Breaking News Thread

[socalrappy700]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081219/bs_nm/us_markets_oil

LONDON (Reuters) – Oil fell below $34 on Friday to its lowest level in almost five years as the global economic slowdown overshadowed OPEC's record supply cuts.

U.S. light crude for January delivery fell $2.64 to $33.58 a barrel by 6:50 a.m. EST. It earlier touched $33.44, the lowest since early February 2004.

London Brent crude was trading 18 cents up at $43.54.

Oil prices have fallen by more than $110 from their peak above $147 in July. They look set for their second biggest weekly decline since 2003.

"Until traders see a sustained drop-off in the rate of demand destruction, the market will have a hard time establishing a floor," Jonathan Kornafel, Asia Director of Hudson Capital Energy, said.

"From a credibility standpoint, OPEC has no choice but to bite the bullet for the next few months."

Oil has continued to drop despite pledges by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this week to remove 2.2 million barrels per day from its supply, which will be the largest ever reduction by the producer group.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, speaking in London, said on Friday the kingdom would be pumping less oil in January and would be at its new output target in line with the group's latest cut.

Other key markets were also falling on Friday. The dollar looked set for its biggest weekly decline since 1985 and world stocks fell as concerns about the U.S. economy worried investors in the last full trading week of 2008.

OUTLOOK

Because of the worldwide credit squeeze, many analysts now expect a drop in oil use this year, the first demand contraction since 1980.

Some doubt OPEC, whose third production cut since September has brought its total reduction to over 4 million bpd or 5 percent of world supply, will fully implement the agreed cuts, further weighing on prices.

"We believe that full implementation of the cuts is unlikely," said Goldman Sachs analysts in a note to clients.

Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said on Thursday oil prices were responding to the global economic recession and investors would have to see how much actual supply cuts OPEC would deliver to the market.

But OPEC President Chakib Khelil said on Friday he believed oil prices had found a floor around current levels.

"I don't believe there is any reason for it to fall any further. I don't see it going lower," he told Reuters in London.

[Krandall]

@ 34 a barrel.. That should put us somewhere near $1 a gallon yea?

[Flynbyu]

Even cutting production 2 million barrels a day, I still think gas will remain low for a while.

~Brian

[Flynbyu]

At last, the music industry admits what we've known for years: That filing music-swapping lawsuits against teenagers, little old ladies, and corpses is a fool's errand (not to mention an expensive headache for the defendants). But don't worry—the RIAA has something new up its sleeves.

The new strategy (as reported by the Wall Street Journal): If the music industry finds out that you're swapping music files online, it'll send an e-mail to your ISP (agreements have already hashed out agreements with "some" unnamed service providers, apparently), which will in turn forward the message to you—probably with a little "P.S." asking you to stop. [Update: CNET has a copy of the RIAA's form letter to ISPs.]

If you don't stop, well ... your service provider probably won't sue you, but it might slow down your broadband connection, or cut off your service altogether.

So, why has the RIAA changed the play? Well, maybe it's been looking at reports like this one from the NPD Group, which shows that U.S. CD sales continue to slide, while the number of tunes shared via P2P sites continues to increase, despite all the litigation.

And then there's the disastrous headlines, as the RIAA relentlessly tracked down and sued tens of thousands of alleged music pirates. Among them: Kids, octogenarians, and a few dead people.

Reaction to the news? Mixed. Engadget's headline reads (in part): "RIAA finds its soul," with the story noting that while the RIAA reserves the right to go after "heavy uploaders or repeat offenders ... it appears that single mothers are in the clear."

All Things Digital has a darker outlook, speculating that ISPs—which "care about the cost of moving lots of data around ... [and] want to make money by selling, renting, or just offering up Hollywood's movies and TV shows to subscribers"—might be more than content to "cut off file-sharers ... [or] simply [charge] heavy file-sharers a lot of money."

And here's another possibility, courtesy of yours truly: Say your ISP catches you sharing tunes via P2P. No problem—download away! But when you get your next cable bill, you'll find the itemized songs added to your monthly charge, kind of like an iTunes bill.

Call it the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy.

P.S. Make no mistake—just because the RIAA has stopped filing new music-swapping lawsuits doesn't mean that it's dropped the existing ones, according to the Journal. Quite the contrary.

Story via Yahoo Tech news.

~Brian

[Krandall]

blah blah blah....

P2P is going to move to entirely encrypted data trnasmissions... No one will be able to see what it is your doin.. Just like how VPN's work.

[Flynbyu]

blah blah blah....

P2P is going to move to entirely encrypted data trnasmissions... No one will be able to see what it is your doin.. Just like how VPN's work.

So I'm in no danger of downloading my ass off?

 

~Brian

[Krandall]

You are right now.. But, PirateBay.org is looking at making a P2P app that runs behind a vpn basically, so there'd be no danger.

[Flynbyu]

You are right now.. But, PirateBay.org is looking at making a P2P app that runs behind a vpn basically, so there'd be no danger.

