Stan The Man: 'Couldn't Be Happier' With Disney/Marvel Deal

If you haven't heard today, Disney has inked a deal to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. While this news has had it's fair share of critics, apparently comic legend Stan Lee isn't one of them.

From the NYT:

Stan Lee, a former Marvel executive and a co-creator of Spider-Man, among other superheroes, is a proud papa these days, seeing that Disney values his characters enough to pay $4 billion for them. Mr. Lee, whose complicated relationship with Marvel has included multiple court battles, released the following statement through a publicist:

“I couldn’t be happier with this agreement. It’s a great move for Disney, for Marvel and for my company Pow! Entertainment since Pow! has a first-look deal with Disney. From every possible point of view, the merger of Disney and Marvel is a match made in heaven. Just imagine, with this deal Marvel gives Disney a library of literally hundreds of unique and colorful characters that have the potential to make great, high-concept movies and long-lasting franchises — and nobody knows how to play in that ball park better than Disney. This is a great day for the two companies and for the entertainment community as a whole. To sum it up as simply as possible, when you combine the best with the best, everyone wins!”

RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 From Outer Space

RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 From Outer Space

Comcast: 'FCC Has No Right To Enforce Net Neutrality'

From Gigaom:

Comcast has filed its appeal of an FCC decision issued last August that censured the cable company for blocking P2P files, arguing that the commission doesn’t have the authority to impose the broadband principles that define network neutrality in the U.S. absent a federal law or a full public hearing to make those principles binding as regulatory policy. Indeed, Comcast’s appeal will test the FCC’s ability to enforce network neutrality without either of those things.

Comcast’s intent to appeal the FCC’s ruling was announced last September, but initial briefs, which it filed July 27, are just now hitting the courts. Comcast initially got into trouble in October 2007, after an Associated Press investigation revealed the company was forging packets that would cause BitTorrent connections of some users to drop and failing to inform them of the practice — a serious net neutrality no-no.

After multiple hearings and the filing of more than 6,500 public comments, the FCC in August of 2008 gave Comcast a stern talking-to and ordered it to change its network management practice, but stopped short of issuing a fine. It also declined to make a formal rule regarding this sort of action, saying instead that it will continue to examine net neutrality issues on a case-by-case basis. So as per the FCC’s order, Comcast implemented a type of network management plan that temporarily slows connections for heavy bandwidth users when the network gets crowded. The management affects uploads and downloads and is protocol-agnostic. A Comcast spokeswoman said today that regardless of the success of Comcast’s appeal, its network management procedures will stay the same.

full article

If you don't know what net neutrality is, watch this video.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D

An update to the previously posted Hubble Deep Field video.

Hacker Attack Takes Down Social Networks

From USA Today:
Social networks Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal on Thursday morning were overwhelmed by denial-of-service attacks disrupting access to more than 300 million users. Botnets — thousands of infected home and workplace PCs — flooded the websites with nuisance requests, thus cutting off access to anyone else.

Security experts can't say if the attacks were related. Twitter users around the globe could not Tweet for at least three hours. Access was restored in much of the U.S. by 1 p.m. Eastern, but Twitter could not be reached via iPhone or in Eastern Europe through much of the day, says Stephan Tanase, a senior analyst at Kaspersky Lab. "This was definitely a pretty heavy attack," says Tanase.

The attacks may have been related to the ongoing political conflict between Russia and Georgia. They started with hackers using a botnet to send a flurry of spam e-mail messages that contained links to pages on Twitter, Facebook and other sites written by a single pro-Abkhazia activist, according to Bill Woodcock, research director of the San Francisco-based Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit that tracks Internet traffic.

Facebook reported degraded service for some of its 250 million users, while LiveJournals says its 21 million users were cut off for an hour.

Nothing on this scale has been seen since February 2000, when a 15-year-old Montreal youth, known as Mafiaboy, directed a bot network to cut off access to Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, Etrade, ZDNET and CNN. Upon being arrested, Michael Calce, now a security consultant, said he did it for bragging rights.

Last month, a denial of service attack cut off access to several government and commercial sites in the U.S. and South Korea, raising speculation that North Korea was responsible. The attacker oddly erased the hard drives of the 40,000 bots used in the attack, rendering the computers useless.

Roger Thompson, a senior researcher at antivirus company AVG, says a vigilante may have been trying to "get the attention of the world on the botnet problem." Estimates vary, but some 40% of Internet-connected computers may be under the control of criminals who can easily use them for a variety of criminal pursuits.

Filmmaker John Hughes Dies At 59

Brat Pack director John Hughes died today after suffering a heart attack.

The man behind many hit films considered modern classics like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty in Pink was 59 when he collapsed and died while walking in Manhattan, New York earlier today.

The father of two stepped away from the limelight in the 1990s to run a farm in his native Illinois.

His last film as a director was Curly Sue in 1991 but he penned the screenplays for 2008's Drillbit Taylor, and Jennifer Lopez's Maid In Manhattan in 2002.

Hughes was also the man behind the Home Alone and Beethoven film franchises.

New Weird Al Song/Video