The Great Geek Manual News

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly suggested that Congress may take action this week on a bill that could rubberstamp the NSA’s spying program. The Bush Administration is trying to sell its latest proposal as a serious compromise, but don’t be fooled — it represents an unprecedented power grab that endangers the checks and balances that define our democracy. Please call your representatives now before it’s too late.

Contrary to the Administration’s characterizations, its “FISA Modernization” bill is not about “updating” the law and allowing surveillance of foreign-to-foreign communications. Instead, it could radically expand the government’s ability to spy on Americans without a warrant.

It’s highly irresponsible for Congress to even consider this proposal before uncovering the truth about the still-shadowy spying program. In recent weeks, Congress has made strides towards more vigorous oversight and authorized subpoenas for key information, but the proposed bill would short-circuit such scrutiny.

Tell your representatives to stand strong against the Administration and stop the abuse of surveillance powers.

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Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

The iTunes Store is on a roll and not slowing down any time soon. Apple announced this morning that over 3 billion songs have been sold through its online music store. The milestone not only marks a major feat for Apple, but also for the digital music industry as a whole.

The iTunes Store has been on a solid trajectory ever since its launch in 2003 as the iTunes Music Store. It quickly accelerated to the number one spot among online music outlets, thanks in part to being tied so closely with Apple’s wildly-popular iPod. Just last month, the iTunes Store moved into the top three of music retailers, trailing only brick-and-mortar giants Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Apple, with 10 percent of the total US music market, surpassed Amazon at 6.7 percent when it took the number three spot.

The major labels are taking note of Apple’s success, although some are more happy about it than others. EMI took a risk and became the first of the major music labels to sell DRM-free music online, starting with the iTunes Store. That decision seems to have paid off so far, as EMI reported in June that its DRM-free tracks and albums were selling at a noticeably quicker pace through iTunes than when they were previously DRMed. They were even selling quicker than CD sales of the same albums. But despite EMI’s early success, recent reports indicate that Universal is frustrated not only by Steve Jobs’ pressure to go DRM-free, but also with Apple’s refusal to raise prices on iTunes tracks—especially given iTunes’ popularity. This resulted in Universal ultimately terminating its long-term contract with Apple and transitioning to shorter-term sales agreements.

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Source: Ars Technica

Apple is the target of a reported multi-million dollar lawsuit filed by rapper Eminem. The singer charges Apple sold Eminem’s songs on iTunes without permission.

According to The Detroit News, Apple pays Universal Music Group, the singer’s distribution company, but not Eminem’s publisher. The lawsuit asks Apple stop selling the rapper’s music.

In 2004, Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, Eminem’s representatives, sued Apple over the company’s use of “Lose Yourself” in television commercials. The lawsuit was settled out of court, according to News.com.

Source: All Headline News

Some laser printers can inflict the same damage as cigarette smoke, a new study warned Tuesday. Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology are calling for caution when working closely with laser printers.

In finding to be published later this week in the American Chemical Society’s “Environmental Science and Technology,” nearly 30 percent of laser printers emit particles causing “respiratory irritation to more severe illnesses such as cardiovascular problems or cancer,” Professor Lidia Morawska said.

The article will include a list of printer brands guilty of the most severe emissions along with a call for warning labeling.

Morawska tested 62 laser printers, finding 17 released tiny toner particles able to penetrate into the lungs. Her study, conducted in a Brisbane office, found emissions were worst when the toner cartridge was new and when printing required large amounts of toner.

As a result, the researcher recommends printers be located in open areas away from workers’ desks.

Source:

Federal Communications Commission members Tuesday afternoon approved new rules designed to open up competition for the upcoming auction of public airwaves. However, regulators handed Internet giant Google a defeat, rejecting a call to require wholesale access to the spectrum.

The new rules give wireless subscribers more latitude on what devices can be used on a portion of the airwaves to be auctioned.

Final wording of the rules was not released after the vote, leaving up in the air whether many telecoms will participate in the auction, predicted to bring $15 million into government coffers.

The FCC also approved a new public safety network designed to answer some of the concerns of emergency responders following the events of Sept. 11.

Source: All Headline News

At Microsoft Relevant Products/Services’s annual meeting with analysts, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner announced that the software giant had sold 60 million copies of Windows Vista since the product’s launch in late January.

During the first five weeks alone, Turner said, sales numbers of Windows Vista exceeded the number of computers that Apple currently has as its total installed base.

But not everyone was impressed. “There were probably nearly 120 million PCs shipped in the first two quarters of 2007, so I’m not sure 60 million is that great,” observed Gartner Client Computing research vice president Michael Silver.

Microsoft is “trying to dampen Apple’s latest quarterly results, which saw a significant increase in shipments,” he said.

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Source: NewsFactor

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service that would rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia’s forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.

“If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers,” said Wales, chairman of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. “I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome.”

Wikia — which has helped groups set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on topics ranging from popular TV shows to specialist health or travel — plans to develop an “open source” Web search service with the help of volunteers.

Wales founded the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia encyclopedia, a noncommercial project that is one of the Web’s most popular sites. He also co-founded the Wikia ad-supported network of self-edited wiki sites. However, the two organizations have no formal ties.

The new Wikia search service will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007, Wales said in a phone interview.

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Source: Reuters

At least half a dozen highly anticipated broadcast network fall pilots have been leaked online.

Copies of NBC’s “Bionic Woman,” ABC’s “Pushing Daisies,” The CW’s “Reaper” and several other shows were available Friday for illegal download via sites such as Torrent Spy, The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

Most of the titles appear to have been uploaded within the past week. The first copy of “Bionic” was listed as uploaded two days ago, while the earliest “Reaper” file was date-marked seven days ago. Other leaked shows include Fox’s midseason “The Terminator” spin-off “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” ABC’s “Cavemen,” and NBC’s “Chuck” and “Lipstick Jungle.”

