no longer have to divulge their e-mail address after the company was scolded for collecting the personal information by Alberta’s privacy commission. The commission found Ticketmaster was unreasonably collecting personal information from customers so entertainment and sports event organizers could use the data for marketing.
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U.K. government loses pensioner data – CNET News

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, the U.K. government department responsible for collecting taxes and other services, has admitted losing the personal details of more than 6,500 people who file pension claims. The details were lost at an office of HMRC in Cardiff, the capital and largest city in Wales, after a data cartridge went missing in September, an HMRC spokesperson said on Tuesday. The cartridge had been sent to the Cardiff office by Countrywide Assured, a life insurance and pensions company.
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Google’s DoubleClick deal gains US approval – Times Online

Google, the US online search giant, has gained US regulatory approval for its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick but is still waiting on Europe to give its go-ahead to seal the deal. The European Commission (EC) has set a deadline of April 2 to finish its review of the transaction after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accepted arguments from Google that a combination with DoubleClick will not stifle online advertising.
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More teens move their social lives online – Mercury News

The Internet is becoming ever more central to the social life of America’s teenagers, especially girls, with greater numbers communicating with friends and creating content on sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, a new survey shows. And when not online, they are gabbing more on cellphones and exchanging text messages. To which America’s teens may say: “Well, duh.”
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eBay to change its fee structure – Heise Online

Internet auctioneer eBay intends to respond to sellers’ complaints by changing its fee structures, reports German Focus magazine. “We do listen to our sellers and intend to adapt our fee structures in the coming year”, eBay Deutschland’s boss Stefan Groß-Selbeck was reported to comment. He had last announced a revision of fee structures in September. The move was sparked by decreasing numbers of visitors and new customers. In addition, two thirds of the almost 248 million registered users internationally were non-active. Between October 2006 and September 2007, 53,000 sellers worldwide had closed their eBay shops. This was mainly due to the high fees, which can amount to several thousand euros a month.
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I Want My MPC: The ‘Multi-Touch PC’ Era Dawns – Raw Touch

Apple’s got it, but you can’t do much with it. Microsoft’s got it, but you can’t afford it. And Dell’s got it, but you can’t have it yet.Everyone’s talking about multi-touch. But what is it, exactly, and why should you care?
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[OT] Italy: Swedish Christmas gingerbread ‘toxic’ – The Local

An EU-wide warning has been issued by Italy over Swedish gingerbread, a Christmas speciality. The Italians claim the gingerbread, or pepparkakor as the biscuits are known, contain higher levels of the toxin coumarin than permitted under European rules.

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Paul Allen Applies to Bid in U.S. Wireless Auction – Reuters

A venture led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has applied to bid in an upcoming U.S. auction of coveted wireless airwaves, according to auction documents released late on Tuesday. Allen was listed with an entity called Vulcan Spectrum LLC among the applicants who filed to bid in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auction of 700-megahertz spectrum, which is scheduled to begin on January 24. Allen heads an investment company called Vulcan Capital and is also a majority shareholder in U.S. cable operator Charter Communications.
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Turn In A Software Pirate, Collect $500 – InformationWeek

A tech industry group is offering consumers up to $500 for reporting software counterfeiters who sell their goods on online auction sites like eBay. Under the plan offered by the Software & Information Industry Association, anyone who unwittingly buys fake software from an online fraudster can receive up to $500 if they report the scam. The SIIA said it hopes tipsters will use the reward money to buy legitimate, replacement software, but under the program rules they’re free to use it any way they want.
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David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists – and Megastars – Wired

Full disclosure: I used to own a record label. That label, Luaka Bop, still exists, though I’m no longer involved in running it. My last record came out through Nonesuch, a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group empire. I have also released music through indie labels like Thrill Jockey, and I have pressed up CDs and sold them on tour. I tour every few years, and I don’t see it as simply a loss leader for CD sales. So I have seen this business from both sides. I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I’m not the only one who can say that.
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Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download – Mozilla

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only. Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for download. This is the tenth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.
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Facebook accuses MP of impersonating MP – The Register

A Liberal Democrat MP suffered the online humiliation of having his Facebook account suspended after the social networking site decided he “wasn’t real”. Steve Webb, 42, member of parliament for Northavon, Gloucestershire, tried to log on on Monday but was told “his account had been disabled following complaints he didn’t really exist …..”
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Google-DoubleClick merger opponents threaten legal action – Mercury News

A coalition opposing Google’s $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick renewed charges of conflicts and threatened possible legal action over a decision by a regulatory chairman not to recuse herself from reviewing the merger. In a conference call with reporters today, representatives of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, said they are considering filing a lawsuit in response to a decision last week by Deborah Platt Majoras, chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Majoras denied a request from the groups that she recuse herself from the merger review after the groups learned that her husband, John M. Majoras, is a partner who specializes in antitrust at the Jones Day law firm representing DoubleClick.
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Video Professor Drops Subpoena, Goes After Wikipedia Users – ConsumerAffairs.Com

Video Professor, Inc. has dropped its subpoena asking Infomercialscams.com for the names of 100 John Does who anonymously posted their gripes about the computer lessons but still has an active lawsuit against ‘defamatory anonymous poster s’ and is now trying to unmask the identities of Wikipedia posters. Video Professor (VPI), which hawks its computer lessons on light-night TV, dropped a similar subpoena against RipoffReport.com but is still has an active ‘vague’ lawsuit against anonymous Internet posters, said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney with nonprofit consumer rights organization Public Citizen, Public Citizen provided legal assistance to Infomercialscams.com in its fight to keep its posters anonymous.
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p2pnet news | Freedom:- Santa has been spying on kids for centuries but now, his these days, his job is easier, thanks to modern technology.

“At Santa Claus Office in Finland, St. Nick’s elves give EPC Gen 2 tags to visiting boys and girls, who wear them so he knows who’s naughty or nice.”

EPC Gen 2 tags translates to RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification), aka spy tags.

And No. This isn’t a p2pnet Christmas spoof. It’s the intro to an RFID Journal story which goes on:

“Entry into Santa’s office is free. Individuals and groups can register at the front desk and receive a plastic souvenir card, about the size of a business card, which hangs by a ribbon around a person’s neck. At this point, a multilingual elf collects information on whether Laura has been naughty or nice, and what Wolfgang wants for Christmas.
“This data is then stored in middleware and linked to the unique ID contained in the EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID tag visitors attach to their cards.”

