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Here is what the letter looked like before it was mailed:

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Research on the behavior of fake RIAA and MPAA trackers shows that these organizations have no proof that you actually tried to share infringing content. Even worse, it is extremely easy for someone to make it look like you shared an infringing file, even if you’ve never used a filesharing application.

Inspired by our previous posts on fake BitTorrent trackers, Ben Maurer decided to take a good look at the behavior of these trackers. For this research he used a BitTorrent client, and started to connect to fake torrents. The torrents were hosted by BayTSP, a company that collects IP addresses for several anti-piracy organizations.

The findings are quite shocking, but at the same time good news for filesharers who receive DMCA notices from their ISP. Ben found what some of us already expected. BayTSP only records who connects to the tracker, and has no proof that the alleged pirates actually tried to download infringing content. BayTSP merely collects IP addresses and forwards them to anti-piracy organizations. The anti-piracy then send a letter to your ISP, accusing you of sharing copyrighted material.

The really scary thing about this is that it is extremely easy for other people to make you receive a DMCA notice from your ISP, and possibly get disconnected if that happens more than once. As Ben points out, one way to make someone connect to a fake tracker (don’t try this at home) is by letting them click on a link like this:

http://tracker.com:12345/announce?info_hash=579CC43E4D6.

Their IP will then be recorded by the fake tracker, and they will probably receive an infringement notice soon after that. Even if they’ve never heard of BitTorrent at all!

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Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya’s national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind’s oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found.

But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm — one pitting scientists against Kenya’s powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism — once largely confined to the United States — has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.

“I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it,” says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya’s 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. “These sorts of silly views are killing our faith.”

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After preparing reports on congressional corruption for the past two years, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (“CREW”) realized that as an organization focused on government ethics, we also need to evaluate conduct in the executive branch. This report represents CREW’s first effort to apply the methodology from our examination of congressional corruption to executive branch corruption.

CREW is well aware that the vast majority of those who work for the federal government are hardworking, dedicated and law abiding; this report is not intended as an indictment of the federal workforce. Nonetheless, after culling through publicly available documents including inspector general reports, court papers and press accounts, we have been able to create a list of 25 people whose conduct is particularly egregious. Their offenses range from sexual misconduct to theft to immigration fraud.

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In this month’s issue of Vanity Fair, Craig Unger writes that the same neoconservative advisers who advocated for the Iraq war are now recycling the same tactics to push for the bombing of Iran. Unger reports that not all of Bush’s key conservative allies are pleased with the administration’s course on Iran:

“Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened,�? says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. “And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president’s neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, ‘Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.’ But after you’ve lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?�?

For example, Richard Perle, a former Bush administration official, has said, “I have very little doubt�? that Bush would order “necessary military action�? against Iran. “Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,�? wrote American Enterprise Institute analyst Joshua Muravchik.

Two other important points from the Unger article:

1) Retired Defense Intelligence official Patrick Lang told Unger that Bush has ordered StratCom — the military command responsible for “nuclear weapons, missile defense and protection against weapons of mass destruction�? — to draw up plans for a “massive strike against Iran.�? Lang noted that the shift away from Central Command “to StratCom indicates they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran].�?

2) Former CIA officer Phillip Giraldi said, “I’ve heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.�?

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Police have released two of the nine men arrested last week in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to murder a Muslim man serving with the British army.

The nine Muslim men were all detained over what the police say was a conspiracy to kidnap the soldier and behead him in an Iraq-style execution.

The operation has been severely criticised by some Islamic leaders, who say their community is being targeted by the police to justify claims of a terror threat.

The police have been given another three days to question the other seven men still being held in custody.

The two released today say their interrogators never mentioned any plot to kidnap or behead a British soldier and never told them why they were arrested in the first place.

Feel safer yet?

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In a move some see as downright loonie, the federal cabinet has authorized the Royal Canadian Mint to produce $1 million gold coins for collectors with deep pockets.

