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A new study has found that just one response for every 12.5 million spam mails sent can turn spammers into millionaires.

Researchers from University of California, San Diego and Berkeley hijacked a working spam network and uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The scientists broke into the Storm network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail.

The research team led by Assistant Professor Stefan Savage from UCSD, created several so-called “proxy bots” that acted as conduits of information between the command and control system for Storm and the hijacked home PCs that actually send out junk mail.

They used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them.

For the study, the researchers created a pharmacy site and ran two types of fake spam campaign through these machines

One mimicked the way Storm spreads using viruses and the other tried to tempt people to visit a fake pharmacy site and buy a herbal remedy to boost their libido.

The fake pharmacy site was made to resemble those run by Storm’’s real owners but always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.

While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The vast majority of these were for the fake pharmacy campaign.

“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted,” BBC quoted the researchers, as writing.

The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001percent. This is far below the average of 2.15 pct reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

“Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of 2,731.88 dollars—a bit over 100 dollars a day for the measurement period,” they added.

The researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about 7,000 dollars a day or more than 2m dollars per year.

When Les Paul’s grandchildren are jamming on the video game “Guitar Hero,” it’s not lost on him that he made it all possible.

Paul, known as the “Father of the Electric Guitar,” will be honored at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s annual American Music Masters series, a weeklong event that starts Monday.

Paul is a rock ‘n’ roll da Vinci, part artist, part inventor, and at age 93 still performs weekly at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.

“It’s therapy,” Paul said Thursday.

Paul recalled that the first time he heard a guitar on his mother’s radio he knew he had to have one. By age 13, he was performing semiprofessionally as a country-music guitarist.

He built a solid-body electric guitar in 1941 — an invention born from his frustration that audiences were unable to hear him play.

Paul remembers the moment when inspiration hit. He was playing at a barbecue stand somewhere between his hometown of Waukesha, Wis., and Milwaukee when a man told him his guitar wasn’t loud enough.

It took Paul 10 years to sell the Gibson guitar company on the concept.

“They thought it was a crazy idea to make a guitar come through an amplifier,” he said.

In 1952, Gibson introduced the Les Paul model, which became the instrument of choice for musicians such as Duane Allman and Jimmy Page.

“We now could be king because you could turn the level up and you could be heard and you could play things that you could never have played acoustically,” Paul said.

Paul’s other innovations include recording techniques like close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking. He also made his mark as a jazz-pop musician, recording hits like “How High the Moon” with his second wife, singer Mary Ford.

Paul was inducted into the early influence category of the Rock Hall in 1988.

He said he still tinkers with new ideas and is busy designing four new amplifiers and two new guitars for Gibson, including a model that beginners can afford but still fall in love with.

“Most of the people that I know that have a guitar love that guitar like they do their wife,” he said.

Paul will perform at a tribute concert Nov. 15 that caps the American Music Masters series. He will be joined by a legion of guitar virtuosos, including Slash, Duane Eddy, Billy Gibbons and the Ventures.

“I’m very grateful to the generation that came after me and picked up the instrument and carried on with it,” Paul said. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am.”

Ergonis Software on Wednesday released an for PopChar X, its utility allowing users to insert special characters into documents.

Among the changes in the new version is improved compatibility with OpenOffice and NeoOffice. PopChar can now also detect the current font in MultiAd Creator Pro.

The company said other improvements and fixes have been made to the application in this update including a problem that caused the memory allocation to grow over time.

PopChar X 4.1 is free for anyone who purchased the application in the last two years. For new users the app costs $37.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a new front in his battle with Republican John McCain for the White House: videogames.

The Obama campaign has placed advertisements for the candidate inside the online versions of some of the hottest-selling videogames in the United States.

Holly Rockwood, a spokeswoman for videogame giant Electronic Arts, told AFP the Obama campaign had purchased ads inside nine of EA’s top titles.

The ads are appearing from October 6 to November 3 in Xbox 360 games such as “Burnout Paradise,” “Madden 09,” “Nascar 09,” “NHL 09″ and “Skate,” Rockwood said.

She said the ads would be visible to players in 10 US states who play the Xbox games online against each other using Xbox Live.

Among the 10 states are several expected to be among the most hotly contested in the November 4 showdown between Obama and McCain.

“Not all of our games support dynamic in-game advertising but these ones lend themselves well to this kind of opportunity,” Rockwood said.

“You’re driving down the freeway, you’re passing billboards and one of the ads you will see is for Obama.

