Internet

UPDATE: Check out a photo gallery of images from Joe Flacco's wedding here. The photos can also be found on the website of photographer Jason Prezant , but the site has been inaccessible due to the high interest in the Flacco pictures. . Joe Flacco's wedding photos have been posted out in the blogosphere, and simply put, they are amazing. The photos, which were published to the blog of wedding photographer Jason Prezant, shed a little light onto what the Ravens quarterback is like away from the television cameras and our microphones.

Yahoo has added another major property to its portfolio, Kanye West went dark and political for his SNL gig, and France is buying military equipment. Welcome to your post-weekend trends report for May 20, 2013. With the exception of television show reactions, most Internet attention this morning centers around Friday news. That includes France's Friday announcement that it is buying drones and Yahoo's announcement that it is buying Tumblr. Apparently only one of those decisions was unpopular enough to warrant NYT reaction coverage . As for weekend content: Kanye West gave what one Twitter user described as "the most terrifying PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen" on SNL Saturday.

Sen. Rand Paul is recruiting plaintiffs - and seeking donations - for a class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency. “Dear Patriot,” the Kentucky Republican wrote Thursday in an e-mail to supporters. “I'm looking for ten million Americans to stand with me and sue the federal government and TAKE BACK our rights. “Can I count on your help? “Without it, I truly fear where our fragile Republic could be headed …” Paul, who is expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, told a Fox News interviewer this week that he would be asking Internet providers and telephone companies to join him in a lawsuit against the electronic eavesdropping agency based at Fort Meade.

The U.S. Senate recently passed a bill that would allow states to require Internet retailers to collect sales taxes on behalf of local governments. This bill has flaws, but they could be fixed in the House. It should be passed. I don't like the idea of the state and local governments collecting more taxes - they know no limits to their capacity to tax and squander our hard-earned dollars - but the current situation is unfair and bad economic policy. (Also, Marylanders stand to gain from this legislation in another way, because of a state law that will reduce future increases in gasoline taxes if taxing Internet sales is allowed.)

They don't make many power couples like this: He's a self-proclaimed whistle blower, the focus of international headlines and Obama administration ire. She describes herself as a "world-traveling, pole-dancing super hero. " Edward Snowden and Lindsay Mills lived in a modest blue clapboard house with white trim here in a Honolulu suburb until about six weeks ago. Their former neighbors described them as quiet and private. On Sunday, Snowden announced that he was responsible for leaking secrets about America's telephone and Internet surveillance pograms to the media, reviving a global debate about Big Brother-style government surveillance of private citizens.

In generations past, the world's oldest profession was a tawdry trade practiced mostly in the shadows of unlit street corners and darkened alleys. Today, vulnerable young women and girls are still being tricked or forced into selling their bodies to strangers by predatory and amoral pimps who deceive, threaten and abuse them - but the locus of "the stroll" has changed from sidewalks to computer screens. Increasingly, traffickers are going online to market their victims, and as a new study by the Abell Foundation warns, the rise in Internet sex trafficking is rapidly outstripping efforts to combat it. The study's authors concede that hard numbers are notoriously difficult to come by, since the vast majority of transactions take place out of view of authorities, and traffickers have become extremely sophisticated in managing their businesses.

The Baltimore region's FBI office is planning to double its staff investigating online child-sex crimes if a special funding measure is approved by Congress.Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, held a news conference at the regional office in Woodlawn yesterday to publicize the Senate's approval of a bill earmarking $10 million to enhance a national task force fighting child pornography and sexual exploitation on the Internet.The local FBI office coordinates the task force, called Operation Innocent Images and staffed by 10 agents.

The Blast has partnered with B2 Networks to broadcast the team's remaining 10 home games live via the Internet at www.B2TV.com, the team announced. To access broadcasts, fans can go to www.baltimoreblast.com or www.B2TV.com free of charge. To watch the games, a high-speed Internet connection and a current version of Microsoft Windows Media Player is needed. The Blast's next home game is at 7:35 p.m.. Saturday against the Philadelphia KiXX.

A deeper look into this case and the law enforcement issues related to it appeared in Thursday's newspaper. Click here for that article.  There can, in fact, be a corrective mechanism when it comes to the mob mentality of the Internet.  This week, a video was posted online of a seemingly lost and disoriented man being swarmed by a group of young people, then sucker punched, robbed, and stripped naked of his clothing on...

Sports columnist John Eisenberg will participate in a live Internet chat today from noon to 1 p.m. Go to http://www.sunspot.net/sports to join in or follow along.