What P2P service do you use?

~Brian

[Krandall]

I currently use Azerus

[Flynbyu]

I'll have to try that.

~Brian

[Krandall]

It's good stuff. Azerus + piratebay.org = H4x0r!

[Flynbyu]

Now with Azerus, can you download music and movies?

~Brian

[Peelz]

Breaking News: Shout Box renamed E + E  complain about moving to Cali box.

[Krandall]

Now with Azerus, can you download music and movies?

~Brian

Azerus is a torrent application. Not sure if you've seen em, it took me a little bit to get the hang of it.. What you do is go to a torrent site like.. Piratebay.org... Search what your looking for. You find somethin you like and you'll download a "seed file" this will then bring the download into Azerus and download the thing your lookin for...
Yea, you can download, Music, Movies, Applications, Digital Books, pics... ect.

[Krandall]

Well,.... they confirmed the bones they found are Caylee's

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081219/ap_on_re_us/missing_florida_girl

Skeletal remains don't reveal how Fla. girl died

ORLANDO, Fla. – Pieces of a tiny skeleton found in swampy woods can tell authorities one thing: Missing 3-year-old Caylee Anthony was killed. What they can't help explain, authorities said Friday, is how or when she died. Authorities said at a news conference that DNA tests conducted on remains found by a utility worker last week less than a half-mile from where the child lived matched Caylee's genetic profile. But the only clue they give about her death is that her bones didn't suffer trauma, said Orange County medical examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia.

"Bottom line is, folks, no child should have to go through this," said Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary.

The discovery of the child's remains came after months of searches, twists and turns in the investigation. Caylee's mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony, was indicted in October on first-degree murder and other charges, even though no body was found. She has insisted that she left the girl with a baby sitter in June, but she didn't report her missing until July.

A search team said they did not check the wooded area sooner because it was submerged in water from the summer's heavy rains. But the utility worker who made the tip, Roy Kronk, said he had contacted the Orange County Sheriff's office in August to report that he had seen "something suspicious, a bag, in the same area."

The sheriff's office said he first called on Aug. 11 to report the bag. A deputy responded but didn't find anything and was unable to locate him. Kronk called a crime hot line the following day and the information was passed on to the sheriff's office criminal investigation division. On Aug. 13, he called the sheriff's office a third time. He met a deputy, but authorities cleared the area as a place of interest in the search a short time later.

Beary said his department was investigating its response.

"If we missed a window of opportunity, we don't know," he said. "I'm not throwing anybody under the bus because we don't know."

It took authorities several days to analyze the remains since being found last Thursday, and some are still undergoing tests. Some of the bones were as small as a pebble and had been scattered, and the fragments were hard to find by excavators who searched on their hands and knees, authorities said.

Garavaglia — the star of cable TV's "Dr G: Medical Examiner — said authorities concluded Caylee was killed through DNA tests and "circumstantial evidence." But she said she was certain this a homicide and not an accidental death — and didn't expect further testing to reveal a specific cause.

"I wouldn't have issued the report if I wasn't sure," she said.

A jail chaplain told the girl's mother that the remains were her daughter at the Orange County jail just before the news conference began. Her attorney, Jose Baez, was with her at the jail shortly after.

"This is her private moment," Baez said. "This is her life she's trying to battle through right now."

The case captivated the Orlando community where the little girl's family lived, and Caylee has been a staple on national news as her grandparents pleaded for tips, promising that the girl was still alive.

Volunteers and investigators mounted several search through the summer and fall, looking at wooded areas near Orlando International Airport, local parks and even the grounds where the bones were found.

Caylee's grandmother first called authorities in July to say she hadn't seen the girl, whose third birthday passed shortly after her disappearance, for a month. Her daughter's car smelled like death, she said.

Police immediately interviewed Anthony and soon said everything she told them about her daughter's whereabouts was false. The baby sitter was nonexistent and the apartment where Anthony said she had last seen Caylee had been empty for months. Anthony also lied about where she worked, they said.

Other troubling details emerged: Photos surfaced of Anthony partying after her daughter went missing. Friends said she was a habitual liar, but also a good mother.

Last month, the Orange County State Attorney turned over almost 800 pages of documents showing someone used the Anthonys' home computer to do Internet searches for terms like "neck breaking" and "household weapons."

In mid-March, someone searched Google and Wikipedia for peroxide, shovels, acetone, alcohol and chloroform. Traces of chloroform, which is used to induce unconsciousness and a component of human decomposition, were found in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car during forensic testing, the documents say.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Anthony faces an automatic life sentence as prosecutors have announced they will not seek the death penalty. Her trial is scheduled for March.

Without a definite cause of death, a defense lawyer can suggest to a jury that labeling Caylee's death a homicide is only speculation, said A. Russell Smith, a Jacksonville attorney and immediate past president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"Juries are particularly conscientious in homicide cases because the penalties are so severe," Smith said. "So, to the extent that there are gaps in critical evidence, it makes the prosecutor's job much more difficult."