Hacked Macs; MySpace Founder Loses Friends; Cyber Squatting

Posted by Ben Worthen

This guy just lost a lot of friends

* Earlier today, we wrote that the first computer broken into at the Â“hacker Super BowlÂ” was a Mac running Apple’s operating system. It took a hacker two minutes to compromise that machine. The other computers in the contest Â– PCs running MicrosoftÂ’s Windows operating system and Linux Â– made it through the day unscathed. This morning, the contestÂ’s organizers relaxed the rules, allowing contestants to load any popular software onto the machines. As of 2:30 pm PDT, the Windows and Linux computers were still standing, according to the organizers.

* We finally have an answer to one of the major questions of life in the Web 2.0 era: Does connecting to someone on a social-networking Web site make them your friend? The answer is no, according to a British judge, who just ruled in favor of a man whose ex-girlfriend accused him of harassment after he repeatedly sent her invitations to be friends on Facebook. The big loser from the decision: MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, who is automatically listed as a friend of everyone who creates a profile on that site.

* Instances of Â“cyber squatting,Â” the practice of registering a Web site using a trademarked name and then trying to sell the site to the trademark owner, reached record levels in 2007, the Journal reports. The U.S. outlawed cyber squatting in 1999. Nonetheless, there were 2,156 complaints filed last year, 45% from the U.S., according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. Many of the complaints involved celebrity names or corporate names with obvious typos.