castle

Six charged in tech insider-trading scheme

Federal prosecutors have charged a prominent hedge-fund manager and five others with securities fraud resulting from insider trading involving some of the tech industry's best-known companies, including Intel, Google, and IBM.

Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group was arrested Friday in New York according to various reports and charged with 13 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy following a FBI investigation into Galleon Group's trading patterns. Also charged in the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, were co-conspirators Rajiv Goel of Intel and Anil Kumar of McKinsey, which provided consulting services … Read more

The stickmen are coming!

StickWars is a fun and unusual arcade-strategy game that shows promise for future versions. The game's interface--in which you defend a castle from an endless horde of stick-figure "barbarians"--is inherently entertaining, as you tap and swipe (i.e., fling) incoming invaders, hurling them off the castle walls at high speeds, to meet their bloody demises (which can be quite bloody, depending on how you set the variable cartoon blood settings) on the ground below.

The game's strategy revolves around earning money, based on how many kills you rack up, and also on capturing barbarians. Train … Read more

The Gizmo Report: the SPOT Satellite Messenger

I've written here before about emergency locators, those gizmos that can help rescuers find you if you become lost in the wilderness.

The tragic death of CNET's own James Kim and the disappearances of Microsoft's Jim Gray and famed adventurer Steve Fossett have convinced me that anyone who travels outside populated areas ought to carry one of these devices.

Following that earlier post, I was contacted by SPOT Inc., makers of the SPOT Satellite Messenger, which began shipping through major outdoor retailers this fall. They offered me a SPOT messenger for review, and I happily accepted. It … Read more

Jammie Thomas: 'I'm no puppet' for RIAA foes

One of the side issues of the Jammie Thomas controversy is whether someone may have steered her into taking on the recording industry.

The question came up last week shortly after Thomas was ordered by a federal jury to pay the record industry more than $220,000 for violating copyright law. Why would a 30-year-old mother of two, who makes $36,000 a year, want to go toe-to-toe with the recording industry, asks Chris Castle, an attorney, former music executive and owner of a small record label.

Castle, who routinely appears at conferences to debate the morality and legality of … Read more