Tech News: Spammer gets 4 Years, New Google Search UI & 9/11 Pager Messages

To those readers in the US, Happy Thanksgiving. To everyone else, happy Thursday! Not too much happening out there today (in the US at least).

• Four Years Not Enough for “Godfather of Spam” – “Spam costs every American–every one of us–over $13-a-year each, $42 billion in all, and that’s just what business pays. And that doesn’t include the criminals’ take. Is four years and a $250,000 fine really the best punishment for the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Spam?” Put another way: Do we take the criminal aspects of spam seriously enough?” (source: PCWorld) HTD: Wait, that’s it? Maybe part of the punishment should be hand writing letters of apology to each and every person who ever received a Spam email. That would keep them busy. Not only should Spammers be locked away, without access to computers, the ISP that host them should really be shutting these guys down immediately and not waiting for the Feds to come in. A person can only dream of a spam-free email environment!
• How to Try the New Google Search – “Confirmed. The rumors about Google’s redesign are true, and you can try it for yourself with a very simple method.” (source: Gizmodo) HTD: Any change to the über-simplistic Google search page deserves a bit of a mention. And there is always a backlash. I think the new design makes sense, as it looks a lot like the Google News section. But, Gizmodo has also quickly posted a way to undo it and revert back to normal.
• Website Wikileaks publishes ‘9/11 messages’ – “A website has published what it says are 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Wikileaks says it will not reveal who gave it the messages – some of which are from federal agencies as well as ordinary citizens.” (source: BBC news) HTD: Why am I not surprised by this? This type of information is captured somewhere so all someone needs to do is get access to it, compile it and publish it. More recently, when large media events occur, we now get real-time news streams right on Twitter. Twitter can provide you with the “real-time web” where you learn about breaking news before the rest of the world.

HTD says: Go make some tech news or enjoy your holiday!