Texas Man Arrested in Pay-Per-View Piracy Case

NEW YORK -- Federal authorities in New York say the operator of a website that stole and streamed telecasts of sporting events has been arrested in Texas.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Thursday that Bryan McCarthy was taken into custody at his suburban Houston home.

The 32-year-old is accused in a New York federal case of running a website that streamed sports and pay-per-view events illegally and made more than $90,000 from advertisers.

The channelsurfing.net website was seized by federal authorities last month.

Prosecutors say the site pirated telecasts of broadcasts of National Football League games, wrestling matches and ultimate fighting events.

McCarthy's phone number in Deer Park isn't listed. It's unclear if he has an attorney.

A notice on the website last month told users it was seized by "homeland security."

Iran detains son of prominent opposition leader

TEHRAN, Iran An Iranian opposition website says authorities have detained the son of opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi.

The Tuesday report on Sahamnews.net also says Ali Karroubi was taken into custody on Monday. Ali is not known as an activist, and his detention is widely viewed as at attempt to gain leverage on his father.

The website also says security forces raided the elder Karroubi's house, locking him and his wife Fatemeh in separate rooms and confiscating books and documents.

Karroubi and fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been under house arrest since organizing a rally last week.

At least two people were killed Feb. 14 in clashes between security forces and opposition protesters in Tehran. The rallies were the opposition's largest in more than a year.

NASCAR sets sights on E15 use by 2011

RICHMOND, VA. When NASCAR takes the green flag in 2011, race cars are expected to be fueled by E15 -- a mixture of 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline.

Hendrick Motorsports is already testing the fuel and Roush Yates engines will start development with E15 in the next few weeks. According to RYE co-owner Doug Yates, the conversion is important to the sport.

"Change is scary, but it's exciting as well," Yates said. "We have to keep up with the changes in the world to stay relevant. We need to be moving ahead."

According to the ethanol.org website, ethanol is a clean-burning, high-octane motor fuel that is produced from renewable sources. At its most basic, ethanol is grain alcohol, produced from crops such as corn.

While NASCAR switched to using unleaded fuel in its top three series in 2007, the IndyCar Series used methanol from 1965 to 2006 when it introduced an ethanol blend on the tour. The following season, IndyCar moved to 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol.

Although fuel injection remains on the drawing board for 2011,Yates agrees with other engine gurus in the garage that the fuel issue must take priority.

"Fuel injection is in our future, but it wasn't as simple," Yates said. "It has to be fair for every manufacturer. Ethanol will be first because they want it in all three series. So it would have to work for carburetor as well as fuel injection."

Certainly the greatest initial concern to the engine builders are the durability of parts -- gaskets, o-rings, fuel lines and seals -- and the reaction to the ethanol. From a competition standpoint, the builders believe the on-track performance of the engines will be similar in horsepower to current conditions. But because engines need more ethanol to produce the same fuel mileage, teams will go on average about four to five miles less per full run. The governing body could opt for increasing the size of the fuel cells, but will likely keep the fuel cell the current dimensions and have teams make more pit stops.

Although NASCAR stepped up discussion on the introduction of E15 fuels nine months ago, manufacturers disagree on the time frame of bringing the program to fruition. While one engine builder suggested six months, another suggested that E15 could be used sometime in the next 16 races -- just not during the title-deciding Chase for the Sprint Cup.

In 2003, NASCAR inked a 10-year deal with Sunoco to be the official fuel supplier for the sport. Despite inquiries to Sunoco a week ago regarding the switch to E15, FOXSports.com has not received a response.

One possible ethanol partner appears to be POET ethanol products of Wichita, Kan. POET gained attention last week when President Barack Obama visited the company's Macon, Mo. plant.

TAKING STOCKS

Dr. Eric Warren will return to the NASCAR circuit starting on Monday.

Warren, who worked as an engineer with Evernham Motorsports and Michael Waltrip Racing before joining the fledgling U.S. Formula One effort, will handle simulation projects for Richard Petty Motorsports.

MEARS WANTS MORE

Casey Mears will drive the No. 21 Zaxby's Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing at the upcoming Nationwide Series stand alone events at Nashville and Kentucky Speedways in June. Mears, who finished 26th in his debut for Tommy Baldwin Racing at Richmond, says he'll also entertain offers to race in this year's Indy 500.

SAY WHAT?

The new feud of the week could feature mild-mannered Kasey Kahne and up-and-comer Joey Logano after the pair battled for the lucky dog spot in the closing laps in Richmond.

