Tiernan Ray, over at Tech Trade Daily, has an amusing post up explaining the rather circuitous route of a particular Apple rumor found on various Apple rumor sites. Basically, one Apple rumors site claimed a new research report was coming out detailing potential upgrades to various Apple products. But, the problem was that there was no such new report. The research firm in question had actually released a report over a week earlier. And then things got even more mixed up:

Macrumors, in mentioning the phantom report from *today*, cites a PC World article from yesterday, that erroneously references the August 6 note as being analyst comment *today*, meaning, Monday, the date of the PC World article. Even more hilarious, in the Macrumors post, the author says that the phantom report from today about updates to the Mac laptops and iPods is “consistent with whispers we’ve heard.” And he cites … ta da! A post from AppleInsider last week commenting on the original August six note. Oy vey.

So, basically a report from last week is used to confirm a non-existent report from this week, which is actually... the original report from the week before.

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DeviceGuru writes "With Debian Lenny (aka 'testing') poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution's 'stable' branch possibly as soon as next month, blogger Rick Lehrbaum loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of Lenny's KDE CD image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin. How's it coming along? After detailing a handful of issues — and offering solutions for each (except Bluetooth support) — he concludes: 'Other than the need for a few hacks and fixes, my main complaint with it is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc.' From the looks of it, looks like Lenny might be the new 'Debian stable' soon!"

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The EFF tried to get the gag order lifted off the three MIT students who had planned a presentation on how Boston's subway system was vulnerable to some hacks. However, a judge has left the gag order in place, saying that it will be discussed at a hearing next Tuesday. He also ordered the students to hand over more information.

There's been a long debate in the security community about what is proper "disclosure." There are some who believe that you should wait until a vulnerability is fixed before disclosing it, while others believe that only by disclosing it are people really motivated to fix the vulnerability. However, most of those debates haven't taken place in court -- so this particular case should be quite interesting for those who are involved in security research, no matter which side of the "disclosure" debate you fall on.

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sciencehabit writes "Computer scientists have developed a program, called reCAPTCHA, which is being used in lieu of CAPTCHA by several sites, to help digitize old books and newspapers. The reCAPTCHA takes entries from old and faded texts that optical scanners and digital-text readers have trouble with. So every time you solve that string of crooked letters, you may actually be helping historians digitally reconstruct a page from the 1908 New York Times." The Science Now story links to the longer and more informative article at Ars Technica. (We last mentioned this program last year — and now it's good to get some sense of how well it's working.)

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India unfortunately doesn't have the equivalent of section 230 of the CDA, which prevents service providers from being sued for the actions of their users. That's why Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all facing a lawsuit over certain types of ads in India. Apparently it's illegal in India to advertise any technique or product designed to influence the sex of a child. However, such ads have been appearing on all three sites. The problem, though, is that the liability should be on those who are actually buying the advertising. They're the parties who are really breaking the law. Yet, because Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are easier targets (and have a lot more money), that's who gets targeted.

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Loopback writes "According to this article on ZDNet, it appears that I'm not the only one waiting for my NetFlix movies. It seems they are being bitten in the rear by their home-grown proprietary inventory management system. 'Netflix has been facing shipping delays and outages in its distribution centers for the last two days and is fumbling to find a fix. The tab is roughly $1.8 million to $3.6 million in revenue a day.'"

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seussman71 writes with a link to some very interesting research out of the University of Washington that employs "a method of using high quality photographs to enhance a video taken of the same subject. The project page gives a good overview of what they are doing and the video on the page gives some really nice examples of how their technology works. Hopefully someone can take the technology and run with it, but one thing's for sure: this could make amateur video-making look even better than it does now." And if adding mustaches would improve your opinion of the people in amateur videos, check out the unwrap-mosaics technique from Microsoft Research.

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NBC Universal has a long history of totally misunderstanding the relationship between online video and TV video. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (including from NBC's own competitor, CBS, which was quick to point out that more online watching resulted in more TV watching), NBC has insisted that online watching somehow cannibalizes TV viewers. That explains why its online Olympics offerings are so weak -- not showing any of the really interesting stuff until many hours after its been broadcast on TV.

