For some, there’s just no place for MySpace
Jan 30, just two days away, is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day. Web blogger Simon Owens, a frequent commenter on social networks, launched the effort earlier this month. It has become a Web cause with widespread support.
Once a popular Web hangout, MySpace generally has become a den of spam, nasty e-mail come-ons from fake hotties and numerous instances of people behaving badly.
Enough interest has been raised that a Facebook group has formed specifically to encourage MySpace users to follow through on the plan. Owens can be reached at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com.
AT&T watching peer traffic
AT&T Inc. is still evaluating whether to examine traffic on its Internet lines to stop illegal sharing of copyright material, its chief executive said recently.
CEO Randall Stephenson told the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland, that the company must study monitoring peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, one of the largest drivers of online traffic but also a common way to illegally exchange copyright files.
Stephenson raised the question, “It’s like being in a store and watching someone steal a DVD. Do you act?”
Comcast Corp., the second largest U.S. Internet provider after AT&T, has chosen another way to deal with the congestion caused by file-sharers, by hampering some peer-to-peer traffic regardless of whether the content is legal.
SETI@home looks for more volunteers
The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded Arecibo telescope, which means the SETI@home project needs more desktop computers to help crunch the data.
SETI stands for search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The SETI@home computer-sharing project started eight years ago with more than 5 million interested volunteers involved. Estimates by the University of California at Berkeley, which hosts the shared-computer project, say 320,000 Internet-connected computers have helped sort through radio signals to find possible signs of intelligent messages.
More sensitive receivers on the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and better frequency coverage have generated 500 times more data for the project than before.
As a result, the SETI@home software has been upgraded to deal with this new data, a UC release noted.