Link: http://torrentfreak.com/exciting-new-tv-streaming-site-wiped-out-by-legal-threats-100316/

I knew this was coming ever since I first posted the link. Well, it was great while it lasted.

Around a week ago, TorrentFreak received information that TVGorge was being threatened with legal action. At that stage the site was still fully operational, but very quickly the situation changed. We are now able to confirm that TVGorge was ordered to cease and desist by the MPAA on behalf of the companies they represent.

“TVGorge has recently been advised to remove all of our indexed content,” said the site’s operators in a statement.

Yep, way to go MPAA - lock up the content you can view for free on TV.

Link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10454366-261.html

The last holdout in this current stupidity war fell due to their supplier ( Wal-Mart ) threatening to not supply them. Sad really,

Let me ask you this - if you can't get a movie for a month after it leaves the theatres - and it's on The Pirate Bay - what will most users do? Wait to see it?  No, I think not.

Idiots at Warner - this is instant fail.

In this case - maybe the dark side of music, We have Brittney Spears, with a microphone open on a non voice effect channel .. IE - live

Ugh.

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1349

Ok, Apple has gone to the limit here - I've had it. When you jam a webserver onto a users pc without their knowledge that's the top level of uncool..

Apple says I need the iPhone Configuration Utility. Oh really? Why, for heaven’s sake? I’ve never plugged an iPhone (or an iPod or any other Apple-branded hardware) into this computer. I have absolutely no need for this program. It will do nothing except take up disk space and memory and potentially represent a vector for security issues.

They’ve also conveniently selected some additional software for me in the form of QuickTime and iTunes, which is 137.5 MB of compressed installers that expands to well over 200MB of disk space when installed. If I click the Install button, all of a sudden I have a pile of software I don’t want or need, including the Bonjour network service.

Update: It’s even worse than it appears. According to Simon Bisson, this update is actually “an enterprise tool for building device profiles. It’s not for consumers [and] it adds an Apache install to your machine.”

End of story - I'm done with Quicktime - which I actually liked, and I feel sorry for all the poor folks that now have a pile of unwanted software bundled in this underhanded and undocumented update.

note, I'd appreciate a comment or link in the comments if anyone has info for folks about uninstalling the Apache tied to the update -

Link: http://www.vegemite.com.au/vegemite/page?siteid=vegemite-prd&locale=auen1&PagecRef=332

And what's the first thing I could think of doing? Yep, linking right to it. Take that you creepy food product made from the leftovers of beer making!

You are also prohibited from linking the Site to another website in any way whatsoever

Wait - http://www.vegemite.com.au

Ha- I've done it again... Send in the Lawyers!

Link: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2241720.ece

Remember - oh I dunno about a year back when it was revealed that Bear wasn't all that ? Well, this time it's gone to the point where even Discovery is re-thinking having him on.

IT was billed as one of Bear Grylls’s most audacious challenges yet. The Eton-educated television adventurer had to escape an active volcano in the Pacific by leaping across molten lava and avoiding clouds of “killer” gas.

However, the episode of Born Survivor set on the Mount Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has emerged as faked in a scandal that has embroiled the television industry - and now threatens Grylls’s future TV career.

He never held a candle to Survivorman in my book anyways....

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136179/Fake_ATM_doesn_t_last_long_at_hacker_meet

Where is the stupidest possible place to put a skimmer ?

Defcon - the hacker convention.

Link: http://news.cnet.com/AP-cracks-down-on-unpaid-use-of-articles-on-Web/2100-1025_3-6249910.html

Right, I never bother with news sites that require registration.. and when my local newspaper started requiring a paid newspaper subscription to view articles I deleted the bookmark... Heck, I can get the same news elsewhere for free...

Now the AP is looking to use code to block websites from displaying their articles.

the Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article that shows what limits apply to the rights to use it, and that notifies the AP about how the article is used.

Newspapers and traditional news outfits just don't get it - all this is going to do is limit their audience even more.

Link: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/6732

I'm still waiting for the first teen getting run over by a car, but in the meanwhile. No brainer here - don't walk around texting... it's completely stupid.

Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8z4os/pandora_to_limit_listeners_to_40_hours_of_music/

The RIAA sucks - plain and simple. Because of recent royalty changes people like Pandora now have to limit and charge where they did not before.

