An order by a Texas judge to release the identities of 178 anonymous posters for making inflammatory comments on news site Topix.com may have posters thinking twice in the future before hitting the ’submit’ button. The order came after Mark and Rhonda Lesher filed a lawsuit against the anonymous posters for allegedly making “perverted, sick, vile, inhumane accusations” about them.
Check out the whole story at MaximumPC. Just rememver to watch your temper.
Over at Rocketdock.com, an artist named nycnanda or c-volume (it’s not entirely clear which is the correct name) has created a beautiful new icon for Maxthon. The icon has a distinct chrome look, which could be just a coincidence following Google’s release of its own Chrome browser. Or it just may be art.
Anyway, here it is. You can also download it and check out a lot of other neat stuff at http://rocketdock.com/addon/icons/15267.
OK, this has nothing to do with Maxthon … or even the the Internet or computers. But it’s so cool, I just had to share it. The photograph below has not been Photoshopped. It’s a real photograph of a real street that has been painted to give a realistic illusion of disaster. I just stumbled upon the photo, and I don’t have any information on the artist, or why the artist would want to spend so much time creating the painting. But damn, it’s cool!
Although this blog is usually devoted to all things Maxthon (and to the fumbling attempts of MaxthonGuy to do things with his PC that violate the rules of nature, we figure that anyone who uses Max must also be a big user of poducts and services found on the Internet. So, on no particularly schedule, we’ll be bringing you “This Just In,” collections of of Internet news we found helpful or amusing. Let us know what you think.
Woman emails while sleeping
According to a case described in the medical journal Sleep Medicine, a 44-year-old sleepwalker logged onto her computer and emailed out party invitations to friends. Fortean Times magazine looks at this case and several other bizarre episodes of somnambulism. From Fortean Times:
The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman’s waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another said simply: “What the…”
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/18/emailing-while-aslee.html
Bamboo lap
top, anyone?
After years of churning out glossy, metal-finish, high-polish products, electronics companies are taking their design cues from nature — and trying to pick up the sheen of eco-friendliness — by wrapping their products in bamboo veneers.
Will it catch on? Can we expect other products to take on a more eco friendly veneer? Perhaps a bamboo ipod?
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/bamboo-pcs-catc.html
Microsoft site flunks IE8’s compatibility test
Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names – including Microsoft.com.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2067&tag=nl.e589
The Pirate Bay still sailing as major charges dropped
It may have some of the biggest names in the recording industry after its booty, but The Pirate Bay is already sitting pretty — or at least prettier — some 48 hours into its trial in Stockholm, Sweden.
Half of the charges against the popular bit torrent-based file-sharing service were dropped on Tuesday, according to BBC News, leaving The Pirate Bay’s four defendants on trial for “assisting making available copyright material” — a significantly less severe charge than the dropped “assisting copyright infringement.”
http://www.crn.com/software/214303518
Judge Dismisses Boring lawsuit against Google
A Pennsylvania judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Pittsburgh-area couple against Google. The couple had alleged Google had invaded their privacy by including their house and street, a private road, on its Google StreetView, available on Google Maps.
Judge Amy Reynolds Hay of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania found that Google did not cause harm to Aaron and Christine Boring.
“The plaintiffs have failed to plead — much less set out facts supporting — a plausible claim of entitlement to injunctive relief,” Hay wrote in her findings.
The Borings had filed the lawsuit last April, claiming that Google unlawfully photographed their house and swimming pool from a vehicle mounted with special cameras that’s designed to capture 360-degree street-level images to include in its mapping applications.
http://www.crn.com/security/214501180
Maxthon — Don’t just surf the Web. Seize it!
Over on the Opera blog, an Opera user named Brightis was asking if it were possible for Opera to have a built -in screen gabber. Before anyone could answer him, Brioghjtis posed anothjer message that I’m seeing more and more of–someone telling how he tried Maxthon and loved it. But here, Brightis’s own words:
“Thanks for the reply, however i have just discovered a web-browser called Maxthon, it has screen capture ability with the ability to save them as whatever files you like, very cool. It has everything opera has, eg wand etc and a lot more, even can use opera’s skin.”