Former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, who gained infamy as the man who orchestrated the largest corporate fraud in history, was sentenced to more than 24 years in jail Monday.

Judge Lake ordered Skilling to remain on house arrest until the Bureau of Prisons determined his date of incarceration. He denied the government's motion for Skilling to be taken into custody immediately.

In addition, Judge Lake denied defense attorney Daniel Petrocelli's request to lower the sentence by 10 months in order to allow Skilling to serve his sentence at a lower security- level penitentiary.

Instead, Lake recommended that Skilling served his sentence at a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Butner, N.C.

I guess that means he will either wind up here or here. I hope he enjoys all 24 years of the regular strip searches, the complete lack of privacy, and the lack of any luxuries.

Is this were we take bets on if he will commit suicide before his incarceration date?

Ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling gets 24 years in prison

"Lynwood," Yankovic's 12th album, debuted this month at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, his first top 10 album ever. Meanwhile, the Chamillionaire parody "White and Nerdy," reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, besting his previous high of No. 12 with "Eat It" in 1984.

"I literally danced a little jig (when I found out)," Yankovic says. "It's just a number, but I've been obsessing over it for a long part of my career. Even with, you know, millions of records sold, I've never been in the top 10, and it's always been a goal of mine."

For his part, Yankovic tends to credit the Internet. "The ("Nerdy") video has gotten a lot of attention, and the proliferation of places like YouTube (has) been a big help," he says.

Once "Nerdy" hit outlets like YouTube, there was no stopping it. "We knew with 'Nerdy' that he'd hit on something incredibly relevant to different generations," Dan Mackta, senior director of marketing for Zomba Label Group, says. "Kids were discovering him like a new artist."

Plus, with the advent of download services, Mackta says, suddenly Yankovic can be a singles artist again, and indeed, "Nerdy" has been safely tucked into iTunes' top five for the past few weeks.

"I'd kind of written off the chance of ever having another hit single, since record labels weren't really releasing commercial ones," Yankovic says. "As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me."

This is excellent. Weird Al deserves it. He had a very bad run of luck through 2003 and 2004. In 2003, Eminem dissed him, leaving me hoping that Eminem would go the way of Coolio. In 2004, while on tour, both his parents died because of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a closed chimney flue on their wood burning fireplace.

It's also great to see the role the Internet has played in his recent success. In no small way, Weird Al reflects the nature of pop culture more than any other artist I can think of. Every few years Weird Al whips out a load of absurdity for us to enjoy, amuses the hell out of everyone, then crawls back into a hole for awhile so we don't get tired of him..

Anyone who does not love Weird Al is just wrong.. :)

'Weird Al' Yankovic finally hits the top 10 - CNN.com

As if there weren't enough concerns about the integrity of the vote, a non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago.

Bob Wilson, an official with the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project — which bills itself as a not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to the correction of election system deficiencies — tells ABC News that last week his organization hacked the database, which contains detailed information about hundreds of thousands of Chicago voters, including their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth.

"It was a serious identity theft problem, but also a problem that could potentially create problems with the election," Wilson said.

A nefarious hacker could have changed every voter's status from active to inactive, which would have prevented them from voting, he said.

"Or we could've changed the information on what precinct you were in or what polling place you were supposed to go to," he said. "So there were ways that we could potentially change the entire online data base and disenfranchise voters throughout the entire city of Chicago."

"If we'd wanted to, we could've wiped the entire database out," Wilson claimed.

I seriously hope this database was not the primary database for this data, and just a mirror of it used for the web page. Either way, it's very bad.. But that would be extremely bad.

ABC News: Chicago Voter Database Hacked

We The Creators of this site, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish Fantasy Congress for the United States of America.

In this game, we give you the power to draft and manage a team of members from the U.S. Congress. Enjoy our gift to you, o great nation: the power to play politics!™

Interesting. Great idea!

As a side note, I think the "Broken Government" series that CNN is doing is excellent journalism.

Fantasy Congress - Where People Play Politics!

Saturday night at PhreakNIC I borrowed an audio adaptor from one of the guys who were running the pirate radio station. I was unable to find them to return it. If anyone knows who those guys were, point them in my direction. I can Paypal some money for the adaptor.

