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Customers Leave GoDaddy in Droves as CEO Bob Parsons Flaunts Killing Elephant, Defends Elephant Video and Leopard Kills

Usually it’s the feminists who are outraged by the actions of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, but this time he’s raised the ire of the animal rights activists, including (but by no means limited to) PETA (which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). It’s not hard to understand – in this day and age people are more likely than not to be upset by the killing of an elephant, let alone by the braggadocio posting of a video of the deed. And despite the timing, the GoDaddy elephant video is no April Fool’s joke – it’s all too real.

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What’s the Big Deal About Google, Verizon, and Net Neutrality? We Explain.

Tech news and forums this week have been overrun by chatter about the legislative proposal for net neutrality that Verizon and Google jointly released on Monday. The proposal, which both Google and Verizon posted to their blogs at 1:38 p.m. EST and 1:47 p.m. EST, respectively, was, they say, intended to spark discussion, and spark discussion it did. If your head is spinning with this week’s discussions of network neutrality, wireline, wireless, a private Internet, and “differentiated online services”, read on.

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Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to Start Charging Users for Processing Spam Addressed to Users

A group of U.S.-based Internet service providers (ISPs) have announced that they are going to start charging their email users for processing the spam that is addressed to them. As the deluge of spam continues unabated, ISPs are seeking new ways to help offset the cost of processing the trillions of pieces of junk email that they are keeping out of their customers’ inboxes (or, in some cases, still delivering to their customers’ inbox or junk folder).

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What is the National Broadband Plan and its Impact on Individuals? Broadband in Every Home is Obama’s Version of “Chicken in Every Pot”

There’s been a lot in the news this week about the National Broadband Plan, and while it was first inserted into public awareness nearly a year ago, many were not aware of even the possibility of a National Broad band Plan, let alone the reality of it, until recently. At its broadest, the American Broadband Plan is about making sure that the U.S. has a robust, and wicked-fast, broadband infrastructure, to not only keep up with – but to keep ahead of – the rapidly changing Internet landscape and demands. It looks at allocation and reallocation of parts of the wireless spectrum, it considers redefining Federal funds currently earmarked to ensure that everybody has access to basic telephone service to include broadband access as well, and it looks at who ought to be paying for all of this broadband development and access. But it also has aspects that are much more personal, and hit much closer to home for the average American.

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Creation of .xxx Domain, .god Domain and .gay Domain Being Considered by ICANN this Week

You’ve probably already heard of the .xxx domain that has been proposed, rejected, re-rejected, and reconsidered, but did you know that there are also a .god domain and a .gay domain being considered? The .xxx domain was first proposed – and provisionally approved – back in 2005, and then was rejected in 2006 and 2007, primarily as a result of lobbying by conservative and religious groups; now it’s being reconsidered. Interestingly, the .god domain, which has had considerably less press, was first proposed as far back as 1995, and has been in the public awareness since at least 2000. The .gay domain is among the newest of proposed TLD (Top Level Domain) offerings (actually “gTLD”, which stands for generic Top Level Domain), although not the only new one (consider New York City’s request for a .nyc domain) – all of which are being considered this week as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets in Nairobi.

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On Canter and Siegel and the Green Card Spam

Now here’s a blast from the past. I was trolling Usenet recently (many of you may know it better as Google groups since Google borged Usenet), and I came across the letter to the editor that I wrote in reponse to a letter that the American Bar Association Journal had published, written by Martha Siegel (she of the Cantor and Siegal Green Card Lottery Spam infamy). In the letter, Ms. Siegel attempted to justify the mass-spamming of Usenet that she and her associate had done in the name of trying to drum up business for their law firm. It was, if not the first mega-spam, certainly the most high-profile of those among the first.

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Massive Internet Outage in California No Accident Say Authorities

A massive Internet outage, loss of telephone service, and even 911 emergency service communications were the result of an intentional act of sabotage against five different fiber optic cables in the Silicon Valley Bay area of California today, according to authorities.

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Massive Transcontinental Internet Outage as Three Undersea Cables Severed – Again.

If you are having trouble with Internet connections between Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Taiwan, Yemen, or Zambia, you’re not alone. Three undersea cables were cut this morning, leading to a global disruption of Internet connectivity. And this is the second time this year this has happened.

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Comcast Axes Comcast Newsgroups and Discontinues Usenet Newsgroup Access for Subscribers

Just two weeks ago, Comcast announced their updated terms of service, limiting bandwidth usage to 250G per customer per month. This week, Comcast cut off their users from Usenet newsgroups, that granddaddy of all Internet forums. (Usenet newsgroups are the foundation of Google’s Google Groups.)

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Comcast New AUP Defines Limit and Excessive Use with 250 GB Threshold

Internet provider Comcast has issued a statement in which they limit and define “excessive use” as, essentially, anything over 250GB (i.e. 250 gigabytes). Starting on October 1, users will be bound by the Comcast AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) and TOS (Terms of Service) to keep their Internet traffic below the 250 gig threshhold.

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Is Your ISP Interfering with Your Downloading and Bandwith Use? Ask Switzerland and the EFF

Is your ISP interfering with your downloading and your bandwidth? If you are legitimately using a torrent service, is your ISP interfering with your connections by doing some peer-to-peer busting? Or, maybe, is your ISP is limiting or even disconnecting your VoIP calls, such as if you use Vonage, or even Skype? How would you know? By using Switzerland, the new Net Neutrality-sniffing program from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

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Craigslist Images Hosed

Starting some time early this morning, it appears that all images hosted by Craigslist are unavailable. Moreover, it seems that the problem is not localized, but happening all over the United States. The problem is that the server which Craigslist uses to host its images – images.craigslist.org – is unreachable.

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Alt Usenet Newsgroups Banned as ISPs Throw Out Alt Usenet Baby with Usenet Alt Binaries Bathwater

More ISPs are jumping on the bandwagon, banning Usenet access to all alt. Usenet newsgroups, in an effort to keep users from Usenet access to Usenet groups which are known to traffic in illegal content, such as Usenet binaries depicting children in illegal acts. So far the ISP-banned newsgroups list includes Verizon newsgroups, AOL newsgroups, and Sprint newsgroups (and some have said Comcast newsgroups, although we can’t confirm that) with more on the way. (If you are asking yourself “What is a newsgroup?” or “What is Usenet?”, Usenet newsgroups (sometimes mistakenly called “Usenet usegroups”) were the precursor to today’s web-based forums; many people now know them as “Google groups”, but they can also be accessed through any number of other servers and programs.)

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ISPs’ Greed to Monetize Mistyped Domains Leads to Barefruit Garden of Delight for Phisher and Hackers

The way in which some of the US’ largest ISPs handle domain name typos, monetizing them through Barefruit, has opened a vulnerability that if exploited by phishers and hackers could be an open and unfettered conduit for the injection of their malicious payloads onto the Internet. Reported late last week by Dan Kaminsky, this particular security hole has been patched. The fundamental danger, though, remains.

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WordPress Comment Spam Hack Disables Plugins and Allows Massive Comment Spam Injection

A new hack has Wordpress hackers disabling all of your Wordpress plugins (including, you see, Akismet or any other anti-spam comment spam stopper plugin), which then allows them to inject comment spam into your blog at will. So if you suddenly find yourself getting an enormous amount of comment spam all at once, or if you suddenly find your blog pages coming up blank (because with your plugins disabled, that often can be the case) you may be the victim of this latest plugin-disabling comment spam hack.