Filed under: Columns, Economy, People, Investing, Media

It's hard to believe, but a year has passed since Bernard Madoff admitted to his sons that his financial empire was built on an elaborate scam. In the ensuing months, Madoff has inspired an ongoing lesson in banking scandals, as the media has reported on his conviction and sentencing, the auction of his possessions and the accusations of his alleged lovers. Ironically, on the first anniversary of history's biggest Ponzi scheme, yet another massive money scam has come to light.

On December 22, 2008, as the country was caught in the first flush of Madoff mania, 32-year old Genadi Yagodayev opened his own investment company, Rockford Funding Group LLC. Located at 80 Broad Street, in New York's financial district, Rockford claimed to be a "leading private equity firm" with $800 million in investments. Offering "fixed dividend accounts" with returns of up to 21%, Yagodayev used cold calls and his website to attract customers who were receiving structured settlements from personal injury and malpractice suits.

Continue reading A year after Madoff, another Ponzi schemer

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Now that the exploding men and unrelenting rain of crates have been taken care of, it would seem a new issue has arisen in Modern Warfare 2. Specifically, a bug in the Xbox Live matchmaking assignments is reportedly dumping playlist searchers into private matches. (Nothing's worse than being teamed with the lowest ranking players, after all.)

Penny Arcade's Gabe tweeted (warning: foul language through link) that he had encountered the issue several times. Meanwhile, Infinity Ward's man in the trenches, Robert "fourzerotwo" Bowling, confirmed the issue is known and that a fix is currently in the works.

[Via Gaming Union]

Source - cwgabriel [Twitter] (NSFW)
Source - Robert "fourzerotwo" Bowling [Twitter]

Modern Warfare 2 players report matchmaking malfunction originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the least surprising "World Exclusive" reveals during last night's Video Game Awards show was the unveiling of Harmonix's next single-band opus, Green Day: Rock Band. In case you missed out on the late-to-the-party announcement, you can check out the debut trailer after the jump. If you don't feel like watching a streaming video at the moment, we'll summarize: It looks a heck of a lot like when you play those Green Day DLC songs on Rock Band 2.

The MTV Games press release that landed in our inbox shortly after the trailer aired contained one particularly interesting piece of news -- unlike The Beatles: Rock Band, all of the tracks in Green Day's outing will be exportable to the core Rock Band games. In addition, all the Green Day DLC released so far for the music platform, as well as the three 21st Century Breakdown tracks that will hit this Tuesday, will be compatible with Green Day: Rock Band. No release date has been given thus far, but the presser specifies that its coming to the Wii, PS3 and 360.

Continue reading Green Day: Rock Band trailer unveiled, songs will be exportable

Green Day: Rock Band trailer unveiled, songs will be exportable originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Action

One of the games that was revealed last Saturday at the Spike TV Video Game Awards was True Crime, a new revival of Activsion's open world crime action game series. We didn't report on the announcement at the time because it wasn't clear if the game would be coming to the PC. Today Activision confirmed via a press release that the title would indeed have a PC port alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

As we said True Crime is a revival of the series that began in 2003 with the release of True Crime: Streets of LA and continued in 2005 with True Crime: New York City. Both games were developed by Activision's in-house developer Luxoflux. However, the new True Crime game (which apparently has no subtitle this time) is being developed by Vancouver-based United Front Games. This time the setting is Hong Kong where an undercover cop must enter the Triad crime underworld and rise through its ranks in an effort to bring them down from within. The game, which will feature martial arts combat and free running alongside gun fights and vehicle chases. is currently scheduled for a fall 2010 release.

Activision's new True Crime game confirmed for PC release originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Range Rover is the automotive embodiment of a distinctly upper class British sporting aesthetic, as quintessentially English and aristocratic as the country houses dotting the verdant landscape. The luxe SUV was introduced in 1970, expanding upon the utilitarian Land Rover first designed by the Wilks Brothers in 1948. The preferred country conveyance of Prince Charles and his kin, the marque continues to dominate the upper end of the SUV spectrum in the UK and abroad despite having passed out of British hands.