Amazingly, NBC execs seem to actually be admitting they made a pretty big mistake here. In going over their own research, they're finally realizing that rather than cannibalizing, people watching on either TV or online only seems to get them to watch more of the other, as it just makes them more interested in the Olympics as a whole. Of course, given how NBC has behaved in the past, don't expect it to recognize this in other parts of its business (or, say, start broadcasting stuff online before the tape delay on TV). Also, don't expect it to realize that perhaps its lawsuit against Redlasso is totally misguided, even though Redlasso helps more people see NBC content online.

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An anonymous reader writes "In a prediction of the open-source future, InfoWeek speculates on What Linux Will Look Like In 2012. The most outlandish scenario foresees Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs. Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on — surprise — good acceptance for KDE 4. Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks. Do you agree? And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?"

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We see all sorts of ridiculous lawsuits floating around, but here's a good one. Eric Goldman has the story of a journalist who was upset about a story written by a local college professor. The journalist felt the story was defamatory, so obviously, he sued Google for $50 billion. Yes, you read that correctly. Pissed off journalist feels that he was defamed by someone totally unconnected to Google... and responds by suing Google for $50 billion. Not surprisingly, the court wasted no time tossing this lawsuit out, and then even slapped the journalist with an order to pay Google's $12,000 in legal fees. The order to pay those legal fees was later removed on a technicality, but as Goldman notes, it appears that judges are getting pretty sick of these sorts of lawsuits, and are finally beginning to punish folks who are filing them.

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Cutie Pi writes "In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'"

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After an inexcusably long absence from YouTube, the farting preacher is back. (Thanks, Coop!)

Etsy seller UntamedMenagerie has a wide variety of intricately cut acrylic jewelry, but I'm best fond of this ribcage, entitled "Thoracic." Thoracic (Thanks, Alice!)

CrazyPC's latest 5.25" drive-bay gizmo is a toaster for your PC. No more suffering with the indignity of raw bread, nor the insufferable pain of going to the kitchen. Um, might wanna be sure your heatsink is below it, and that your fan is up to snuff. Or invest in water-cooling. CrazyPC 5.25 Inch Bay Toaster

Yakkay's bike-helmets look like hats -- just slip a cover on (they come in beanie, sunhat, peaked cap and a couple other varieties, and in many colors) and pedal your way to sartorial splendour. Yakkay (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

I'm a devoted listener of StarShipSofa's Aural Delights science fiction podcast. The most recent episode (No. 37) has a short story by Ted Chiang called "What’s Expected Of Us," and I think it's comparable to the work of Jorge Luis Borges.

"What’s Expected Of Us" is about what happens after the introduction of a little toy called The Predictor. It looks like a car-door remote. It has one button and one LED. It does one thing, and one thing only: without fail, its LED flashes precisely one second before you push the button.

Chiang's exploration of the consequences of such a gadget packs the same kind of philosophical wallop that makes The Mind's I (Hofstadter and Dennett) one of the most mind-altering books I've ever read.

Cory gave me a copy of Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others, a thought-provoking collection of short fiction.

Starship Sofa Aural Delights

If you haven't been paying attention to the Techdirt Insight Community lately, I wanted to let you know of a fun new project that's taking place there. It's new series of expert discussions in the Insight Community, sponsored by Dell, about the various challenges created by the rise of "digital nomads." With a growing number of people being able to work from anywhere with just a computing device and an internet connection, both companies and individuals are finding a variety of new challenges -- from how to strike that work/life balance, to keeping a team on the same page, to dealing with security issues, to just dealing with the basic challenges of carrying stuff around and finding connectivity. We're putting the best content together and creating something of a living digital whitepaper with input from a variety of folks. If you're a member of the community, log in and contribute. If you're not a member, join now and contribute your insight (and maybe earn some money for your efforts).

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I am responsible for reading most of the help requests sent to Slashdot. Most of the mail I get in a day is what you would expect, comments and concerns about postings, user accounts and Slashdot itself. There are a very special group however that get passed around the office due to the inordinate level of anger, lack of understanding and just plain weirdness they possess. Through the years I've collected many and still get such gems on a regular basis. We thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite rants, ramblings and ruminations with the rest of you. I give to you the first of many installments of Slashdot's disagree mail. The names have been changed to protect the idiot — hit the link below to drink it in.

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