Data “provided voluntarily about each visitor” shows on a screen inside a “big golden book that Santa keeps on his lap”.
And that’s how he knows, “if Cynthia brushed her teeth this morning, or if Paul was a good boy, allowing St. Nick to personalize the experience for the children,” adds the story.

It doesn’t say what happens to the data when the kids have gone home.

BUT —- you can spy on Santa too!

Beginning at 2:00 am MTN on Christmas Eve, track him live via NORAD as he makes zooms around the world delivering prezzies to kids identified as being worthy recipients.

Also See:

RFID Journal -
Ho, Ho, Ho, Santa Uses RFID, December 17, 2007
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Emi boss wants more rights from artists – Financial Mail

Emi’s new owner, financier Guy Hands, wants artists signing to his label to agree to multiple rights contracts, allowing the music giant to profit from all aspects of their careers, from CDs to T-shirt sales. Traditionally, music companies sign artists to recorded music contracts and they may also sign music publishing deals that entitle them to payment whenever the music is used. However, Hands is understood to be planning to boost the number of multiple rights deals – sometimes called 360 degree deals. These mean the company will also take a share of tour and merchandising revenues.
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Firefox detention story was a hoax – The Inquirer

A school, where it was claimed that a boy was given a detention for using Firefox, has issued a statement denying the story. A school detention notice, which recounts the story of a kid who was in hot water for using Firefox instead of Internet Exploder, was posted on the World Wide Wibble. High School Principal John Scudder said the uploaded letter was an altered version of a detention letter sent to a student.
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XM settles patent lawsuit with Universal Music – Reuters

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc said on Monday it has settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and hopes to reach deals with the other music companies. The dispute centers around XM’s portable “Inno” device, which can store and record music from satellite radio. Major music labels including Vivendi’s Universal, Warner Music Group Corp, EMI Group Plc and Sony BMG sued XM in May 2006, saying the Inno infringes copyrights and transforms a passive radio experience into the equivalent of a digital download service such as Apple Inc’s iTunes.
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Cell Phone Bills Higher Than Land Line Bills, For the First Time Ever – Switched

If you have a cell phone (and we’re pretty sure you do), have you thought about giving up your land line (a.k.a. a traditional phone that plugs into the wall)? Maybe you’ve already ditched your old talker. If you haven’t, consider how much you spend on your cell phone plan versus your land line. If you’re like us, you’ve either totally given up on a wired line to your home, or the bills from your cell provider make those wired bills look somewhat paltry. As it turns out, we’re not alone — according to recent government data, U.S. household spending on cell phone plans will exceed spending on land lines for the first time in 2007.
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EU lawmakers want regulators to examine privacy in Google-DoubleClick deal – Associated Press

In an unusual move, European lawmakers will press fiercely independent antitrust regulators next month to look at data privacy issues surrounding Google Inc.’s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick. The $3.1 billion deal has already spurred rivals and consumer advocates to complain about the control they say it would give Google, the world’s largest search engine, over Internet advertising and personal information.
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Tech giants form tiny chip group – BBC

Seven of the world’s leading chip makers are collaborating on chips which contain transistors with features just 32 billionths of a metre wide. IBM, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale have formed the alliance to cut development costs.
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Majority Of Americans On Google Docs: ‘What You Talkin Bout Willis?’ – TechCrunch

A new survey by NPD has found that the 73% of Americans have never heard of Google Docs and other online office applications, but perhaps worst still only 0.5% of respondents have abandoned desktop office applications for an online alternative. 94% of Americans have never tried a web based productivity suite. To be fair though, the survey was of ‘600 PC users’ so it (possibly) didn’t count Mac users for example, nor really ask enough people to even be a statistically valid survey of computer users.
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IFPI Pressure Leads Police to Detain File-Sharing Students – TorrentFreak

As part of its anti-piracy activities within ‘Operation Premiere’, Czech police raided a students dormitory in the Prague-Strahov area. As well confiscating many terabytes of pirate material, police detained seven students who they claim form part of Internet pirate network. They are facing 5 years in jail. Following an investigation and pressure by the IFPI, Czech police carried out raids as part of ‘Operation Premiere’ – action against alleged P2P internet pirates. According to a report and additional information from the Prague Municipal Police website, the raids were carried out on the Prague-Strahov dormitory which is usually inhabited by students from the Czech Technical University in Prague. The police seized a large amount of computer related equipment and tens of terabytes of pirated material – otherwise known as ‘warez’ – worth an estimated several millions of dollars.
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High School Student In Detention For Using Firefox – dissfunktional

An 11th grader at Big Spring High School in Newville, PA has 2 hours of detention on December 19th for using the Firefox Browser.
In the letter they call firefox ‘foxfire.exe’.
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Can Ribbit Finally Bring Web & Voice Together? – Om Malik

For a long time, I had this belief that the worlds of web and voice would converge, unleashing upon us a whole new class of voice-web mashups. Instead all we got were some marginal ideas and rarely-used widgets. Voice, in particular, remained too difficult for web developers. In the end the two turned out to be awkward roommates, never really comfortable with each other. Lately, VoIP insiders have started talking about taking a platform approach – a way to add voice to web applications easily while leaving complex tasks such as peering and billing in the background. Ribbit, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup, is the latest to join the fray, and it has perhaps the most audacious (and equally risky) strategy for bringing web and voice together. If you strip away the hype (meaningless blather such as the company’s claim of being Silicon Valley’s first phone company), what they have done is built their own Class 5 softswitch and back-end infrastructure and married it to front-end technologies like Flash and Flex from Adobe Systems (ADBE).
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Watchdog looks into X Factor vote – BBC

Media watchdog Ofcom is looking into complaints from X Factor viewers who claim they could not phone in to vote for eventual runner-up Rhydian Roberts. The Welsh singer was hot favourite to win, but narrowly lost to Leon Jackson on Saturday night’s ITV1 show. Ofcom has had 80 viewers’ complaints, and some fans told the BBC they tried and failed to vote up to 10 times.
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Crackdown on Child Pornography – Washington Post Staff Writer

Lewd photographs of children were disappearing from adult bookstores. Child porn magazines in plain brown envelopes were no longer reaching customers through the mail. It was the early 1990s, and experts believed that federal law enforcement efforts were ending child pornography. “We thought this was one of those rare forms of social deviance, of criminal behavior, that had been eradicated,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “Except for a fixated group of hard-core pedophiles, we thought it was gone.”
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Spanish police arrest 63 in Net child porn swoop – Reuters

Spanish police said on Sunday they had arrested 63 people across the country in five investigations into child pornography being posted, viewed and paid for on the Internet. It is the second huge swoop this year after police arrested 66 people on charges of child pornography in July.
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Censors battle for Manhunt 2 ban – BBC

British censors are seeking a judicial review to block the sale of controversial video game Manhunt 2. Last week developer Rockstar won a hearing at the Video Appeals Committee to have a ban on the title lifted. But the British Board of Film Classification said that decision was based on an incorrect interpretation of the Video Recordings Act.
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Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust – New York Times

When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew S. Grove would often talk about the software spiral — the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power. At Microsoft, from top, Craig Mundie, Burton Smith and Dan Reed are working on the next generation of computing power. The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time.

