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.

Live: The Crunchies 2010

This blog post is breathing. It’s being updated every few minutes, or as fast as I can hit save. Enjoy the live blogging!

Techcrunch put on a great show this evening at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Crunchies are the geek version of the Grammys. Startups are ranked, refactored, and reviewed over the course of a year on different categories. Here are all of the nominees.

Mike Arrington introduced the event.

Best Internet Application

Every application that you use is up for grabs here. The nominees for this category are Chartbeat, Greplin (personal search engine), Pandora (internet radio to the max, over 60 million users), UJam, and Rdio.

It’s interesting that the two “best” internet applications were both radio/music-based: Pandora, and Rdio (gold and silver, respectively).

Tom Conrad from Pandora:

Best Mobile App

Bump, Hashable, Instagram, and Chomp were the nominees. But Google Maps won the award (not really fair). I do use it 50 times a day, but still, let the little guy take home an award.

Best Social App

Marissa Mayer spoke about social apps. “Where’s the Crunchies’ badge for tonight?”

Foursquare, GroupMe, and Twitter (silver) were among the finalists, but DailyBooth was the winner. Everytime I’ve ever logged into DailyBooth, I’ve posted a photo of myself. I don’t really engage too much, but it’s easy to get sucked in. It’s more social than Twitter?

Best Social Commerce App

Social commerce is the best commerce. ShopKick took second but Groupon pulled in the gold. C’mon guys, Groupon is already a verb.

Interview: Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter

Arrington spoke to Costolo candidly, “You just lost to DailyBooth in ‘Best Social App’”.

“So far, Twitter has been too cool for revenue. Are you thinking, 2010, for that?,” said Arrington. Costolo said, he’s not worried about it. When asked when he does worry about, he said international, scaling, and organization is an operational challenge.

Best Location Based Service

Location is everywhere.

Best New Device

A device is something you hold in your hand, there is no other way to define it.

Boxee, Chrome (huh?), iPad, Kno were nominated. XBox Kinect came in second and you can guess what came in first: iPad.

As an iPad user, I really do think it’s the best device out there. You can’t put it down once you start playing with it. It’s efficient, extraordinary, and entertaining. And you can take it anywhere.

Best Technology Achievement

Google - Self-driving cars. “I’m glad everyone envisions a cleaner, safer future”.

Best Design

Oooo, design. It’s the thing that makes you look longer and harder at a website. You appreciate visual beauty, and so do the Crunchies judges.

The winner is… Gogobot.

Best Touch Interface

iPad/iPod wasn’t even mentioned. But the winner is an iPad app called Flipboard.

Best Bootstrapped Startup

Bootstrapping means self-sustaining. That means they built something with nothing.

Some finalists worth mentioning: Easel, Fast Society, and Techmeme (a great tech news aggregator). Addmired pulled away with the gold, and Instapaper got silver.

Best Enterprise

Enterprise apps play a huge part of streamlining a company’s business. BuddyMedia beats our Salesforce and 37Signals for the win.

Best Clean Tech

I’ve never heard of any of the companies mentioned in this category. The winner was .

Best Time Sink Application

Descibed as, “ways to waste time when you’re unemployed”. If you had a week to visit any website, what would it be? You can only spend time on this website?

Crunchies judges voted for CityVille over Angry Birds, Quora, and Netflix! Damn.

Angel of the Year

Angel investors do the hard work of finding the most promising startups. Ron Conway came in second because you can’t win a Crunchie two years in a row. Paul Graham took home this year’s award with his awesome portfolio over at YCombinator.

VC of the Year (individual)

Yuri Milner, from DST, won. Arrington said, “you are a source of stress for the VC community”. He says that because DST is so freaking good. Milner likes to bet high on the best investments: Facebook, Groupon and Zynga. He actually didn’t answer any of Arrington’s questions…

Best International

What’s awesome outside the US? Spotify won last year. This year, it was ViKi, which looks awesome.

Founder of the Year

Mark Pincus, from Zynga, picked up this award. 425 million people play social games using Zynga’s platform. That’s more than the population of the US.

CEO of the Year

Zuck couldn’t win this one two years in a row, so the award went to the cash cow Groupon. It’s scary how big those guys are. Mason deserves it though. He could probably be a stand-up comedian too.

Best New StartUp or Product of 2010

To decide this category, they put all of the CEOs of the nominees in the room and they all yelled Robert Scoble’s name to see where he went.

I’m not surprised that Quora won. It’s absolutely the most interesting site on the web today.

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010

Drumroll please? Twitter!! I had to save the best for last. For all of you guys who think tweeting is for twits, get with the program. Twitter is the best message platform ever.

See you at next year’s Crunchies.

Apple's Jobs takes medical leave, remains CEO; Succession planning in focus

Cook takes over day to day as CEO Jobs takes medical leave.

Apple said Monday that CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave to focus on his health. He will remain CEO.

As Jobs takes his leave, Tim Cook, chief operating officer will take over Apple’s day-to-day operations. In early 2009, Jobs went on a medical leave for six months in early 2009 to have a liver transplant. During that time, Cook filled in and Apple didnג€™t miss a beat. Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor.

Here’s what Jobs sent to Apple employees:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Appleג€™s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

The news is likely to put Apple succession planning back on the front burner. Earlier this month, a pension fund proposed that Apple become more forthcoming about its succession planing for Jobs, who is a pancreatic cancer survivor. Details of Jobs’ latest medical leave were disclosed.

In that proposal, which was detailed in Apple’s proxy statement, the Central Laborers Pension Fund in Jacksonville, Ill. argued that Apple do the following:

• Appleג€™s board will review the succession plan each year;
• Develop criteria for the CEO position and a process to evaluate candidates;
• Identify internal candidates;
• Begin a ג€œnon-emergency CEO succession planningג€ process, three years before a transition;
• Report the succession plan to shareholders each year.

Apple urged a vote against the proposal.

Jobs’ latest medical leave is likely to put the succession planning on the front burner again. Here are a few thoughts since Jobs’ health will be a key issue again.

• The medical leave hand-off at Apple has been well established from the first time Jobs took time off. Cook has proven that he can run Apple on a day-to-day basis.
• There will be more probing about Jobs’ health and what exactly he’s doing. Obviously, Jobs wants his privacy, but shareholders are going to want more details.
• The succession planning proposal in Apple’s proxy statement may get more serious consideration as Jobs take leave.
• Details of the duration of Jobs’ medical leave are likely to impact Apple shares. If it’s a short leave—quite possible since Jobs is still CEO—then the damage will be minimal.
• Now it’s clear why Cook is one well-paid operating chief. Cook made $59 million in Apple’s fiscal year.

Related: Pondering Apple in a post-Jobs world