“We try to create an authentic gaming experience,” she said.

The ad campaign encourages voters who are eligible to do so to cast their ballots before November 4.

“These ads will help us expand the reach of VoteforChange.com so that more people can use this easy tool to find their early vote location and make sure their voice is heard,” Nick Shapiro, an Obama spokesman, told AFP by email.

Television, radio, newspapers and, more recently, the Internet have become the staples for political advertising in the United States but using videogames is a first in US presidential politics.

The technology website GigaOm published a screen shot of an Obama ad which appears in the racing game “Burnout Paradise.”

In the picture, a race car is seen driving by a roadside billboard which carries Obama’s picture and says “Early Voting Has Begun.”

The billboard features the VoteforChange.com website address and the words “Paid for by Obama for President.”

An ad in “NHL 09″ shows an Obama poster on the side of a hockey rink and carries the same message.

The games which will feature Obama campaign ads are among the most popular in the EA catalogue of sports titles and are rated for play by the Entertainment Software Rating Board for everyone aged 10 and older.

And most videogame players in the United States are not teenagers too young to vote according to the Entertainment Software Association.

The latest ESA report, Essential Facts 2008, found that the average age of a videogame player is 35 years old and 49 percent are between the ages of 18 and 49. Just 25 percent of videogame players are below the age of 18.

Despite extending his campaign to videogames, Obama, the father of two young daughters, has not always been the biggest supporter of the pastime.

During a recent speech in Chicago, he urged parents to “turn off the TV set once in awhile, turn off the video game and the remote and read a book to your child.”

Filing tax returns just isn’t a fun activity. You pretty much have to go through all of your financial records to try and play a game with really complex rules and some stiff penalties for the losers. There is a bit of good news that’s come about in recent years. It is now possible to fill out your tax return easily through online filing.

This is possible through the development of some great software. It basically takes the role of your major chain accountant. The software goes through a list and prompts you for all the necessary information. You then just go through each item and punch in the numbers as prompted. It will suggest deductions that you could probably take and then ultimately produce a finished return. Once it’s done, you can have it use efile to send it straight to the IRS.

The best part about this is the cost. You are getting the service for just the price of the software. The filing and the accounting is then free. You should make your money back after its first use. Just think of how much better free tax filing is. Is there a good reason you shouldn’t do it?

David Kernell, who was indicted on one count of accessing a computer without authorization, pleaded innocent to the charges on Wednesday.

Kernell, the son of Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, Tenn., who is a Democrat, was accused of reverse-engineering the password of Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account, and accessing it without her permission.

Kernell was released without posting bond, but the court imposed several conditions, according to the Associated Press. Kernell, an economics student at the University of Tennessee, is not allowed to own a computer and can use the Internet only for checking e-mail and doing class work, the AP reported.

The trial is set for Dec. 16. If convicted, Kernell could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Shares of Apple (AAPL.O) Inc. rallied more than 9 percent Friday, as investors saw a newly attractive valuation in the battered stock and anticipated new laptop computers.

Apple, which also makes iPod music players and iPhone communications devices, has scheduled a Tuesday event at which it is expected to unveil a line of lower-cost notebooks. The company is scheduled to release its quarterly results the following Tuesday.

With the economy likely facing a drastic slowdown in consumer spending, Apple’s shares had dropped more than 40 percent in the last month.

But Yair Reiner, an analyst with Oppenheimer, said that with the Apple’s stock trading at less than half the price of a year ago, the shares look attractive on valuation alone.

“Growth is just a bonus,” Reiner said.

Other analysts agree. “Given the recent sell-off in technology stocks, Apple’s stock offers a valuation entry point not seen in years,” Bank of America analyst Scott Craig wrote in a note on Wednesday.

With the hype that typically accompanies an Apple product launch, investors will be watching next week to see if the company can maintain momentum.

Reiner said he thinks a line of less expensive computers could help the company ride out the turbulence of the coming months.

“One of the biggest fears about Apple is that it’s going into a recession selling high-end electronics. I think that if it can broaden its product portfolio and include products that are competitive on the mid-end, it positions it to better weather the storm and appeal to a larger base of consumers.”

Shares of Apple rose $8.06 to close at $96.80 on Nasdaq.

The Web is percolating rumors that a new Apple laptop is in the works with an $800 price tag. Currently, Apple lists its lowest-priced MacBook at $1,099.