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The Most Dangerous Appliance In Your Home: The Television – hypnosiscontrol.com

The idol who we sit and worship every day in our living rooms is in fact a dastardly manipulative double agent. TV, the boob tube, television, telly, the babysitter, (or whatever you want to call it) is more than just a portal into daily news and entertainment. TV is Big Brother. The average American watches more than 4 hours of TV per day.
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First Russian BitTorrent User Sentenced, Activists Call For Support – TorrentFreak

With rampant piracy across much of Russia, one could be forgiven for thinking they don`t care about copyright there. That assertion is now up for debate as the first BitTorrent user in Russia is sentenced for illegally distributing software, with anti-copyright activists calling for people to jump on a torrent in protest. According to a report from rusya.ru, a man has made history by becoming the first person in Russia to be convicted for using BitTorrent to infringe copyright. Sergei Avramov appeared in court in the city of Rostov-on-Don, accused of the illegal distribution of pirated software. Despite his actions being strictly not-for-profit, he was found guilty and received a 12 month suspended sentence.
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The Promise of Social Network Advertising – eMarketer

This year, 37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011. “The continued growth of social networking seems assured, says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage, “unless teens stop social networking as they become adults.”
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DOJ Blasts New ‘Copyright Czar’ Bill – PC Magazine

The Department of Justice on Thursday slammed intellectual property legislation that would re-organize its IP enforcement structure, calling it unnecessary and counterproductive to the work it has already accomplished. “We have a current structure that works quite effectively,” Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers last week introduced H.R. 4279, which would further crack down on intellectual property violations, and create several new government positions with the power to enforce the new law. It is intended to preserve American economic prosperity, according to sponsors.
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Cracking open the cybercrime economy – ZDNet UK

“Over the years, the criminal elements, the ones who are making money, making millions out of all this online crime, are just getting stronger and stronger. I don’t think we are really winning this war.” As director of antivirus research for F-Secure, you might expect Mikko Hypponen to overplay the seriousness of the situation. But according to the Finnish company, during 2007 the number of samples of malicious code on its database doubled, having taken 20 years to reach the size it was at the beginning of this year.
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Armed forces recruit on YouTube – BBC

Videos of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and others designed for recruitment purposes are being posted by the armed forces on YouTube. The Ministry of Defence (MoD), Royal Navy and Royal Air Force have channels on the popular internet site. RAF Lossiemouth-based gunners also regularly updated an online Afghan diary during a six-month tour. The Ministry of Defence said it was one of the first government departments to recognise the potential of YouTube.
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American hip hop star arrested in Stockholm – The Local

American hip hop artist Ju-Ju from The Beatnuts was taken into custody in Stockholm on Thursday night following an alleged assault at the city’s Debaser The musician was arrested after a fight broke out when the band had finished playing. Nobody was seriously injured in the fight. “The suspect denies committing an offence,” police spokesman Bo Olsson told The Local.
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Comcast Sues The NFL For Breach Of Contract – Consumerist

Comcast has sued the NFL for breach of contract alleging that the league is breaking its contract with Comcast by encouraging the cable giant’s customers to switch to other providers. This suit follows a cease and desist letter sent by Comcast warning the NFL to stop trying to coerce the company into placing the channel on a different package. A previous lawsuit decided that Comcast had the right to offer the channel on whatever package it wanted, including a premium “sports tier.”
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Writers’ Strike: Boon or Doom for Torrent Sites? – P2P Blog

TV execs aren`t the only ones feeling the effects of the writers` strike. If repeats and reality programming end up ruling the airwaves in the coming months, a plethora of web sites devoted to hit shows like 24 or Lost could also be affected, notably torrent sites and other P2P communities that draw a sizable audience of TV show fans from all around the world looking for their latest fix. The question is: How will they be affected, exactly? For better, or for worse?
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Judge Affirms $30M Judgment Against EBay – Associated Press

A federal judge has approved a roughly $30 million judgment against eBay Inc. more than four years after a jury concluded the online auctioneer had infringed on the patent of a small Virginia company. U.S. District Court Judge Jerome Friedman’s certification, issued late Tuesday in Virginia, edges Great Falls, Va.-based MercExchange LLC a step closer to cashing in on its long-running battle against one of the Internet’s powerhouses.
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Bamboo PC is eco-friendly and looks nice too – Reuters

Back in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I, an early personal computer that consisted of a circuit board in a simple wooden box. Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and other computer makers went on to make advanced PCs in metal and plastic casings, but now Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) is finding potential beauty — and sales — in an eco-friendly notebook PC encased in another natural material: bamboo.
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Auction for ‘digital dividend’ – BBC

A multi-billion pound auction of airwaves for a new wave of digital services has been launched by Ofcom. More digital TV channels and ultra-fast wireless broadband could be rolled out over the next decade as radio spectrum is freed up by the digital switchover. The regulator has said that the market will decide how the spectrum is used with an open auction. The BBC, Channel 4 and ITV had pressed for ring-fenced space for high definition TV over Freeview.
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IBM donates a supercomputer to Africa – Heise Online

IBM wishes to spark scientific and socio-economic development in Africa with its donation to the Meraka Institute in Pretoria, South Africa of a Blue Gene/P worth $2 million. At 14 teraflops, the system will be the fastest on the continent, eclipsing even the cluster in Egypt – currently 151 in the top 500 – which was also supplied by IBM.
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Rare JK Rowling book fetches £2m – BBC

A handwritten copy of author JK Rowling’s new book, which will never be published, has sold for almost £2m. Rowling wrote and illustrated seven copies of the Tales of Beedle the Bard, but is offering only one for sale. The collection of fairy tales, which is mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, had been expected to fetch up to £50,000 by Sotheby’s. All the proceeds of the auction in London are being donated to Rowling’s charity Children’s Voice.
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Dramatic Price Cuts for Blu-ray Players – IMDb

