Today's phishing scam is brought to you by someone after your visa card who apparently doesn't like the apostrophe...

We are sending this message to all the VISA credit card holders.

Protect your Visa card online with a personal password

Due to increased risk of internet fraud, all the VISA credit cards have to be protected with an online password until the date of 04-30-2005. If you do not complete the registration process you will not be able to make online purchases after the date of May 1st 2005. We apologize for the inconvenience that this might cause, this is an attempt to secure the online shopping and reduce the internet credit card fraud.

Protect your card now

You may activate now by entering your card number over our secure server. If your card issuer is participating in Verified by Visa (most issuers are) you.ll complete a brief activation process. You.ll verify your identity, create your Verified by Visa password and you.re done.

Verified by Visa protects your existing Visa card with a password you create, giving you assurance that only you can use your Visa card online.

Simply activate your card and create your personal password. You.ll get the added confidence that your Visa card is safe when you shop at participating online stores.

© Copyright 2005, Visa U.S.A. All Rights Reserved

"If nothing is changed and these services continue to operate, it will have an impact on the creative process. For the movie industry, it will mean less risk will be taken in terms of the creation of new material," said Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Uh... how could Hollywood take less than zero risk...

Yahoo! News - Online Music Case Outcome Rests on VCR Technology

Just got a phishing scam in that purports to be from Monster.com.

Dear Monster Customer,

We were unable to process the recent messages on
your account. To ensure that your account is not
suspended, please check your information by clicking
here.

Monster Network Customer Service

The page it directed me to contained the JS/Stealus trojan, which, from the description:

JavaScript, which exploit[s] an Internet Explorer vulnerability resulting in Internet Explorer displaying one location in the Address bar, but actually loading the content from a different site.

Doesn't sound like it does anything itself, so I assume they actually want to get into people's Monster.com accounts...

Now, if I could just find a way to email Monster.com - they don't seem to have an email address to send to, just web forms.

I didn't know they were re-making Spy vs. Spy. I remember when a friend got this for Commodore 64 and it wasn't out on the ZX Spectrum... I was green with jealousy. Until it finally came out on the Speccy.

Spy vs. Spy - Ferrago

Edit: found the developer's site.

“You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul. Instead of simply being 'nonreligious', atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.”

(Actually, incorrect to a degree - I don't believe in the lack of a higher being. I know there's no proof for one.)

atheism 100% Satanism 67% Buddhism 33% Judaism 25% agnosticism 21% Islam 17% Hinduism 17% Paganism 8% Christianity 4% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

I decided to tidy up and make public my subscribed feeds on Bloglines.

Penny Arcade

Someone's take on the reimagining of Bugs Bunny mentioned before. May contain fucking swearing.

'A New Bunny'

My “review” of Half-Life 2 is the number one hit on Google for the phrase Alyx Vance fucked. Whoever was searching for that is a sick puppy.

Now running on Nucleus 3.2.

An interesting “admission” of sorts from Damion “Ubiq” Schubert...

“Of course, most of the presuppositions in the thread assumes, once again, that standard EQ/WoW combat is boring and easy. Which, if you're soloing stuff that you can solo, is true. However, it bears repeating that combat situations in these games is very fast and furious when in a group situation, and failure is relatively common while exploring dungeons and instances.”

Zen of Design >> Player Failure in MMOs

It seems to me that's a bit like Ford saying they made one model go slower in order to sell more of another.

They added a new “Cashflow” Gatso speed... sorry, safety camera on my route home. That makes twelve I have to pass on the way to work and ten (or nine on the alternate route) on the way back. I can't even see the reason for this new one... the budget must be suffering in Tottenham or something.

Well, at least it's an easy one to see and not situated to cause even worse traffic problems than normal. Though I suspect there's going to be a few incidents as people used to there not being a camera pull up sharply when they do spot it.

Apple was unavailable for comment.

However, in September last year, the group defended the price differential saying that "the underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads".

"That's not unusual - look at the price of CDs in the US versus the UK," an Apple spokesman said at the time.

That's essentially bollocks... CDs may or may not cost more in the UK, but I can buy them from the US (and have done) at the price they cost there and accept the extra cost for physically shipping them to me. Apple's iTunes has no such extra cost for downloading and the only thing stopping me from buying from the US iTunes is Apple's own additional coding to prevent me.

BBC NEWS | Business | Europe investigates iTunes prices