billso.com

Tech: Jay Echouafni is on the lam. He paid 5 people, including the netad of CIT/FooNet, to perform DDoS attacks against his competitors. CIT hosted TV retailing business. “This is an example of a growing trend: that is, denial of service attacks being used for either extortionate reasons, or to disable or impair the competition,” says FBI supervisory special agent Frank Harrill. “It’s a growing problem and one that we take very seriously, and one that we think has a very destructive impact and potential.” Thanks, Slashdot.

US authorities have been arresting spammers and Internet scammers over the last few weeks. I hope it helps.

USA: The new edition of Wheelock’s Latin is out. I had four years of Latin in high school, and thought it really helped my vocabulary and grammar. So here’s my plug: take Latin.

Wheelock died years ago, but the Wheelock family has pressed HarperCollins to keep the textbook price at a reasonable level. The paperback edition costs $21 new. But, as Al Greco says, the publisher’s business model is broken. Used books and the downloading of scanned copies help students avoid buying a new copy of every textbook.

I’m about to go through the usual beginning-of-the-term questions from students who want to use an older versino of the course textbook. Both of the textbooks that I use now have significant changes in their new editions, so I tell students to get the current edition. A few try to get by with an older edition, which may lack updated readings or entire chapters. Sometimes it hurts their performance.

Sports: Apparently the Athens Olympics don’t want anyone linking to their web site. It’s an amazing list of regulations.

Sports: In Hawai’i, it’s possible to watch some of the events live. However, the prime time events are still shown in prime time, 10 or more hours after they happened. How do US Web sites handle the time difference when reporting Olympic news? Some sites keep the news off of the home page. Well, at least I can wear any kind of shoes, eat a pizza and drink Pepsi while I’m watching.