Another malware scammer bites the dust:
Starting in August 2004, Ancheta turned to a new, more lucrative method to profit from his botnets, prosecutors said. Working with a juvenile in Boca Raton, Fla., whom prosecutors identified by his Internet nickname “SoBe,” Ancheta infected more than 400,000 computers.
Although the recall for the Stihl MS 192 Chain Saw is not nearly as gory as we might have hoped, the fact that the chain saws can “leak fuel” and then spark to create a fire leads to some interesting mangling opportunities. It would, however, make the chopping down of trees for heat a more efficient process.
Score one for the FTC—and by proxy, consumers—for their statement in the Netflix class action settlement, which as originally proposed offered a one-month upgrade to customers affected. (So if you were on a three-a-month plan, you’d get a four-a-month plan for a single month.) A one-month upgrade that would automatically transition into the higher movies-per-month plan after the free period. Ars Technica reports this quote from the FTC:
In the instant case, the Commission believes that the negative option aspect of the proposed settlement appears dangerously close to being a promotional gimmick. Specifically, the value of the benefit offered each class member is very low, both because those members who accept the benefit receive very little of value and because it is reasonably foreseeable that many class members will forgo any benefit altogether to avoid the negative option.
There are lots of taxes one pays in online games. They can be taxing to the marriages, health and even the sanity of emaciated South Korean nerds slowly irradiated into a shade of phosphorescent blue, like a deep-sea inverterbrate, by their112-hour binges in front of a monitor flickering Lineage mobs upon their retinas. And any World of Warcraft player knows that it can be taxing upon your intellect as well: being forced to endure the general chat channel of the Barrens will slough IQ points off like reams of skin after a first-degree sunburn.
John Brownlee here. Before I started guest-blogging here, Joel asked me, as temporary co-chair of his consumerist Algonquin Round Table, if I had any swell ideas. Chomping on a cigar, he stretched the fat man suspenders with the dollar symbols he likes to wear just for such dramatic gestures as far from his nipples as they would go, then let them go with a snap that made me wince.Then he looked at me with an expression half composed of expectation, the other half contempt. But I wasn’t cowed – I did have a swell idea.
Good news for the naive Luddites that each and every one of us has in our families. You know, the ones who believe that Internet Explorer pop-ups with Windows-like dialogue buttons are actual OS warnings and start naively clicking their way to a system infected with the spyware these scams are claiming to prevent. Because the FTC has finally nailed some of these companies and made them pay out over $2 million in ill-gotten gains.
Although we can think of few things more appealing than leaving a child to hang in an elastic death trap, we must avoid the Bounce Bounce Baby! Door jumper, despite its potential for comedy. It seems the jumper is a “Hazard: The plastic clamp that attaches the jumper seat to a door frame can break, which can cause the unit and child to fall to the floor. This poses an injury hazard to young children.”
It would appear that losing an arm to an animatronic bear is now the second-leading injury at Chuck E. Cheese. These plastic siren whistles have been recalled as a choking hazard, with reports that at least three children “swallow[ed] pieces of the plastic siren whistle,” setting the stage for the most festive asphyxiation ever.
Would you like to pay your taxes with a credit or debit card via the phone? If so, be prepared to spend an additional 2.5% of your total payment amount to use one of the approved third-party payment services. Both the disengenuously named Official Payments and Pay1040 charge a two-and-a-half percent service fee (okay, 2.49% for Pay1040) for performing the simple task of taking your money and passing it on to the IRS.
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