Category: News and Views
Troll Fail: Righthaven Smacked Down Again | Electronic Frontier Foundation
You may remember that we withdrew a number of popular articles from ‘Dispatches’ because of these rat bastards right here. They shook down independent blogs like this one on infringement claims. Their story isn’t selling anymore – Ed.
Online analytics: Find out what your buyers are thinking | money.cnn.com
It’s business owner’s worst nightmare: Customers walk in the door and walk right back out.
For Twiddy & Company, a 95-person firm that connects vacation renters with beach houses in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, that meant customers clicking on their Web site and promptly abandoning it.
Ecommerce Should Get Serious About Video | mashable.com
Today, ebusinesses that utilize video assets are at an advantage, since Google is structuring its search engine results to reward sites that include video.
Iraq: Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say | latimes.com
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
Seriously, you think? – Ed.
LulzSec Hacks Senate Server, Asks Rhetorically “Is This An Act Of War, Gentlemen?” | zero hedge
“We don’t like the US government very much. Their boats are weak, their lulz are low, and their sites aren’t very secure. In an attempt to help them fix their issues, we’ve decided to donate additional lulz in the form of owning them some more! This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov – is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem? – Lulz Security.”
Lulz is a derivative of lol (laugh out loud) that has evolved to mean doing something because you can and you get satisfaction out of it -Ed.
Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think | Al Jazeera English
“With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started,” he said, “But they never end.”
LulzSec, Sony, And The Rise Of A New Breed of Hacker | Huffington Post
In a press statement released last week, the group wrote, “We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1,000,000 users’ personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts.” LulzSec also claimed to have gotten hold of “3.5 million ‘music coupons,'” which the group then invited the public to “plunder.”
Their motivation, it seemed, was something other than monetary gain. But what? An introduction on their website offers a clue: “We have now taken it upon ourselves to spread fun, fun, fun… ”
Small business lending tumbles | money.cnn.com
Bank lending to small businesses fell $15 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to a report released this week from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.
Franken’s bill to close mobile tracking “loopholes”| arstechnica.com
Not content to let Apple and Google continue to sort out their location tracking policies on their own, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has introduced a new bill meant to “close current loopholes in federal law to ensure that consumers know what location information is being collected about them and allow them to decide if they want to share it.”
Dispatches From The Front 