Retailers have reportedly been chopping the price of Samsung’s Blu-ray DVD player at record speed. The website High-Def Disc News noted that just days after several retailers cut the price of the player by $100 to $299, Costco dropped it still further to $279.99. Then on Tuesday, it said, Amazon cut it still further – to just $269.98. That puts the price within $70 of the lowest price being asked for Toshiba’s HD DVD players, which are now being offered by some retailers for $199.98.
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Women are top tech shoppers – Times Online

Women will overtake men as the primary buyers of electronic gadgets for the first time this Christmas, according to department-store chain John Lewis. Helen Keppel Compton at the company told The Sunday Times that a tipping point had been reached this winter and women would be responsible for between 50% and 60% of all purchases in its electrical departments during the festive season.
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Report Advises Caution Shoppping Online – Associated Press

Some popular online retailers don’t do enough either to inform customers how their personal information could be used or to give them control over it, according to a public interest research group. CyberStreetSmart.org, a project of the New York Public Interest Research Group, has issued “screen door” and “steel door” awards to retail Web sites after evaluating their protections for customers’ personal information. The group reviewed the privacy policies of 484 online retailers in October and November. Disneyshopping.com and homedepot.com received screen door awards, meaning they’re not doing such a good job. Sites that won steel door awards include netflix.com, ralphlauren.com and rocawear.com.
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Facebook’s viral marketing catches a bug – Valleywag

Developers write apps for Facebook not because it’s a wonder of modern software, but because it lets them tap into Facebook’s 60 million users. The result: a surfeit of zombie bites and Scrabble challenges, spread, in Valley parlance, “virally” from friend to friend on the social network. Last night, Facebook proved antiviral. A bug deleted all pending requests from friends to add an application. “Anyone else seeing that invitation acceptance numbers are down significantly over the past 7-8 hours?” one developer wrote in a Facebook forum. “Since about midnight PT, our signup numbers through requests/invites are about 40% lower than we’d normally expect.” Facebook’s response? An emoticon! “Hey, there appears to have been some data loss last night. It seems (ironically) that a script that was supposed to be backing things up and cleaning out old platform requests that were already acted on actually went haywire and instead deleted new requests that were not supposed to have been deleted. ”
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Websites Made Chumps by Phony Trump Story – UMDb

A recent story that Donald Trump left a waiter at Santa Monica restaurant The Buffalo Club a $10,000 tip was a hoax fabricated by a new website, Derober.com, the Los Angeles Times disclosed today (Tuesday). Among outlets carrying the phony report were FoxNews.com, Defamer, E! Online, and the Huffington Post.
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World’s first ‘newspaper’ phone launched in Sweden – The Local

Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter said on Wednesday it had launched the world’s first “newspaper” telephone: a mobile phone offering the daily’s subscribers direct and free access to its website.
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United Online Cancels Classmates IPO – paidContent

So much for the first pureplay social networking IPO in U.S.: United Online (NSDQ: UNTD) has canceled the proposed IPO of its Classmates.com social networking unit. The company originally announced its plan to hive off the company in August, and in late November it said it expected to raise $177.7 million via the sale. But, citing the standard market conditions, the company now says that such a move wouldn`t be in the interest of stockholders. In other words, the interest wasn’t there.
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Microsoft swoop hands Multimap founder $25m – Times Online

The deal, understood to be worth a little more than $50 million (£24.4m), will further expand Microsoft`s fast-growing footprint in online and mobile advertising. It will also deliver a windfall worth about $25 million to Sean Phelan, the Multimap founder, who owns a majority stake in the business.
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Behind The Scenes of the Swiss DMCA Fight – TorrentFreak

Whilst America is often considered by many to be the home of overreaching and overprotective copyright laws, the Swiss government has decided that it can do better, and so quietly passed a bill in an attempt to catch the US. However, the Swiss won`t accept such a law without a fight. Swiss DMCA referendum logoThe law, dubbed by many to be a `Swiss DMCA` was slipped through on October 5th with little fanfare, and overwhelming legislative support. Annoyed, Florian Bösch started the `No Swiss DMCA` campaign to do something about it. Unusually, Mr Bösch is actually a coder that works on DRM systems. He agreed to talk with TorrentFreak to discuss the law and his aims.
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IIA ready for new censor battle – Australian IT

Australia’s peak internet industry group will this week launch its bid to force Labor to rethink its internet filtering policy.
Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos said the organisation would meet Labor’s new Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy this week to brief the federal Government on mandatory ISP-level internet filtering. “It’s premature to say anything more at the moment, except that there are concerns in the industry on implementing anything that could be unworkable,” Mr Coroneos said.
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p2pnet news views | RIAA News:- Making MP3s from personal music files and putting them in a shared folder is in and of itself a copyright infringement!

At least, that’s what Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA is trying to claim, as p2pnet posted on Tuesday.

“It’s always amazing and discouraging to realize how many morons there are out there downloading and copying with not a clue to what copyright even means, or how it works, or why in fact YOU DON’T ‘own’ the music when you purchase your right to have and enjoy a copy of it,” says Sam I Am Says in a Reader’s Write (and possible copyright infringement of a Dr Seuss character).

He goes on:

It’s not even remotely like the ownership of a car. What imbeciles. Read the law and do your homework to understand it so you can deliberate here intelligently or just STFU.

It’s enjoyable to watch the RIAA lawyers methodically take you pathetic bunch of pizza delivery boy whiners off to court. It ain’t gonna end with YOU getting the upper hand, THAT’s for sure. Not while the Feds, law enforcement and the RIAA boys are all thinking alike and until you trolls figure out a way to change the law, that’s always gonna be bad for you. Download and don’t get caught? A little pilfered music and an ethical breach. No big deal. BUT. Get caught? Settle up with your checkbook or YOUR life is now in the shitter right where it deserves to be. Sleep tight.

Responds a second post:

@Sam: you’re the moron for not thinking deeper about your post. Had you thoroughly thought about it you might have realized two things:

1. ‘downloading’ a song file is not illegal (in America) regardless of what you or the RIAA/MPAA might try to keep pushing on the masses.

2. the ‘fair use’ provision of the Copyright Act clearly and unequivocally states that the PURPOSE for the use of a copyrighted item is what’s important.