For 2010 the Range Rover and its rakish younger sibling, the Range Rover Sport, were treated to a makeover encompassing several significant engineering and design upgrades. We had a chance to ramble 'round the scenic byways of Vermont recently in the latter. At 375 hp, the normally aspirated Sport model has nearly the same power as the previous year's supercharged version, capable of 0 - 60 mph in 7.2 seconds (just 0.1 seconds off the pace of the outgoing supercharged unit).

The Sport's smooth, refined, responsive performance and good looks mark it as a thoroughbred in all respects. For 2010 the exterior has a somewhat cleaner, more sculpted appearance. LED headlamps combine with a new two-bar grille, front bumpers and fenders to create a more sporting, aerodynamic, low-slung stance. At the rear, new light clusters and a revised bumper design mirror the smoother front-end. The interior has been comprehensively redesigned as well, using higher quality materials and finishes.

Leather is used extensively on major surfaces, in a wider choice of colors. To create a more sporting feel, rich dark shades "sandwich" narrow sections in lighter tones, completed by a generous selection of stylish wood finishes. There are luxurious new seats front and rear, which feature a deeper, more sculpted shape. A new adaptive sport mode provides more aggressive shift points and "learns" an individual driver's style to provide more appropriate responses to throttle inputs. The supercharged model now comes with F1-style paddle shifters on the steering wheel as well.

The fascia-mounted touch-screen system houses a new hard-drive navigation system while a new portable audio interface also allows connectivity to an array of personal audio storage devices, USB sticks and iPods. A new Surround Camera System features five digital cameras which relay a near 360-degree view to the touch-screen display. You can even zoom in. And one of our favorite new features is the automatic High Beam Assist technology, which turns them on and off as needed, detecting preceding and approaching traffic. Perfect for those country roads at night.

Filed under: Wheels, The Classicist

The Classicist: Rambling in the 2010 Range Rover Sport originally appeared on Luxist on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: North America, United States, Airlines

The airports may not be as crowded at Christmas this year. The Air Transport Association of America expects holiday flight traffic to fall 2.5 percent from 2008. The holiday period is measured as December 17, 2009 through January 6, 2010. The busiest days in the sky are most likely to be the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday after Christmas.

Don't expect to have plenty of legroom, though. Part of the decline stems from the fact that airlines have cut flights, so fewer people may be jockeying for fewer seats, leaving you just as cramped as usual. Both the dip in the number of passengers and in the number of flights is a direct result of a recession that has had a magnified effect on the travel market this year.

Last week, Delta, American and United all came out and said that they're seeing an increase in demand -- and from those high-value corporate clients that keep the planes in the air.

Holiday travel to fall 2.5 percent originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So much for making nice. Apple just announced that it's countersuing Nokia for infringing thirteen of its patents -- slightly upping Nokia's claim that Apple's infringing ten. We haven't seen the case yet, but we'll post it up for you as soon as we find it -- and as we predicted in our breakdown of Nokia's complaint, this is shaping up to be a long and costly nightmare of a suit. Hey, do you think Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell might have a crazy lightning rod of a statement about the case for us?

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," said Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel and senior vice president.

Cool, thanks. We'll be in the corner under a Nomex blanket for the next few months.

Update: Here's the PDF of the reply -- we're still reading all 79 pages of it, but it's what we expected: Apple says Nokia's patents aren't actually essential to GSM / UMTS, denies infringing them, and says they're invalid and / or unenforceable anyway. Apple also says Nokia wanted unreasonable license terms for the patents, including a cross-license for Apple's various iPhone device patents as part of any deal, which Apple clearly wasn't willing to do. That's in stark contrast to what Nokia says it wants in its lawsuit -- all it's asked the court for is past due license fees on its patents. (Which is odd, if you think about it: Nokia wouldn't come to terms on a license that didn't include iPhone patents, but it'll spend the cash on litigation for past due fees? That seems silly.) Oh, and if you're just in this for the bitchy quotes, here you go:

As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia's GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia's new offerings to the already released iPhone:"[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride." True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple's iPhone ideas as well as Apple's basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia's purported standards essential patent.

We'll let you know if we see anything else of interest, but we'd say we're in for a long, bumpy ride here.

Apple countersues Nokia for infringing 13 patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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