Caldeso writes "For the first time in U.S. history, a researcher has received jail time for falsifying research data to obtain federal grants. Eric Poehlman pled guilty to defrauding the government to the tune of nearly 3 million dollars by changing and making up research and was sentenced to a year in a federal prison work camp and a lifetime ban on further federal grants."

An anonymous reader writes "Five men aged 19-24 were arrested last week in connection with the reported theft last year of some 310,000 personal records from database giant LexisNexis. The Washington Post reports that some of the individuals were also involved in the theft and online posting of revealing photos from socialite Paris Hilton's cell phone. All are being charged with 'aggravated identity theft,' which carries a mandatory 2-year jail sentence for those found guilty."

maumedia asks: "I'm hoping someone can help me here, as I'm nearing frantic on this issue. I need a good Windows/ASP managed host -- a company that will manage/troubleshoot a dedicated server for us. My research has turned up either shared hosts, or dedicated hosts, and not very much in-between. If we're not ready to hire a sysadmin and pay for our own backbone, but we've outgrown the massively-shared hosting system, where can we go? I'm really hoping for an answer that doesn't involve a move to PHP/Linux, as it makes much more sense to us to utilize the resources we have at hand."

FilmFan writes "Now that Kevin Smith is offering a downloadable commentary for Clerks 2, will other Directors follow in his footsteps? Some studios think so and are already offering similar content for shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who, and Star Trek: Enterprise. Other websites offer fan-created content and even offer a free DVD player capable of playing these downloaded commentaries in sync with a DVD."

casals asks: "I'm a computer engineer working at a non-IT company, and there's this thing bothering me: by the end of each job, we have to generate a huge report that's actually a composite of lots of minor reports, each one of them made using a different software. Since the softwares used don't interact at all, we have to input the same information five or six times - not too smart, I guess. The outputs are either Access databases or Excel spreadsheets (some of these reports are just Excel spreadsheets that must be filled with data); so, I was thinking about making an application that could aggregate all the input models and generate all the outputs I need, at once. Any suggestions?"

antikarma writes "NASA engineers successfully activated the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 9:12 a.m. EDT Friday aboard the agency's Hubble Space Telescope. Checkout was completed at 10:20 a.m. EDT with science observations scheduled to resume Sunday, July 2. 'This is the best possible news,' said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 'We were confident we could work through the camera issue, and now we can get back to doing more incredible science with the camera.'"

An anonymous reader writes to mention that Panogames has released 17 new fullscreen panoramic screenshots inside HL2: Episode One. There are even more HiRes shots available from HL2 Lost Coast and Half-Life 2.

Chris Reimer writes "C|Net News.com is reporting that a 15-year-old student lost a lawsuit over having an instant messenger icon that represented a death threat against an English teacher on his personal computer that another student reported to school authorities. From the article: 'His parents sued, claiming that the icon was protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, that the school district failed to train staff in proper threat assessment and that the school board violated state law in not following proper procedures. [The judge] Mordue rejected the free-speech claims.'"

Readers left more than 800 comments on yesterday's report (based on the say-so of a Windows tech-support provider) that Microsoft may be turning off copies of Windows without WGA installed, as of this fall. (WGA is Microsoft's "Windows Genuine Advantage," a program using software of the same name installed on Windows users' computers intended to verify that the OS is correctly licensed.) Many suggested reasons that this sounds like no more than a rumor, while others took the opportunity to critique WGA as it currently operates on Windows machines, or to describe what they see as opportunities for the users and makers of operating systems other than Windows if (or perhaps when) Microsoft actually does shut down copies of Windows which it suspects are being used out of license. Read on for the Backslash summary to see some of the comments which defined the conversation. Update: 06/30 21:28 GMT by T : A cut-and-paste mishap gave the word "people" one too many Ps; now corrected.

An anonymous reader writes to mention a ZDNet article on Massachusetts senator Marc Pacheco's OpenDocument study. The report blasts the decision to switch to the OSS-friendly document format, saying the state's IT division didn't have the authority to make that decision and has disregarded the needs of disabled citizens. From the article: "'The process, quite frankly, was driven by one individual in a very powerful position (Kriss) issuing a memo to an individual in a less powerful position (Quinn). Then he was told to get it done and forget about any obstacles,' Pacheco said. Although OpenDocument is not yet widely used, other government entities, including Belgium, have expressed interest in OpenDocument as a standard as well."

An anonymous reader writes "News.com reports on a cell-phone use study which confirms that talking on your cell is as bad as being drunk, when it comes to driving skill. The researchers studied 40 volunteers in a driving simulator." From the article: "[The subjects were observed] while undistracted, using a handheld cell phone, using a hands-free cell phone and while intoxicated to a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level--the average legal level of impairment in the United States--after drinking vodka and orange juice. Three study participants rear-ended the simulated car in front of them. All were talking on cell phones and none was drunk, the researchers said."

An anonymous reader writes "Lawmakers in the French government have passed a controversial iTunes law, which has the stated intention of forcing Apple to allow purchased music to be universally useable." From the article: "In a statement issued after lawmakers hashed out the final compromise text last week, Apple said it hoped the market would be left to decide 'which music players and online music stores are offered to consumers.' The final compromise asserts that companies should share the required technical data with any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores, but it toned down many of the tougher measures backed by lower-house lawmakers early on."

Kawahee writes "Microsoft has released IE7 Beta 3 to the public. From TechNet Flash: 'As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility, and security improvements. If you've previously installed a beta of IE7, you should uninstall it before installing this release.' For the first time, the Administrator's Kit for Internet Explorer 7 is also available, which is described as 'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'"

Game Revolution has a great feature looking at fifty of the worst-named games ever to require a controller. They dig deep here, unearthing gems like 'Yo! Noid!', 'Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!', and 'Huygen's Disclosure'. From the article: "From Dick Butkus to Hootie and the Blowfish to Lake Titicaca, bad names have been with us forever. But thanks to the inevitable collision of reclusive nerds, bizarre artists and painfully unhip marketing execs, the video game industry enjoys some of the worst names of all. The following list was compiled after hours of lively debate, pages of exhausting science and one actual geek fistfight."