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Drugs, mugs and microsoft bugs...

By Graham Hayday

Published: Friday 17 January 2003

If you were a drug dealer, would you go round boasting about it on FriendsReunited? No? Then you're cleverer than a gentleman called Raymond Casling, a 24-year-old from Teeside. He included these words in his profile on the site: "I'm doing very well. I'm selling a lot of charlie in Redcar and I've got three sports cars."

Oops. The police - who were already suspicious of Casling's lavish lifestyle - needed no further proof of the source of his ill-gotten gains, and swiftly arrested him. He has now been jailed for three years. Idiot.

Another crim has also been hoisted by the petard of his own stupidity this week (although he's not quite in Casling's league). A man called Kenneth Fetterman was pulled over by police in Wichita in the US recently for driving with a broken windscreen. Nothing too heinous there, but the officers were probably mighty chuffed when Fetterman turned out to be driving without a licence - and with some marijuana on him. And imagine their unfettered glee (if you'll pardon the pun) when it turned out that our man had been on the run for two years after perpetrating a six-figure fraud on eBay.

In March 2001, Fetterman and two other crooks were discovered using a variety of user IDs to place fake bids on eBay and drive up the prices of auctions between November 1998 and June 2000. Prosecutors said the trio induced an eBay user to bid nearly $135,000 for a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting after posting over 50 fraudulent offers for it.

Fetterman legged it after reading a story about the charges against him in a local paper, and has been lying low ever since. But now the long arm of the law has got him by the short and curlies he's facing four counts of wire fraud, six counts of mail fraud and six counts of money laundering. Each wire and mail fraud carries penalties of up to five years in prison and fines of $250,000. The money laundering could cost him up to 20 years in stir and $500,000. And all because of a broken windscreen. Silly boy.

Steve Pankhurst - one half of the husband and wife team behind FriendsReunited - is anything but. He said last weekend that he's considering selling the business. He told the Sunday Times: "In the past 18 months we have had many parties interested and we are reviewing all our options with [accountants and financial advisers] BDO Stoy Hayward. We are quite advanced in the process."

The business - which the Pankhursts set up in the comfort of their own home and with very little capital expenditure and hardly any marketing spend - is thought to be worth £25m. Which can't be bad. Congrats to Steve and Julia Pankhurst, now take the money and run, we say...

Strange Microsoft error message number 394... This isn't likely to effect many of you, but if you're a user of Windows 2000 Server (SP1), Advanced Server (SP1) or Professional (SP1) and happen to log on to an MIT realm, type CTRL + ALT + DELETE, click CHANGE PASSWORD, type your existing MIT password and then type a new, simple password that does not pass the dictionary check, you will receive this error message: "Your password must be at least 18,750 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30,689 passwords. Please type a different password."

You'd need a damned good memory (or a massive post-it) for that one... Downloading the most recent service pack will squash this bug by the way, so don't lose any sleep over it. (Thanks to David Baker for pointing that one out).

News story on Ananova, Thursday 9 January 2003: "VIOLENT COMPUTER GAME FIRM UP FOR DESIGN AWARD. The makers of best-selling computer game series Grand Theft Auto have been shortlisted for [the London Design Museum's] Designer of the Year award."

News story on Ananova, Monday 13 January, 2003: "HOWELLS ATTACKS VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES. Violent films, TV programmes and computer games are being attacked by [culture minister Kim Howells] for making mayhem seem acceptable to young people."

We as a society can't make up our minds about this one, can we? Museums come under Howell's department's remit by the way...

On 31 January, the consultation period for the government's ID - sorry, 'entitlement' - card scheme ends. On 11 December last year, the Home Office claimed that from analysing the responses it had received up until that point, those in favour of the scheme outnumbered those against by a ratio of two-to-one. That was based on 1,500 responses.

Since then, campaign groups Privacy International, Liberty and Stand have been busy highlighting the possible dangers of such a scheme (did someone say Big Brother?), and have attracted more than 2,800 detailed responses. Privacy International now reckons support for the government has dropped to less than one-in-four.

This stuff may be complex, but it's also extremely important, and it would be nice to think that a lot more than around 4,000 people care enough about it to register their opinion. To help the process, Privacy International has set up two local rate phone numbers you can call to make your voice heard. If you're in favour of the ID/Entitlement Card, call 0845 330 7245. Against: 0845 330 7246. Each message left will be converted into an audio file and emailed to the Home Office. The government confirmed last week that these files will for the first time be regarded as legitimate consultation responses. Failing that, you can go to Stand's website (http://www.stand.org.uk ) and do your thing online.