In 1998, when President Bill Clinton signed the bipartisan Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibited state and local taxation of Internet access and Internet-only services, the purpose was to promote the commercial potential of the Internet, especially for start-ups and small businesses. Congress extended the bill three times, the latest until 2014. Now there's the Marketplace Fairness Act, which, writes The Washington Post, "would allow states and local governments to require large Internet retailers and other 'remote sellers' with sales over $1 million annually to collect sales taxes and send the revenue to the appropriate location.

When first-time mom Sarah Dorman has a parenting question, she often turns to a Facebook group of Baltimore women before her own mother. Her mother's probably not available at 3 a.m., and not familiar with the latest rules regarding infants and organic fruit or fretting over the contradictions in all those advice books - unlike some of Dorman's online peers. "It all goes through fads of what's the popular thing. What was really popular when our parents were doing it might now sound psychotic," said Dorman, 31. Three decades ago, for example, parents were told to place babies face-down to sleep, a distinct no-no today after doctors realized it increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

It's Europe Day! (Yeah, we didn't know that either.) Welcome to your trends report for Friday, May 10. You're not alone if you were in the dark about the EU's annual holiday: Apparently, very few Europeans know that it exists. Nonetheless, between that, soccer championships and some market-related news articles, Europe managed to get some major attention on Twitter this morning. Also getting heavy traffic -- mostly on Google search -- was the NBA. This weekend's matchups include Heat-Bulls and Warriors-Spurs.

[ SITES ] Sun smartphone and tablet site (smartphones and tablets) Touch.baltimoresun.com , specially designed to be interacted with on touch screens, automatically adjusts its presentation according to your device. Readers visiting baltimoresun.com on smartphones like iPhones and Android phones and on tablet computers like iPads and Kindle Fires are now being automatically redirected to touch.baltimoresun.com. They can still access baltimoresun.com by going to http://www.baltimoresun.com/?

I see in the Sunpapers that Maryland wants to tax us on the things we buy on the Internet ("Bill to require sales tax for online purchases advances in Senate," April 22). Don't we pay enough taxes now? The state seems to tax everything that is not nailed down. We need to vote these people out of office. Who are these people telling us that the gas tax will be lower? You know that will never happen. Our motto for Maryland should be, "The state that taxes us to death. " Gerald Yamin, Pikesville Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Servers that host internet service for more than 30 state agencies are vulnerable to a cyberattack, according to a legislative audit released this week. The Maryland State Archives, which oversees the five servers, did not update the operating systems in more than five years, auditors found. Without the protective software patches and updates, Internet service for nearly the entire state government could be at risk, Legislative Auditor Thomas J. Barnickel III said. Auditors said there was no evidence of hacking, merely a weakness in the system that could hypothetically knock most state agencies offline or direct state Internet traffic to malicious sites.

If you live in Maryland and order a box of $5 stogies over the Internet this summer, you might get busted for accepting an illegal tobacco shipment. Or you might not. Comptroller Peter Franchot says he doesn't want to enforce a prohibition on Internet sales of premium cigars that took effect May 1. The ban was "an unintended consequence" of 2010 reform of wholesale tobacco commerce, he said in a letter to legislative leaders dated Monday. He asked their permission to suspend enforcement of the law until the fall, when the General Assembly meets again.

Banking via the Internet took a step closer to commercial viability as MCI Communications and First Union Bank announced plans yesterday to test a service that would give First Union customers simplified access to electronic banking services.The collaboration on an 18-month test pairs one of the nation's leading providers of Internet services with the nation's ninth-largest bank.Vinton Cerf, an MCI senior vice president who is known in the industry as the "father of the Internet," described the move as a "giant step" toward popularizing the worldwide network of networks as a vehicle for banking.

Imagine you are a benevolent monarch and you have the power to institute a sales tax. (Even benevolent government has to be financed, after all.) Would you set one up that gave preference to sellers located outside your kingdom and penalized your own subjects? Would you go further and discourage those outsiders from even setting up shop in your country? Of course you wouldn't. That would be crazy. And while there are plenty of examples of insane heads of state, they aren't usually beloved by their people.

AT&T has announced the expansion of its mobile Internet network at Aberdeen Proving Ground, extending access for advanced mobile services, devices and applications to federal government customers who work at or are visiting the post. "Demand for wireless speed is growing rapidly, and these network enhancements on the grounds of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, a key military facility, are just the latest examples of AT&T's significant infrastructure investment in this region," said J. Michael Schweder, president of AT&T Mid-Atlantic in a press release.