lt's a silence the lonely know
in the fire the rainbows grows
you can push it down my friend
it will come up ten fold again
we will erase your name, we will show no restraint
how much blood must be shed
on the streets of unrest
we will bleed as long need be
that river will remove you from history
we will erase your name, we will show no restraint
you have robbed us for many years
but we have saved every last tear
we have suffered all of your hate
and now we march down to your gates
we will erase your name, we will show no restraint
Freedom, Glory, Be Our Name
Freedom, Glory, Be Our Name
you think your power is secure
when you startle us with the threat of war
but fear has its limits too
we are no longer scared of you
we will erase your name, we will show no restraint
we will burn your temple to the ground
we will tear all your prisons down
your gallows will be set for burning
just before one last hanging
we will erase your name, we will show no restraint
Freedom, Glory, Be Our Name
Freedom, Glory, Be Our Name
now we give you one last chance
to do what's right and to let us dance
or the hand of fate will become a fist
a force your thugs can not resist
The fields where soldiers practice their killing
can be a spread of green grass
where the boisterous rainbow children may dance
while the one who beams with
ultimate command
will merely be a smile (Written by Shamloo)
Shoukoeh Azadi Ba Mast
Targets of the scam receive an unsolicited email purporting to come from notorious anti-piracy company MediaDefender. The email, which is simply addressed “Dear User!” claims the individual has been monitored on any of several torrent sites while engaging in anything from copyright infringement, through to simply browsing the sites.
Threat characteristics of ZBot - a banking trojan that disables firewall, steals sensitive financial data (credit card numbers, online banking login details), makes screen snapshots, downloads additional components, and provides a hacker with the remote access to the compromised system. Creates a startup registry entry. Contains characteristics of an identified security risk.
Savvy Internet users will hopefully realize the email is a scam fairly quickly, but hardened file-sharers should smell a rat even earlier due to the omission of demands for money.
Wu also doubted that MySpace provided sufficient notice to members to hold them responsible. If a user didn’t read the terms of service, the judge asked prosecutor Krause, could they still be charged with violating them?
Krause struggled to respond to Wu’s questions, emphasizing that not every terms-of-service violation would be prosecuted as a crime. In Drew’s case, he said, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that she knew what she was doing was wrong.
But Wu disputed this, pointing out that the government’s star witness — Ashley Grills — had testified that she never read the terms of service before clicking on a button agreeing to them.
Wu and Krause circled around each other for several more minutes before Wu finally announced that he was granting the defense’s motion to acquit.
Using ingenious experiments to reveal the brain’s hidden machinations, Wegner and others have found that our brains expend steady, conscious effort to avoid talking about ex-girlfriends on first dates, sending putts off the green, or letting slip the real reason you were late for work.
But when our conscious minds are stressed and preoccupied — by, for example, a desire not to screw up — a subconscious process devoted to guarding against the mistake slips through. Unwanted thoughts pop into the forefront of your mind.
The New York Times and others are reporting that DoJ has written to the federal judge administering the settlement, which gives Google the right to digitize not only works in the public domain but protected works, for a fee, unless content owners opt out, and a huge cache of what are known as “orphan” works — books whose copyright status isn’t clear.
To sweeten the pot, the comics powerhouses have launched a Facebook promotion to get Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman nuts on board with a time-honored hero just landing his first dedicated film. Interested parties can power up widgets on their Facebook pages, which need, like Green Lantern’s iconic ring, to be continuously recharged to satisfy eligibility for prizes like a Playstation 3, 40-inch 1080 LCD HDTV and a Blu-Ray version of the film. Of course, if they don’t feel like recharging their lanterns, they can also goof around with the widget’s peripheral content, which includes a personality quiz, Green Lantern IQ test, videos, news, and downloads.
Every year since 1982, the English Department of San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a literary battle royal that challenges aspiring hacks to compose the opening sentence of the worst novels imaginable.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the contest’s namesake, was a noted author and politician who coined famous phrases such as “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar” and “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But, he also opened his novel Paul Clifford with the infamous clunker, “It was a dark and stormy night.” So, the contest bears his name.
The acquisition for $7.8m (SEK 60 million) came as a huge shock to most people familiar with The Pirate Bay, as GGF promised that when it takes over the site it will eliminate illicit file-sharing - the base upon which The Pirate Bay achieved its worldwide fame and enabled it to gather millions of loyal users.
Indeed, most indications point to GGF being only interested in three things - the Pirate Bay’s domain name, the users and the revenue they can generate from them.
However, according to a report, the news of the acquisition didn’t come as a shock to everyone. Indeed, accusations are being made that some individuals knew what was about to happen and took the opportunity to try and cash in.
Currently the site is down after suffering a minor DDoS attack, and TPB’s TiAMO told TorrentFreak that the site’s load balancer had crashed .
