Former mayor sentenced for online pharmaceutical drug sales

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7 March 2011
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A well-known Miami-Dade lawyer who pleaded guilty to selling tens of millions in pharmaceutical drugs without prescriptions on an Internet site serving buyers across the country was sentenced to 40 months by a federal judge in California on Thursday.

Robert Smoley, a former mayor of North Bay Village who has represented numerous high-profile clients during his career, admitted he and others distributed in excess of $48 million worth of drugs through his company, United Mail Pharmacy Services — via redwolf.newsvine.com

WordPress: DDoS attacks came from China

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7 March 2011
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The large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that hit the WordPress.com blog publishing platform last week originated from China, according to the founder of the site.

A DDOS attack involves harnessing hundreds or thousands of computers to simultaneously bombard a web site with data so it becomes overwhelmed. The computers in such attacks have typically been infected with malware so they can be used without the consent and awareness of their owners.

The attacks, which brought slowdowns to the WordPress.com site, were severe enough to interfere with the company’s three data centers in Chicago, San Antonio and Dallas. The site has since returned to normal as of Monday — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Germany identifies a secure way to deal with spam

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6 March 2011
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In theory, stopping spam is easy: just make it uneconomic to send millions of messages by charging for each one sent, or make senders authenticate their identity to stop address spoofing and simplify blocking.

In practice, that would involve building a secure, parallel e-mail infrastructure linking electronic authentication with real-world identities: a daunting task. Yet that’s just what Germany is about to do.

De-mail — a play on the country-code abbreviation for Deutschland (Germany) and the word e-mail — is a government-backed service in which all messages will be encrypted and digitally signed so they cannot be intercepted or modified in transit. Businesses and individuals wanting to send or receive De-mail messages will have to prove their real-world identity and associate that with a new De-mail address from a government-approved service provider. The service will be enabled by a new law that the government expects will be in force by the end of this month. It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages if they wish — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Essential Plugins for Every WordPress Installation

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6 March 2011
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One of the reasons why people gravitate toward WordPress is the seemingly unlimited numbers of open source plugins available. Today, I’d like to go over a few plugins that I think absolutely warrant your attention. I’m sure I’ve missed some, though, so make sure to chime in within the comments! Hopefully, this article will morph into an absolute monster of a list that can act as a reference for fellow WordPress developers — via Nettuts+

Iditarod Race goes high tech with GPS devices

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6 March 2011
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When the 39th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starts in Anchorage on Saturday, 62 mushers and their dogs will embark on an annual trek that has evolved far from its shoestring roots.

The leading contenders are professionals, working year-round to prepare for the race and financed by corporate sponsors. There is a significant monetary reward at the end — $50,400 (31,023.02 pounds) and a new truck for the winner, and smaller cash prizes for all the finishers.

Mushers are equipped with the most high-tech outdoors equipment available, including custom-made sleds with adjustable runners for varying snow conditions and, starting this year, global-positioning-satellite (GPS) devices to check on their progress — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Why Some People Steal Content

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5 March 2011
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Before a business trip to the US, I wanted a copy of the film Veronica Guerin, a journalistic biopic starring Cate Blanchett, to show my journalism students in my stead. My university library did not carry the film, so I turned to Amazon.com for a digital copy. None available. Netflix, which won’t stream content in most places outside the US, wasn’t an option. I haven’t been able to buy any iTunes content outside the US for several months, so Apple was out, too. I told my research assistant to just show the students All the President’s Men instead.

I teach journalism ethics, so I didn’t download a pirated copy of the 2003 film, but it would be hard to blame another global content seeker for doing so — via sean-easter.newsvine.com

Robert Soloway Exits Prison, Disavows ‘Spam King’ Ways

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4 March 2011
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America, beware. Robert Soloway is free to e-mail again.

After three years, eight months and 27 days, Soloway — the internet villain dubbed the Spam King by federal prosecutors — is allowed back online.

In his first interview since release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon, Soloway swears his spamming days are over. If I send out spam e-mails, that’s a violation of my probation. End of story, he says. I’m being very careful. If I send out an e-mail, I’m not even going probably to CC it. I’ll send a unique e-mail to each person — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Lord West urges e-mail snooping crackdown

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4 March 2011
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Ministers must do more to stop internet service providers (ISPs) snooping on private e-mails without consent, an ex-cyber security minister has said. Some ISPs have trialled software that intercepts and scans e-mails to target ads.

They are meant to ask permission first – but former Labour minister Lord West says it is too easy to flout the rules — via dungbeetlemania.newsvine.com

Customer service on Twitter

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4 March 2011
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Here’s how you do it well, courtesy of Zappos (of course). Yesterday I tweeted:

I think my wife is having an affair with someone named “Zappos”. He sends her a package at least every third day. I am on to you, Mr Zappos!

Almost immediately, Zappos’ customer service Twitter account replied:

@jkottke I’m sorry sir, but our relationship with your wife is strictly professional.

Great, right? A company that gets the joke and participates meaningfully in an actual conversation with a full awareness of the context — via Source: kottke.org

Suncorp Bank error reveals student’s eBay fraud

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2 March 2011
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A Brisbane schoolboy’s elaborate frauds were only discovered when $2 million accidentally lobbed into one of his fake bank accounts, a court has been told.

Philip Heggie, 19, pleaded guilty to more than 100 charges in the Brisbane District Court on Tuesday.

From December 2008 to December 2009, the then Year 12 student at St Laurence’s College used 119 Suncorp bank accounts in different names to defraud users of the auction website eBay — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Gmail Bug Deletes E-Mails for 150,000 Users

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1 March 2011
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The cloud has failed roughly 150,000 Gmail users, whose e-mails have been deleted and accounts disabled by a mysterious glitch.

Users on Google’s help forum report that the Gmail bug responsible deletes everything, including e-mails, labels, folders, and settings. When affected users log on, they see a welcome message as if they’ve never used Gmail before. Other users simply found their accounts disabled while repairs are being done. According to Mashable, the bug affects less than 0.08 percent of users — via redwolf.newsvine.com

‘Most stupid criminal ever’ blew cover on Facebook

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28 February 2011
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A man who stole a laptop, then used it to post a gloating self-portrait of himself on the victim’s Facebook page is challenging for the title of the world’s thickest criminal.

Last December, Rodney Knight Jr, 19, broke into the house of Washington Post journalist Marc Fisher and lifted a bunch of stuff, including cash, a winter coat and a laptop computer belonging to the hack’s 15-year-old son — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

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27 February 2011
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These have been some eventful weeks in the world of copyright trolling. Thousands of unnamed John Does in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

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27 February 2011
42 second read
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571 views

These have been some eventful weeks in the world of copyright trolling. Thousands of unnamed John Does in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google Recipe Search Cooks Up Next Gen of Search

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27 February 2011
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Stepping into the kitchen now, Google introduced a recipe search engine Thursday that serves up dishes based not only on the ingredients you may have on hand, but the calories you want to consume and even how much time you have to cook.

About one percent of the queries on Google are for recipes, the company said, and the new vertical intends to make it easier for people to find recipes across the web. Keeping with its search roots, Google isn’t showing the recipes in the results, and is linking to recipes on sites like Epicurious and the Food Network, which likely alleviates some worries about Google’s newest effort — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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