The intense speculation was fueled by an Apple e-mail inviting reporters to attend an Oct. 14 media event hosted by CEO Steve Jobs, at which he is expected to tout a notebook lineup refresh. Tech bloggers are abuzz about unconfirmed reports of a new Apple price list that features the $800 product.

Additionally, Fortune magazine pointed photos of a new laptop casing posted by a Taiwan-based blogger. The business publication noted that the images are “consistent with reports that Apple has switched to a new manufacturing process that carves the shells of its notebooks out of a single ‘brick’ of aluminum.”

A Portable PC Boost

IDC noted last month that the global PC market had been able to resist economic pressures due to the rising sales of low-cost portable PCs. “We continue to see a rapid transition to portable PCs around the world, even as economic pressures rise,” said Loren Loverde, director of IDC’s PC tracker program.

The research firm also noted that the market trend through September reflected the increasing importance of computing — not just in the home or office, but also as an integrated part of people’s lives. “Falling prices, more design choice and competition for PC makers to capture this market continue to drive a rapid transition,” Loverde said.

The increasing form factor diversity in notebooks as well as desktops is enabling people to justify multiple PC purchases, noted Bob O’Donnell, IDC’s vice president of clients and displays.

“The right way to gauge the success of consumer PCs is no longer the adoption rate of households with PCs, or even the number of PCs per household, but rather the number of machines per individual,” O’Donnell said.

Enjoying Record Growth

If the latest rumors prove correct, the $800 MacBook would not be welcome news for rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Given the current global economic meltdown, however, Apple must make its new laptop compelling enough to overcome rising spending hesitation among consumers and businesses.

According to Gartner’s second-quarter PC sales figures, Apple’s 8.5 percent share of the U.S. PC market put it a distant third behind HP (25.3 percent) and Dell (31.9 percent). However, Jobs noted in July that Apple had record PC growth in the quarter.

“Apple’s PC shipments grew 38.1 percent,” confirmed Mika Kitagawa, a principal analyst at Gartner. By contrast, Dell’s growth was 11.9 percent in the second quarter and HP’s growth was just 5.6 percent, she said. “The home PC segment continued to be the strongest driver for Apple as well as sales into the education segment,” Kitagawa explained.

Apple did even better in the notebook segment of the U.S. PC market during the second quarter, Kitagawa said. “Here is our market share estimate for the U.S. mobile PC market: Dell at 26 percent, HP at 25.1 percent, and Apple at 11.2 percent,” she noted in an e-mail.

If Apple does crack the $800 barrier with a low-coast MacBook, it may also be able to gain a bit of small-business traction. “In the commercial space, companies continue to see the value of refreshing their PCs and are maintaining surprisingly healthy purchasing patterns,” O’Donnell said last month.

Mono 2.0, an open-source runtime enabling .Net-based applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix, is being released Monday, featuring capabilities for a number of .Net technologies.

Considered a major upgrade, the open source Mono 2.0 runtime leverages Microsoft’s .Net Framework 2.0 programming model. With Mono, developers can build desktop and server applications using Microsoft-based environments and deploy them across multiple platforms, including Windows. Novell is leading the Mono effort.

“The existing apps you build on Windows, you can now run those applications on Linux or MacOS 10. Different people have different reasons for doing so,” such as platform consolidation, said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and Mono project maintainer.

Mono 2.0 supports the C# 3.0 language and LINQ (Language Integrated Query) for querying of data across databases, objects, and XML content, de Icaza said. Also, users can move over server applications built for .Net and client applications built with Windows Forms.

Version 2.0 of Mono, however, lacks support for key .Net 3.0 and .Net 3.5 APIs, specifically Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows Presentation Foundation. These are not currently supported because they were not amongst the most requested technologies sought by early users of Mono, de Icaza said.

“We don’t support them because we haven???t developed those pieces yet,” he said. Work on WCF support is planned for next year.

Also featured in Mono 2.0 is MoMA (Mono Migration Analyzer), a tool to assess the readiness of Linux environments for migration of .Net applications.

Microsoft’s reaction to Mono has been mixed, according to de Icaza. “I guess it depends on who you ask. In some cases, of course, they would rather have people stay on Windows,” he said. Microsoft is working with de Icaza and Novell on Moonlight, which will enable applications built for Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in to run on Linux. Moonlight 1.0, a more complete release than what has been available, is set to be released by the end of this month.

Mono is intended to help more applications be moved to Linux and help developers reach a larger market. “From our position, we want more developers to be able to start deploying their third-party applications on Linux. We want to enrich the Linux ecosystem,” de Icaza said.

