Mistake Wipes Out 14,000 Email Accounts

Agency had no standing to regulate Comcast, 3-judge panel rules

(NEWSER) - A federal court today said the FCC does not have the power to force Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally. The ruling, in a closely watched case concerning Comcast's ban on BitTorrent, is a blow to the Obama administration’s crusade for net neutrality. But the FCC failed to show that regulating ISPs falls within “its statutorily mandated responsibilities,” a three-judge appeals court panel ruled. More»

Net Neutrality isn't a cure-all; the internet is full of choke points

(NEWSER) - Net neutrality is back in the headlines, but it might not be as important as its champions might hope. Essentially, the net neutrality fight is over price discrimination—the ISPs want to charge extra fees to big companies that could afford to pay them, explains Ars Technica . Companies of all sorts practice price discrimination, and it works out well—unless the public finds out and gets offended. More»

Social networking sites have their place, but so does predecessor

(NEWSER) - Email’s had a good run, but its day is done, according to Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal. Email is an outdated form of communication, better suited to a time when we logged online and off, she argues. Now that we’re always connected, Twitter and Facebook are faster—and more fun. And, not coincidentally, they’re growing faster, according to the latest Nielsen data. More»

(AP) - Google Inc.'s Gmail service got knocked offline today in a widespread outage that affected most users for a few hours this afternoon. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the disruption, which led users to get a "502" error message. Google first posted of the problem at 3:53pm EST and says it was fixed by 5:40pm for nearly everyone. The company suffered a similar glitch in May. More»

Social network spams contacts without permission

(NEWSER) - The US’ third-largest social network is also the world’s most annoying website, Sean Gregory writes in Time. An e-mail about photos from an ex-boss lured him to Tagged, only to lead him through a confusing registration that spammed all his contacts with an informal note. “I don’t have a ‘smiley-face’-style relationship with most of my old professors,” he moans. More»