It didn’t take long before the person responsible for hacking into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account was traced.  Thanks to the wonders of IP addresses, the one responsible for the intrusion was traced back to an ISP of a Knoxville, Tennessee student housing complex that is now under federal investigation.

Acting upon a search warrant early Sunday morning, the FBI showed up at the apartment of the 20-year old student and son of a Democratic state representative while he was hosting a party. Whether or not the FBI got in on some beer pong has yet to be announced.  No worries for the alleged hacker who, if found guilty, will serve only a light sentence due to a legal loophole regarding email that has been read, but not discarded.

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I’m sure you’ve heard about Republican vice president candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail account getting hacked. Turns out, the hacker knew more about her personal life than both the Republican party and the press. The hacker had guessed that Alaska’s governor had met her husband in high school, and also knew Palin’s date of birth and home Zip code. With those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo’s e-mail service into assigning a new password, “popcorn,” to the Alaska Governor’s e-mail account.

A formal investigation has been launched by both the FBI and the Secret Service against the hacker who has since come out anonymously via the Internet but there is no word on his identity. While it certainly was a violation of Palin’s privacy, the following question was raised: should Governor Palin have been using a non-government e-mail to conduct state business? Also, does this evidence imply improper political activity? I think not, but Sarah Palin definitely needs to think of some better password recovery questions.

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Remember how Yahoo fucked you out of all your music by shutting down its DRM server and not giving you any reimbursements? Well, it has rightfully decided to reimburse its paying customers. Turns out Yahoo feels bad for screwing customers over. Nice of Yahoo! Music to consider the folks who keep its workers from going hungry.

Yahoo, in return for shutting down their music service, is promising either refunds or a replacement DRM-free version of tracks that you downloaded via its service. All current users will automatically migrate to Real’s Rhapsody service. Gone are the days that the recording industry makes money off of forcing folks to rebuy all their music every time there’s a format change. Trent Reznor makes his music free, why can’t everyone else?

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Yahoo announced that it’s shutting down its DRM servers as of September 30, 2008. Anyone whose turned over hard cash towards Yahoo Music will lose the ability to recover it or transfer it to a new PC. Further proving DRM’s worthlessness, Yahoo even had the nerve to tell its customers to burn CDs and re-rip the tracks they bought, before the chance is over. Haven’t we learned anything from old DRM techniques?

Shame on you, Yahoo. I purchase music that I rightfully own and you’re not going to make it available to me? There’s a word for that: theft. Isn’t DRM supposed to be beneficial? It’s like Communism, it sounds great on paper, then it’s executed poorly. DRM only makes things harder for legal users. Legal users are the most important users of all, and Yahoo just fucked them in the ass. What’s it going to take to have proper DRM that benefits the user? A CD that self-destructs after it is copied.

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The Fourth of July has passed and now we’re stuck on a Monday with a big week ahead of us. However, nobody’s week will compare to that of Jerry Yang’s. Jerry is CEO and co-Founder of Yahoo!, a dying Internet company you probably use daily. Today, money-maker and powerhouse Carl Icahn issues a letter to Yahoo! shareholders telling them that the current board at Yahoo! must be ousted, including Yang. Why’s this? Icahn and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer have been chatting about Yahoo! recently. Check out choice quotes from Icahn’s letter:

Much has been said about how badly the Yahoo! board has “botched up” negotiations with Microsoft over the past months. There is no need to keep pointing out the mistakes I believe Yahoo! made by not immediately taking a $33 offer made by Microsoft. But one thing is clear — Jerry Yang and the current board of Yahoo! will not be able to “botch up” a negotiation with Microsoft again, simply because they will not have the opportunity.

– If elected, I have little doubt that the new board, subject to its fiduciary duties, will do what the current board will not do, i.e.,

– Immediately start negotiation with Microsoft to sell the whole company or, in the alternative, sell “Search” with large guarantees.

– Move expeditiously to replace Jerry Yang with a new CEO with operating
experience.

Things are not looking good for Yahoo! or Yang. I give it six months before Microsoft is finished purchasing the company and replacing Yang with Icahn. Thoughts?

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Valleywag has posted a great little exploit from a “Canadian computer guy” that allows you to access any private MySpace profile. Using a Yahoo! Mobile widget portal and a little URL trickery, you can easily browse through any private profile, photos included. I stopped using MySpace about two years ago, so I signed up with a throwaway Dodgit.com e-mail address to see if I could make it work.

Sure enough, it did. Five minutes later I was checking out some hotties from my hometown and scoping out Heidi Montag’s private photo collection, which was nothing special. If you need some new pics to whack off to, give this tutorial a read. After the jump, more proof and linkage.

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That infamous color pink… it makes guys make sure that they choose a very different color scheme, but it always seems to draw the female crowd in. The leading Web 2.0 instant messaging client Meebo has just added a pink theme to its increasingly popular application. Meebo allows users to make their own Meebo account and tie in each of their AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk together and talk to buddies/friends in each protocol all at once. It sounds a bit like the application Trillian, but Meebo is strictly an online client. So who knows, maybe this new pink color scheme will attract more people to Meebo, maybe it won’t, but it will definitely brighten up some user’s boring blue Meebo screens. — Nik Gomez

Pink IM from Meebo [ShinyShiny]

It’s how Peter Parker made a living after discovering his secret Spiderman powers, and now Yahoo and Reuters want to pay you to take pictures of breaking news stories. Yahoo and Reuters have recently partnered up to create a service they are calling “You Witness”. This service runs off of the premise that nearly everyone has a camera on their phone, and now these cameras are coming to a point where their image quality is acceptable for news stories. Because everyone has a camera phone, and there are always people around events that occur (which make breaking news), these people will take pictures of the happening and hopefully make some money.

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