Amar Toor
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Scientology Hacker Convicted, Heading To Jail
With old-fashioned, barbaric crusades having gone the way of the Pet Rock, it seems people have started to take their religious beefs from the war-grounds to the Web. The most recent cyber-attack, though, might be the most confusing yet. As the Huffington Post reports, Dmitriy Guzner, a 19-year-old from New Jersey, has been sentenced to a 366-day term in federal prison for participating in a cyber-attack on Church of Scientology Web sites back in January of 2008. According to the charges, Guzner and his hacker lackeys conducted a massive denial of service attack on the sites, rendering them inaccessible to other users. The cyber-assassin plead guilty to computer hacking charges in May, and will serve an additional two years of probation upon his release from prison.
The head-scratcher? Prosecutors claim that Guzner was operating as part of a covert anti-Scientology hack team called "Anonymous," (Ed. Note: Not just Scientology, but "Anonymous" is part of a larger hack group) which protests the Church on the grounds that it promotes Internet censorship. So their logic, if we heard correctly, was to combat censorship with malicious, vigilante... censorship? Nope, no unsound reasoning here. [From: Huffington Post]
Anonymous, Sexual Blog Comment Costs School Employee Job
HuffPo reports that a man in St. Louis lost his job at a local school after posting a vulgar response to an online poll, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last Friday asked readers the following question: "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" Spotting a hanging curveball, the employee posted a one-word vulgarity, alluding to a certain female anatomical feature. Web site administrators deleted the comment, only to have it re-posted. At that point, Kurt Greenbaum, director of social media at the newspaper, used the IP address to trace the original obscenity back to a school. Job loss ensued.
The following Monday, Greenbaum wrote an article titled, "Post a vulgar comment while you're at work, lose your job." One reader argued, "You guys don't like moderating so you call his work and get him fired." Greenbaum's reply, dripping with sarcasm, read, "Yeah, you caught me! I made him log on to his computer at work, visit STLtoday.com's Talk of the Day, read the item, type a vulgarity and hit the 'submit' key."
The guy shouldn't have been making these comments from a school computer, but isn't Greenbaum overstepping his bounds here? It's the responsibility of the newspaper to filter its readers' comments (Ed. Note: Wouldn't know anything about that at Switched. Our commenters are all angels.) -- not to monitor its readers' behavior. For whatever reason, the site maintenance team couldn't just color within the lines of their own Web site; they had to go "tell teacher." The most reprehensible part, though, is Greenbaum's smug self-righteousness, regardless of right or wrong. The only thing that resulted was someone losing their livelihood. Let's take it down a notch on the sarcasm, shall we? [From: Huffington Post]
Russian Astronaut's Blog Makes Outer Space Fun Again
While NASA astronauts typically tweet banalities about their jobs, the hilarity of one Russian cosmonaut's blog is skyrocketing to infinity... and beyond.
Maksim Suraev, a Roscosmos astronaut aboard the International Space Station, has used his blog to give readers some humorous insight into daily outer space existence. Translated into English by Russia Today, the blog features not only weirdly hilarious pictures from aboard the Station, but intimate and witty writing, as well. (Russophones can find the original here.) One post discusses the "holy symbols" aboard the station, with a picture of religious icons floating in zero gravity. One of those icons is Suraev's own crucifix, which, he claims, contains "a piece of the original cross on which Jesus was crucified."
Artist Creates Twitter Avatars From Pop Culture Figures
You can find the full slate of 11 avatars here, running the gamut from Buzz Lightyear to 'Where the Wild Things Are.' (We'd probably go for Chewbacca, on cuddliness alone.) It's a clever motif, and one that could easily be expounded with greater extremes, and in different contexts; isn't Obama's caricature kind of tailor-made for this shape, anyway? [From: Ape Lad on Flickr and Neatorama]
Feds Using PlayStation 3 to Catch Predators
When trying to track down the cyber footprints of a criminal, federal authorities typically use a complex and expensive system of computers to crack open a suspect's password-protected files. Now, however, according to Kotaku, agents have discovered that they can do the same thing by networking a group of PS3 consoles together -- at a fraction of the cost. And as it turns out, all the processing power that goes into producing those complex graphics is perfectly suited for cracking passwords. And though any gaming console can fill the same function, authorities have chosen the PS3 in particular because it allows them to use Linux, an open-source operating system. (Tragically, the newest PS3 Slim doesn't allow open-source systems, although police have turned to eBay to troll for older versions.)
Dancepants Like This (Which Power iPods), Baby, They Were Born To Run
For many of us, music is the only way we can get through a grueling session at the gym. But if you've ever wanted to feel more in touch with your MP3 player or to sync appropriate music to your run, a new pair of pants may be just the thing.
The new Dancepants Kinetic Music Player is, basically, a hamster wheel for music lovers. Although it may look like any other pair of track pants you might ...Parents Worried Girls Becoming Addicted to Facebook
On top of all the natural insecurities and volatile emotions that characterize adolescence, you can now add the girlish gossip-mongering of the Facebook age, where high school dating drama follows gals home and the family laptop becomes the central location of anxiety, woe, and "Oh no, she di-int." Granted, they may just want to have fun, but growing girls don't always have an easy time of it.
...'Unfriend' Named Word of the Year
After a year that saw so much action and chaos on the political, economic, and pop cultural fronts, the New Oxford American Dictionary has decided that 2009's vaunted Word of the Year should be firmly planted in the new social media lexicon. The envelope, please...
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, "unfriend" is your 2009 Word of the Year (cue applause). The Oxford Dictionary defines this ...$1.6M Bugatti No Match For a Low-Flying Pelican
It's official. The birds are attacking.
For the second time in a month, a single bird has defied the odds and taken down a piece of machinery many times its size. According to the Lufkin Daily News, Andy House was cruising down the roads of La Marque, Texas in his $1.6 million Bugatti Veyron last Wednesday, minding his own business and talking on the phone (which, we are sure, didn't ...Teen Claims Kidnappers Forced Him to Buy PS3 at Walmart
Used to be, back in the golden years of kidnapping, abductors would only demand a ransom in exchange for their victims. Nowadays, though, as the video game generation matures into criminal adulthood, typical demands are becoming a bit more... peculiar.
Teenager Kyle Yarkosky, of Florida, claims that a fellow teen named David Daniels and another unnamed suspect abducted him last Monday, held ...
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