Peter says running Pirate Bay has resulted in ‘bad pay’, i.e minus SEK 30 million in fines - incidentally an identical amount to the cash payment part of the deal with GGF.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF's Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.
"We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money," he said.
According to Mr Pandeya, GGF's chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference - at least in terms of content - would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.
The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday said it has won a copyright-infringement suit against Usenet.com, a site that lets newsgroup users share documents, music, and other files.
The federal court ruling in the Southern District of New York was handed down Tuesday. The RIAA had sued Usenet.com, a longtime online newsgroup provider, in October 2007.
Usenet.com works differently than many file-sharing sites in that it stores content on servers and makes it available on-demand. Other sites use a peer-to-peer architecture in which content is downloaded from people's computers on a network.
The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!
This aside, we are not aware of any legal action taken by any of Nexicon’s partners to back up their threats. To the best of our knowledge they don’t even have a proper license to act as private investigators which is a felony in several US states and renders the ‘evidence’ they have in their spreadsheets useless.
Our advice, if you get a settlement offer from one of Nexicon’s partners please forward it to your spam folder - after forwarding it to us first of course.
#72 posted by Mark Sable, June 28, 2009 3:41 PM
Hey everyone...Mark Sable, the writer in question here.
First, thanks to Cory (whose book Little Brother I read and enjoyed just before traveling on said trip) for writing about this. And I appreciate everyone's comments.
I figured I would try to make myself available for questions (ask away) and fill in a bit more detail.
I think IAMINNOCENT has it about right. I'm not particularly conspiracy minded in real life, although it does make for good fiction.
It's remotely possible that I was flagged SSSS because of my writing. I only mention this because I created an ARG to market UNTHINKABLE, one that might have aroused the suspicions of, say, the NSA.
But as one of the intelligence sources I used for the book put it, he would have been surprised if any of our security organizations were competent enough to make that connection.
Most likely, I was flagged SSSS for an...unusual flight pattern (6 flights in 10 days) that was full of seemingly one way trips, and that I changed a bit relatively the last minute. (Ironically, my penultimate destination was originally Prague, so I came just short of, as others have so aptly put it, "the full Kafka").
I have been flagged on occasion for that reason.
What I found strange and took issue with was not the initial flagging or even the extra screening. It was the fact they went out of their way to read the script (which I had brought with me to type handwritten corrections due the next day into my laptop).
There were plenty of documents in my bag they could have read through. And while the first page of the script did contain words like "9/11" "terrorist attacks" and "police state", it was in an extremely small font.
Regardless of how or why I was stopped, it was unnecessary of them and quite possibly a violation of my civil rights to read the script.
And let's be honest, what was reading the script going to tell them? Do you think the average TSA agent - someone who doesn't need a high school diploma for the job - knows the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas (or Hadassah for that matter?)? They don't remotely have the training to analyze suspicious reading materials.
The TSA by its own admission is only designed to stop "stupid" terrorists.
I'd love if this helped the book sell more copies of Unthinkable (and surely, the only way to really punish the TSA is to buy as many books as possible), but I'd much rather my work be judged on its own merits.
#77 posted by Mark Sable, June 28, 2009 4:47 PM
Hollt - I agree with you a grand TSA conspiracy is highly unlikely. I allow for the possibility that the NSA could have had me on some list for the ARG, but I admit it's a remote one.
My issue isn't so much that once the TSA figured out that it was "about terrorism" they read the script. I don't think they should have been looking through reading materials, and I don't think they are qualified to judge what is or isn't terrorist material.
I'm also I think understandably defensive about any accusation that the incident was somehow staged by me. I wouldn't risk my reputation for the publicity, not to mention jeopardize my ability to travel.
That said, if anyone's got any PR ideas for the remaining issues that don't end with me on a no fly list...please let me know;)
#90 posted by Anonymous, June 28, 2009 8:00 PM
I am totally going to write a script about a hot TSA woman pulling me out of line for a Penthouse forum moment, and carry it with me every time I fly.
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On June 24, Iranian Superstar Andy Madadian went into an LA recording studio with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and American record producers Don Was and John Shanks to record a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran.
This version of the old Ben E. King classic is not for sale - it was not meant to be on the Billboard charts or even manufactured as a CD.....it's intended to be downloaded and shared by the Iranian people...to give voice to the sentiment that all people of the world stand together....the handwritten Farsi sign in the video translates to "we are one".
If you know someone in Iran - or someone who knows someone in Iran - please share this link.
Free Download "Stand By Me"
If you've been on the Internet in the last week and a half, you've know: Green is the hot new color. Twitter avatars, Facebook profile pictures, Web site logos...Iran's Sea of Green has taken over the Internet. It's a well-intentioned fad, but a fad nonetheless, and it's time for it to end.