After complaints from the City of Austin and the Texas attorney general’s office, the social networking site Twitter has shut down a fake account that pretended to issue Austin Police Department bulletins with official-sounding messages that included “warming up my radar gun for SXSWi.”
Grab a bag of popcorn, kick up your feet and enjoy the show — this one’s just getting good. After Intel filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA late last month alleging that a four-year-old chipset license agreement the companies signed did not extend to Intel’s future generation CPUs with ‘integrated’ memory controllers (like Nehalem), NVIDIA has hit back
TechDirt is reporting that the ACLU has stepped in on behalf of several teens facing the threat of child pornography in Pennsylvania for sharing of nude pics of themselves. Unfortunately for a girl in New Jersey she is facing much more than just a threat as she was arrested yesterday for posting almost 30 explicit pictures of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to see. “the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls’ behalf, saying he shouldn’t have threatened them with baseless charges — which haven’t yet been filed — if they wouldn’t agree to probation and a counseling program. The prosecutor says he was being “proactive” in offering them a choice, but the ACLU says he shouldn’t be using “heavy artillery” to make the threats. As its attorney points out, teaching kids that this sort of behavior can bring all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen ramifications is a good idea, but threatening them with child-porn charges isn’t the best way to do it.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Jane Q. Public writes “At the Federal Trade Commission’s Seattle conference on DRM, FTC Director Mary Engle started off by referencing the Sony rootkit debacle, and said that companies are going to have to get serious about disclosing DRM that may affect the usability of products. She also said that disclosure via the fine print in a EULA is not good enough, and ‘If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away, don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling.’ Transcripts and webcasts are available from the FTC website.” Update 18:13 GMT by SM: as Jane Q. Public was nice enough to diplomatically point out, the webcasts are no longer functioning, but transcripts are still available.
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Engadget is reporting that the iPhone 3G is finally available contract-free if you are willing to pay a much higher premium. Without a contract consumers are looking at 9 for an 8GB model and 9 for the 16GB. AT&T has the added restriction that you must be an existing AT&T customer, but Apple (retail stores only, sorry) will sell one to anyone willing to pay the premium. This change brings the model much closer to the prevailing European model where phones are sold as hardware and the plans are handled completely separately.
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The AP is reporting that a senator has introduced legislation that would allow struggling newspapers to operate as nonprofits, similar to the way public broadcasting works. “[Sen. Benjamin] Cardin [D-Md.] introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to choose tax-exempt status. They would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible. Cardin said in a statement that the bill is aimed at preserving local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. … The head of the newspaper industry’s trade group called the bill a positive step.”
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Death Metal sends along an Ars Technica piece about The Pirate Bay’s plans for a virtual private network service to help ensure its users’ privacy. “The Pirate Bay is planning to launch a paid VPN service for users looking to cover their tracks when torrenting. The new service will be called IPREDator, named after the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) that will go into effect in April. IPREDator is currently in private beta and is expected to go public next week for €5 per month. … IPREDator’s website says that it won’t store any traffic data, as its entire goal is to help people stay anonymous on the web. Without any data to hand over, copyright owners won’t be able to find individuals to target. … The question remains, however, if any significant portion of The Pirate Bay’s users will decide to fork over 5 per month solely to remain anonymous. It seems more likely that the majority either won’t care, or will simply start looking for lesser-known torrent trackers to use.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Australia’s official online censorship board’s web page was offline Thursday, hours after hackers hijacked it to protest revelations the government was going to require ISPs to block public access to thousands of websites, many of which aren’t obscene.
A tipster – a very reliable one – told Om Malik that Skype is almost ready to launch an iPhone version, perhaps as soon as next week.
Most netbooks are already fairly cheap machines, but these three deals from MSI, Acer, and Lenovo bring the cost down by 25 percent or more.
