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The Walking Dude writes "BBC News asked Frank Abagnale if technology is driving the old-school conman into extinction. 'Mr Abagnale really ought to know', as the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can was based on his life. He served five years of a 12 year prison sentence for check fraud before being offered a job with the FBI. 'There may, after all, be life in the old con yet.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Justice Department has added another two years to its agreement with Microsoft, extending the protocol licensing program that is part of the company's penance for anti-competitive activities. The organization feels Microsoft is providing documentation too slowly to its licensees." From the article: "At one time, the Justice Department and several state Attorneys General had sought a breakup of Microsoft in order to prevent it from abusing its Windows monopoly. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson at one point ordered such a move, though his ruling was later reversed on appeal. Ultimately Microsoft settled with the Department of Justice, agreeing to far more modest restrictions, including the protocol licensing program." Relatedly, regulators have cleared Vista of anti-competitive elements. They examined the OS on concerns an added search box may have given the company a home-field advantage.

theodp asks: "From Rotwang in Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Wallace the Engineer in last year's Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Slate notes that scientists have long been a staple of the movies. So who are some of the more memorable scientist characters from your movie-going?"

Vitaly Friedman writes "Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence. From the article: 'Yahoo continues to defend itself against charges that its Chinese operations have been responsible for the jailing of multiple dissidents. Multiple reports have surfaced which tie Yahoo Mail to various Chinese court cases that have ended in imprisonment for writers with politically unpopular opinions.'"

conq writes "BusinessWeek looks at the flaws in the bill proposed by the House of Representatives that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries. One big problem with their bill is it is much too vague, it 'could rule out content from any number of Internet companies, including Yahoo! and Google.' What's more, DOPA would prohibit sites that enable users to create their own content and share it. That covers a wide swath of the online world, known colloquially as Web 2.0, where users actively create everything from blogs to videos to news-page collections." This is analysis of a bill we covered yesterday.

Tough Lefty writes "A new study by McAfee's SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The key findings were that major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords and sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results. Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."

Billosaur writes "From NPR, we get a Marketplace story about the theft of corporate laptops and the sensitive data they may contain, specifically how to handle the repercussions. From the story: 'TriWest operates in about 21 states. It's based in Phoenix, Arizona. In December of 2002, somebody broke into the company's offices and stole two computer hard drives.And those hard drives contained the personal information of 550,000 of our customers from privates in the military all the way up to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.' How they handled the situation earned them an award from the Public Relations Society of America."

At this point, if you're at all interested in online gaming, you probably recognize the 'MMOG' abbreviation. Massively Multiplayer Online Games are one of the most popular genres in gaming right now, and today I have impressions from two titles that do things slightly differently from the norm. Final Fantasy XI has been out for three years on the PC, two years on the PS2, and as of last month made its debut on the Xbox 360. The first Massive title to grace Microsoft's next-gen console is, regrettably, starting to show its age. More sprightly is the standalone expansion to last year's Guild Wars, simply entitled Factions. It adds new content and classes to a very popular Player vs. Player (PVP) title, and manages to meet the high expectations set by the original game's launch. Read on for my impressions of Final Fantasy XI for the Xbox 360, and Guild Wars: Factions.

When we look back on this E3, I think one of the moments we're most clearly going to remember is the dead silence in the Sony press conference following the price announcement. Eurogamer and GameDaily has coverage of Phil Harrison's spin work, trying to recover from that moment, discussing how Sony is not ripping off Nintendo and Microsoft probably won't meet their 10 million units goal. More interestingly, they discuss an interview with Ken Kutaragi conducted by a Japanese website. From that piece: "SCEI president Ken Kutaragi has defended the PlayStation 3's high price tag once again, declaring that not only will consumers be prepared to pay the cost but that the console is 'probably too cheap.' In an interview with Japanese website IT Media, partially translated by IGN, Kutaragi said: 'This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap - we don't want you to think of it in terms of game machines ... For instance ... Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem.'"

netbuzz writes "Fair comment or libel? A law prof/blogger calls those behind the class-action suit against Yahoo 'extortionists.' The targeted lawyers, who include spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman, are not amused." From the article: "Goldman, who according to his blog 'holds leadership positions in the American Bar Association and the Computer Law Association,' addresses the merits of the suit in a generally academic fashion before winding up for the big finish: 'I think these lawsuits are nothing more than a shakedown for cash,' he concludes. 'Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend, so the plaintiffs' lawyers can exploit those defense costs for their personal largesse. They can make this argument to defendants: settle with me for a fraction of your total expected defense costs, and we're both better off (defendants save some defense costs, plaintiffs' lawyers grab some personal loot).'"

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"

diverge_s writes "News.com.com has an article detailing a long overdue attempt Congress is making to restrict the use of Social Security Numbers. From the article: 'In both the House and the Senate, there are at least three pieces of pending legislation that propose different approaches to restricting the use and sale of SSNs. Politicians have expressed astonishment at what they see as a rising identity fraud problem, frequently pointing to a 2003 Federal Trade Commission survey that estimated nearly 10 million consumers are hit by such intrusions each year.'"

abb_road writes "Whether or not we're in the midst of another boom-bust cycle in technology is a matter of fierce debate. BusinessWeek discusses what constituted that last bubble and looks at current trends to see if we're on the verge of a new one. From the article: 'The Great Bubble of the late '90s shaped a generation of Internet entrepreneurs and investors much as the Great Depression shaped a generation of economizers in the mid-20th century. 'The bubble generation is much more attuned to the fact that things can get really out of hand,' says Bill Burnham, a former partner at Mobius Venture Capital. 'There's a level of caution that has been ingrained.'"

Kuzulu Kuhuru writes "Researchers in Microsoft's anti-malware engineering team are using distance measure and machine learning technologies to automate the process of classifying new strains of computer viruses, Trojans and other malicious software programs." From the article: "Microsoft's proposal will take a 'holistic approach' to tackle the classification problem, Lee said, pointing out that the machine learning aspects will deal with everything, from knowledge consumption, representation and storage, to classifier model generation and selection. It aims to consume knowledge about the malware sample efficiently and automatically and represent that knowledge in a form that results in minimal information loss. "

Snap E Tom writes "According to a Washington Post poll, a majority (63%) of Americans 'said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.' A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made. Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy."

Peter writes "Seven staff in the one building have been diagnosed with brain tumours, and everything seems to be pointing to the mobile phone towers located on the roof. The building is owned by RMIT University and an investigation is taking place. Five of the seven staff worked on the top floor of the building. Medical experts contacted by The Age Newspaper said no definitive link had been proved between mobile phone tower radiation and cancer."

ckswift writes "From security expert Bruce Schneier's blog, a major security hole has been found in Diebold voting machines." From the article: "The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide. Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways."

tito writes "A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold. New Zealand Herald is reporting that a Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds. It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from 'wild' algae outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April."

mresolver writes "University of Chicago students have once again emerged from the library after a long winter to participate in the world's largest scavenger hunt. The multiple day event is famous for the working breeder reactor that students managed to build during the 1999 hunt. This year, the official list (PDF) includes a superconductor, working wood refrigerator, hot air balloon made to Montgolfier specifications, one-way funhouse mirror, and a walk-in Kaleidoscope."

An anonymous reader writes: "FORTUNE's Adam Lashinsky interviews co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. 'In just five months, YouTube has gone from beta testing to part of the national zeitgeist. The website is a place where anyone with a home video can post it online and create an endlessly entertaining diversion for bored office workers -- who've been watching 40 million clips a day.'"