3. and just for kicks, there is no law that says ‘making available for download’ is illegal either.

The travesty of all of these extortions/threats/trial is that no one has brought this up yet.

I am fully legal to ‘illegally download a song file’ [RIAA words] and publish a website that contains a portion of that song file and even create a derivative work based on that song file (can you say ’sampling’?) without paying royalties and without paying the RIAA for doing so. That is the law. Zero ambiguity.

Thus, without a trial that seeks the facts behind the REASON a file was downloaded and showing how it was USED illegally, there can be no basis for a lawsuit related to downloading song files. In fact, there is not even standing to file a lawsuit in the first place since there has to be a law broken in order to bring charges. Sheesh. And the Sony Bono Copyright Extension that went into effect was a farce, a travesty of the law, and should never have been allowed to go through except that Disney paid off certain congress members to get it passed to protect their income from the Mickey Mouse empire. That is also a fact.

‘He who has the gold makes the rules’ (at least in America)

Stay tuned.

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Also See:
p2pnet – It`s illegal to rip CDs: RIAA, December 11, 2007

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p2pnet news | Games:-The Merriam-Webster Word of the Year is … unpronounceable.

That’s how HeraldNet sums up the dictionary’s selection of ‘w00t’ as THE word for 2007.

It’s a, “hybrid of letters and numbers, used by gamers as an expression of happiness, joy, and excitement,” explains the Wikipedia.

But as SPOnG sees it:

“In the United States this week makers of a famous dictionary successfully managed to get a whole bunch of young gaming-type people to visit its website.

“It achieved this by placing a word at the top of its list of ‘Words of 2007′ – brilliant!”

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines w00t:

w00t (interjection) expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”

w00t! I won the contest

W00t!
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Also See:

HeraldNet – The Word of the Year is … unpronounceable, December 12, 2007

SPOnG – Dictionary Gets Youngsters to Its Website: w00t!, December 12, 2007

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p2pnet news | TV:- NBC Universal and SanDisk say they’re collaborating on TakeTV, a web video player which can be used to hook computers up to TV sets.

At $100 for a four gig version and $150 for eight gigs, it makes Apple TV’s entry-level $300 look silly.

But as usual, the companies are making an effort to ham-string Fair Use by loading it with DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control.

SanDisk, “plans to use their security expertise in collaboration with NBC Universal to implement a series of measures to protect NBC Universal content, including partnering to explore the implementation of watermarking and filtering technology solutions,” say the two companies in a statement.

“NBC U says SanDisk offered it everything that Apple wouldn’t, including flexible pricing and collaboration with NBC U on copyright protection,” says Silicon Valley Insider.

And ‘product’ is, also as usual, expensive.

“NBC U will have control over the wholesale price of its shows; consumer pricing will range from $0.99 to $3.99 for TV episodes. There will also be bundles of shows, and other marketing wingdings that iTunes didn’t want to accommodate, the companies say,” according to the story.

You can check it out at www.fanfare.com but be careful: when we went for a look, it jammed the Firefox tab.

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Also See:
statement – NBC Universal to Provide TV Content for SanDisk`s Web-Based Service Fanfare, December 11, 2007
Silicon Valley Insider – SanDisk Gives NBCU What Apple Wouldn’t: Pricing Flexibility, December 11, 2007

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p2pnet news | Product News:- Please observe closely the image to your right, “showing the home page for Google Canada,” blogs Lauren Weinstein, going on:

Does anything seem a bit odd about the normally clean and pristine Google front door? What the blazes is all that ISP-related verbiage taking up the top third of the page? Why would Google ever give an ISP permission to muddy up Google’s public face that way?

What indeed?

And the answer is, of course, Google had given no such permission

The day before, “The topic has arisen of ISPs spying on Web traffic and using the derived data to insert their own ads into the user data stream,” Weinstein had posted, continuing:

“In my view, such behaviors by any conventional general purpose ISP with their paid subscribers is unacceptable, even when opt-outs of some sort are supposedly available (from the spying or just from the ads? – Not clear!) This appears to represent a clear violation of basic network neutrality principles.”

He goes on to cite a “fairly new patent application” which “demonstrates the depth of intrusion that has been contemplated for the associated enabling devices,” namely, United States Patent 20070233857 (Application):

Abstract:

A network device for monitoring and modifying data traffic between a client device and a server device is disclosed. The network device is configured to provide targeted advertisements to a user based on some or all of the data traffics generated the user. Different from a proxy server, the network device operates transparently from both perspectives of a computer being used by the user and a website being visited by the user. The network device is disposed in line between the computer and the network so that all data traffics are examined. The data packets exchanged between a computer and a website being visited are altered or modified in such a way that the head of the packets remains largely intact while the payloads of the packets are changed to suit the need of delivering transparently the targeted commercial information.

In his Canadian Google item, the ISP in question is Rogers and it, “simply decided to modify Google on their own, demonstrating a real world example of ISPs Spying On and Modifying Web Traffic that I was discussing yesterday,” says Weinstein, adding:

“While Rogers’ current planned use for this Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and modification system (reportedly manufactured by ‘In-Browser Marketing’ firm ‘PerfTech’) is for account status messages, it’s obvious that commercial ISP content and ads (beyond the ISP logos already displayed) would be trivial to introduce through this mechanism. By the way, PerfTech is even using Google for one of its linked promotional examples on the PerfTech home page. I wonder if they bothered to ask Google’s permission for that?

“Anyway, the fact that there’s an opt-out present for future account status messages on the Rogers page insertions hardly changes the extremely problematic and network neutrality unfriendly aspects of such situations, as I noted in yesterday’s blog item.

“Question: Will Web service providers such as Google and many others, who have spent vast resources in both talent and treasure creating and maintaining their services’ appearances and quality, be willing to stand still while any ISP intercepts and modifies their traffic in such a manner?

“I can’t say for sure of course, but I suspect that a likely reaction might be discerned by paraphrasing Bugs Bunny: ‘Eh, he don’t know them very well, do he?’ ”

Definitely stay tuned.

