An anonymous reader writes "Last month, The Pirate Bay was blocked in Italy. The Swedish tracker appealed the ruling, and have emerged victorious. When they will be back online in Italy is not known, as news of this development is rather fresh."

arcticstoat writes "Microsoft has said that it plans to remove a lot of the standard apps from Windows 7 in order to make the new OS 'cleaner.' Among the apps for the chop are Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, which will no longer be included with the operating system as standard. Instead, equivalent versions of the apps will be available from Microsoft's Windows Live download service as optional free downloads, much like the new BETA versions of the apps that Windows Live offers today." Meanwhile, jammag writes that "tech pundit Mike Elgan posits that the rushed-to-market Windows 7 — due in 2010, now being beta released this October — may in fact merely be Vista with new packaging.

Bashar Abdullah writes "Kuwait Ministry of Communications have issued orders to all ISPs to block YouTube, after some offensive videos to Quran and prophet were posted there. YouTube is 15% of Kuwaiti traffic, ranked #3 on Alexa for Kuwait. Funny thing is, those videos they refer to have been removed and I can't reach them anymore."

Stephen writes "While phishing is a problem, giving one company the power to block any site that it wishes at the browser level never seemed like a good idea. Today Google blocked a host of legitimate web sites by listing mine.nu. mine.nu is available as a dynamic dns domain and anybody can claim a sub domain. All sub-domains are blocked regardless of whether phishing actually occurs on the sub-domain or not. Several Linux enthusiast sites are caught up in the net including Hostfile Ad Blocking and Berry Linux Bootable CD."

Bennett Haselton contributes the following essay on the consequences of license choice as it applies to sites based on user contributions; read on below for more of his big idea for making Knol a more useful resource. "Google Knol should allow its writers to publish under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. The preceding sentence may not mean much to you, but if you've ever wanted to cite a Wikipedia article as a source, or simply read a Wikipedia article with some assurance that someone wasn't pulling your leg with some creative editing, or if you've wanted to contribute to Wikipedia but couldn't afford the time unless you received some modest compensation for it, then the addition of this one simple feature to Knol might make all the difference." (More below.)

Will Lord writes "The Guardian is reporting that the Thai government plans to close down 400 anti-government websites and is asking ISPs to block 1,200 more. The response follows a declaration of a state of emergency which has seen troops take to the streets of Bangkok to police anti-government protests. With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent, do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?"

fahrbot-bot tips a story of mad cow disease, a private meat packer that wants to test all of its beef for the disease, and the USDA, which controls access to the test kits and just won an appeals court ruling that the government has the authority to block testing above and beyond the 1% the agency performs. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef sought to test 100% of its beef, in order to reassure its export markets, especially Japan and South Korea, that its beef is safe. Large meat packers opposed any such private testing, because they feared they would be forced into 100% testing and would have to raise prices. The appeals court ruled, 2 to 1, that under a 1913 law, test kits that are used only after an animal is killed still constitute "diagnosis" and "treatment" — this for a disease that has no treatment and is 100% fatal — and therefore fall under the USDA's authority to regulate.

Dave writes "China continues to block more and more popular services. This week they blocked iTunes and YouTube, and now it's TringMe, a popular VoIP 2.0 service. From TringMe's Blog: 'We received close to hundred complaints from our China users that TringMe services is not accessible from yesterday. We have found after our investigation that TringMe is blocked by Chinese government. Earlier China blocked Skype and now they are turning their eye to TringMe. TringMe is extremely popular in China and we have a large number of paying customers in China including a Chinese social network with 3 million users using TringMe's API & services.'"

An anonymous reader sends word of a paper presented a few days back by Adi Shamir, the S in RSA, that promises a new form of mathematical attack against a broad range of cryptographic ciphers. The computerworld.com.au report leans heavily on Schneier's blog entry from the Crypto 2008 conference and the attached comments. Shamir's paper has not been published yet. "[The new attack could affect] hash functions (such as MD5, SHA-256), stream ciphers (such as RC4), and block ciphers (such as DES, Triple-DES, AES) at the Crypto 2008 conference. The new method of cryptanalysis has been called a 'cube attack' and formed part of Shamir's invited presentation at Crypto 2008 — 'How to solve it: New Techniques in Algebraic Cryptanalysis.' The new attack method isn't necessarily going to work against the exact ciphers listed above, but it offers a new generic attack method that can target basically formed ciphers irrespective of the basic cipher method in use, provided that it can be described in a 'low-degree polynomial equation'... What may be the biggest outcome from this research is the range of devices in widespread use that use weaker cryptographic protection, due to power or size limitations, that are now vulnerable to a straightforward mathematical attack."

Ian Lamont writes "An unnamed source at an American ISP says staff there briefly considered using Deep Packet Inspection to comply with an order from Argentina's Department of Justice to block access to a local gambling site. The ISP ended up not going that route, owing to the cost, but some engineers at the company worry that DPI will eventually be implemented on the ISP's overseas network, thereby positioning it for an easier US rollout should Net Neutrality lose out in Washington. Besides being used for traffic-shaping, DPI can also monitor the traffic of ISP subscribers to supply targeted advertising."

03.20.07 Chopblock is Seeking. Full Time Website Editorial Writer Responsible for operation of Korean language editorial web con... 10.24.06 Welcome to the new CHOPBLOCK!

03.20.07 Chopblock is Seeking. Full Time Website Editorial Writer Responsible for operation of Korean language editorial web con... 10.24.06 Welcome to the new CHOPBLOCK!

This is a video response to Another Auburn Chop Block! Rate: 252 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 399,572. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook

Rate: 17 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 35,690. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook. Digg (more share options) (fewer share options) This video will appear on ...

Bamboo Chop Block, cutting boards ... Chop Block manufacture: Handmade by Bambu in China. (Note that Bambu works only with manufacturing partners who demonstrate a commitment to ...

Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

MySpace music profile for CHOP BLOCK (NEEDS A BASS AND 2ND GUITAR PLAYER) with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs, band information, downloads and more

New York Times blog about the competition and culture of college football. ... NEW ORLEANS — While the senior Louisiana State defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey is seemingly the front ...

Ironwood Gourmet is a manufacturer of acacia wood, rubberwood, and bamboo products for the kitchen and for entertaining. Products include wood cutting boards, serving platters ...

There are holes for standard mounts (mounts included!) and rubber feet for table top use. The Chop Block from Rhythm Tech comes in three sizes: small, medium, and large.

03.20.07 Chopblock is Seeking. Full Time Website Editorial Writer Responsible for operation of Korean language editorial web con... 10.24.06 Welcome to the new CHOPBLOCK!

This is a video response to Another Auburn Chop Block! Rate: 252 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 399,572. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook

Rate: 17 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 35,690. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook. Digg (more share options) (fewer share options) This video will appear on ...

Bamboo Chop Block, cutting boards ... Chop Block manufacture: Handmade by Bambu in China. (Note that Bambu works only with manufacturing partners who demonstrate a commitment to ...

Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

MySpace music profile for CHOP BLOCK (NEEDS A BASS AND 2ND GUITAR PLAYER) with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs, band information, downloads and more