The Federal Trade Commission, which has declared war on Internet scams, warned consumers on Monday not to open a bogus e-mail that appears to come from its fraud department because it carries an attachment that can download a virus.

The e-mail says it is from “frauddep@ftc.gov” and has the FTC’s government seal.

But it was not issued by the agency and has attachments and links that will download a virus that could steal passwords and account numbers, the agency said.

A computer developed for the world’s poor children, dubbed “the $100 laptop”, has reached a milestone: It is now selling for $200.

The One Laptop per Child Foundation, founded by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte, has started offering the lime-green-and-white machines in lots of 10,000 or more for $200 apiece on its Web site

The placards made clear this was not your typical immigrant rights march: “We played by the rules, now it’s your turn,” read one. “Legal immigrants keep America competitive,” read another.

High-tech workers here on federal permits are speaking out — many for the first time — over rules that leave them in personal and professional limbo.

After Congress failed to reform immigration laws for the second year in a row, hundreds of the largely India- and China-born workers protested this summer in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. They were frustrated that the divisive debate over illegal immigration had overwhelmed efforts at comprehensive immigration reform.

“I’ve never held a banner before, but I don’t know what else to do,” said Gopal Chauhan, a high-tech employee who has been waiting seven years for a green card. “We usually have better things to do, like invent the next iPod.”

Legal immigrants who feel squeezed by limits on the number of green cards issued each year are trying to separate their complaints from the protests by illegal immigrants. And high-tech companies that say they can’t fill jobs because of a cap on skilled-worker visas have stepped up their long-standing plea for the cap to be raised.

EBay division Skype and mobile phone group 3 have launched a mobile handset that allows Skype users to make free Internet calls to each other while on the move.

The companies said on Monday the new 3 Skypephone could also send free Skype instant messages, and that they hoped to sell “several hundred thousand” units worldwide in the fourth quarter of this year.

NBC and Fox are set to launch an advertising-supported online video site that hosts programming from varied entertainment companies in a bid to seize viewers from Google Inc.’s YouTube, the broadcasters said.

A test version of the site, Hulu.com, goes online Monday, with plans to premiere a final version in a few months, company officials said.

The site, developed by News Corp. and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., offers free viewing of full-length films and TV episodes, supported by advertising.

It will host programming from the two networks, as well as TV shows and films from Sony Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

“Consumers identify with shows and films,” rather than networks, Hulu chief executive Jason Kilar said. “When you aggregate great content together, it makes things easier for the user.”

Walgreen plans to put kiosks that can make DVDs of popular movies in drugstore photo departments next year, using a new system that would increase selection while avoiding piracy.

Recent change in copy-protection rules governing DVDs have freed Walgreen and other retailers to tap this new movie market by letting consumers burn digital copies onto blank discs at stores, industry watchers said.

Walgreen and CVS have tried to attract more customers in recent years by offering improved digital photo kiosks, in- store health clinics and exclusive merchandise.

For studios, the kiosks add to revenue, particularly from older and more niche content selections, without having to manufacture, ship and store them.

In the 1970s, Vint Cerf played a leading role in developing the Internet’s technical foundation. For the past seven years, he’s faced the more daunting task of leading a key agency that oversees his creation.

After fending off an international rebellion and planting the seeds for streamlining operations, Cerf is stepping down this week as chairman of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

“My sentence is up,” Cerf said with his characteristic sense of humor, which he and others credit for helping him steer the organization through several high-profile battles from which it emerged more stable and stronger.

Cerf, 64, who’s also a senior executive at Internet search leader Google Inc., joined ICANN in 1999, a year after its formation to oversee domain names and other Internet addressing policies. Cerf was elected chairman in 2000 and leaves the unpaid position after Friday’s board meeting in Los Angeles because of term limits.

When he joined the board, many questioned whether ICANN would survive. Now - though some people still complain that ICANN is arbitrary, secretive and slow - the focus is more on improving it than replacing it.

Samsung has announced that it has developed the world’s first 64Gb (8GB) NAND flash memory chip using a 30nm production process, which opens the door for companies to produce memory cards with up to 128GB of storage and flash SSDs with capacities of half a Terabyte.

With flash memory becoming increasing used in consumer electronic devices, such as MP3/MP4 players, digital cameras and mobile phones, the increased capacity would allow for a significant increase in the quantity and quality of data stored. For example, a single memory card built using 16 of the new chips would be capable of storing the equivalent of 27 single-layer DVDs.

Perhaps more interesting for Custom PC readers is the prospect of solid state drives (SSDs) with capacities that rival typical hard disk drives. In our Dream PC Labs test we found that the Vadim system, which uses four 32GB SSDs in RAID 0, was significantly quicker than PCs using conventional hard disk drives, so two (or four) 512GB SSDs in RAID 0 could prove to be the ultimate storage system.

A man who shouted “This is YouTube material” as he pissed on a dying, disabled woman has been sent to jail for three years.

Anthony Anderson, 27, had been smoking cannabis and drinking heavily with friends, when he found Christine Lakinski, 50, collapsed in a doorway in Hartlepool, in northern England.

Calling her a “smackhead”, Anderson threw a bucket of water over her. He then urinated on the comatose woman and sprayed her with shaving foam, as his friends watched and laughed. The incident was captured for posterity on a camera phone. Anderson then went a night club, as you do.

Lakinski died at the scene of pancreatic failure. She had curvature of the spine and learning difficulties and suffered bullying all her life, according to reports.

Anderson pleaded guilty to “outraging public decency”.

This post is translated from a post (in hebrew) by Yuval on a popular Israeli blog.

Is might seem as a technical problem, but I feel it may teach us something about the way Google behaves.

Introduction: it started with a story on Israel’s channel 2 news, describing a Star of David that has been engraved into the Dahniye airport runway, now visible from space via Google Earth. The report stated that the Star of David was engraved “lately” by IDF tractors during Israeli operation in the area. I decided to check the issue and contacted Israeli Google PR, who directed me to the Digital-Globe layer in Google Earth that shows the date during which the picture was taken. But is it indeed so?
(more…)

Users of the MySpace.com social networking Website will be able to add multiplayer games to their personal profile pages, and play them for free, from next year. MySpace has struck a deal with Oberon Media Inc. to make available hundreds of casual games from its portfolio, the companies said Tuesday.

MySpace provides a platform on which individuals or groups can build Web pages known as personal profiles, showcasing their tastes or talents in music or other aspects of multimedia creation. With the games channel MySpace plans, those users will also be able to highlight their favorite games, and perhaps find others to play them with.

Emails containing malicious PDF files have been putting computers at risk since Friday, Finnish security software firm F-Secure said on Saturday.

“The emails sent in bulk looked like credit card statements, and contained an attachment called ‘report.pdf’,” its chief research officer Mikko Hypponen said in a statement.

When such PDF files are viewed on vulnerable machines, they start downloading software from servers in Malaysia or Sweden, which are now being cleaned, he said. “There will be more such attacks.”

“We are worried about this case, as PDF attachments are typically not filtered at email gateways.”

A security update for Acrobat Reader, which opens PDF files, was made available a few days ago, but many users have not updated the program yet, Hypponen said.