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carusoj writes in with NetworkWorld reporting from a panel at Harvard last week. It concluded that employee non-compete agreements have stifled tech startup development in Massachusetts, where the pacts are aggressively enforced, but failed to hold back the tech industry boom in states like California, where they are mostly unenforceable. We've discussed non-competes often here in the past; Techdirt made much the same point a year and a half back.

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im_thatoneguy sends in an account up at Shacknews about Atari's actions to get early reviews of its upcoming game Alone In the Dark pulled from Web sites in Europe. Atari sued the German site 4Players, alleging piracy, and also cancelled an advertising deal on the site, after a pre-release review gave the game only 68%. 4Players posted a commentary (translation) alleging that Atari is doing this bcause the review is unfavorable. Shacknews reports that Atari has also demanded that both Gamer.no and GameReactor remove early reviews — both reviews gave the game a score of 3/10. Kotaku editorializes: "[Does Atari] fear that, because these outlets may have received copies of the game 'early' (i.e. from pirated copies), that they're somehow reviewing incomplete code, which could affect their opinion of the game? Maybe. Pessimists could, however, be forgiven for thinking it's a convenient excuse for Atari to attack negative reviews of the only game they're releasing in 2008 that has any chance of making them some money."

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An anonymous reader notes that Hotmail's full version doesn't work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn't fix it.) At least 8 other bug reports have been duped to this one. The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)."

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seattlle foodie sends along a New Scientist article outlining two recent studies that confirm what many have long suspected: bad boys get the most girls. "The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the 'dark triad' persists in the human population, despite their potentially grave cultural costs. The traits are: the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking, and callous behavior of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these traits would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out of relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators."

zorro6 writes "I thought this might be an interesting question/topic and it would sure help me to get some kind of answer. I recently got internet service from a small, local wireless ISP in my area (south central Colorado, USA). The strange thing is that many, many web sites think I am in Quebec, Canada when I use the service. Evidently some geolocation service thinks my IP address indicates I am in Canada. I have checked the obvious. The WHOIS information for my IP correctly indicates a location of Durango, CO. So the bad info is coming from some more sophisticated geolocation service. My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French! Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada. So far I know that Yahoo! (or their ad provider), Nvidia, Movielink, etc. all think I am in Canada. I would sure appreciate any help/info on how to get this corrected."

shanen writes "A story from the NYTimes about metering internet traffic caught my eye. I thought the exchange of information over the Internet was supposed to be a good thing? Couldn't we use technology more constructively? For example, if there is too much network traffic for video and radio channels, why don't we offset with the increased use of P2P technologies like BitTorrent? Why don't we use wireless networks to reduce the traffic on the wired infrastructure? Such technologies often have highly desirable properties. For example, BitTorrent is excellent for rapidly increasing the availability of popular files while automatically balancing the network traffic, since the faster and closer connections will automatically wind up being favored. Instead, we have an increasing trend for anti-technology technologies and twisted narrow economic solutions such as those discussed in the NYTimes article, and attempts to restrict the disruptive communications technologies. You may remember how FM radio was delayed for years; part of the security requirements of a major company includes anti-P2P software, as well as locking down the wireless communications extremely tightly — but there are still gaps for the bad guys, while the main victims are the legitimate users of these technologies. Can you think of other examples? Do you have constructive solutions?"

Corrupt links to a Sydney Morning Herald article which begins "The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday." The article is thin on details, but what it does say is bad enough: "Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks." It sounds like the perfect way to organize an especially malicious DDoS attack. The French government has never been shy about wanting to "protect" French people by censoring Internet content, though.

Jm_aus writes "eBay's plan to force all users to use PayPal only has been rejected by Australia's competition regulator, the ACCC. This followed 650 submissions from eBay users as well as from Australian banks, other payment services, the Australian Reserve Bank, and (anonymously) Google, which aired a lot of dirty laundry about PayPal's unresponsiveness and failure to sign up to the local banking code of conduct. Apparently the public benefits from eBay's 'Bad Buyer Experience' elimination program are likely to be 'minimal.' There is a period for appeals."

Several users have alerted us to a May Scientific American article that has been getting some attention more recently. Apparently, blogging is now good for you and, at least in this context, is the suggested reason for the explosion of blogging. This is quite the departure from some of the results we have seen in practice for more prolific bloggers.

Wired is running a story about AT&T's chief technical officer, John Donovan. He contrasts his view of BitTorrent and P2P in general against the controversial policies adopted by other ISPs. Donovan also explains why AT&T is considering usage-based pricing, citing the cost of network upgrades which only affect a small number of users. AT&T is expected to test the new pricing scheme later this year, which should give them plenty of time to see how Time Warner's customers respond to the idea. "'I don't view any of our customers, under any circumstances, as pirates -- I view them as users,' Donovan said. 'A heavy user is not a bad customer.' What he wants to do is gently encourage more efficient usage of his network, and usage-based pricing may be one of the ways that happens. Such measures may not even be necessary, as Donovan admits that users self-adjust their habits to take advantage of off-peak times. For instance, he said, BitTorrent on the company's network peaks around 4 a.m., when other traffic is at an ebb. Overall P2P traffic accounts for about 20 percent of the network's usage, Donovan said."