Twitter users, especially those that had gained a large following over the years, were shocked earlier today when their number of followers was reset to 0.
While the numbers were back to normal soon, the reset had to be done to kill off a bug that was being exploited to force celebrities to “follow” anybody who was using the bug.
“We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place,” said the company in a blog post.
Fortunately, adds the company, the glitch did not make private tweets public.
The extremely easy glitch involved tweeting the term “accept (whoever)” and then refreshing. Suddenly, Ashton Kutcher or whoever else you wanted was your fan.
Result for: vat
Apple unveiled the first beta of the next version of the iPhone and iPod Touch OS. It’s currently available to registered developers, and scheduled to be released to consumers this summer.
“The new iPhone OS 3.0 is a major software release packed with incredible new features and innovations for iPhone customers and developers alike. It will keep us years ahead of the competition,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.
In addition to the Copy and Paste feature mentioned recently by Digg’s Kevin Rose , new features will include expanded search capabilities, landscape view for Mail, Text, and Notes, and Bluetooth networking capabilities.
As with version 2 of the OS, version 3 will be a free upgrade for iPhone owners but cost $9.95 to upgrade an iPod Touch.
If the server problems last year, when the new iPhone and OS were released, and the year before, when the iPhone debuted, are any indication, it’s probably a good idea not to plan on updating for at least a day or two.
Result for: vat
On August 26th, 27-year-old Kevin Cogill was arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. FBI agents say Coghill had nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his site in June.
The blogger allegedly had been streaming songs from the still unreleased new Guns N’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” on his site for some time.
In November, Coghill pleaded guilty to one federal count of copyright infringement, a charge that carries up to one year in prison and a large fine. Federal prosecutors today have said they are pushing for a six month sentence for Coghill based on the “calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it.”
The government has said the damages amount to $371,622 USD, basing each infringement on iTune’s 99 cents per track cost. The RIAA, always one to create phantom numbers, believes the infringement amounts to a “$2.2 million loss based on a $6.39 legitimate wholesale value.” These numbers of course imply that every person who downloaded the tracks would have purchased them legally had they not been available illegally, which we all know is not true at all. The government’s almost 400,000 “conservative figure” was based on the following:
“This number is based on a sample of 30 out of 1,310 unauthorized web sites that offered the leaked songs to the public between June 19, 2008 and November 21, 2008. Of the 1,310 web sites identified as having unauthorized copies of the music that defendant streamed, 30 of those contained information showing the number of downloads from their sites. It is most likely that this number represents the number of downloads of the group of 9 leaked songs, for a total of 152,784 downloads of individual songs (16,976 x 9), tt is, however, not possible to say at this time whether the figure represents the group of 9 songs or individual songs. Giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt, the government will assume that the 16,976 figure represents downloads of individual songs.”
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