Social security

       Whoever called them "social networks" must be having a second and third thought after a week of decidedly un-social activity around them; Russians... well, all right people at machines that seemed to be in Russia launched sustained denialof-service attacks that literally knocked Twitter off the air entirely for several hours, and almost did the same to Facebook and the blogging site Live Journal ,which become so slow they were almost unuseable; Georgian blogger Cyxymu said credibly it was all about him- the Russians hate that he tells the truth about the Russian-Georgian spats and war so much, that their e-vigilantes tried to close down all his platforms;the hackers used botnets to launch the attacks; those are machines (possibly yours) that have been hijacked by hackers by a variety of methods including fake email and malicious websites; used typically to mail billions of spam, they are so powerful that they only can be used for good, for evil or for being decidedly unsocial.
       Then there are the US Marines, not known as a group to be all that sociable anyhow; their officers ordered all Marines off Twitter and Facebook ; in their typically diplomatic manner, the Marine commanders explained:"These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user-generated content, and targeting by adversaries."
       That could be why the National Football League , comprising the major US gridiron clubs, ordered all US professional football players not to use Twitter ;the multi-millionaire sportsmen will be fined $1,701, or 58,054 baht,(it's the NFL's maximum) per Tweet; or maybe NFL officials simply want to flaunt their control of content. The same could be said for the international sports network ESPN , which informed its employees they are banned from sending any sports-related news over Twitter and Facebook without written permission;violators can be fired on the spot.
       Apple Inc has done a lot to make the name iPhone a synonym for phone,but the spiffy appliance actually only has an 8 percent share of the smartphone market; just as impressive as the propaganda machine, however, is the accounting office; Bernstein Research reported that in the second quarter of the year, the iPhone and its 65,000 apps (1.5 billion downloaded) had accumulated 32 percent of all profits in the smartphone niche. Google CEO Eric "I Know Jack" Schmidt resigned as a director of Apple Inc ; US regulators said they might well sue Schmidt and Apple for a conflict of interest and attempted monopoly anyhow.
       Google announced yet another microscopic upgrade to its quick but faltering Google Chrome web browser;this time, Chrome comes with 29 skins to compete with the 20,000 for Firefox .Apple Inc released Mac OS X 10.5.8,which marginally increased security for Appleholics and makes the AirPort networks work.
       Google bought the Internet video specialists On2 Technologies for $106.5 million; the purpose of the deal is to use On2's technology which allow better quality video, all part of the Google hope it can improve YouTube enough to make money from it. US media tycoon Rupert Murdoch of News Corp said he was just kidding about how news wants to be free; beginning almost immediately, you will pay to see the Times (of London) online, or you won't see it;Murdoch said he also will add charges to websites for his other newspapers;it's hard to figure why anyone would pay to see news on the Internet, and not as hard as it is to figure why Murdoch and others believe we will.
       Microsoft paid enough money to feed all the world's orphans for weeks in order to make Patrick De Schutter and French friends at Office.com go away and move their website to ContactOffice.com, because Microsoft needs Office.com more than the orphans; in fact Microsoft wouldn't say what it paid for the domain name, and pretended there was some sort of mystery over what product it might promote there;hint: Office 2010 will be partly based on the web, and is in final development at the moment.
       Publicis Groupe of France, one of the world's largest advertising companies, paid Microsoft $530 million in cash and stock for Razorfish , Microsoft's "preferred provider" for Internet advertising; the purchase, however, was more significantly an advertising deal,where Publicis agreed to spend grazillions on advertising through Microsoft over the next five years.
       Microsoft held its chin up and its upper lip stiff as it came to Asia to promote the abysmally unpopular hosted messaging and small-business aid Business Productivity Online Suite,which some argue does not need the "B" in the initials BPOS; Allison Watson,corporate vice president for Microsoft's worldwide partner group, said in Singapore than Asians will be much faster than farangs in seeing the greatness of BPOS and joining on; the service actually offers free domain names, websites and more for small and medium businesses,and it will likely be a key part of Microsoft's plans to offer more online services like Microsoft Office.
       Florida resident Keith R. Griffin told the judge that he did not download 1,000 images of child pornography; he said his cat would jump on the keyboard and by accident hit the keys to download the photos; the detectives knew he was lying, wrote a Wall Street Journal columnist, because cats never use the keyboard commands - they prefer the mouse.