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Also See:
Lauren Weinstein – Google Hijacked — Major ISP to Intercept and Modify Web Pages, December 8, 2007
posted – ISPs Spying On and Modifying Web Traffic — With Patent Application, December 7, 2007

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Next-Gen DVD War Turning Blu (-ray); HD DVD is Next Betamax – Pali Research

Our forecast (in late 2006, click here) that 2007 would be the first year consumer spending on DVDs declines appears to be coming true. While Hollywood had hoped the strength of the summer 2007 box office would allow for a modest increase, we believe the failure of several key 4Q DVD titles (such as Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3 among others) will result in a modest decline in 2007 consumer spending on DVDs. The standard definition DVD business has matured (with DVD players now in over 90 mm homes), with catalog sales now falling rapidly; in addition, TV DVD sales have reached a plateau. With this as a backdrop, Hollywood studios need next-gen (hi-def) DVD to take-off more than ever before, particularly studios that have relied heavily on catalog DVD sales. While the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has driven hardware prices down rapidly (sub $300 for Blu-ray and sub $200 for HD DVD), consumers are simply confused by the split in title availability by studio.
>>>

Santa putting children’s information at risk, warn experts – OUT-LAW News

Santa Claus could be breaking privacy laws in his collection and use of data about British children, experts have warned. Yuletide cheer-bringer Claus could be putting the personal data of millions of children at risk. Data protection laws lay down strict conditions for the use of personal data and there is no evidence that Claus has an adequate compliance programme in place. Children across Britain who write letters to Claus with a list of gift requests are not told for how long that data is kept, or if it will be used for other purposes such as marketing by third parties. The Data Protection Act stipulates that data should not be kept for longer than necessary, which would mean 25th December, though Claus may argue that he needs to keep the letters for six years to use in any gift-related lawsuits.
>>>

Buyers Forgive Facebook – MediaWeek

Perhaps they are caught up in the holiday spirit, or maybe everybody loves a good mea culpa, but most digital media buyers are in a forgiving mood when it comes to Facebook`s recent string of Beacon blunders. Buyers say they are generally satisfied with the way Facebook has responded to the recent storm of controversy generated by Beacon, its new advertising technology that was designed to automatically alert members about their friends` online purchases. Most don`t plan to steer clients away from the popular social networking site. In fact, many buyers credit Facebook for its willingness to be daring in this still-nascent space, where the rules of advertising are still being written.
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Software Vendors Accuse Prestigious Law Firm Of Piracy – InformationWeek

A Philadelphia law practice recently ranked among the nation’s top 200 firms has been accused by a software industry group of stealing business applications made by Adobe, Symantec, and other vendors, InformationWeek has learned. In a lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the vendors by the Software Information Industry Association, the firm of Fox Rothschild is alleged to have “engaged in the unauthorized reproduction and use” of software made by Adobe, Corel, Sonic Solutions, and Symantec.
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Manhunt 2 title wins ban appeal – BBC

The developer of Manhunt 2 has won its appeal to force the British Board of Film Classification to look again at its ban on the game’s release. The game has twice been rejected by the BBFC for certification, effectively banning the game for sale in the UK.
>>>

Ex-Microsoft worker charged with fraud – Seattle Times

A former Microsoft employee charged with defrauding the company to the tune of $1 million intends to plead not guilty, her attorney said Friday. Carolyn M. Gudmundson, a 44-year-old Kirkland woman, is charged with 11 counts of wire fraud and seven counts of mail fraud stemming from a complicated set of transactions she allegedly orchestrated to channel payment for Microsoft and Expedia Internet domain names to herself.
>>>

Oprah Winfrey On Obama’s Trail – socialitelife.buzznet.com

Our ruler Oprah has informed us who we should be voting for. Here’s pics and footage of Oprah Winfrey joining her beloved Barack Obama on the campaign trail in Iowa. And stumping for him in a major way. Seriously, I think she’s making sure she’s got a lock on that First Lady position if something happens. Have you ever seen a woman who so transparently wants to run our country?

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They’re to do with Gloomy Bear which mutilates and kills, and it’s pure Japanese.

Now here’s another Japanese orginal.

“Heads wrapped in bandages and eyes covered in patches, these girls have not been on the losing end of a fight, but rather the youth of Kegadoru, translated ‘injured idols’ and a fetish for scantily clad women to dress up in bandages,” says Weird Asian New.

The post goes on:

When you’re covered in bandages, everybody pays attention to you and worries about you. They also provide a chance to start talking to guys, who’ll ask you how you hurt yourself, so the bandages are really, really good.

Apparently the color of the bandages also plays a role in the fashion with White symbolizing chastity and virginity and Black symbolizing an even darker side to the trend.

We believe Red probably symbolizes they are really hurt and need to go to the hospital.

Says a post to the story:

haha I saw a girl like that on the train today, I really thought she was dying or something but now I know she wasn’t

Says another:

thats heaps cute, ages ago was the band-aid coverin the mouth an now this. ^_^v cute la ~

And, says Annette, “Trevor Brown was the first thing I thought of when I saw it,” going on:

Something I’ve noticed is that when there is a strange new trend in a subculture there is the explanation that they give to curious outsiders and the explanation that they keep to

themselves, It’s possible that they are doing medical art as subversive performance/fashion. Subversion doesn’t work the same if everybody knows what it really means.

As a comment on culture what does it tell us about the Japanese? That competition for male attention will spur girls to fake terrible injuries because Japanese men are so insecure around women that this is what it takes to make them feel unthreatened? I’m not saying that this is

the case, I’m just trying to prompt an added level of thinking about it.

I think this fashion is wonderful for how it prompts people to think about how people behave and think about disability, injury, femininity and sexuality.

(Thanks, Chizu, and you lose your bet )

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Also See:
Gloomy Bear – Japanese Net-linked suicides, August 25, 2005
Weird Asian News – Kegadoru: Injured Idol Fetish, November 23, 2007

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Politician files Wikipedia charge over Nazi symbols – Reuters

A left-wing German politician has filed charges against online encyclopedia Wikipedia for promoting the use of banned Nazi symbols in Germany. Katina Schubert, a deputy leader of the Left party, said she had filed the charge with Berlin police on the grounds that Wikipedia’s German language site contained too much Nazi symbolism, particularly an article on the Hitler Youth movement.
>>>

Security fears prompt call for scrapping of children’s database – Guardian Unlimited

The planned database containing the details of all 11 million children in England should be suspended because it is insecure and will put children’s safety at risk, an alliance of independent school heads and privacy campaigners warns today. In a letter to the Guardian, influential groups representing private schools, together with the human rights campaign Liberty, say it is “ludicrous” that the government intends to push on with the controversial ContactPoint database project while awaiting the outcome of a new security analysis of the system.
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Charity auctions four types of rhino poop – USA Today

