Warum duldet die friedliche japanische Gesellschaft die Yakuza? Man könne das mit ihrem Ehren-Kodex und ihrer früheren Rolle erklären, meint der Journalist Atsushi Mizoguchi. Yakuza-Mitglieder schwören, nicht zu vergewaltigen, nicht zu stehlen und keine Raubüberfälle zu verüben. Früher hätten sie der Polizei gelegentlich Tipps gegeben und ihr Kleinkriminelle ausgeliefert. In Nagoya schickte die Kokodai-Gumi Patrouillen auf die Straße. Das noble Bild der Yakuza ist allerdings ein Mythos. Dennoch glauben manche Leute noch, so Mizoguchi, im Falle einer Krise würde sich die Yakuza patriotisch verhalten. Als die Linke in den 1960er-Jahren gegen die Militärallianz mit den USA protestierte, prügelte die Yakuza Demonstranten in die Flucht. Nach dem Hanshin-Erdbeben 1995 zog die Yakuza die effektivste Hilfe auf. Auch nach dem Tsunami von 2011 schickte sie viele Lastwagen mit Nothilfe, deren Wert die Zeitschrift Sentaku auf 400.000 Euro schätzte. Danach bewarben sich ihre legalen Firmen aggressiv um Aufträge zur Müllbeseitigung. Außerdem, sagt Adelstein, ziehe die Polizei, wenn sie die Wahl habe zwischen organisiertem und und dem nicht-organisierten Verbrechen hat, das organisierte vor. Es lasse sich eher kontrollieren.  

David Karp, the founder of the blogging platform Tumblr, was 17 when he decided to cut the apron strings and move to Tokyo. With a smattering of Japanese and a sharp eye for computer code, the impatient Manhattan teenager embarked on a period of self-discovery. "I was holed up in the middle of this world where it was just me on the internet," Karp recalls. Within weeks, he had fine-tuned his computer skills and cooled on the idea of building robots. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. But there was one small problem: his voice. "I was so silly – I tried to be very formal and put on a deep voice to clients over the phone so I didn't have to meet them and give away how young I was," he says. "I lied about my age. I lied about the size of my team. I lied about my experience. I was so terribly embarassed about it for so long. I should have just owned up."

Er war Hacker, Rennfahrer, Investor, Playboy und schließlich Gesetzloser, der zum Multi-Millionär wurde, als das Internet megalomanische Investmentbeträge auf sich zog: In der Dotcom-Goldgräberzeit hatte Schmitz schließlich Anteil daran, dass aus ihr die Dotcom-Blase wurde.

Der Gütersloher Spielehersteller Ascaron hat große Spiele wie Sacred hervorgebracht, und mindestens ebenso groß waren seine Reinfälle. Mit der Pleite im April endet eine Ära - auch eine von Pfusch und Nachlässigkeit. Die Geschichte einer schleichenden Katastrophe.

Die italienische Mafia wächst - nach einer aktuellen Studie ist das organisierte Verbrechen die größte Wirtschaftskraft des Landes und mit einer Liquidität von etwa 65 Milliarden Euro inzwischen auch die mächtigste Bank. Das geht aus dem Bericht "Die Hand der Kriminalität auf den Betrieben" hervor, den die Dachvereinigung kleinerer und mittlerer Firmen am Dienstag in Rom vorstellte. Allein die fast 100 Milliarden Euro, die das organisierte Verbrechen jährlich über Bars, Restaurants, Hotels oder Geschäfte in ihrer Hand einnehme, machten etwa sieben Prozent des italienischen Bruttoinlandsproduktes aus.

An internal memo from India’s Military Intelligence that hackers have posted online suggests that manufacturers of mobile devices have provided “backdoor” access to the Indian government in exchange for access to the Indian market. The manufacturers, referred to collectively in the memo as “RINOA,” include RIM, Nokia, and Apple.

The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.

Movie industry lobbyists like to say that online piracy costs their clients billions of dollars every year, and it’s getting worse — but that’s doesn’t quite seem to be the case, according to data released this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS report (embedded below) shows that the movie industry is doing very well, earning record profits and paying executives more than ever, even as it hires fewer workers than it did just a decade ago. Although a recent National Crime Prevention Council ad campaign tries to make the point that piracy kills jobs, the CRS found that total gross revenues and box office receipts have doubled in the last 15 years. Grosses went from $52.8 billion in 1995 to $104.4 billion in 2009, while box office receipts went from $5.3 billion in 1995 to $10.6 billion in 2010 — yet hiring still went down.

A week ago today, Megaupload’s now-famous Mega Song was on its way to becoming a viral hit, only to be cut down from YouTube by a Universal Music takedown demand. Following the filing of a Megaupload lawsuit the song is back online, but Universal are standing firm. You can’t touch us on DMCA grounds, the label says in a new filing, adding it can take down any material, even if it doesn’t infringe their rights.

