Wednesday, March 01, 2006

From Benton Headlines: VIVE LA DIFFERENCE! [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Frazier Moore] [Commentary] For cable subscribers, "a la carte" sounds appetizing: Pay only for the channels you want. Spare your family from networks you never watch and don't want your kids exposed to. And save money in the process. But what if you like the current pricing system? You subscribe to a tier of cable or satellite service, then get a bundle of channels. The more you pay, the wider the selection of channels. Also viewers may indeed watch only 17 channels. But over time, those 17 could vary. Viewers' tastes change and what they choose to watch can reflect that, if the options are there. 4:25:23 PM    comment []

Three from BNA News: NY TIMES FILES SUIT AGAINST DEFENSE DEPT OVER SPYING The New York Times sued the U.S. Defense Department on Monday demanding that it hand over documents about the National Security Agency's domestic spying program. The Times wants a list of documents including all internal memos and e-mails about the program of monitoring phone calls without court approval. It also seeks the names of the people or groups identified by it. FRENCH SUPREME COURT REVERSES PRIVATE COPYING OF DVDS RULING The French Supreme Court has overturned an appellate court ruling that blocked the application of technological protection measures since it inhibited private copying of DVDs. The prior decision involved the use of TPMs on the DVD Mulholland Drive. French language decision [Cour De Cassation] AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS CRITICIZE COPYRIGHT PLAN Australian schools have warned they will have to turn off acces to the Internet if a move by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website. Teachers said students in rural areas would bear the brunt of cuts if the Copyright Agency was successful in adding internet browsing charges to the $31 million in photocopying fees it rakes in from schools. [Australian IT] 10:24:25 AM    comment []

Bob Rankin on the sounds a hard drive makes when it crashes, including discussion, clips of what a dying hard drive sounds like, and MmeMoxie's link to the Gizmodo contest to make dance tracks based on the sounds of dying hard drives, including the winning entry. 7:23:55 AM    comment []

DDoS Attacks Target Prominent Blogs, by Rich Miller. Several prominent weblogs have been hit with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in recent weeks, as the target list for digital attackers continues to broaden. While some of the attacks appear to be politically motivated, on Monday a DDoS struck one of the blogosphere's most financially successful bloggers. Australian Darren Rowse confirmed that an outage Monday on his ProBlogger weblog was caused by a DDoS, but provided no details about the attackers or their motives. Rowse gained international attention last year when he revealed that he would make more than $100,000 as a solo blogger in 2005, primarily through earnings from Google AdSense advertising and commissions from affiliate referral programs. Has the success of professional bloggers made them viable financial targets for professional DDoS attackers? . . . . These attacks have previously targeted online betting sites, payment gateways, domain parking services and even online games. An earlier series of attacks targeted the blog of Michelle Malkin, who led a movement among bloggers to mirror the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that initially appeared in a Danish magazine. . 6:23:45 AM    comment []