Author: tommytrc

Let’s pretend you run a blog. — Not too far a stretch for many of you.

Now lets pretend a content spammer tries a unique approach. Rather than just having a bot inject spam, he pretended to be quite a number of different people in your comment section who, by chance, all had a fascination with the same site. They would make heated comments sure to get noticed then work in a passing reference to the site in question so they could post a link.

A veritable human virus.

Now lets pretend said virus forgot his medication one day so he went postal and bombed your blog (under an assumed name) with hundreds of comments for almost a 7 hour period. Let’s also pretend that:

You know who the idiot is. You know his real IP number as well as who his ISP is. You know where he lives, right down to his home address. You even have a phone number.

Do you:

A) Plaster the information all over the internet.
B) Sent out a private email to all your “blog-buddies” that this guys is trouble.
C) Contact his ISP and have him dumped.
D) Get some low-life friends of yours to DDOS his website for a few days.
E) Call the phone number and tell his mommy on him.
F) Call his country mental-health professionals because anyone who spends 7 hours bombing a blog needs to be locked up in a rubber room.
G) Demand an apology (if even by email) so you won’t do A-F
H) Go on with your life.
I) Put up a smart-assed post revealing just enough information about the guy that he will know that you know who he is and that maybe he should find another toybox to play in.
J) Other

Hypothetically of course…

Postscript: I know at least two of my regular readers will know from this post who it is. I ask you to hold it to yourself for now… If you are busting at the seams, email me… I’ll give a cookie to the first right answer.

And a private message to the troll in question: Did you say you wanted to know who is more net savvy? You’ve been pwned.

Originally posted by Paul from Wizbang

Not quite the magical unveiling of the iPhone that we’ve all been waiting for (guess that could still be in the
offing at Macworld or something), but Motorola executive VP Ron Garriques showed off the first iTunes-compatible
handset during his keynote address at CES yesterday. He wouldn’t cough up anything much about the phone itself or when
Apple fans everywhere will finally be able to feel whole, but the phone itself did have an iPod-like navigation
interface and sync with iTunes just like a proper iPod.

[Thanks, Mike]

Originally posted by Peter Rojas from Engadget

Logitech has announced a new universal remote, the Harmoy 880, with a built-in color screen and a recharging station. I like the Harmony platform a lot—$250 worth of like, I dunno, but I might pick it up on clearance.

Product Page [Logitech]

Originally from Gizmodo

Think Secret already had a pretty tight track record for accuracy when it came to Apple rumors, but getting sued by Steve Jobs and co. over a couple of product leaks just gave them some massive street cred, which is why we’re inclined to think they’re on to something when they dish out some serious dirt about the supposed flash-based iPod that’s going to be announced next week. There was already a first edition of the rumor that claimed that the iPod flash would come without a display, but Think Secret is pretty dang sure that the flash-based iPod Apple will introduce at MacWorld won’t have a ClickWheel but will come with a small LCD screen that’s two lines shorter than the one found in the iPod mini and will come in a both 1GB version that will sell for $149 and a 2GB version that will sell for $199.

Originally posted by Peter Rojas from Engadget

Oh Brother…what next!!!!

Well, this should be interesting. An “unhappy” iTunes user is now suing Apple for antitrust violations, claiming that they broke antitrust laws by only allowing their music to play on iPods — blocking out other music players from the market. It’s unlikely that he’ll win the lawsuit, and honestly, it sounds more like a setup by an Apple competitor than just some individual who feels wronged. The guy in question says he was “forced” to buy an iPod in order to make use of the music he bought on iTunes, but the courts will likely point out that he could have gone to a competing online music store. Of course, what this really highlights is how some of these copy protection issues are building fragmented worlds. How would people react if the CDs they bought at Tower Records could only play on Tower-branded radios? Thanks to the way the industry views intellectual property online, the end result is a lot of competing separate worlds, which actively discourages use.

Originally from Techdirt