While we did the best we could to lower the rates, we are going to have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the web. Because we have to pay royalty fees per song and per listener, it makes very heavy listeners hard to support on advertising alone. Most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might.

Link: http://www.starcraft-fans.com/page/Blizzard+Responds+to+No+LAN+Support?t=anon

In a startlingly asshat move, Blizzard will not include and has no plans to include in the future .. LAN support.

This from the company whose games got us all buying routers and switches and cat5 cable by the truckload.

They claim this will better control piracy... and in a way they are right -

I wouldn't even pirate the game. In fact, I'm not playing it at all unless they change direction on this.

While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

Bite me Blizzard - EA learned not to treat their customers like criminals, you should too.

Or any other day really....... Stay safe this holiday - or it just might be you we're all watching on You Tube next week (that is, after you get out of the hospital)

Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/23/girl-who-claimed-her.html

You probably saw it in the news - this girl who said she wanted 3 stars on her face that said she "fell asleep" and woke up like this?

and btw that's really attractive isn't it? What guy would turn that down?

Anywho - she totally like liked and stuff -

"I asked for 56 stars and initially adored them. But when my father saw them, he was furious. So I said I fell asleep and that the tattooist had made a mistake," Ms Vlaeminck told Dutch TV.

Link: http://www.entertonement.com/clips/vzvxslzhkm--106

I feel sorry for whoever lives next to this lady....

Link: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/6675

If I hadn't seen so many idiots doing stupid things on the road I'd almost not believe this... I think the time I looked over and saw a girl practicing the flute while driving with her knees took the top prize.

Almost 60% of kids surveyed admitted to driving while texting.

Makes you want to cancel the text plan once they get to driving age huh?

Anyway - it's something you'll wanna talk to your kids about - and if you're a grownup doing that, don't be surprised when I break the law myself to snap a picture of you and your plate to send to the state police.

Link: http://matthewhurtt.com/how-al-gore-celebrated-earth-hour/

Apparently being rich and artsy fartsy means that you get to leave a bunch of lights on cus you like "invented the internet" or something.

Way to go Mr. cynic.

Gods, I just installed the latest Java and Java FX - look - if I wanted a gd search toolbar - which I don't know why anyone would - I'd download it elsewhere. Cut the crap!

Ok - hello -yes I'm at the Burger King Drive Through.

Btw he did get justice - he waited for the cops, they came and promptly wrote him a ticket with mandatory court appearance.

Link: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0218091shamu1.html

What a boob - he went and texted the victim admitting he did it...

According to police, a phony personal ad was placed on the popular classifieds site offering men sexual favors. The ad, placed on the site's "Women Seeking Men" section, included a phone number and two photos of a woman, named Jennifer, who purportedly placed the ad. The posting promised suitors that the advertiser would "moan like Shamu."

With mug Shot Goodness ....

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=3103

This is all due to pressure from the TV networks - as if watching the show on a laptop is ok but on a TV its not. Mind you, most folks could just output the PC to a TV anyways. ... Dumb move from an industry that still apparently does not get it.

Link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10166467-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

TV.com saw a 263 percent increase in unique viewers in January after it redesigned and expanded the site and added user interaction features, according to Nielsen VideoCensus figures cited by MediaPost Online. It has 5.9 million unique visitors compared with Hulu's 4.5 million, according to Nielsen figures reported by Advertising Age.

Oh come on - can we stop all the fighting here? What good does it possibly do to anyone that shares video to pull content from distribution?

Ok so Tv.com got more hits -who cares? they got hits on your branded content, sigh - when are media companies going to wise up to the internet?

Link: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/84897/Fan-playing-away-from-home-falls-victim-to-cruel-hoax

Ok, we here in the states can take our sports seriously but not like this - This little escapade lost a guy his wife and his dignity -oh and did I mention the broken bones?

Btw - the You Tube videos been nixed ... but it was pretty priceless.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-02-06-digital-tv_N.htm

Yep, good thing that bill passed.. Most stations will keep to the original schedule creating a virtual cluster of TV that works and doesn't work all at the same time. This of course is a benefit to consumers in some way.....

Meanwhile all the new services scheduled to take up that unused bandwidth wait.

Link: http://www.denofgeek.com/misc/197946/geek_tech_why_your_popup_blocker_doesnt_work_as_well_as_it_used_to.html

Using a tricky DHTML method this time that slips right past most blockers. I think you'd beat 'em with Firefox/NoScript tho.

