rebootied

Luckless Predator Only Attracted to Undercover Cops | Threat Level | Wired.com:

By Kevin Poulsen Email Author |  August 14, 2009 | 2:51 pm |

It’s official. There’s nobody in the chat rooms but pedophiles and undercover police.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of an Indiana man whose online efforts to proposition underage girls led him to not one, not two, but three undercover cops, none of whom apparently knew about the others.

The case began in August 2006, when aspiring sexual predator James Daniel started an online conversation with Amanda_13, a fake 13-year-old girl voiced by Sergeant Richard Howard of the Porter County Sheriff’s Department.

After several highly explicit chats, Daniel asked Amanda_13 to meet him at a park in Valparaiso, Indiana, to have sex. When he showed up, he was arrested for inducing an individual under 18 to engage in criminal sexual activity.

When Secret Service agents searched Daniel’s computer, they found logs of chats with two other apparent minors, who described themselves as 13 and 15 years old, respectively. Federal prosecutors introduced the chats at Daniel’s trial as evidence of his perverted motives.

Supposedly, it was only after Daniel was convicted that the feds realized that one of those girls, daisy13_Indiana, was also a cop working the very same Secret Service operation. They informed Daniel’s attorney, who appealed on the grounds that the government improperly withheld information that would have proven entrapment.

The case became even more bizarre when the three-judge appellate panel reviewing the conviction saw the screen name of the third supposed teenager, blonddt, and recognized it from an earlier case.

“To our surprise, the government was unaware until this panel told it at oral argument that the other screen name, blonddt, was also an officer from the Indiana operation,” wrote Judge Diane Wood (.pdf) on Thursday.

Despite the prosecutorial missteps, the panel upheld Daniel’s conviction, ruling that the additional chat logs still showed his intent to commit a crime. Daniel is serving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, followed by supervised release for life.

There’s no evidence in the record that he ever succeeded in talking with a real underage girl.

The Pirate Bay acquired for $7.8 million // News:

Global Gaming Factory X has acquired file-sharing site The Pirate Bay for SEK 60 million (USD 7.8 million).

Along with the purchase of file-sharing tech firm Peerialism, GGF intends to turn the website legitimate, offering compensation for copyright owners whose content is featured on the site.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Hans Pandeya, CEO of GGF

"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.

"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File-sharers need faster downloads and better quality," he added.

Peerialism creates file-sharing technology, which GGF intends to incorporate into The Pirate Bay when the acquisition is completed in August.

"Peerialism has developed a new data distribution technology which now can be introduced on the best known file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay," offered Johan Ljungberg, CEO of Peerialism.

"Since the technology is compatible with the existing it will quickly allow for new values to be created for all key stakeholders and facilitate new business opportunities."

The four founders of The Pirate Bay - Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström - were found guilty of violating intellectual property rights earlier this year, each receiving a one year jail sentence and fines totalling USD 3,620,000.

Popgadget Personal Technology for Women: Privacy protestors block Google Street View "spy" car:

Street View, Google's attempt to index the entire world in 360 degree photographs, hit a snag this week in the small village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire, England.

Residents formed a human wall, stopping Google's vehicle from entering the village or capturing any useful pictures of its outskirts.

Paul Jacobs, who spotted the Street View car and called an impromptu demonstration, says he was motivated by a fear of burglary, as the area has seen three burglaries in the last six weeks: "If our houses are plastered all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to strike."

What do you think of Street View? I know I've had fun using it, but perhaps I'd feel differently if my house were clearly visible. Or if I had anything worth stealing.

Via The Guardian.

Some good news: my next-term contract talks went well today. There was a huge buildup where I thought they were going to tell me they couldn't hire me, but it was about how they can't give me a raise. I hadn't even asked for a raise. I've never received a raise since accepting this position. The Japanese economy has been recessed since my arrival, and is in the middle of tanking, pulling a tragic wingman-follows-the-lead-fighter-into-the-ground maneuver in sync with the USA. (Note: I do not believe we are doomed.) Anyway, between their historic reticence to provide a raise, and the economic environment, I'd not planned to ask for more money -- instead proposing more flexible hours and possible work-at-home time. They seemed open to both suggestions.

