- NFL teams treat any and all information on their roster or
activities like they’re state secrets that will affect the fate of the world. The
general manager of an NFL would rather tell you his blood type, social security
number and PIN for his debit card than let you inside his team’s draft
preparations or free-agent evaluation process. That makes it utterly hilarious
that a pair of New York pranksters, neither old enough to drink (legally) yet,
somehow managed to tap into an illegally record a telephone conversation between
Buffalo Bills GM Buddy Nix and Tampa Bay Buccaneers GM Mark Dominik. The
conversation showed up on Deadspin and before long, the Bills and Bucs were
notifying NFL security and awaiting potential legal action against the
pranksters. “We are aware of the report
on Deadspin involving a phone conversation with Bills G.M. Buddy Nix,” the
Bills said in an official statement. “We have made the league aware of the
report and are reviewing it with legal counsel.” The pranksters who recorded
the conversation should also review the situation with legal counsel because
there is a solid chance that these knuckleheads will face state or federal
charges for illegally listening to and recording someone else’s phone
conversation without permission. Both the federal government and
most states require at least one party in a
conversation must to consent to a discussion being recorded. Other states
require both sides to acknowledge and accept that the conversation is being
recorded. In this case, neither Nix nor Dominik knew and with the call going
across state lines, all sorts of legal wires were likely tripped. What’s sad is
that the pranksters were probably a couple of degenerate fantasy football dorks
looking for inside information to help them prepare for their draft in a few
months………
- Maybe now, more than ever, the Netherlands needs to live
up to its reputation as a doobie-smoking, über-mellow nation of beautiful
people who like to chill out and ride their bikes around their canal-ringed
cities. The Dutch need something to help them relax now that their government
has raised the nation’s alert level for terrorist attacks to "substantial,” citing an
increase in the number of Islamist militants traveling from the Netherlands to
Syria, as well as a radicalization of Dutch youth. "The chance of an
attack in the Netherlands or against Dutch interests abroad has risen,"
the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) said in a
statement. "Close to a hundred individuals have recently left the
Netherlands for various countries in Africa and the Middle East, especially
Syria." While this may sound paranoid and eerily like a government
mistaking people looking for a good time in some of the most war-torn regions
of the world for extremists going abroad for terrorist training, the NCTV
believes individuals fighting for radical Islam abroad could return and
"inspire others in the Netherlands to follow in their footsteps." In
fact, the agency has a detailed theory on the matter, a theory in which the
Arab Spring and resulting destabilization of governments across the Middle East
and North Africa have made space for an expansion of radical Islamic groups
that are no longer under the control of security forces. To combat the threat
this poses in Holland, Dutch police and intelligence services have deployed
extra personnel to investigate suspect individuals and monitor sources. So far,
the closest the Dutch have come to a real terrorist attack is a radical
Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdering anti-Islamic filmmaker Theo van Gogh in
Amsterdam in 2004……..
- Netflix and Facebook are two places people tend to waste a
lot of time, so the two entertainment sources forging closer ties seems like a
natural fit. Netflix
Inc. has introduced new social media features to enable users to discover new
TV shows and movies an can link their accounts to Facebook and more readily
share what they’ve been watching…when they’re not busy posting clever members
and snarky status updates on Facebook. With this connection, new
recommendations will appear in the subscriber's Netflix queue under rows
labeled "Friends' Favorites" and "Watched by your friends."
To protect their privacy, Netflix subscribers can opt to share what they've
watched only within the Netflix experience or allow their viewing choices to be
shared on Facebook. The new features will be available to all Netflix
subscribers by the end of the week, the company said. “There are few
better ways to find a movie or TV series you'll love than hearing about it from
your friends," Netflix product vice president Tom Willerer said in a
statement. "Facebook already makes it easy for our international members
to connect with friends over TV shows and movies and we're thrilled to now
bring this experience to our U.S. members.” Part of the impetus for the new
features is a recent a change in U.S. law barring services from disclosing an
individual's video viewing habits. Netflix subscribers will soon be presented
with an option on the service to connect to Facebook and share information
about what they've been watching and if they’re down, rows of movies and TV
programs watched by friends will display within the lists of
recommendations. The default setting will be for a person’s viewing
information to be contained within the Netflix universe. To share the
information on Facebook, users can change their "social settings" on
Netflix.com……….
