Who, specifically, is pushing so hard to have Richard O'Dwyer extradited from the UK to the US to stand trial on something a judge would probably refuse to sit in on anyway since O'Dwyer was actually complying with the DMCA, and he didn't even have to.
We need to lean on those people to make them stop this madness, immediately. A large part of the reason this country exists is because we got sick of people in the UK making decisions about the lives of people in the colonies. This sort of hypocrisy is utterly unacceptable.
So, Verizon claims the traffic going across their network is their "speech" which makes restrictions on their speech a constitutional issue.
Okay, fine.
They can use QoS. Let them try and QoS traffic and go attempt to shake Google down for money, because maybe that will be enough to protect them from all the lawsuits and investigations as a result of them losing common carrier protections and being held liable for "their speech".
Right so... Stuxnet was gov't/military. It got rustled because anti-malware people were paying attention and managed to fit the pieces together.
...yet antivir companies seemed to universally "miss" the pieces.
Now we've got Flame, which shows every sign of being basically the same kind of setup, except this time there's no obvious payload. Oh and it's signed by a "rogue" certficate. Nah...
"Normal" criminals don't screw around much. They compromise hosts and start using them.
...and now that the media is catching on a bit early, a module went out to very carefully scrub the machine of all traces of the malware?
Does the word 'scuttle' have any meaning to anyone anymore? How the crap can this possibly be confusing anyone who has supposedly been paying attention.
I'm sure the agency that's doing this is pretty irritated right now but, well... maybe they'll have better luck not being spotted the next time around.
Paul Christoforo, Douchebag, Interviewed by Forbes
Topic: Current Events
4:07 pm EST, Dec 29, 2011
So if you missed it, yesterday someone set new standards for Massively Pissing Away Your Career By Being An Ass. Check the news blog on Penny-Arcade for the details, and if you're not aware of them the Forbes article won't make as much sense.
Suffice it to say that from the interview with Forbes, this guy hasn't learned a goddamn thing. Everyone and their brother read the emails and knows what went down--except, apparently Mr. Christoforo, who appears to be both delusional and incredibly naive in thinking he can tell a reporter lies about what happened without most of the readers (of the millions who read the email exchange) knowing exactly how full of crap he is. ...and now they've got confirmation he's full of crap and that it wasn't just a one-time lapse of judgement made in the "heat of the moment".
If he had any sense he would be doing the following things:
1. Checking into a detox clinic for that steroid problem. 2. Writing a detailed apology letter to everyone, everywhere, for everything. 3. Hiring a lawyer to help with the details of moving to a new city and legally changing his name.
...because he's sure as hell not working in the gaming industry again unless he learns how to out-shoot people with a controller.
...and now, some unbiased reporting from USA Today... NOT!
Topic: Current Events
6:21 pm EDT, May 12, 2011
So, by now lots of people have heard that Facebook hired a PR firm to shill against Google on the basis of "Google invading your privacy and giving your information away"...
Rather interesting subject matter considering that Facebook absolutely adores doing this very thing... "monetizing" your contacts in Facebook by handing out a great deal of your personal information to anything you "Like" (or to anyone smart enough to bypass their questionable security filtering).
It seems to me that Facebook is likely attempting to capitalize on the nonsense left over from the mess that was the Google Maps vehicles literally picking up wireless confetti, in an attempt to use the court of public opinion to get the FTC to sternly forbid Google from doing anything remotely like what Facebook makes their money doing. (...and it's not like this would be the first time Google has been attacked this way!) Elimination of competition by government action? True innovation!
Since the actual "spoiler" story broke I've seen signs that a few major news outlets actually did take the bait and published articles critical of what Google is doing with Social Search (I guess they didn't get the memo that the jig is up)... and then a few minutes ago I spotted USA Today's article, which really takes the cake for slanted reporting. They stop just short of outright lies but they really go a long way to swing that double-standard--berating Google for doing things they've subtly misrepresented and in the next paragraph lauding Facebook for doing even more of the same thing. They even engage in the timeless tactic of not actually saying nasty things, but instead simply quoting J. Random Asshole's comments about it, even if J. Random Asshole just learned about the situation from the reporter that asked them a handful of minutes before. I think the best part is how they use an article exposing this sort of smear campaign to actually engage in their own smearing.
Here's some nice blockquotes that are probably lawyer-bait, but what the hell... There's no use talking about something like this unless you can point to specific examples:
Let's start with the byline:
It's not as if Google lacks privacy controversies to quell.
Well, I suppose if you count the manufactured controversies at hand and whatever the hell just went down in Korea, then you've got two, possibly three controversies. Notice how they don't come out and make an accusation, when stating that there's not a lack of rumors can say so very much more. Cheap, and just as effective as saying "It's not as if your sister's never been called a whore."
Just an inch below that (you can't really call them paragraphs, can you?) we have:
Google said that Social Circle in fact allows Gmail users to make social connections based on public information and private connections across its ... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]
So if you've been wondering how it is that we can somehow accumulate public debt faster than we could private debt if we were given a stack of credit cards in someone else's name... this video will explain some things.
Some very upsetting things. It was linked from http://bankofamericasuck.com yesterday as a part of their Bank of America leak campaign.
Still, it's a cartoon, so aside from some language towards the end, you should probably have your kids watch it.
WikiLeaks finally publishes Iraq War Logs as promised
Topic: Current Events
8:23 pm EDT, Oct 22, 2010
At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.
The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.
Sh*t, meet fan.
If that 60% figure doesn't do it for you, there's plenty of other things in there that will. Things like there actually has been a count of civilian deaths, despite officials from multiple governments repeatedly denying it. Things like we've apparently made it official policy to not investigate when accusations of some completely abhorrent things are directed at the Iraqis we're supposedly training to keep the peace over there. Things that make even those little tidbits seem tame.
So, if these Attorney's Generals are actually interested in stopping online prostitution, why've they not said anything to backpage.com yet? Three times in the last year I've read about three different sting operations being done against that site, and I don't see any big movement to smear their reputation, although the prostitutes on that site aren't exactly being subtle.
Shame on CNN for exploiting underage girls for a story.
