The involvement of Lori Drew (an adult) in the suicide of Megan Meier has been an unavoidable topic. Last week, Drew was tried on three counts of accessing computers without authorization, a legal statute meant to stop hackers. She was acquitted of all felonies but convicted of three misdemeanors. The lawsuit itself was hugely problematic and clearly the result of prosecutors wanting to get her on anything. But in focusing on the technology, prosecutors reinforced the problematic view that technology has anything to do with this atrocity.

apophenia: reflections on Lori Drew, bullying, and solutions to helping kids.

NMT (popcorn hour) plugin for Ted Talks.

TED.com Videos.

Honda has never had an unprofitable year. It has never had to lay off employees. In the fiscal year that ended in March, profit grew 12%, to $5.1 billion, on $84 billion in sales. In the U.S., which accounts for 43% of Honda's sales, vehicle sales are up 7% through July, even as the industry slipped 5%. The company sold more vehicles in July than one member of the old Big Three, the Chrysler Group.

Engineers Rule - Forbes.com.

Ubuntu has had some pretty nice art in their last few releases. One of the best was the included Heron wallpaper.

It’d be nice if Ubuntu would add some of their iconic release art to their clothing store - I’d totally buy a tshirt with that on it. Or better yet, something Ibex related.

Daring Fireball: Google Mobile Uses Private iPhone APIs.

This is an unfortunately common type of situation - the people making the laws don’t understand the concepts of security or attack, or not well enough to figure out a way to respond to them. Rather than trying to put in efforts to block the implementation of botnets or criminalizing the ways in which they’re gathered and exploited - the law makes for a vague ‘impairment’ charge and then promises a vague overall crackdown on anything and everything that could possibly be used to cause an attack. Nevermind that’s pretty much anything, when used to excess.

The changes now make it a criminal offence to conduct DoS attacks. Where the original legislation included offences of unauthorised access to computer material and of unauthorised modification of computer material, there is now a new offence of doing anything without authorisation with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer….

The 1990 Computer Misuse Act has also been changed to make it an offence to make, adapt, supply or offer to supply any article which is ‘likely to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, [a hacking or unauthorised modification or DoS] offence’. It is also an offence to supply an article – any program or data - ‘believing that it is likely’ to be used to commit such an offence.

New law introduced to criminalise denial-of-service attacks - SC Magazine UK.

Nine Inch Nails as Lullaby’s. What could be any more awesome?

Rockabye Baby! - Transform your favorite rock
music into baby music..

Best tagline - “If your child bites the hand that feeds, try this album”.

The power of the Obama operation could be measured: doubling the turnout at the Iowa caucuses, raising twice as much money as any other candidate in history, organizing volunteers by the millions. (In Florida alone: 65 offices, paid staff of 350, active e-mail list of 650,000, 25,000 volunteers on any weekend day.) The ultimate test would come Nov. 4. In the meantime, there were indications of a great storm brewing. At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We've been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

McCain Camp Retools, Targets Obama | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com.