- Never underestimate the comic book passion of dorks. Marvel
made that mistake this week after it announced Sunday at SXSW that more than 700
No.-1 issues of its comics would be free to download on comiXology or the
comiXology-fueled Marvel app. Marvel executives announced that the issues, including
the recently released Marvel NOW titles, would be free for download through
Tuesday. So many Marvel titles that a person may have wanted but could afford
growing up were available…or would have been if the entire system hadn't crashed
and burned shortly after launching. Demand was so high that when many dorks
started downloading, nothing happened. The comiXology servers were woefully
unequipped to handle the traffic and @cmxsupport (comiXology Support) had to
step in and attempt to keep amped-up nerds calm while tech experts worked to
remedy the problem. “Still working on it” was a common tweet from @cmxsupport
throughout Monday morning and the comiXology Facebook page read: “Y’all, we’re still working on getting
everything to 100%, thanks for your patience. You can follow us on twitter for the latest updates.” Even comiXology
CEO David Steinberger waded into the middle of the mess to tweet, “I really appreciate the loving support we’ve
had from our users over the last
18 hours. We’ll be updating the world shortly.” Fixing soon morphed into
finishing, as in finishing off the promotion by shutting it down. “We
expected a high degree of excitement for the Marvel initiative – and had
believed ourselves prepared — but unfortunately we became overwhelmed by the
immense response,” David Steinberger wrote on the company’s blog. “We’re still
struggling to keep our systems up. “The result is that you aren’t getting your
comics when and where you want.” Steinberger insisted the company was only
pausing, not terminating, the promotion. When or if it resumes remains to be
seen, but the power and desperation of comic book, er, graphic novel lovers
have never been stronger……..
- How does an American city, smack dab in the middle of one
of the more unhealthy regions of the country, convince its populace to get off
its collective butt, put down the double-fudge brownie and hop on a bike? Greenvile,
S.C. has undertaken this daunting endeavor and over the last month, it has
waged an advertising and promotional battle that includes billboards and
YouTube videos featuring a man flying
with a jetpack through the downtown skies. What Greenville Jetpack Rentals had
to do with riding bikes was unclear, questions began swirling about what the
ads’ greater purpose was. Some Greenville residents wondered if jetpacks were
coming to their city. Instead, the jetpack ad campaign was revealed to be
nothing more than the brainchild of a local advertising agency, Erwin Penland,
looking to promote what it and its client for the campaign have deemed the real
"new mode of transportation," the ol’ standby known as the bicycle. The
client is Upstate Forever, a nonprofit group that focuses on sustainable growth
in the region, and they want to promote their bike-sharing program. Setting up
a fictitious jetpack company with its own Facebook page and posting bogus
YouTube videos of a man flying over Falls Park seem to have little to do with
riding a bike and assuming that generating misguided or vague hype over such
efforts will lead to people then latching onto the idea of a bike-sharing
program seems like a giant shot in the dark. "We actually thought the
teaser campaign might last a little longer than it did, but the campaign was
creating so much buzz with you all and with the public that we decided that we
needed to go ahead and explain what was really going on," said Upstate
Forever Executive Director Brad Wyche. For some Greenville residents, the
campaign actually turned them against the bike program because they were so
disappointed to find out that jetpacks were not on their city’s horizon,
literally or metaphorically. The goal for the bike-share program is to convince
residents to take the bus to town and ride a bike to their final destination.
The prices will be $5 for a day, $15 for a week and $60 for the year for bikes
that can be taken out and returned to any B-station around town. The bikes will
also be equipped with a GPS monitoring to discourage theft……..
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