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Ars Technica
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Aug 15, 08 7:20 AM CDT
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A judge has thrown out a defamation suit against Wikipedia, upholding the principle that a website isn't responsible for user-generated content, Ars Technica reports. In the lawsuit, a literary agent charged that her Wikipedia entry damaged her reputation because it included nasty comments from bloggers and from a website that ranked her among the nation's worst agents.
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Globe and Mail
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Aug 14, 08 8:06 PM CDT
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Twitter gets a bad rap for its often less-than-substantive musings, but every now and then the service proves its "true potential" as an Internet tool, writes Mathew Ingram in the Toronto Globe and Mail . Case in point: When a Chinese citizen journalist recently traveled to Beijing, the authorities hustled him out of the city on false pretenses. Fellow Twitterers picked up his story and translated his posts.
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Guardian (UK)
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Aug 13, 08 2:06 PM CDT
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By now you’ve probably encountered “LOLcats,” the photos of cats with superimposed text designed to make people “laugh out loud,” as the kids say. Now, the fine folks at the Guardian have turned some highlights from President Bush’s visit to Beijing into “LOLBushes” ... and dragged daughter Barbara and Henry Kissinger into the fray. Click the link below to see what England thinks of the Commander in Chief.
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Los Angeles Times
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Aug 12, 08 9:59 AM CDT
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Google's Gmail was largely inaccessible for 2 hours yesterday, as both the company and compulsive email checkers struggled to figure out what went wrong, the Los Angeles Times reports. The blackout was followed by a flurry of anxious web-chatter on the subject of the much relied-upon email service. The company later blamed the downtime on an internal outage.
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E! Online
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Aug 11, 08 10:31 AM CDT
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The infamous (and infamously annoying) stunt known as a "RickRoll"—a Web link allegedly of interest to the recipient that actually leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up"—has a sequel, E! reports: the "Barackroll." It intercuts footage of Barack Obama speeches with dance moves from his appearance on the Ellen show. Click the window on the left, and get the song stuck in your head, too.
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New York Times
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Aug 9, 08 11:57 AM CDT
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A fatal flaw in Internet security has a patch, but it’s a leaky one, the New York Times reports. Yesterday, a Russian scientist demonstrated an attack that secretly redirected web traffic. It took him just hours using standard equipment; before the patch, it would have taken seconds. Thieves could use the method to hijack a user’s bank or credit card information.
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Wall Street Journal
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Aug 9, 08 10:57 AM CDT
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The Internet is killing the two cultural exports that most define America: music and movies, Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel writes in the Wall Street Journal . Gone are the days of the old-fashioned rock star and the seminal album, replaced by one-hit wonders and an iTunes audience that craves singles. Gone, too, are the days when— Harry Potter notwithstanding—lines would snake around the block to see Star Wars or similar fare. Blame downloading for much of it. "Our movies and music are America," Wurtzel warns. "And the day the music dies, the party's over."
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Wired
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Aug 7, 08 4:23 PM CDT
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Noting that both candidates have plans to ensure our collective cyber security, Bruce Schneier, in Wired , lays out some essential policy advice for the next president: Use the government’s enormous purchasing power to make security software producers do better. Make security requirements for government software high, and those improvements will be included in the security products offered to the public.
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Wall Street Journal
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Aug 7, 08 3:45 PM CDT
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The web browser Flock is designed to ease multitasking for highly active web users, and it mostly succeeds, writes Walter S. Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal . Billed as “the social Web browser,” Flock gives users a sidebar with feeds for email, and social networking, photo, video, or news sites. The sidebar is always visible next to the page in the main browser window.
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Wired
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Aug 7, 08 8:05 AM CDT
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Security researcher Dan Kaminsky outlined what he calls the biggest Internet security hole since 1997 to a gathering of experts yesterday, and it's a lot worse than had been understood, Wired reports. “Every network is at risk,” Kaminsky said at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. "That's what this flaw has shown." The bug, a hole in the Domain Name Service, has wider implications than anyone realized when word of it leaked last month, Kaminksy said.
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San Jose Mercury News
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Aug 6, 08 9:34 PM CDT
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Hoping to dodge the hassle and cost of real-life trade shows, more companies are heading online to show off their wares. The San Jose Mercury News takes a look at this new, virtual business terrain, and what companies are doing with it. The online shows cost about $25,000 and boast 3D graphics and social networking features. One big advantage: It's easier to track attendees' activities and translate them into sales leads.
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Christian Science Monitor
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Aug 6, 08 7:58 PM CDT
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Jordan’s Queen Rania is taking on Arab stereotypes through a venue not particularly known for engendering serious discourse: YouTube. The Christian Science Monitor follows her successes and frustrations as she self-publishes videos, hoping the experiment can teach Arabs and Westerners more about each other. Rania began the series by asking Westerners to submit their stereotypes about Arabs.
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BusinessWeek
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Aug 6, 08 1:22 PM CDT
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Though the stake bought by Microsoft last fall pegged Facebook’s value at $15 billion, a rush of stock sales by insiders at the still-private company shows they think it’s worth much less, BusinessWeek reports. Even Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social-networking giant, reportedly has sold some shares, and trouble could be looming in Silicon Valley.
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