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Some good news for today. Once known as the 8th largest spammer in the world, now facing prison and forfiture of all his earnings.

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Digg users are reporting that the "Church of $cientology" has posted a response website to the continued on and offline harrassment by the group calling themselves "Anonymous". However, the poster of this article points out that the "death threat" video on the Scientology server is actually better quality that the one on Youtube.

If this is true, it means that Scientology has the original copy of the video and they either:

1) Received the video through some other means and posted it to Youtube themselves to publicize it.

2) They created the video and are trying dirty tactics to discredit Anonymous

I can believe both theories. I wouldn't put it past Scientology to do something like that, but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone sent them a real death threat. First, others have done far fewer terrible things to get death threats and also the "group" called Anonymous isn't really a group. It's anyone and everyone who feels that the Co$ is bad and wishes to join the movement against them.

That means any crackpot could call themselves Anonymous. Even someone willing to make death threats (which would be the exact worst thing to do).

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Hopefully we'll see more material like this.

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My first thought is to be very cautious about using an online password checker to test the strength of your passwords because you might inadvertantly give away your password to a rogue site. However, this Microsoft sponsored password checker requires no logins or personal information and being that it's a fairly well-known company, chances are smaller that they would abuse the info if they even store it (which I can't imagine it being cost-effective to do so).

Water contamination is no bueno

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Just another example for why we need federal monitoring and regulation of certain industries and services. Stuff like this would go on all the time if there wasn't oversight and corresponding accountability. Just look at the presidential administration for an example.

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A timeline comparing the beliefs of Scientology versus actual science. And also this:

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's most notorious space opera is the religion of Scientology, which is packed with aliens and space battles and waves of invaders to our solar system.

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Just spreading the news. But I was also very troubled by this:

"People have been scared out of their minds to speak out about Scientology," said Hill, Miscavige's niece, in an interview. "Nobody should have to be that scared to speak out about a church." Wiseman echoed the sentiment, adding that the Anonymous campaign had influenced her decision to reveal her identity last week. "The Internet is listening. If something happens to me, all of these people will know."

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Lifehacker has an interesting article about managing your online reputation. They talk about how to tell when new information about you surfaces (setting up a Google alert) and how to amend or respond to negative information. There are also ways to artifically improve the way you're viewed online (your own blog).

It's a good read for anyone who's concerned about what people will find when searching for your name online.

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The New York Times is running an article about Facebook's data retention issues. If you post to Facebook, even if you delete your account later, they keep the data available for public viewing.

It took Mr. Das about two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook’s customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das’s empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.

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There are already plenty of cases of adults or college students who have lost jobs and dropped out of school due to MMO gaming obsessions. Now we're going to unleash this on our kids?

If you're thinking of letting you kid play an MMO, be very careful about what game you choose and be sure to set limits on how and when they play.