According to Kahne, "All he did was slow us both down by holding me down. Jeff Gordon put a straightaway on us in like five laps, and he wasn't that much faster than us at that point. I don't really know what Logano was thinking out there."

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Maingear unleashes Shift desktop, child-sized 'personal supercomputer' for $2,199 (or $13,394)

Boutique computer maker Maingear on Monday unleashed its Shift desktop PC, a child-sized that marries extreme performance and upgradeability to industrial design for a barnburning rig that can handle the highest-definition media.

Or, as the company

In a market crowded by players who use the same parts, Maingears trying to differentiate itself with style, case engineering and quality technical support.

On the style front, the companys doing away with the blinking-lights-and-neon look of geeky gaming computers and ushering in an industrial look with straight lines and black-on-black aluminum attitude. In person, the Shift is a massive, steel-framed desktop tower — almost the size of a seated small child, from my visual guesstimate — and impressive in its footprint.

(Its actually 24 inches tall, 8.6 inches wide and 21.5 inches deep.)

The folks at Maingear are quite fervent about case engineering, and the Shift continues that tradition with bottom to top airflow, aggressive liquid cooling and a 90-degree rotation of the motherboard. Further, the system is fairly future-proof, and offers user-accessible expansion slots, full eATX motherboard support, full sized 5.25” optical drives, multiple SATA hard drive configurations and up to two 2.5” HDDs in each 3.5” HDD drive bay.

Finally, as CTO Chris Morley mentioned in a ZDNet interview back in June, customer support is the way his company is differentiating itself from other boutique shops. Maingear says each Shift owner will be able to talk directly to the builder that assembled their system. Theyll also have virtual, private on-site support through an internal remote-desktop setup, as well as traditional on-site support when necessary.

Inside, its full-on extreme computing. The $2,199 Shift P55 sports the following:

• 750W Silverstone Strider Modular Industrial Power Supply


• NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 512MB GDDR3 w/ PhysX (upgradeable to 13 other options, including dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 w/ PhysX in SLI)


• Intel P55 Extreme Series CrossFire and SLI Ready DP55KG motherboard


• Intel Core i7-860 2.8GHz Quad-core CPU (2.93 GHz available)


• 4GB Kingston HyperX Dual-Channel DDR3-1333MHz Low Latency memory (8GB available)


• 750GB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 7200rpm 32MB Cache (upgradeable to dual 160GB Intel X25-M Gen2 SSDs in each of the first two drive bays and single X25s in the third and fourth)


• All-in-One Integrated USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer


• 22X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology (upgradeable to 8X Lite-On SuperMulti Blu-ray/DVD Burner with Software)


• 7.1+2 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical In and Out


• Bluetooth


• Gigabit Ethernet

A Shift X58 model, which starts at $2,599, offers up to 12GB of DDR3 2,000MHz memory, another optional optical drive, two more drive bays (for a total of six) and the potential to easily blow several paychecks. In a test run, I was able to configure a Shift X58 to a breathtaking $13,394 without tangential software or accessories.

Heres the breakdown between the two models:

The company says a Shift system geared specifically toward creative professionals — thats video production, audio editing, and CAD — is coming before the end of the year.

The Shift series starts at $2,199 and is available from the companys website.

Related on ZDNet:

• Maingear introduces ‘worlds greenest gaming PC for $799


• Maingear debuts eX-L 18, ‘worlds most powerful laptop; dual GeForce, triple HD, $3-6K


• Building high-performance, luxury computers in a recession

mail agent test

Arizona Sheriff: I Survived Sexual Abuse

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu was the victim of sexual assault as a young boy, an ongoing incident that forever changed the outspoken critic of Arizona's immigration policies, he told MyFoxPhoenix.com.

"I was a victim of sexual assault when I was a young boy, actually by a priest back in Massachusetts," Babeu told the website. "That was something that had a dramatic impact on me and my life."

Babeu said the abuse began at age 11 and continued for several years. He reported the abuse, which altered his views of people in positions of power.

"By somebody who is trusted and revered, someone of God, and then having leaders within the church cover it up and lie about it really awakened my sense of the world and what's right and what's wrong and how some people in positions of great trust and great honor can do bad things," he said.

Babeu, who served as an officer in Iraq with the Arizona Army National Guard prior to becoming Pinal County's top lawman, said the experience shaped his leadership style. He also did not rule out a run for higher office.

"I'm not going to close the door on that," he MyFoxPhoenix.com. "I believe if we did run, it would be a very competitive political battle."

Babeu said he tries to use his experience with sexual abuse as a "motivating force" to better the world.

"That's what I've tried to do," he said.

Click here for more from MyFoxPhoenix.com.