A non-profit group is selling pieces of “rhino poop” on eBay. The International Rhino Foundation says bidders have their choice of black rhino poop, white rhino poop, Indian rhino poop and Sumatran rhino poop.
>>>

Texas AG sues two sites for children’s privacy violations – Computerworld

Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott has sued two Web sites that cater to children for failing to take adequate measures to protect their identities and personal information. The lawsuits are the first in the U.S. to be brought under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 and highlight the many privacy pitfalls facing minors that the law is designed to address.
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Software Freedom Law Center goes after Verizon over GPL – CNET News

The Software Freedom Law Center on Friday said it has filed a suit against Verizon Communications alleging that it has violated the terms of the General Public License, which governs the use of thousands of free and open-source software products. The suit is the fourth that the SFLC has filed on behalf of two programmers who wrote BusyBox, a software utility package covered under the GPL. BusyBox is typically embedded in hardware devices that use the Linux open-source operating system.
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AdultFriendFinder Settles FTC Charges – eWeek

According to the FTC, Various, Inc., a California corporation doing business as AdultFriendFinder, AdultFriendFinder.com and Cams.com, as well as its various advertising affiliates use pop-up ads to drive traffic to its sites. Some of the ads included graphic depictions of sexual behavior, exposing consumers—including children—to sexually explicit images.
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I’ve been running these headline updates largely for stories I didn’t get time to follow up. But I’ve had a couple of emails suggesting I do them every day.

Yes? No?

Cheers!

Jon

=============

[OT] Villagers lose Battle of Fjuckby – The Local
The hapless inhabitants of Fjuckby have lost the last chance they had of changing the name of their village to something less suggestive of sexual intercourse. On Thursday, the National Land Survey of Sweden – the government agency responsible for the handling of place names – announced that it was following the recommendation of the Institute of Language and Folklore to preserve the name Fjuckby. A delegation of residents applied in December of last year to have the old name Fjukeby reinstated, a variant in common usage until the 1930s.
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Newspapers Hope for Online Growth in ‘08 – Associated Press

Newspaper publishers, entering 2008 with some of the worst economic conditions in many years, said Wednesday they hope to bring even more readers — and ad spending — to their Web sites with expanded offerings of news, advertising and video. The newspaper industry has been struggling as a dismal housing market weighs heavily on real estate and other types of print advertising. As Donald Graham, CEO of The Washington Post Co., put it: “2007 was not a good year for anybody in the newspaper business.”
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Toyota’s new robot can play the violin, help the aged – Agency France-Presse

Toyota Motor on Thursday unveiled a robot that can play the violin as part of its efforts to develop futuristic machines capable of assisting humans in Japan’s greying society. The 1.5-metre-tall (five-foot), two-legged robot wowed onlookers with a faultless rendition of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. With 17 joints in its hands and arms, the robot has human-like dexterity that could be applied to helping people in the home or in nursing and medical care, the carmaker said.
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eBay claims CBC hijacking story is false – Digital Home

eBay claims CBC hijacking story is false On Tuesday, Digital Home Canada publisher wrote in Digital Thoughts about a CBC story that described how a Calgary man had lost $20,000 in a hijacked eBay transaction and chastised the company for its refusal to co-operate with the RCMP or to offer any type of restitution to the buyer. Yesterday, eBay Canada contacted Digital Home to inform us that the CBC story was inaccurate and that the Calgary man had not lost his $20,000 through eBay.
The original CBC story claimed that a Calgary man, Shaqir Duraj, had lost over $20,000 in a fraudulent eBay transaction through a tactic know as hijacking. The article went on to say that eBay was refusing to co-operate with the RCMP and that eBay did not respond to “to several phone calls and an e-mail from CBC News.”
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Man Sentenced to 110 Years for Hacking and Extortion – IDG

A North Carolina man last week was sentenced to 110 years in prison after admitting that he and a co-conspirator hacked into computers used by young girls and used illicitly gained data to blackmail them. Ivory D. Dickerson, 33, a civil engineer, admitted that he conspired with the other person to send emails or instant messages to underage girls as part of a scheme to trick them into opening a file containing the Bifrost trojan horse. The malware would give Dickerson and his co-conspirator control over the victim’s computer, and they tried to use hacked information to coerce the girls into creating and then electronically sending them lurid photos of themselves, prosecutors said.
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JetBlue, Yahoo, Rim plan free in-flight Wi-Fi – Reuters

JetBlue, Yahoo Inc and Research in Motion plan to offer free, in-flight, Wi-Fi web connections for laptop computers and advanced cell phones, Rim said on Thursday. The service will allow passengers to access customized Yahoo mail and Yahoo instant messenger services on their laptops or to access corporate e-mails on Wi-Fi enabled versions of the popular Blackberry device from Rim.
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Bands call for resale ticket levy – BBC

Managers behinds acts like Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, and the Verve have called for a levy to be added to tickets resold on the internet. The managers – who represent 400 other bands and artists – have teamed up to create the Resale Rights Society (RRS). Under their plans, musicians would get a share in the proceeds of every ticket resold on websites such as eBay.
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Game reviewer affirms advertisers run the show – Valleywag
Was CNET’s firing of GameSpot editor Jeff Gerstmann a bizarre special case? Isn’t it hard to believe Gerstmann was axed to appease an advertiser? Not at all, says a game reviewer who claims he’s been pushed out by advertisers twice. Don’t for one second think that this kind of thing is unusual. Publishers and editors use “the appearance of integrity” as a smokescreen for their subsidized spinelessness more often than you want to know.
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MPAA head: Content filtering is in ISPs’ best interests – Ars Technica

As befits a man who has spent years in DC, the MPAA’s Dan Glickman has polished his share of folksy analogies to a shine. “I used to grow popcorn, and now I sell it,” he told a crowd of bankers and analysts yesterday at the UBS Global & Communications Conference in New York, a reference to his tenure as Secretary of Agriculture. Now, though, Glickman is the self-described “chief hired gun or mercenary for the [motion picture] industry,” and his comments give us a window into what the movie studios are thinking. His words yesterday revealed that movie execs are thinking about one thing in particular: the technology that can be used to halt film piracy, and that they expect ISPs to implement it.
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Sun promises prize money to boost open source efforts – IDG News Service

Sun Microsystems will today (5 December) release details of a new award program meant to spur growth and activity within the company’s open-source efforts, according to a post by Sun’s open-source officer, Simon Phipps, on his corporate blog.
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Royalty Board Sets Satellite Radio Rates, SoundExchange Wants More – Digital Music News

