TechwareLabs Daily News
- ASUS Maximus II Gene Motherboard @ Hothardware
- Western Workstation & Server CPU Comparison Guide Rev. 3.3 @ TechARP
Xigmatek Balder SD1283 HDT CPU Cooler @ Tweaktown- Antec Skeleton Open Air Computer Case Review @ Tweaknews
- AMD Athlon II X4 630 Extreme Overclocking with LN2 @ Tweaktown
Ghost Detecting Gadgets that Confirm your Sanity
With Halloween coming up this weekend, it seemed like the perfect time to discuss a problem far too many of us face—homes that are haunted by evil spirits.These gadgets can confirm you are not completely crazy.
What does it say about the sanity of anyone owning more than one of these gadgets?
Check out the article here.
Ten Most Geekiest Halloween Costumes Explored @ Engadget
—clearly, Halloween is dominated by nerds far too old to trick-or-treat. It was also clear that mdg357’s homemade Iron Man suit was more than deserving of the free pizza.
The old school Megatron dude would have won it for me, strictly on style points.
Facebook Awarded $711 Million In Anti-Spam Case
“Facebook is on a never-before-seen legal rampage against high profile internet spammers. Today Facebook was awarded yet another nine-figure settlement, this time for over $700 million. Facebook also has a criminal contempt case on Wallace, which means a high likelihood of prison, a big win for the internet and a milestone in cyber law. ‘The record demonstrates that Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct,’ Jeremy Fogel wrote in his judgment order, which permanently prohibits Wallace from accessing the Facebook Web site or creating a Facebook account, among other restrictions.”
I don’t understand why the courts impose such rubbish awards, they have to know there’s not a snowballs chance in hell that Facebook will ever see the cash. It would be far more productive to take a realistic assessment of the damage and penalize the individual in both a cash and sentence that would be more meaningful. This guy will simply declare bankruptcy and restart another spam campaign. Jail time for the SPAMMERS!
New Threats Against Pirate Bay Owners
In what is shaping up to be the never ending saga of The Pirate Bay it seems the Swedish courts are trying a new tactic. Prosecute the founders and ban them from running their own site. Uum yeah, neither they, nor the website is even in Sweden anymore. But hey MPAA and RIAA don’t give up yet. . . you could always hire a hitman for the job.
“The Pirate Bay should be closed, and if it isn’t, two of the founders will each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$71,500), according to a verdict in the Stockholm District Court. This time it’s Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg who are in the court’s crosshairs. They have been forced to shut down the site or pay the fine. The court has stated that the site will have to remain closed unless Neij and Warg are exonerated on another similar case they’re involved in, which is now on appeal.”
Federal Judge Says E-mail Not Protected By 4th Amendment
“In the case In re United States, Judge Mosman ruled that there is no constitutional requirement of notice to the account holder because the Fourth Amendment does not apply to e-mails under the third-party doctrine. ‘When a person uses the Internet, the user’s actions are no longer in his or her physical home; in fact he or she is not truly acting in private space at all. The user is generally accessing the Internet with a network account and computer storage owned by an ISP like Comcast or NetZero. All materials stored online, whether they are e-mails or remotely stored documents, are physically stored on servers owned by an ISP. When we send an e-mail or instant message from the comfort of our own homes to a friend across town the message travels from our computer to computers owned by a third party, the ISP, before being delivered to the intended recipient. Thus ‘private’ information is actually being held by third-party private companies.””
UPDATE:
I blogged yesterday about a new opinion on e-mail and the Fourth Amendment. I received a few requests for a copy of the opinion, so I formatted a version of it and have posted it here.
In the course of re-reading the opinion to post it, I recognized that I was misreading a key part of the opinion. As I read it now, Judge Mosman does not conclude that e-mails are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Rather, he assumes for the sake of argument that the e-mails are protected (see bottom of page 12), but then concludes that the third party context negates an argument for Fourth Amendment notice to the subscribers. I missed this because the reasoning closely resembles the argument for saying that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply at all, and I didn’t read the earlier section closely enough. That’s obviously a much narrower position, and I apologize for misunderstanding it the first time in the quick skim I gave it. Sorry about that: The fault is entirely mine.
This could be very bad, guess its time to fire up the digital shredder and start the process of “getting off the grid” before big brother comes calling.