He estimated that 45 percent of applications will run on Mono 2.0 out of the box while 18 percent will require developers to spend a couple of weeks to make some changes due to operating system differences. About 20 percent will require significant work, taking about three to six months, if the application is tightly integrated with Windows, de Icaza said.

Current Mono user Mindtouch, maker of the Deki collaboration platform, opted for Mono because it sought to provide cross-platform solutions, said Aaron Fulkerson, Mindtouch founder and CEO.

“I think Mono is fantastic for us,” he said. Mindtouch founders and many of the company’s developers had worked at Microsoft and sought to leverage Windows-based development skills, he said. But .Net lacked platform independence.

“We very seriously considered going with Java and then [took] a good hard look at Mono,” Fulkerson said. Mono was determined to be a “sufficiently mature technology to build on,” he said.

“In fact, we developed our product and deployed solely on Mono and Linux up until this month,” just now adding support for Windows, said Fulkerson.

The Mono 2.0 runtime is offered under the LGPL, while class libraries and compilers are available via the MIT X11 license.

Mono was built using Microsoft documentation pertaining to the .Net engine and languages, which are ISO standards, de Icaza said. Work on Mono 2.0 has been going on for about two-and-a-half years. The Mono project itself was begun in 2001.

Eric Nofsinger is betting that Nintendo’s hot family-friendly Wii videogame consoles can win the hearts of “hardcore gamers” that lust for battle in action-packed virtual worlds.

Nofsinger’s team at US-based High Voltage Software is painstakingly crafting a “Conduit” first-person shooter game for the Wii that challenges players to repel alien invaders in a make-believe Washington, D.C.

High Voltage was part of a cadre of studios that joined Nintendo in San Francisco on Friday to demonstrate that the Wii’s motion-sensing controllers can simulate guns and swords as well as golf clubs and orchestra batons.

“One of our missions from the start was definitely to make a game for the hardcore,” Nofsinger told AFP as he provided a glimpse at a version of “Conduit” nearing completion.

“What our game represents, and what we are really pushing for, is to deliver on the promise that Wii made when it first came out — games for everybody.”

Nintendo’s Wii has been an unprecedented success since its launch in November of 2006 and is credited with luring legions of “casual gamers” into a videogame world formerly dominated by young men and titles devoted to fighting.

Wii titles have unabashedly been oriented to sports, music, and more communal play that appeals to children, women, senior citizens and others that previously shunned videogames.

“No matter what you hear, we also believe in games that please the core,” Nintendo marketing chief Cammie Dunaway said during a two-day event focused on Wii games heading for store shelves in coming months.

She previewed a Wii version of “Call of Duty,” a blazingly successful first-person shooter franchise with hordes of devotees that play it on Sony’s PlayStation or Microsoft’s Xbox 360 consoles.

Wii COD players aim controllers like rifles and squeeze triggers to fire guns or flame throwers on a “World at War” battlefield.

“A lot of gamers aren’t teens in the basement anymore,” Robert Taylor of Activision said as he demonstrated “COD World at War.”

“Those guys have grown up and have children. Dad wants to play something with the kids, and then be able to put on a shooter and have some fun after he puts them to bed.”

Wii has been referred to as the “other system” gamers buy as a lightweight option to heavyweight Sony Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

“It’s up to us as publishers to show what is wrong with those stigmas,” Jason Allen of CapCom said, noting each of the competing videogame consoles gets unfairly pigeon-holed.

Allen showed off a CapCom game, “Dead Rising: Chop til you Drop,” in which Wii controllers are waved to shoot, hack, slice, bash or saw zombies in a virtual shopping mall with chain saws, swords, pistol and other weapons.

“Basically, you can just beat the crap out of zombies,” Dunaway quipped.

A “MadWorld” video game puts players in an animated city dominated by a kill-or-be-killed “Death Watch” game show.

“Nintendo loves hardcore gamers; we really do,” Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta told AFP.

“‘Chop til you Drop’ and ‘MadWorld’ might not be games for kids, but there are a lot of people out there that want a mature game experience. You can get that on the Wii.”

The Wii has been snubbed by some makers of major first-person shooter videogames because the console lacks the computing and graphics power designed into Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 machines.

“Nintendo has to overcome that,” says Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, predicting that a beefed up, high-definition Wii console is in on the horizon.

“A Wii HD would really position Nintendo well, which is why I’m absolutely convinced there is a Wii HD coming. Businesswise, they can’t have people saying that their machine is a toy for my mom.”