Dexter Herbivore writes "Australian gamers are yet again left disappointed by their government's response to a lack of an R18+ rating for games. Gamespot reports that Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has blamed 'interest groups' for swamping the public consultation with pro-R18+ submissions. From the article: 'A strong response from gamer groups in the Australian Federal Government's R18+ public consultation has led Censorship Ministers to claim that more views from the community are needed before a decision into the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games can be reached.'" Reader UgLyPuNk adds that support for the new rating is coming from unexpected places.

A couple weeks ago, we discussed news that some dedicated Halo 2 fans were keeping the game's multiplayer alive after support for online play was dropped. Now, a few days shy of a month after support ended, the last users have been knocked off the server. "[A user named] Apache N4SIR outlasted everyone. 'May 11th @ 0158hrs I was FORCEFULLY REMOVED!!' he wrote on the forums at Bungie.net. 'I thought I'd be the one turning off the lights but that was done for me. Good night everyone, my Elite needs a rest.' His last comrade in arms, Agent Windex, was still signed on, as spotted by Kotaku at 4 p.m. US Pacific Time on May 10, but their adventure, which began on April 15, ended after Windex announced 21 minutes later that he had been removed from play and Apache N4SIR suffered a similar fate hours later, as he described in his post."

Trailrunner7 writes "US and international prosecutors have indicted a criminal ring that they allege was responsible for an ATM scam last November that stole about $9 million from RBS WorldPay. The criminals cracked payroll debit cards and withdrew money from ATMs in hundreds of cities around the world. A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight men in connection with the scheme, including five Estonians, one Russian, one Moldovan, and one unidentified man. Prosecutors allege that the men 'used sophisticated hacking techniques' to defeat the company's encryption system. The scam involved an elaborate plan in which the attackers first bypassed the encryption on the debit cards, which RBS WorldPay issues to customers for employee payroll purposes. They then raised the limits on the accounts attached to the cards, then provided a network of 'cashers' with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards, which were used to withdraw more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Japan and Canada. The $9 million loss occurred within a span of less than 12 hours; 130 different ATMs in 49 cities were hit within one 30-minute period."