The US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has now issued its decision on satellite radio performance royalty rates. The Board set rates at 6.0 percent of gross revenues, a payout that ramps to 6.5 percent by 2009, and 7.5 percent by 2010. Satellite radio executives appeared comfortable with results, which fell inline with earlier analyst expectations.
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Google Pre-Launches New iPhone Interface – TechCrunch

We heard a rumor that Google was going to launch a new interface for users accessing the site via an iPhone in the next few days. But an anonymous tip let us know it actually launched without any warning or announcement this evening. If you visit Google.com from an iPhone, you now get a menu of services to choose from – home (search box), Gmail, Calendar, Reader and More (docs, sms, goog-411, news, photos, blogger and notebook). It`s basically all of the core Google services, accessible from a single easy to use menu.
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Young Europeans prefer Internet to TV: poll – Agency France-Press

Young Europeans prefer the Internet over television, and nearly half say they watch less TV because of surfing the web, a poll of 10 European countries showed Wednesday. More than 7,000 people were questioned as part of the survey released by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA).
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p2pnet news | P2P:- Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’s sorry.

Sorry for trying to censor 01238 magazine for posting stuff he didn’t like?

Because it couldn’t possibly be his terrible Beacon balls-up. After all, he and his merry admen went there eyes wide open, looking to rip off FaceBook users, thinking they’d be too stupid to see what was going on.

But that’s what it is.

In a Facebook apology, Zuckerberg says all he was trying to do was, “help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web”.

He and his team, “simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it,” he says.

But he hasn’t given up.

In an attempt to get out from under, “We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends,” he says.

Bollocks.

He was looking for a way to sell data tracked by Facebook, and it had absolutely nothing to do with helping users in any way, shape, manner or form.

And not only Facebook folks.

Its Beacon ad system tracks the activities of all users of its third-party partner sites, “including people who have never signed up with Facebook or who have deactivated their accounts,” says Computer Associates.

So will Zuckerberg soon be apologising to surfers at large?

But back to Zuckerberg as he tries to weasel out of it, “On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you,” he says.

That gurgling sound you hear is Facebook sinking.

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Also See:
posting stuff he didn’t like – Microsoft’s sex-obsessed RoboSanta spouts filth at children, December 3, 2007
Facebook – Thoughts oin Beacon, December 5, 2007
never signed up – Facebook Beacon also tracks non-users, December 5, 2007

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Passport applicant finds massive privacy breach – Globe and Mail

A security flaw in Passport Canada’s website has allowed easy access to the personal information – including social insurance numbers, dates of birth and driver’s licence numbers – of people applying for new passports. The breach was discovered last week by an Ontario man completing his own passport application. He found he could easily view the applications of others by altering one character in the Internet address displayed by his Web browser.
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Microsoft’s sex-obsessed RoboSanta spouts filth at children – The Register

Disturbing news has reached our Yuletide youthful innocence bunker that Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence-powered Santa bot is subjecting the world’s children to an unprecendented torrent of filth. Reg reader Iain blew the whistle on the foul-mouthed software after his nieces – just 11 and 13 years old – were drawn into a chat about oral sex. Redmond has added the seasonal ID northpole@live.com to MSN messenger. Anyone can add the bot as a contact. During conversations it often suggests people play a child-friendly online game called Factory Frenzy where the player helps Santa’s elves. It also has a shocking predeliction for casually dropping in that it likes to talk about a certain sex act.
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Klausner sues Apple iPhone over voicemail patent – Reuters

Klausner Technologies Inc said on Monday the company had filed a $360 million suit against Apple Inc and AT&T Inc over voicemail patents that Klausner claims the Apple iPhone infringes. New York-based Klausner said the lawsuit also names Comcast Corp, Cablevision Systems Corp and eBay Inc’s Skype as infringing its patent for “visual voicemail.” The plaintiff seeks an additional $300 million from the three. Klausner said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas. A copy of the filing was not yet available from the court. The suit alleges asserts that the defendants’ Internet-based voicemail products and services violate a Klausner patent. It seeks damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million, according to the press release.
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Universal Music Restricting Music Streaming On Certain Sites – paidContent

Universal Music Group, the largest music label, has implemented a new online streaming policy for its artists: each song for its artists will be limited to either 90-second clips or full-songs that contain promotional voice-over messages, reports Billboard. Excluded are any online services that UMG has a commercial licensing deal with, which means it is getting compensated for each stream. The policy applies to MySpace (which UMG is suing for violation of copyright law) and others. The story says UMG is concerned that users won`t buy the track or album if they get free streaming of full songs.
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‘Kill switch’ dropped from Vista – BBC

Microsoft is to withdraw an anti-piracy tool from Windows Vista, which disables the operating system when invoked, following customer complaints. The so-called “kill switch” is designed to prevent users with illegal copies of Vista from using certain features.
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Supreme Court refuses to consider adult Web site’s anti-piracy lawsuit – Associated Press
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider an appeal by an online publisher that claims credit-card companies are enabling the piracy of its pictures of nude models. The case was brought by Perfect 10 Inc., which until recently published an adult magazine and also operates Perfect10.com. The company said in court papers that its business has been severely harmed by pirate Web sites, many of them overseas, which have used images of its nude models without authorization.
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Calgary man loses $20K after eBay sale hijacked – CBC

A Calgary man is one of 1,000 Canadians who have been scammed on eBay through a tactic known as hijacking, and the RCMP says the online auction service is not co-operating with their criminal investigations. Shaqir Duraj, a Calgary bakery owner, won an eBay auction for a car in early October. He thought he was dealing with a reputable seller with a 98 per cent customer satisfaction rating.
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Shorter URLs help phishers hook more victims – CNET News.com
Phishers are using shorter URLs for malicious sites in a bid to lend an air of legitimacy to threatening links. Internet Security Services, IBM’s online-security division, claims to have noticed a significant drop in the number of characters used by fraudsters in their phishing URLs. A post on ISS’s Frequency X blog stated that “analysts have been observing host names within fraudulent phishing URLs consistently arrive with lengths of between 30 and 37 characters”; observers “have noted a significant change” as phishing host names have shrunk down to an average of only 17 characters in recent weeks.
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More state Web sites will show up in searches with help from Google software – Associated Press

Googling something or someone? If the state of Florida has public records about your subject, they might show up in your search results. Many state agencies make numerous public records available online, but the information hasn’t been indexed by the search engines at Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the three most popular.
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Jon