Not to mention a wheelbarrow to get the hefty thing home.

Great for use in Bugatti Veyron vending machines!

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A modified marquee in Atlantic Beach has been drawing some attention. “Hoohaa” replaced a word in the title of a play after a driver complained about finding the previous wording offensive.

The marquis for Atlantic Theaters advertises a number of plays including, the Masquerade Ball, Band Jam, and now The Hoohaa Monologues.

Some said hoohaa is a strange word and that its definition depends on its context, while others said it sounds like a country band.

However, it’s not a band at all. In fact, most people know hoohah by a different name — vagina.

“We got a complaint about this play The Vagina Monologues,” said Bryce Pfanenstiel, of the Atlantic Theater.

The Hoohah Monologues is a replacement title for The Vagina Monologues — a well-known play about that part of the female body.

“We decided we would just use child slang for it. That’s how we decided on Hoohah Monologues,” Pfanenstiel said.

They did this after a driver who saw it complained to the theater, saying she was upset that her niece saw it.

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An Army officer who investigated possible abuse at Guantanamo Bay after some guards purportedly bragged about beating detainees found no evidence they mistreated the prisoners — although he did not interview any of the alleged victims, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Cat says he believes the mice left town in the middle of the night, The Fox says he believes the chickens accompanied the mice, and the public continues to slumber.

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The war in Iraq is a four-year, runaway disaster, the American voters turned adamantly against it in the November elections, the vaunted James Baker-led panel recommended what most everybody wants – a careful withdrawal, or as careful a withdrawal as possible. In the face of all that, it was just assumed Bush would have to bow to reality.

No way. The exact opposite is happening. Not only is Bush not starting to get the troops out, he’s not content to stand pat with the troops he’s got there now. No, he’s sending over more. The war in Iraq is one of the worst blunders in American history, and the man responsible is now digging America in deeper. And America is letting him do it.

You watch these clowns in Congress, these eunuchs who don’t have the balls to even pass what a Bush ally laughed off as a “confetti resolution” – a symbolic statement that wouldn’t force Bush to withdraw but would at least officially express Congress’s opinion in favor of withdrawal. But they can’t even agree on that – they’re afraid the White House will accuse them of demoralizing the troops, of encouraging the enemy. It would be too politically risky.

Such a statement wouldn’t have stopped Bush anyway. The only way Congress can prevent Bush from escalating the war is by refusing to pay the cost of sending the extra troops in. But only a few senators and congressmen are willing to take that step because then the White House would accuse Congress of leaving the troops to die, of taking away their guns and uniforms and everything.

It’s bullshit, of course. The only thing that would be taken away is Bush’s right to send over those 21,500 more soldiers. But it’s not going to happen; the fear of White House propaganda has all but a few politicians paralyzed, and the White House knows it. The administration isn’t even worried. “We are moving forward,” Dick Cheney told CNN about Bush’s decision to escalate. “Congress has control over the purse strings, they have the right, obviously, if they want, to cut off funding, but in terms of this effort, the president has made his decision.” In America, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on. Right over the cliff.

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The committee also is looking into Blackwater’s contract to provide security services in Iraq. After numerous denials, the Pentagon has confirmed that Blackwater provided armed security guards in Iraq under a subcontract that was buried so deeply the government at first could not find it.

The secretary of the Army on Tuesday wrote two Democratic lawmakers that the Blackwater USA contract was part of a huge military support operation by run by Halliburton Co. subsidiary KBR. Dick Cheney ran Halliburton before he became vice president.

Several times last year, Pentagon officials told inquiring lawmakers they could find no evidence of the Blackwater contract. Blackwater did not respond to several requests for comment.

The discovery shows the dense world of Iraq contracting, where the main contractor hires subcontractors who then hire additional subcontractors. Each company tacks on a charge for overhead, a cost that works its way up to U.S. taxpayers.

