A recently released Justice Department Audit conducted by the departments Inspector General, Glenn Fine, found that the U.S. governments expanded powers under FISA may have been undermined by something totally unrelated to the technical challenges related to wiretapping phone calls and emails. Apparently the FBI didn't pay it's phone bill. About half of 1000 bills related to wiretaps were either not paid on time or not paid at all, resulting in wiretaps being cut.
We'll pause for a second to let that sink in, and give you time to catch your breath from laughing your *ss off.
One of the more low key annoucements at CES yesterday involved Comcasts official rollout of Fancast.com . Partnering with Amazon's IMDB and the likes of CBS, Viacom, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, USA, Bravo, BBC, SciFi, and Hulu, Fancast aims to be "the" place to go for streaming video. Through it's licensing arrangements with major studios it has at it's fingertips over 100,000 video properties. Currently there is only a fraction of this available directly from the site in live streams, but expect the streamable content to grow quite a bit going forward.
Signifying Comcasts boldest step yet into online content, it also shows how important online advertising is becoming to traditional market players bottom lines. Comcast will capitalize this new portal through an advertising based model as well as through tie-ins with Fandago , the online movie ticket portal it purchased last year.
