alphadogg wrote in with a Network World story that begins: "Last week, a handful of employees at Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., received e-mails saying they were being laid off. The subject line read 'Urgent — employment issue,' and the sender listed on the message was at dekalb.org, which is the domain the medical center uses. The e-mail contained a link to a Web site that claimed to offer career-counseling information. And so a few employees, concerned about their employment status and no doubt miffed about being laid off via e-mail, clicked on the link to learn more and unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program that was lurking at the site. Score another one for spammers."

mwnyc writes "The BBC is reporting on the sentence issued today to former CA boss Sanjay Kumar, who had pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and securities fraud. Mr. Kumar is expected to begin serving time in February 2007. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Kumar could have faced life in prison but the judge called that punishment 'unreasonable.'"

PatPending writes "American companies General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have joined with the New York Law School and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to inaugarate a new system of peer review for software patents. The four companies, plus Red Hat, the world's biggest listed open source software business, are the lead sponsors behind the Community Patent Review project. The one-year pilot program will begin in early 2007 and focus on published but not-yet-granted patent applications relating to computer software. Scientists and engineers will be able to submit prior art to patent examiners at the USPTO using an online system. All Community Patent review project documents will be available on the internet for public comment. 'High-quality patents increase certainty around intellectual property rights, reducing contention and freeing resources to focus on innovation,' said David Kappos, vice president of IP law at IBM."

bignickel writes "Researchers at Penn State have applied for a patent on software that automatically recognizes objects in photos and tags them accordingly. The 'Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures Real-Time' software (catchy name) trained a database using tens of thousands of images, and new images have 15 tags suggested based on comparisons with objects or concepts in the database. Not sure how you identify a 'concept,' and they're only talking about having one correct tag in the top 15, but still cool."

eldavojohn writes "As many of you know, the JPEG image compression is actually proprietary. This has resulted in many lawsuits between its owner, Forgent Networks, and other companies that have used it. Yesterday Microsoft and about 60 other defendants settled with Forgent to the tune of $8 million. For a company with annual revenues of $15 million, that's nothing to sneeze at. You haven't heard the last of Forgent yet, as the article states, 'It is currently pursuing claims against cable companies over a patent that it says covers technology inside digital video recorders.' Sounds like that one could be worth a little bit of cash, wouldn't you think?"

Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"

Via 1up, the news on the Coming Soon site is not good. Paul W.S. Anderson is to film a Castlevania movie, beginning next year. From the article: "Anderson's script spans many time periods but mostly takes place in 15th century Transylvania. It represents a fresh take on the much-filmed Dracula legend, mining back to its genesis in the story of the Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. 'You could almost call this movie Dracula Begins,' Anderson said. 'It's an action/horror project in the vein of Underworld and Blade, and hopefully it will be a big franchise for us, Rogue co-president Andrew Rona said." But ... Underworld and Blade are nothing like Castlevania.

Imaginary Friendly asks: "I'm the 3rd guy in a three-person IT firm. We're good and we're expanding. Our clients range from three computers to 30, with our largest client having six servers. We can handle the work but, thanks to my efforts and love (or just luck), I may be signing up two new clients who have 200 networked computers each. We're spread thin as it is, and hiring competent IT staff has been difficult. We're now doing 60-hour work weeks, so re-education has remained passive. How do we transition from manual rebuilds and CD deployments, to full scale (proper) IT administration?"

simoniker writes "There's been plenty of controversy about Rockstar's PS2 title Bully, but does it actually have anything to teach players? Ian Bogost looks into whether the game actually has a social message, explaining: 'Taking Bully seriously means acknowledging that the game has something to say about the world, not just that the world has something to say about it. It means assessing how effectively the game tackles the topic of bullying and how meaningful its claims about it are.' His conclusion? 'Sweeping away all the dust that Bully left in the wake of its release, it's hard to defend the game, not because it might be a pubic nuisance or a danger to kids, but because it could have been so much more of a scathing critique of high school social politics than it turned out to be.'"

Claus Valca writes "I just spotted over on the Windows Vista Team Blog the news that the Windows Vista retail licensing terms are being revised. Looks like PC home-brew system builders have been let back into the Vista party!" From the article: "Our intention behind the original terms was genuinely geared toward combating piracy; however, it's become clear to us that those original terms were perceived as adversely affecting an important group of customers: PC and hardware enthusiasts. You who comprise the enthusiast market are vital to us for several reasons, not least of all because of the support you've provided us throughout the development of Windows Vista. We respect the time and expense you go to in customizing, building and rebuilding your hardware and we heard you that the previous terms were seen as an impediment to that — it's for that reason we've made this change."

kukyfrope writes "Now that Sony has killed off Hong Kong retailer and Internet-import capital Lik-Sang, gamers must now find alternative outlets to import games and other goodies from Japan. Modojo has put up a nicely detailed list of some other online vendors that offer the sale of retail Japanese games to other international customers, featuring a few stores that can surely satisfy your import craving. 'The (now two) main Far East based export companies are Play-Asia and YesAsia. Both offer similar services (with the exception of Play-Asia's lack of European shipping for Sony products). So why would you prefer one over the other?'"

Andy Updegrove writes "Far too much attention has been paid to whether or not the Wikipedia is accurate enough. The greater significance of the Wikipedia today, and even more for those in the future, is its reality as the most detailed, comprehensive, concise, culturally-sensitive record of how humanity understands itself at any precise moment in time. Moreover, with its multiple language versions, it also demonstrates how different cultures understand the same facts, historical events and trends at the same time. Today, archaeologists are doing digs to understand how people lived only 150 years ago, making guesses based on the random bits and pieces of peoples' lives that they find. In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure-trove for data."

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Microsoft is entering into an unusual partnership with Novell that gives a boost to Linux, people familiar with the companies tell WSJ.com. From the article: 'Under the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows on their computers. The two companies are expected to announce details of their plan today at a press conference in San Francisco. In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux, the people said. Businesses that use Linux have long worried that Microsoft would one day file patent infringement suits against sellers of the rival software.'"

An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek takes a look at how political campaigns are taking the time-honored tradition of political mudslinging digital. One notable example: In the Virginia Senate race incumbent Republican George Allen held a comfortable lead over challenger Jim Webb until one of Webb's camera-toting aides captured footage of Allen making a racial slur during a campaign stop. The video soon held the number 1 ranking on YouTube and gained national attention. Allen has since taken a steep drop in the polls, and Republicans now risk losing a seat they thought secure."

InsertCredit and some of the other game-journo sites out there took issue with the Game Career Guide's How to Be a Game Journalist feature. So, they've responded with their own opinions. There are 12 entries in total, each with a refreshingly cynical approach to what they do. From Tim Edwards' post: "So what do I do? I'm deputy editor of PC Gamer. Half my day is spent on the phone — talking to the PR reps that act as the gatekeepers to games industry and talking to our freelancers who write up to half of the magazine. With them, I'll commission copy, talk through their work, chase up any late text or missing elements. Meanwhile, I'll talk through pages with our art team — because magazine journalism is 50% writing, 50% making the words look pretty. 50% more of my time is spent talking through mag strategy: what's to be our next big review, how the flat-plan is shaping up, what we should put in the next issue. And my final 50% is spent working on copy — writing or re-writing. And yes, I'm well aware that there are many halves to a whole."