Maybe you've never heard of Niue before. But you will now. This Pacific island nation is said to have been so inflamed when filtering software maker Secure Computing found the third-most common Net porn source to be .nu domain names that the American company which sells .nu names has threatened to sue Secure. .NU Domain president J. William Semich said the major critique of the Secure study was a fat volume of domains that are no longer active, or were deregistered for compliance failure. Secure Computing says they have received no actual legal complaint from .NU Domain yet...
Speaking of complaints, legal and otherwise, the latest in the spam wars has it that some regulators think the spammers can be beaten within two years. They also say millions may give up the Net and phone messaging systems unless governments get real about joining up to sock spam. A three-day U.N. conference on the subject produced news conference comments that spammers, including phishers, can be knocked down in such a short time. "If we don't work together," said UN International Telecommunication Union Net strategy expert Robert Shaw, "we may see millions of people abandoning the Net entirely, out of frustration and disgust." Stop us if you've heard that one before...
Speaking of "Stop," some police agencies might have an easier time making "stop" hold up in court – thanks to their outfitting patrol cars with TiVo-style digital video systems. Not only does it promise to make it easier for the men in blue to duck frivolous lawsuits (though we're not about to speculate on the next time some burglar busts into a school building, falls and breaks every bone in his body, and then sues the school district for safety violations), but it will also save them fair tonnage of storage space that they now waste with bulky analog tapes. East Texas's Tyler Police Department has fitted all 60 of its patrol card with the systems, including special "pre-event" features that go back automatically and save the minute's footage before an officer hits the button to mark the segment...
East Texas is also adding something it probably prefers not to have: more child porn cases. The Lufkin Police Department says that daily advances in equipment that's high tech already makes child porn more accessible, even if the predators are still hard to catch. Hard, but not impossible: a former Lufkin High School assistant principal, Charles Dexter Lewis, was charged with possession of child porn July 6, about a month after he was charged in a case involving sending nudes of himself to a student by e-mail. He's free on $20,000 bond...
Internet America wants to keep itself free from a takeover bid by VoIP, Inc. The Dallas-based company said July 7 they would reject any VoIP, Inc. bid to acquire working control of the company. VoIP reportedly issued a public announcement that they wanted to acquire the company in a stock swap, then allegedly sell off Internet America assets and turn the company into a shell company. Internet America chief executive William E. Ladin said the company is pursuing a long-term strategy that includes new products to spur subscriber increases, including new broadband products like wireless and broadband over power lines. "We do not believe that the sale of control of Internet America for stock of a company approximately 95% of which is owned by 2 individuals and that intends to liquidate our assets is in the best interests of our shareholders," Ladin said about the VoIP, Inc. move...
Google, meanwhile, has to beware a trademark infringement move from Googles. Googles.com is a children's Website whose operator wants to stop the search kings from expanding into new areas focusing on children, with that operator, Stelor Productions, filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office arguing Google is walking all over its turf, confusing prospective investors and infringing its trademarks, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Although the popular Google search engine and the children's site have co-existed for years," the paper continued, "Stelor contends that Google 'has been a growing annoyance as the Google search engine has become more and more successful and well-known'."..
Meanwhile, around the world in southern Asia, match Islamic devotion to Internet dating and you get some Pakistani communities making the pair a signature doing for communities where matchmaking is usually a family affair. There's Mehndi.com, a matrimonial site with voluminous personals from eligible young Muslims and their parents, fashioned for more traditional Pakistanis and founded by a Pakistani who lives in Canada; and, Shaadi Online, involving producers interviewing the parents of marriage-eligible candidates as well as a bachelor and bachelorette with marriage the specific goal.