They also wanted to reinforce that they like me, but the barrier between contractor-style and employee-style relations needs to be respected, which I had to hold myself back from nodding gleefully at, since it allows even more leverage to get the flexible hours and work-at-home / offsite clauses to be integrated.

Anyway, in short, it looks like I'll be employed here for another 2 year period (though I may request 1 year, and then renegotiate), maybe with more personal freedoms than at any time in the last 8 years.

The mediocre news is that though that went well, it had looked like I might get tomorrow afternoon off to cool my jets in Namba with aalfonso and maybe even my first two-day weekend in a while, but we have [DESCRIPTIVE TEXT DELETED TO COMPLY WITH CORPORATE SECRECY POLICY] so I'll be here on Saturday and Sunday, leading directly to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigeria bikers' vegetable helmets:

In the city of Kaduna, drivers waved palm fronds and rode in convoy to protest at the price of helmets, which can cost up to $29 (£20).

They say passengers often steal the helmets once they reach their destination.

Stories have also appeared in the local papers highlighting passengers' fears that the helmets could be used by motorcyclists to cast spells on their clients, making it easy for them to be robbed.

I was honestly hoping to be graceful in victory, even with as little faith as I'd had that victory was possible, much less assured.

Now that Obama has won, I suddenly find that I want to subject all of the Neocons and all of the republicans who, even though they might not have agreed with Bush and Cheney, have spent the last eight years either smugly confident and supportive of all their crap, or even worse -- silent despite feeling an unease about the course our government has taken -- and subject them to the same behavior.

I remember when the Shrub got up in front of the nation and said something along the lines of, "I'm the President now. I'm the President of America; I'm even the President of those of you who didn't vote for me." That smug, petty, revealing remark about what a power-hungry, selfish President he would become has been ringing in my head for 8 years. Cheney trying to cast the Vice Presidency as some kind of exercise in quantum state logic problem, claiming whatever suits him when he should have been convicted for contempt of court. Rummy. Man, just... Rumsfield. And Rove perhaps more than anyone else: "The Architect." These lying scum had been in charge of the country for too long, and so proud about hijacking our grief over 9/11 and trotting it out whenever we needed to be scared into submission enough to agree to their agenda.

I've grown so sick of it over the last eight years I had no idea how much I've been bottling up. I've been in despair, been angry, and been ashamed over the course of things. And part of me wants to be as graceless in victory as the opposition has been now, for 1/5th of my years on this planet, for a third of my time as a voter. Part of me wants to get all testosterone-poisoned jock on the losing players, and humiliate them. Rub their face in the mess they've made, and put them outside. Begin shouting "America, love it or leave it!" back in their faces. Someone once told me that anger is just another face that fear takes. I'm not sure I agree, but I've been angry for awhile, and afraid that we would not recover, that perhaps the more reasonable among us, those with enough common sense to be conflicted on complex issues, might never have the power in our own hands again. That fear nearly allowed me to become as shrill and intolerant as those that have been in power for the last 8 years.

In the end, people taking the high road are setting enough of an example that I'll try and refrain from teabagging anyone crying into their McCain/Palin commemorative hankies. This article, in particular makes me more hopeful than vengeful: eastside93's Blog | Talking Points Memo | I Didn't Vote For Obama Today

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I've openly supported Obama since March. But I didn't vote for him today.

Coilhouse » Blog Archive » Resistance is NOT Futile. Please Register and Vote.:

Cynicism will not protect you from disappointment. It will not shield your loved ones from harm or neglect. It will never heal your community, fix the ailing economy, or return any semblance of dignity to this country.

Your indifference is not a safety blanket; it is a shroud.

Your vote is your voice. Say something.

My family, probably like most of your guys' families, are fond of forwarding chain emails to me. I used to ask them to stop, but they never understood why, and I finally just chose to not care about them. I rarely get pissed off at chain emails anymore, but this really irked me:

( chain email text, lame-ass formatting intact )