“Tinchy Stryder been shit from day what’s new… if it aint techno Roll Deep shit man aint getting in… I’m getting vexed…”

Damn, Narstie aint never been afraid to say what’s in his heart. I’m proud of him for that. PAIN.

— By Akira The Don on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League on the making of Rick Ross and Drake’s Teflon Don collab. Oh, this is ill. I love these shits.

— By Akira The Don on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Basically some rotten tosser called Weiner planted child porn on a colleague’s laptop in order to steal his job while he was in jail. Andrew Crossley better watch out them 4chan droogs don’t do similar to his dumb ass.

EastLondonLines reports:

Assistant school caretaker Neil Weiner has been sentenced to 12 years in jail after being found guilty of possessing indecent images of children and perverting the course of justice by planting  child pornography on a colleague’s laptop.

Weiner, 40, a married father of two from Dagenham, hatched what was described as a “wickedly evil and vile plot” to get his boss, caretaker Eddie Thompson, sacked from Swanlea Secondary School in Whitechapel.

Weiner launched the plot in 2006, hoping to get Mr Thompson sacked so that he could be promoted, the Old Bailey heard.

He planted the 177 indecent images of children on his boss’s PC, then sent police the CD claiming he had found the images on Mr Thompson’s laptop.

Judge David Paget told him: “What you did to a decent and honest man was in my view wicked.

“It is difficult to imagine a more cunning, deceitful or warped course of conduct than yours in this case, or a more malicious one.”

Mr Thompson was arrested in October 2006. It took eight months before police decided no further action would be taken.

Richard Milne, prosecuting, told jurors that others who found out about it were “horrified by what you may think was a wickedly evil and vile plot”.

Mr Thompson and his wife became afraid to leave the house, after he received threats and they were spat at in public, because details of the allegations were leaked by Weiner to a local newspaper. Even when he returned to the school where he had worked since 1993, Mr Thompson said he was shunned by nearly all the staff, making his life “almost unbearable”.

Weiner was arrested in 2007 after a mobile phone used to make an initial anonymous call to police about Mr Thompson was traced to him.

The judge said there was no evidence that Weiner was a paedophile but his conviction for possession of the images meant that he had to be placed on the sex offenders register.

“You will go to prison for a long time. The prison population is not renowned for being particularly fair or reasonable,” he said. ”You will be suspected by many of being a paedophile and, like Mr Thompson, you may find that you suffer, both in prison and on release, for the rest of your life.”

Weiner was also found guilty of possessing a further 355 indecent images of children on a CD, ranked from level 1 to 4 – the second most serious. He was convicted in August.

— By Akira The Don on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

From BoingBoing, in response to Wired’s story this morning mourning the death of the World Wide Web:

Wired uses this graph to illustrate Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff’s claim that the world wide web is “dead.”

Without commenting on the article’s argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn’t account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice.

You can probably guess that total use increases so rapidly that the web is not declining at all…

In fact, between 1995 and 2006, the total amount of web traffic went from about 10 terabytes a month to 1,000,000 terabytes (or 1 exabyte). According to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total internet traffic rose then from about 1 exabyte to 7 exabytes between 2005 and 2010.

So with actual total traffic as the vertical axis, the graph would look more like this.

I wonder what Wired’s angle was, other than linkbait? Read the rest here. Shout out Moneys in the comments for the link…

— By Akira The Don on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Andrew Crossley, that douchebag lawyer the fine folks at 4chan exposed as a granny-robbing, lying, thieving scumbucket is facing a £500,000 fine for losing the personal details of thousands oh his unsuspecting prey. I personally think he should be in an American jail, as should his collaborators at British Telecom

The Guardian reports (strangely failing to mention who attacked the law firm’s site, and why):

The Information Commissioner could levy a fine of up to £500,000 on the London law firm from which the personal details of more than 8,000 Sky broadband customers, 400 Plusnet customers and 5,000 Britons accused of illicit filesharing have leaked in the past few days.

