geekosystem

As if his new life in a Swedish prison for allegedly hacking the tax records of Swedish company Logica weren't bad enough, The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg ("anakata" to his pirate friends) is now facing additional suspicions of aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud. While the they are currently considered only "suspicions" and not "charges," that's all officials need to detain someone indefinitely because that's how they do things in Sweden.

Scientific papers being retracted after publication isn't some kind of new phenomenon. The age of press releases might have made such snafus a more widely-known event, but it's one of those things that happens from time to time. Common wisdom was that the majority of retractions were due to errors present in the work, but a new study has concluded that it's actually misconduct like fraud or plagiarism that causes most retractions. In other words, scientists aren't dumb; they're just liars.

California Senate Bill 1411 went into effect yesterday, adding criminal and civil penalties to the act of impersonating a person online.  Specifically,

to knowingly and without consent credibly impersonate another person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means with the intent to harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud another person.

Sounds great for identity theft.  But, as TechCrunch points out, the bill does not address satiric or parodic impersonations a la Fake Steve Jobs.