An anonymous reader writes "The Internet Storm Center notes that emails that look like subpoenas are being sent out to the CEOs of major US corporations. The email tries to entice the victim to click on a link for 'more information.' According to the ISC's John Bambenek: 'We've gotten a few reports that some CEOs have received what purports to be a federal subpoena via email ordering their testimony in a case. It then asks them to click a link and download the case history and associated information. One problem, it's [totally] bogus. It's a "click-the-link-for-malware" typical spammer stunt. So, first and foremost, don't click on such links. An interesting component of this scam was that it did properly identify the CEO and send it to his email directly. It's very highly targeted that way.'"

DrJokepu writes "Apparently the folks at the Department of Corrections of Oklahoma just forgot to use common sense when they created the state's Sexual and Violent Offender Registry. By putting SQL queries in the URLs, they not only leaked the personal data of tens of thousands of people, but enabled literally anyone with basic SQL knowledge to put his neighbor/boss/enemies on the sexual offender list. Fortunately, after the author of the blog The Daily WTF notified the department about the issue, the site went down for 'routine maintenance' on April 13 2008."

crazyeyes writes "Those crazy counterfeiters have done it again. First they made counterfeit Intel boxed processors, now they are counterfeiting DFI motherboards! Quoting: 'The detail to the packaging, documentation and the motherboard printing really makes you wonder if the people responsible for this have only limited their activities to DFI motherboards. It's quite possible that there are fake ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards in the market as well.'" Update: 04/15 12:59 GMT by Z : As noted in the comments, the articles offer no speculation as to the origins of the counterfeits. Updated to clarify that.

Pickens writes "Metallurgists studying the hulk of the Titanic argue that the liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship's builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. They say that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to have arrived, saving hundreds of lives. The team collected clues from 48 Titanic rivets and found many riddled with high concentrations of slag, a glassy residue of smelting that can make iron brittle. To test whether this extra slag weakened the rivets, scientists commissioned a blacksmith to make rivets to the same specifications as those used to join steel plates in the hull of the Titanic. When the plates were bent in the laboratory, the rivet heads popped off at loads of about 4,000 kg. With the right slag content they should have held up to about 9,000 kg. Even a few failures because of flawed metal would have been sufficient to unzip entire seams, because as faulty rivets popped, more stress would have been placed on the good ones, causing them to break in turn. The shipbuilder, which is still in existence, denies it all."

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview on Comic Book Resources about his new continuation of the Marvel comic-book series 'Invincible Iron Man,' Matt Faction provides information about the the new series (debut will be May 7). The villain is Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah Stane (the villain of the new Iron Man movie opening on May 2). Whereas Obadiah was a ruthless billionaire who fought as the Iron Monger, Zeke 'rejects the strategies of his father as being the crude tactics of Attila the Hun.' Instead, he will be 'a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist.' As the author puts it, 'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.' The concept has gone over well on the CBR forums."