Network representatives expressed surprise that the full-length pilots were on the Web and alerted their studio partners. Some said they were anticipating that critic and industry screener copies would leak eventually as smattering of fall pilots have found their way online during the past few years. All networks contacted declined official comment.

TelevisionWeek downloaded and confirmed the content of several pilot files. The videos were of reasonably high quality, akin to the streaming programs on broadcast network Web sites.

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Source: TVWeek

Catholic missionaries have always trekked to remote parts of the world to spread the word of God. Now they are being encouraged to go into the virtual realm of Second Life to save virtual souls.

In an article in Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, academic Antonio Spadaro urged fellow Catholics not to be scared of entering the virtual world, which may be fertile ground for new converts wishing to better themselves.

“It’s not possible to close our eyes to this phenomenon or rush to judge it,” Spadaro said. “Instead it needs to be understood…the best way to understand it is to enter it.”

According to its Web site, Second Life–a 3D simulation game where players can create virtual versions of themselves and interact with others–has a population of more than 8 million residents and millions of dollars change hands there every month.

“Is there (cyber) space for God?” Spadaro asks in his article, which says there are already virtual churches and temples serving countless religions. He quotes a Swedish Muslim who says his avatar prays regularly just as he prays in real life.

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Source: CNet

IBM appears to be the first corporation to create employee rules governing virtual worlds, and the move has critics, who say that mandating behavior for the so-called “metaverse” is unlikely to reform impish avatars. They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Net.

Anything pretty much goes in online virtual worlds. Identities are nebulous. Online characters known as avatars chat it up, gamble or even have sex at first sight.

Increasingly though, these online zones like “Second Life” are also becoming places where commerce is happening. Big companies such as IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. use these graphics-rich sites to conduct meetings among far-flung employees and to show customers graphical representations of ideas and products.

Now, in hopes of capturing the power of this new platform while avoiding potentially embarrassing incidents, IBM is taking the unusual step of establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit “Second Life” and other online universes.

IBM appears to be the first corporation to create rules governing virtual worlds. The move has critics, who say that mandating behavior for the so-called “metaverse” is unlikely to reform impish avatars. They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Internet.

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Source: NewsFactor

The coding gnomes responsible for the virtual sanity environment known as Second Life pulled the plug yesterday on some of the most popular destinations in the virtual reality space – namely, the casinos that provide something to do other than swap sexes or species or indulge in bizarre sexual adventures.

Praise Jesus they’ve saved us from ourselves. Now we can all get off the island.

Linden Labs, the owners of Second Life, issued new policies Wednesday covering virtual casinos on the official Second Life blog, effectively eliminating the healthiest form of entertainment available there. Speculation about the legality of gambling with a virtual currency on a virtual space had been tossed about on various Second Life blogs since the passage of the Unlawful Internet Enforcement Act (UIGEA) last year concerning the legality of the virtual casinos. Not surprising, since the virtual currency, the Linden Dollar, is readily convertible to old-fashioned greenbacks.

Virtual currencies have started to raise eyebrows around the world, as more and more gaming sites use them to attract American, Chinese, or other players on thin legal ice in their home jurisdictions.

Linden Labs was concerned enough about the issue to call the FBI in for consultation a few months back. The policy change is sweeping and uniform, covering those in jurisdictions both friendly and hostile to internet gambling.

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Source: The Register

Digg Inc., a reader-powered news site, fired Google Inc. as its online advertising partner Wednesday in favor of a company Digg’s top executive described as young and willing to take risks: Microsoft Corp.

“We at Digg couldn’t think of a better partner to get to where we need to go,” said Jay Adelson, the company’s chief executive officer. “They’re a young ad service, they’re innovative, they’re willing to work with us on the cutting edge.”

For three years, Microsoft will deliver ads - mostly small, contextually relevant text links - on Digg.com.

More than 9.5 million people visited the site in June to read, suggest a story or help vote a favorite onto a list of top news, according to data from comScore World Metrix. Digg competes with similar sites including Reddit.com, acquired last fall by magazine publisher Conde Nast, and Netscape, which is owned by Time Warner Inc.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. Google declined to comment.

Digg is the first high-profile customer for Microsoft’s adCenter platform since the company signed up Facebook, a popular social networking site, last summer.

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Source: The Associated Press via The York Dispatch

Pirated software worth $500m (£250m) has been seized as the FBI shuts down a world-spanning piracy outfit.

Before the raids the Chinese counterfeiting syndicate was thought to have sold and distributed software worth more than $2bn.

The FBI and China’s Public Security Bureau arrested 25 people during the two-week operation against the pirates.

Despite recent crackdowns, industry figures suggest that 82% of the software used in China is counterfeit.

The FBI said it had been building up a case against the piracy syndicate for years before staging the raids on the software production plants in China’s Guangdong province.

During the raids, dubbed Operation Summer Solstice, the FBI seized more than 290,000 CDs with a claimed market value of $500m.

The gang was known to be producing pirated versions of 13 of Microsoft’s most popular programs including Windows Vista, XP and Server as well as Office 2003 and 2007.

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Source: BBC News

MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site - more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, officials in two states Tuesday.

North Carolina’s Roy Cooper is one of several attorneys general who recently demanded the News Corp.-owned Web site provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using the popular social networking site, along with information about where they live.

After initially withholding the information, citing federal privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.

Cooper’s office said Tuesday, however, that now the figure has risen past 29,000.

“I’m absolutely astonished and appalled because the number has grown so exponentially over so short of time with no explanation,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who also had pressed the company earlier for sex offender data.

MySpace declined to comment on the figure, focusing instead on its efforts to clean up its profile rolls.

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Source: The Associated Press via The Daily Journal