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Operate a blog, get fired

scaredpoet

The online social connection service Friendster is feeling the heat from its users, now that their new CEO, Scott Sassa (formerly of NBC), apparently gave the word to fire respected software engineer Joyce Park. The reason? Park is a blogger. To quote Park:

It’s especially ironic because Friendster, of course, is a company that is all about getting people to reveal information about themselves…

The posts in question, as far as I can tell, don’t really reveal much of anything at all that I would say warrant a termination, but that’s just me.

Perhaps Friendster sees blogging as a threat, considering news passes among linked bloggers like wildfire. Most certainly this bit of news has already caused a significant backlash, as Friendster users aren’t happy about this development and are now organizing a boycott, asking people to cancel their accounts.

You’ll also note that, unlike the general style of other posts in this blog, Friendster hasn’t been linked (as is customary on first mention). That’s deliberate. This site doesn’t reward fascist behavior with so much as a link.

In Texas, even 10-year-olds are good shots

scaredpoet

In Texas, domestic distrubances can attain a whole new level of drama:

Deputies said the man, who had not been identified, was shot by his son, who was sitting in the back seat of the man’s Toyota 4-Runner. The shooting occurred outside the home of his ex-wife, where the boy lives with his mother and a 7-year-old sibling.

“We’re not certain of anything until we finish our investigation,” Williams said late Friday. “The information we have at this time is that the 10-year-old did fire the weapon.”

I guess that custody visit didn’t go well…

Satellite Retailer accuses “bully,” then DDoSes competitors

scaredpoet

I knew that the world of cable and satellite TV was cutthroat, but I dind’t realize it was this bad:

A Massachusetts businessman allegedly paid members of the computer underground to launch organized, crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against three of his competitors, in what federal officials are calling the first criminal case to arise from a DDoS-for-hire scheme.

Jay Echouafni, 37, is a fugitive from a five-count federal indictment in Los Angeles charging him with aiding and abetting computer intrusion and with conspiracy. As CEO of the online satellite TV retailer Orbit Communication Corp. (link broken; site is now offline), Echouafni allegedly paid a business associate to recruit members of the computer underground to cripple three online stores, resulting in long periods of downtime and an estimated $2 million in losses to the businesses and their service providers.

Funny how orbit is apparently calling DirectTV a “bully” for revoking exclusive-reseller commissions (after all, they aren’t an exclusive reseller) and yet here they are, “bullying” competitors in far more crippling ways.