taliban

Facebook is a great resource to find out about friends graduating, getting married, and going on vacation. Apparently it's also a good resource for Taliban fighters to spy on soldiers.

According to Australia's Department of Defense's new report on social media (PDF), "the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers" as a way to gather information.

These fake profiles are a cause for concern, notes the report. The goal of the report is to be a training guide and review for Australia's military … Read more

Pardon our dust, 404 video viewers! We're right in the middle of a grand studio makeover! The 404 clubhouse is getting all new gear, including wide-angle lenses and a brand new HD tricaster so you can see our radio-friendly faces in high-definition! Actually, we'll let you determine whether that's good or bad, but bear with us for the next few days as we finish setting everything up.

To make it up to you (and in honor of our favorite holiday), we're giving away original 404 art courtesy of the incredibly talented Blake Stevenson! If you just started listening to the show, Blake is the unofficial artist of The 404 that donated his talents to our official logo as well as many of the posters you see in our studio! He recently created the Halloween poster you see on this page and we're really excited to give it away! To enter, all you have to do is follow Blake on Twitter and RT this message:

"RT this & follow @blakestevenson to get some original @the404 ink! http://goo.gl/1XXG"

...and that's it! You have all weekend to do that for a chance to win some awesome art from your favorite podcast; we'll announce the winners next week--good luck!

Now onto today's stories. The first one is almost NSFW so I'll skip that for now, but the next one raises controversy about the recently released first person-shooter game, Medal of Honor. The EA reboot is a gritty take on the current conflict in Afghanistan, and the prerelease even let you play as Taliban soldiers attacking the U.S. Special Forces.

EA has since renamed the Taliban the "opposing force," but the post-censorship becomes a divisive issue for The 404. Jeff doesn't have a problem with it, Wilson thinks it's just "too real," and I'm stuck in the middle like a preteen begging his parents to stop the madness. Tune into the first half to get the full story!

After the break, we hit another milestone for the show: our first ever listener-submitted VIDEO VOICE MAIL! As you know, listeners usually call in and leave an audio voice mail that we play on the air, but Blazer from Cincinnati had the genius idea to post a YouTube link to show us a skateboard trick he created and named after the show!

It's a no-comply pressure flip that he calls The 404 Flip, and we'll definitely show Tony Hawk when he returns to the show next Friday! In the meantime, we'd love to receive more video voice mails, so upload your best messages to YouTube and send us a link at the404(at)cnet(dot)com. Of course we understand that not everyone has access to a video/Web camera, so audio voice mails will certainly be accepted as well--the number's the same: 1-866-404-CNET. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday for the triumphant return of Ms. Natali Del Conte!

After a long battle with critics, the embattled Medal of Honor game will not have Taliban fighters in its multiplayer mode, the game's executive producer announced in a blog post today.

Medal of Honor Executive Producer Greg Goodrich said that he and his team have been receiving "feedback from friends and families of fallen soldiers who expressed concern over the inclusion of the Taliban in the multiplayer portion" of Medal of Honor. He said that he and his team "care deeply about" those opinions.

"Because of this, and because the heartbeat of Medal of … Read more

The big fight between the Pentagon and Wikileaks has gotten to the high school breakup stage: the Pentagon wants Wikileaks to put its mix tapes, photos, and t-shirts in a shoebox and mail them back. Also, another rousing argument on Net neutrality, this time with Brian Cooley's uniquely capitalist viewpoint in the mix. Good times.

Last November, citing bandwidth and security reasons, the military launched TroopTube, a video-sharing social Web site designed for service members, as the alternative to YouTube. Apparently, it now has had a change of heart.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. military in Afghanistan is launching a Facebook page, a YouTube site, and Twitter feeds as part of a new communication effort. Officials said this would help the military reach those who get their information online rather than via printed materials.

For now, the military's Facebook and Twitter sites in Afghanistan are still in a testing phase. Officials … Read more

Hang up, or else. That's the Taliban's message to cell phone companies operating in Afghanistan, whom it suspects of collaborating with NATO to track down its forces.

The displaced theocrats have given the four mobile phone operators in Afghanistan three days to shut down at night--roughly 14 hours a day--or face attacks against their offices and towers, according to Reuters.

The Taliban is convinced the Americans are using mobile phone signals to track down its remaining troops. "Since the occupying forces stationed in Afghanistan usually at night use mobile phones for espionage to track down the mujahideen, … Read more