I'm _really_ sorry I wasn't able to return it.

PhreakNIC was fun this year, as it is ever year. I'd like to thank all the staff for their hard work running the convention. It's not an easy job, and we all greatly benefit from their hard work.

Hopefully, I will have a chance to make some more comments about the convention later. I'm currently really backed up with work, and somewhat fatigued.

Most of the Industrial Memetics crew was on hand this year giving talks. Acidus gave an enlightening talk about javascript based security problems in Web 2.0 apps, which was by far the best talk on web security I've ever seen. He is currently working on a book on this topic, and we are all looking forward to it. Decius gave a talk entitled "The Year of the Fourth Amendment: 2006", which I wish everyone was able to see. He put a number of the events of the past year into perspective, in the form of a call to action that I'm sure all who were in the room will answer. Neoteric and Abaddon gave another version of their infamous "Why You Suck" talk, which is way more good natured than it sounds, and was in many ways the high point of PhreakNIC this year. It had the highest turnout of any talk and was extremely funny. I gave a talk entitled "Prior Restraint and Information Security Research", in which I went over case studies of security researchers who have gotten into legal trouble for disclosing the product of their research, some past legal president that I felt people should be aware of, and advice about how to communicate with the media and protect yourself if you find yourself in a position to do a risky disclosure.

I've received word that the video from all the talks Saturday was lost due to a technical glitch in the the video recorder, so these may be lost forever. This is sad, but sometimes these things happen..

I had a collection of posters on hand which I hung up in various places in the hotel. I came up with this batch of slogans over two sittings, with the intent to make people laugh, inspire a bit, and instill some curiosity. In short, a blatant branding and propaganda exercise. There were a number of them that by design contained some mildly obscure references. Here are the ones that I got asked questions about the most:

The Peters Projection is an equal-area map projection of the earth, which more accurately represents the planet's land mass than the maps we most often see. For instance, Greenland isn't the same size as Africa, as it appears in most ma... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Industrial Memetics PhreakNIC Propaganda

Richard Dawkins was on The Colbert Report last night promoting his new book.

YouTube - Richard Dawkins on Colbert Report

Reconstituted punk pioneers the Stooges have spent the past week recording their first album since 1973 with producer Steve Albini in Chicago.

Pop, drummer Scott Asheton and guitarist Ron Asheton are joined by bassist Mike Watt, who is subbing for Dave Alexander. Watt is chronicling the sessions in explicit detail on his Web site.

Among the tentatively titled tracks scheduled to appear, Watt describes "ATM" as "the most what I'd call 'riff-oriented' of all the tunes," and says Brendan Benson may add harmony vocals to "End of Christianity." "O Solo Mio" is said to be "the real ballad ... of the bunch, but way more driving than any kind of 'ballad.' "

"It's neat to see how they all three work," Watt writes. "The best I can do is help them let me help do what I can with the bass, follow their direction and keep my head together. Anything else is crazy. I like the way Iggy and Ron get everything they can for the tune right after me and Scotty record with them, so each tune can live in world that's pretty whole and unto its self."

Oh wow, this could be amazing.

While pondering how excellent a new Stooges album could potentially be, check out the contract rider for their current tour on The Smoking Gun. It may be the best contract rider ever...

Stooges recording first album in 33 years - CNN.com

The police team investigating allegations against President Moshe Katsav on Sunday recommended that the president be charged with rape, sexual assault, eavesdropping, fraud, breach of trust and improprieties in gift distribution.

The investigators presented their findings and recommendations for indictment to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and senior officials in the State Prosecutor's office, and said they had consolidated enough evidence to try the president.

The police also revealed Sunday that the president is suspected of purchasing dozens of gifts at hundreds of shekels apiece with money taken from the President's Residence budget. The police said there was evidence of intention to "carry out crimes of fraud and breach of trust."

The most serious charge Katsav could face is for the alleged rape of two women.

Haaretz | Israeli president may be charged with rape and fraud

Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got - books, pencils, legs and arms.

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.

Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."

Don't mess with Texas!

Texas School Tells Classes to Fight Back