It's a 1990s revival, as the intrusive world of pop-up ads fights its way back through your defenses...

You may have noticed that a lot of sites are managing to launch pop-up windows that can penetrate any standard blocker built into a web-browser these days, and pretty much all proprietary blockers too.

Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/20/sheffield_conficker/

Oh but not by itself. Granted the worm is pretty bad and all but I think they kinda doomed themselves with this....

after managers turned off Windows security updates for all 8,000 PCs on the vital network

" Well Bob we got some spontaneous reboots in Lab 4"

" Gee, lets just turn off that pesky update thingy "

Brilliant!

Link: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/6390

I dunno if you've heard but Belkin has been gaming the review systems as part of company policy and has now been caught.

According to the tipster, an employee of Belkin, the company had made it “unofficial” policy for all Belkin employees to do whatever is necessary to get good product reviews and good press.

Link: http://blogs.discovery.com/cosmic_ray/2009/01/day-of-the-come.html

My lad asked me what I thought of this the other day - and I said that nobody writes about how many times Nostradamus was wrong. Seriously ever read the quatrains? Now there's an email going round with an asteroid slated to hit the earth in 2012. I'm sure glad there's at least one scientist backing the non hype.

And don't even get me started with the Mayan calendar - if the Mayans were so darned smart where the heck are they and why didn't they know not to trust Spaniards?

My name is Inigo Montoya - You Killed the Mayans....

Prepare to die.

Link: http://gizmodo.com/5107742/ftc-halts-massive-scam-that-tricks-consumers-into-buying-anti+virus-software

Oh I can't tell you how often I get the call for this one ... goes like this... "my computer is really slow and I get these porn popups"

Aha - and what'd you install?

"Well nothing, um I did install this antivirus software... said I was infected."

Cha- Ching!

consumers received exploitive advertisements that took them to one of the defendants’ Web sites. These sites would then claim to scan the consumers’ computers for security and privacy issues. The “scans” would find a host of purported problems with the consumers’ computers and urge them to buy the defendants’ computer security products for $39.95 or more. However, the scans were entirely false.

Link: http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9122359

After a good thrumping by the blogosphere Apple has put its tail between its legs and taken down the Antivirus advice completely - oh yeah that's the responsible thing to do. It's like the Ostrich burying its head - "I can't see you, so therefore you cant see me"

Ok anyone remember this commercial?

Apple has strongly recommended that all Mac owners should now install an anti-virus application on their systems. The note said, “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.” The note then recommends three applications: Intego VirusBarrier X5, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh and McAfee VirusScan for Mac.

Whoops! - seems now that macs use all Intel Hardware and Unix for an operating system they are just like everyone else.

Link: http://www.techcult.com/5-sickening-habits-of-mainstream-websites/

All 5 of which you will NEVER see here.

Viva the web! - GeeG won't ever throw pop ups, interstatials, or "you have to register to see this article" at ya.

Link: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081103/1815542728.shtml

I know I'm not alone when I say I am getting really sick of EA making legit customers jump through ever increasing hoops. This latest is just plain stupid beyond belief.

See, they are intentionally misprinting some CD keys with one digit less (19 instead of 20)

You can get the last digit if you send them a picture of the key! Though they advise that if you just try every letter and every number eventually you'll find the right one!

This stops pirates HOW?

All this does is puts you through a frustrating extra 20 minutes on install. I say either boycott EA games altogether or just go to bittorent and pirate the darn thing and save yourself the extra hassle.

Link: http://mailblog.aol.com/2008/10/31/an-open-letter-to-gmail-happy-halloween-we-love-your-costume/

You just will not believe AOL trying to take a swipe at Google ! - In fact none of the commenters did either... Ooooooh, yup its on.

An "experimental" instant-messaging feature built right into your mail service so people can use it to send text messages to their contacts' phones? We love it – that was such a hit when we first introduced it so many years ago.

Link: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/19/017209&from=rss

In a startlingly dickish move Yahoo decided that they didn't want to write a conversion from the old profile pages to the new format so they just went and deleted 'em. Article has some help on how to get some stuff back.

Stimpy wasn't kidding - but who thought THIS would happen?

http://view.break.com/582236 - Watch more free videos

Owch!