Elderly Amish Man Caught on Film With Prostitute, Blackmailed
When a 75-year-old Amish widower slept with a prostitute, he -- we feel certain -- felt pretty bad about it the next morning. As if that guilt weren't enough for the old man, the prostitute and her boyfriend demanded $67,000 from him, claiming that they had filmed the scene with wall-mounted cameras and would upload the recording to the Internet. The pair was later arrested and, we can only imagine, the Amish man abhorred technology more than ever.
Bank Robber Gets Away With the Help of Craiglist
In October, a bank robber -- wearing a safety vest, blue shirt, face mask and goggles -- eluded police with the help of Craiglist. Just outside the bank, while the robbery was in progress, stood a group of men who were responding to a Craiglist day labor opportunity. As the advertisement required, they were all wearing safety vests, blue shirts, face masks and goggles.
Nude New Zealander Arrested After Responding to Fake Sexy Text Message
Late in 2007, a Wellington, New Zealand man received a racy text message from two anonymous "ladies," giving him only an address and a request that he show up naked. Well, he indeed showed up naked... at the home of one appalled, unsuspecting New Zealander. Both the nude Romeo and the sadistic texter were arrested, though neither were prosecuted.
Fake Craiglist Ad Costs Man Most of What He Owns
Last Spring, a post appeared on an Oregon Craigslist board stating that the owner of a specific house was leaving all of his worldly possessions (still in said house) to whoever wanted them. When homeowner Robert Salisbury rushed home -- on a tip from a woman suspicious about the offer of a free horse -- he found his house being ransacked by 30 strangers. We suggest he take that horse and collect some vengeance Clint Eastwood-style.
17-Year-Old Jailed for Stealing Virtual 'Furniture'
When a 17-year-old Dutch boy hacked into several accounts on the Second Life-style site 'Habbo' in 2007, the the law got involved. The boy was discovered to have stolen $5,800 worth of virtual furniture and knick-knacks. Apparently, crime -- whether actual or virtual -- does not pay.
Phishers Going After Your Phones in New 'Vishing' Trend
Over the past year, sneaky spammers have begun to forsake the worn-out territory of e-mail in favor of cell phones' fertile frontier. The result? "Vishing." Get it? Voice mail phishing. It might be more ominous if it didn't sound like a James Bond villain saying, "Wishing."
Burglars Break Into Restaurant, Steal HDTV, Leave Money / Food Behind
Around Halloween of last year, a truckload of thieves drove into -- that's right, into -- a Pennsylvania Mexican restaurant, where they -- apparently uninterested in the cash register -- stole a mid-grade 47-inch HDTV and fled the scene. We've all heard about how this generation is lacking in ambition, but this generation's thieves, too?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Galley said 2:42PM on 10-07-2008
IPTV is the future.
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StrangeBum said 4:42PM on 10-07-2008
I can't even tell you how long I have been saying the same thing to all my friends and family, I'm trying to help get them adjusted to digital media now so that down the road such transitions won't prove to be any sort of problem for them.
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TVGenius said 11:54PM on 10-07-2008
Cerf can stuff it.
I can tell you, first hand, that the penetration of broadband is nowhere near what it needs to be for that to become a reality, and it's not going to get any better. I've been waiting for five years, and still can't get DSL at my house in the center of town. I pay $40 a month for a 128kbps WiMax-like service that's been operating here for ten years. Sprint has no EV-DO here, and AT&T no 3G. And with more and more ISPs adding bandwidth caps that equate to less than 10 hours of HD programming per month, there's no way it can become a reality.
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Kris Marshall said 8:49AM on 10-08-2008
There will be little progress on these fronts for probably the next 10 years. Our first efforts, in the wake of the world wide economic collapse, will have to be energy self sufficiency, green technology, basic infrastructure repairs. Luxuries will have to wait, just as they did while the world fought WWII after the Great Depression.
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C said 4:04AM on 10-14-2008
I certainly hope that this prediction is not overly optimistic... The problem with downloadable video content at the moment is poor video quality. There is so much hype about 1080p resolution being able to be downloaded via the internet, not everyone is looking at the severely low bitrate used to compress these horrible looking 1080p video signals. So what that you get 1902x 1080 pixels per frame?? With the low bitrate that is even less than SD DVD, you just get about 2 megapixels of terrible looking dots! The recently announced VUDO that promises less compression HD content take over 3 hours to download over cable internet! And it is NOT cheaper than renting Bluray or watching HD TV, both of which have much higher bitrate than what is offered today.
This man, when predicting the future demise of TV broadcast, forgot one important thing: HD video quality becoming cheaper and more common place. The majority of consumers are getting bigger and cheaper HD display TVs. Anything that takes more than 30 min to download, cannot offer high quality HD video content without compression artifacts, and costs more than rental discs or free over the air broadcast will NEVER proliferate.... In only 10 years? I certainly hope so....
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C said 4:15AM on 10-14-2008
Corrections to my post...
2012 is only 4 years away, not 10 years... So this is even more a ridiculous claim....
1080p signals are not 1902x1080 but 1920x1080 pixels. My bad...
andy said 3:37PM on 11-21-2008
look how quickly music sharing leapt from FTPs and web clients to napster- it changed the culture of music distribution overnight
the networks & studios won't be caught as unaware as the music industry was, so there may be a workable business model in its formative stages- or piracy could take over, we're not far from a leap in bandwidth and hard drive size that will make sending large video files no more difficult than downloading a dozen albums was on napster back in what, 2000?
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