She went home to google her hometown; what she found chilled her blood and confirmed her suspicion. A photo appeared on the screen, a photo of a convicted killer along with details of his horrendous acts. She was, needless to say, shrouded in fear.

One of the country’s most sadistic killers had been released from prison after serving 20 years for violently bashing in the head of a former girlfriend’s son, in front of the other children.

This man was going by a different name now, but the image depicted the very same man her sister was dating; there was no mistaking it. Another detail unknown to her sister, the man was on the child protection register.

Upon the truth of the matter, a family representative revealed that they “still felt betrayed by the system”. Lawyers at Firth, McAlpine and Scott said this about ex-convicts ability changing their names:

“The family was amazed that someone could change their name and just blend back into the community like he had.”

An investigation revealed that the man changed his name while behind bars by deed poll before 2008 when the law changed. Since then no one is allowed to change their names while on the child protection register unless they appeal to Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione. It’s not said how many have applied for a name change, but police reveal that a total of 5 changes have been permitted. A police spokesperson was quoted saying:

“These matters related to applications where the name change was to the name the person has been known by all of their life and under the name for which they were arrested and charged. However, their birth certificate records the name of their biological father.”

Surprisingly while the police had knowledge of the man’s new identity, they failed to inform the public as well as the family.

Upon release from prison the man moved to a halfway house, eventually he met his new girlfriend; gaining her trust, not revealing his dark secret; ashamed or not. She gave him a job and he soon integrated himself into their lives, eventually being introduced to the woman’s children.

After a return from vacation, the sister of the woman revealed everything to the police and now the man faces up to 5 years in jail for violating the Child Protection Offenders Registration Act for allegedly being within the presence of minors for the consecutive period of 14 days or more and not reporting his actions.

While playing video games, a Taiwanese man died of cardiac arrest due to low temperatures. It was reported that the man checked into the cafe on Tuesday night and was eventually found dead by a waitress the following night, according to police.

The waitress said she saw the 23 year-old man talking on the phone sometime around noon on Wednesday; apparently he had died sometime after that because she later discovered him dead. Authorities say he sat amongst other cafe gamers for up to nine hours before discovery; oh the morbidity.

O’Neal’s rep, Matt Frost, released the following statement:

It is with terrible sadness we must report that Patrice O’Neal has passed away this morning at 7:00am due to the complications of the stroke he suffered on October 19. Many of us have lost a close and loved friend; all of us have lost a true comic genius. His mother, who was also his best friend, was at his side. Patrice is survived by his wife, Vondecarlo; his step daughter Aymilyon, sister Zinder, and his mother Georgia. The family wishes to thank all of the fans and friends who have expressed an outpouring of love and support for Patrice these past weeks. We ask that you please respect the family’s request for privacy at this difficult time.

O’Neal will be remembered for his confrontational style of humor and his numerous appearances and specials. Our thoughts go out to his friends and family. If you’d like to read more about the death of Patrice O’Neal, visit FamousDead.com.

As I’m sure you can imagine, news of O’Neal’s death spread through Twitter very quickly, below are some selected tweets:

If you’re unfamiliar with Zhitomirskiy, he was one of the four co-founders of Diaspora, a free personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service. It’s been rumored that Diaspora could eventually become a direct competitor to Facebook.

The death of Zhitomirskiy is pretty hard to grasp, he was only 22. The exact cause of his death is unknown at this time. If you’d like to read more about Zhitomirskiy, you can visit FamousDead.com.

Our thoughts go out to his friends and family.

Below is a video of the Diaspora team discussing their project.

Diaspora: Personally Controlled, Do-It-All, Distributed Open-Source Social Network from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

Breaking into the music industry in 1987, Heavy D and the Boyz had success with their first album Living Large. The group arguably had their biggest hit in 1991 with Now That We Found Love, you can see the video below:

One of the last tweets that Heavy D tweeted out was him paying respects to “Smokin” Joe Frazier.

As I’m sure you can imagine, news of the death of Heavy D spread around Twitter very quickly, below are some selected tweets:

You can read more about the death of Heavy D at FamousDead.com

Original Article: Rajeev Motwani, an angel investor and Stanford professor, who served as something of a mentor to the Google co-founders as they were getting Google off the ground, was found dead in a swimming pool on Friday from an apparent drowning.

To understand a little bit about what role he has played in the lives of Google’s creators,  Sergey Brin wrote the following on his personal blog:

When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational.

Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.

That is only an excerpt. You can read the rest of Brin’s words here. Brin is certainly not the only one to lament the loss of Matwani. A simple blog search, news search, or Twitter search for his name will show you the impact he has had on the technology industry.

Motwani was 47 years old and had a wife and kids. We at WebProNews would like to express our condolences to Motwani’s family and friends. Om Malik, who knew Rajeev personally, has some heartfelt words at GigaOm. More on Rajeev here.

Superman fanboy Thomas Denton, blogger and charitable eBayer, was so grateful for the help his family received from Candlelighters during his young nephew’s bout with cancer, he enlisted a team of comic artists willing to donate their artwork, some of which featured depictions of Superman. We’ll call them Superfriends, just to be snide toward Warner Brothers, DC’s parent company.

Denton set up auctions via eBay’s charitable auction channel to sell the Superfriends’ artwork, all proceeds, minus eBay’s fees**, to be forwarded to Candlelighters. But all was not well. A team of WB lawyers crashed through the skylight and forced eBay to pull the auctions, citing copyright and trademark violations.

DC owns Superman, they said, and Superman’s not allowed to help unapproved cancer patients, not even kids. (Cue dramatic villain music, and raucous, menacing laughter.)

Denton acknowledged his mistake despite being "heartbroken," and refused to play the victim. He asked that concerned Metropolis citizens still donate to Candlelighters. DC wasn’t completely devoid of sympathy and "made a exemption" [sic] for one of the listed items—you know, just to show they’re not complete ungrammatical jerks. Denton will still have to foot the fees for the auctions not reinstated.

This story has an even sadder end than that. Denton blogs he will be shutting down his Superman fan site. "I’ve sort of lost my enthusiasm for promoting WB’s products," he said. All because WB (and other corporations these days) can’t keep its lawyers on a tighter leash. 

Can anything save Thomas’s love of Superman? Is it too late for the Candlelighters? Will Metropolis ever be out of the iron grip of the overly litigious?

Citizens of Metropolis, without Superman it’s up to you, and Denton has nine other auctions running at eBay, with a day left to bid.
 
 

_{*If in fact she is, as her jilted hubby claims, a "cheating, lying, adulterous slag of a wife," selling a person is pretty much illegal (and wrong) everywhere, especially on eBay, million dollar bids aside.}   

**No good deed goes unpunished, eh?