The details were exposed in files on the website belonging to ACS:Law, a firm of solicitors which has attracted the ire of a number of online forums due to its aggressive approach to people accused by its clients of filesharing. The site was the target of a “denial of service” attack over the weekend which made it collapse – and the files, which would normally be hidden from unauthorised access, became visible when the site was brought back online.

If the Information Commissioner determines that the data exposure was through ACS:Law’s fault in operating its website, rather than directly as the result of hacking, then it could levy a fine against the company.

Alex Hanff, of the pressure group Privacy International, said the data breach was “one of the worst ever in the UK” and that the group has launched legal proceedings against the firm.

ACS:Law has come under intense scrutiny from consumer watchdogs and industry bodies for its methods of tracking and pursuing broadband users, and a number of customers are preparing to take the company to court on a harassment charge, the Guardian understands.

The company apparently works from lists of alleged infringers who have been tracked from file downloads to computers’ IP addresses; physical names and addresses are then obtained by contacting the relevantinternet service provider (ISP). But this is not a surefire method of identifying infringers.

Today, the online advocacy organisation Open Rights Group warned that the “unwarranted private surveillance” of people accused of downloading is a direct outcome of the Digital Economy Act [DEA]. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told the Guardian: “ACS:Law appears to be preparing to use DEA processes to target filesharers and Ofcom’s code is wide open for them using that process, so that’s a massive concern. This is all pretty terrible because, to be frank, Ofcom’s system is going to throw up these situations as they’re allowing private companies to exploit them.”

Killock described ACS:Law’s methods – in which a letter is sent to the person at the address it claims to have identified, demanding payment often of several hundred pounds for copyright infringement – as “notorious”. He suggested that the company likely finds success in embarrassing people into paying the fine, even if they are innocent. The company’s leaked records showed a list of more than 5,000 people it suspects of downloading pornographic films.

ACS:Law had no comment when contacted by the Guardian.

Hundreds of people contacted by the company claim to have been misidentified and the British Phonographic Industry has refused to endorse ACS:Law’s approach, prompting fears that the self-certification framework put in place by the Digital Economy Act and Ofcom allows no redress for the accused. A number of customers who claim to have been falsely accused of downloading are preparing to take the law firm to court for harassment. The company also faces a disciplinary tribunal after a long-running investigation into its practices by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Killock said: “The BPI [British Phonographic Industry] is also calling to have parts of the evidential system kept secret, but this incident shows that we need complete transparency in the way that evidence is gathered and the problems that everyone highlighted about privacy impact of the Digital Economy Act.

“We have private companies surveilling people without knowledge, collecting data and matching it with people through court orders. This has huge implications.”

Tony Dyhouse, director of cyber security at the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, said the apparent unreliability of the evidence gathered by private companies such as ACS:Law is grounds for a new wave of legal protection for the falsely accused. “It’s important to realise that IP addresses are a very unreliable way of attributing guilt to an individual in such cases,” he told the Guardian. “Very few people have static IP addresses and it is also very easy to use someone else’s computer if you gain access to their password, or can log into an unsecured wireless connection down the street. IP addresses are usually given out for a short period from a pool. They are easily faked.

“This is a perfect example of why the law needs to be changed in this country to allow victims of data breaches to sue for compensation on grounds of defamation, not just financial loss. At the moment, you can only seek compensation for loss of reputation once financial loss has been proven. This can’t be right. Imagine the consequences for a school teacher who erroneously appeared on this list.”

— By Akira The Don on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Back in March I asked Google, “can I…” and marvelled at the auto-suggestions that popped up. A number of you joined in, and AshJamesW asked, “why are”? Well, today, I asked Google “why are”? again, and whilst the auto suggestions were fewer (just 3), the questions remain riveting, and revealing.

I wonder what else the collective conciousness wants to know?

— By Akira The Don on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010