“This ongoing episode demonstrates the Pentagon’s complete failure to safeguard taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat and one of the lawmakers who had asked about the Blackwater contract and received denials.

“They continue to look the other way in the face of overwhelming evidence that Halliburton was charging taxpayers for unauthorized security services,” Van Hollen said.

Jon Stewart reacts to the news that Ted Haggard is once again “completely heterosexual.”

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Executives from the music industry have made it clear that while they may not stick with digital rights management (DRM) as a means to protect their digital catalogs, they are not willing to abandon copy protection altogether as requested by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an open letter published yesterday. Responding to the letter, a senior executive at one company who asked to remain anonymous said “we’re not going to broadly license our content for unprotected digital distribution.”

I guess he’s never heard of the “audio-cd” format.

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“Wat Myra, Doortje en Rakker vandaag toch weer mee hebben gemaakt..” Hondeneigenaren weten allang wat voor een spannend leven hun huisdieren hebben, maar vanaf woensdag kan iedereen op internet lezen wat voor avonturen ze dagelijks meemaken.

Op www.blaft.nl kunnen gebruikers gratis een eigen hondenblog openen en verhalen en foto’s van de trouwe viervoeters plaatsen.

Hondeneigenaren krijgen een eigen internetpagina voor het hondendagboek. Ook kan er een virtuele roedel worden gemaakt met vriendjes en vriendinnetjes van de honden.

Ik heb net miauwt.nl maar even geregistreerd. Vanaf morgen is het domein aktief, gaan we er ook maar even multi-user wordpress op zetten…

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For three days, the jury had been listening to audio tapes of Libby’s two appearances before a grand jury in March 2004, when Libby repeatedly claimed that in July 2003, before the leak appeared that outed Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer, he knew nothing about her until Russert told him that “all the reporters knew” she worked at the CIA. Libby acknowledged to the grand jurors that weeks earlier Vice President Dick Cheney had told him that Valerie Wilson was a CIA employee, but he said that he had completely forgotten this and had learned about her “anew” when Russert passed him this gossip during a phone call. It’s an essential part of Libby’s tale. When the FBI and a grand jury were looking for administration officials who had leaked information on Wilson to reporters–and Libby was a potential target–Libby told the Bureau and the grand jury that he had not disclosed any information gathered from official sources; he had only shared with a few reporters a rumor he had picked up from Russert. And you can’t prosecute a guy for spreading gossip. Again and again, during his grand jury testimony, Libby pointed to Russert: he told me, and, boy, was I surprised.

But on the stand, Russert told the trial jurors the opposite. Questioned by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for less than fifteen minutes, Russert said he had uttered no such thing to Libby. Russert also noted that it would have been “impossible” for him to have done so because at the time of the call–July 10 or 11, 2003, and days before Valerie Wilson’s cover was blown in a Robert Novak column–he knew nothing about her. Wilson’s wife never came up in the conversation with Libby, Russert testified. Libby had called him to complain that Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball was being too hard on Cheney’s office (and on Libby) as Hardball covered the controversy sparked by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s charge that the Bush administration had twisted the prewar intelligence.

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A public iris scanning device has been proposed in a patent from Samoff Labs in New Jersey. The device is able to scan the iris of the eye without the knowledge or consent of the person being scanned. The device uses multiple cameras, and then combines images to create a single scan (see diagram).

Iris recognition is a biometric identification system that requires a high-resolution picture of the irides of the subject’s eye. Pattern recognition software is then used to match that picture against future iris scans.

Iris scans are considered highly accurate; current iris recognition algorithms have an incredibly low false match rate. Good quality scans result in a “false match” less than one time per one hundred billion (this system has been used with excellent results in the United Arab Emirates).

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In the 2002 movie Minority Report, filmmaker Steven Spielberg shows Tom Cruise’s character walking through a mall. As he does so, public iris scanning devices repeatedly identify him, and then target him for personalized advertisements.

And only terrorists wear sunglasses, right?