A California man faces up to 101 years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of sending out e-mail scams as well as related crimes.

Jeffrey Brett Goodin, 45, of Azusa, was convicted Friday on multiple counts by a jury in the U.S. District Court for Central District of California in Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Goodin, who was arrested last year, was found guilty of operating a sophisticated phishing scheme, the prosecutors said in the statement. As part of the scam, he sent e-mails posing as AOL’s billing department to trick people into giving up their credit card information, according to the statement. He then used the credit card data to make purchases, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Source: News.com

Vivendi’s Blizzard Entertainment on Tuesday started selling “World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade,” the first expansion to the largest multiplayer online game, which has 8 million players worldwide.

Analysts expect Blizzard will sell easily millions of units at $20 each. The company, which does not detail game sales, gets revenue from unit sales and subscriptions, which cost about $15 per month in the United States.

Unlike traditional video games that have set plots a player navigates, massive online games operate in a so-called open world, where players can wage battle against each other. Companies that operate such online games often charge monthly subscriptions and for start-up software as well.

The expansion which went on sale in North America and Europe on Tuesday, adds new content, including a new continent for players to explore, added levels, as well as new quests, monsters and dungeons.

Source: Reuters

A US man has been badly burned in a fire resulting from a spontaneously-combusting mobile phone, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Fifty-nine-year-old Luis Picaso, of Vallejo, California, who had been sleeping in his house on a white plastic lawn chair last Saturday night, was rudely awoken by a fire which melted the plastic chair, ignited his “polyester-blend slacks” and nylon soccer jersey and caused “second and third-degree burns across at least half his body”.

Source: The Register

The co-founders of the Internet telephone service Skype unveiled the brand name and details of their latest project Tuesday: a new Internet-based television service called Joost.

Entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold Skype for $2.6 billion to eBay Inc. in 2005, said the new project combines aspects of file-sharing software and regular broadcast television.

Joost - pronounced “juiced” - may eventually try to move onto television sets, but it will initially focus on making it easier and more fun to watch TV on a computer.

Joost, like Skype, requires users to download free software. In this case, the program will help them browse the Internet for channels and clips they’re interested in, rather than make phone calls.

“We’re currently in a test phase with a limited ‘beta’ release, so we have content matching our base,” Chief Executive Fredrik de Wahl said in a telephone interview. “Comedy, sports, music, documentaries.”

He said the company has deals with Warner Music, “Bridezillas” producer September Films and “Big Brother” creator Endemol NV, among others, but plans to make content deals globally as the service grows.

The service will be ad-supported, but advertising will be briefer and less frequent than on regular TV. Viewers will have a broader selection of programming and will be able to watch whenever they want.

Source: AP

Scientists at Hewlett-Packard have discovered a new way to wire a certain type of computer chip, paving the way for even smaller and cheaper electronics in the future.

Although this chip-design breakthrough has been achieved only in laboratory simulations to date, Stan Williams, director of Quantum Science Research at HP Labs, said the company expects to make a working copy of the chip within a year.

Source: sfgate.com

For almost ten years now I have argued that digital rights management has little to do with piracy, but that is instead a carefully plotted ruse to undercut fair use and then create new revenue streams where there were previously none.

Like all lies, there comes a point when the gig is up; the ruse is busted. For the movie studios, it’s the moment they have to admit that it’s not the piracy that worries them, but business models which don’t squeeze every last cent out of customers.

In a nutshell: DRM’s sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights so that they can sell them back to you.

Source: arstechnica

Netflix Inc. will start showing movies and TV episodes over the Internet this week, providing its subscribers with more instant gratification as the DVD-by-mail service prepares for a looming technology shift threatening its survival.

The Los Gatos-based company plans to unveil the new “Watch Now” feature Tuesday, but only a small number of its more than 6 million subscribers will get immediate access to the service, which is being offered at no additional charge.

Netflix expects to introduce the instant viewing system to about 250,000 more subscribers each week through June to ensure its computers can cope with the increased demand.

After accepting a computer applet that takes less than a minute to install, subscribers will be able to watch anywhere from six hours to 48 hours of material per month on an Internet streaming service that is supposed to prevent piracy.

The allotted viewing time will be tied to how much customers already pay for their DVD rentals. Under Netflix’s most popular $17.99 monthly package, subscribers will receive 18 hours of Internet viewing time.

Source: AP