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents, spanning 36 companies, include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people's computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The papers were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.

Diese interaktive, flash-generierte Grafik bietet Ihnen die Möglichkeit, mit einem Klick die Entwicklung aller wesentlichen Internet- und Print-Angebote aus Deutschland nachzuvollziehen. Darüber hinaus können Sie die Auflagen und Klickzahlen mit denen der Konkurrenz vergleichen.

In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a think tank sponsored by the governments of 30 of the most powerful capitalist countries and dedicated to promoting free-market institutions, concluded that half the workers of the world -- close to 1.8 billion people -- were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes.

Giant weapon makers are not the only ones cashing in on US wars. Unbeknownst to the public, the companies behind some the most familiar household name brands constitute the backbone of what has mushroomed into a military-corporate complex of "civilian" firms, which rake in huge profits while helping the Pentagon to carry out its wars and foreign occupations. Unsurprisingly, at least five of these companies have seen their contracts with the Defense Department skyrocket since 9/11.

All told, according to the government’s complaint, Full Tilt Poker owed $390 million to players worldwide, but had about $60 million in cash. Since 2007, the government claims Full Tilt Poker enriched its board members and owners with $443 million in payouts, while telling players they could withdraw from their accounts at will.

Das ganze Ausmaß dieser Partnerschaft zeigen die nun öffentlich gewordenen Mitgliederlisten. Insgesamt 300 Großkonzerne gehören Alec demnach an, darunter Schwergewichte wie ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Philip Morris, Bayer und der Finanzier der Tea-Party-Bewegung, Koch Industries. Die Mitgliedergebühren der Firmen von jährlich bis zu 25.000 US-Dollar sowie hoch dotierte Spenden machen 98 Prozent des Council-Budgets aus. Die Beträge der Politiker betragen gerade einmal die restlichen zwei Prozent des Haushalts.  Im Gegenzug für ihre Investitionen erhalten die Unternehmen Einfluss und Abstimmungsrecht, beim Formulieren und Abstimmen der Gesetzesvorlagen, zitiert Lisa Graves, Direktorin des Center for Media and Democracy, Passagen aus einem internen PR-Dokument des Councils. Entsprechend eindeutig ist die Sprache der geleakten Gesetzesentwürfe: wirtschaftliche Deregulierung, Steuererleichterung für Konzerne, das Aufheben von Umweltbeschlüssen, Privatisierung öffentlicher Schulen und Gefängnisse, Maßnahmen gegen den Einfluss von Gewerkschaften.  

In the high-speed world of automated financial trading, milliseconds matter. So much so, in fact, that a saving of just six milliseconds in transmission time is all that is required to justify the laying of the first transatlantic communications cable for 10 years at a cost of more than $300m.

"The first day [of this paid service] we made $5,000, the second $6,000, the third more -- I wasn't expecting this. But people love advertising themselves. Lots of people use this function several times a day. They become addicted."

Her name is Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the US Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7bn contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) as the US was about to invade Iraq. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the US government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed. Bunny Greenhouse told her superiors that the process was illegal. She was overridden. She said the decision to grant the contract to KBR came from the office of the secretary of defence, run by VP Cheney's close friend, Donald Rumsfeld.

Nutzer der kürzlich staatsanwaltschaftlich vom Netz genommenen Video-on-demand-website kino.to und anderer, vergleichbarer sogenannter "illegaler Downloadseiten" gehen weit häufiger ins Kino als der Durchschnittsbürger. Dies belegt eine Studie, die bereits vor einiger Zeit von der Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK) unternommen wurde. Das Brisante an dieser Studie: Sie führte zu Ergebnissen, die der GfK, die als Lobbyist großer Medienkonzerne unter anderem für die Ermittlung von Einschaltquoten zuständig ist, derart unangenehm sind, dass sie nicht publiziert wurde.

Indeed, the very insurance that was being held in public coffers by the Hellnic Postbank, is today worth approximately 27 billion dollars according to numbers cited by Mr. Kammenos on multiple occaisions. Considering that Greece is now under duress to raise collateral for its “bailout” money, 27 billion dollars would go a long way towards preventing the privatization and sale of the nation’s assets to foreigners (this figure assumes a partial default and subsequent payout). Unfortunately, the Greek government is no longer in possession of this 27 billion worth of CDS, because it sold them in December of 2009, for a paltry 40 million dollar profit. According the Mr. Kammenos, the contracts were sold to a private firm for “high net-worth individuals” founded in 2009, by the name of IJ Partners.IJ Partners, based in Geneva, has a number of well-known Greeks who serve as either managing partners or members of the board, including former IMF economist Miranda Xafa (who intermediated Greece’s dealings with the IMF), former CEO of Piraeus Bank (one of the banks named in a law suit as shorting Greek government bonds during the period in question) and Theodore Margellos, the well-known exporter who was accused of falsely passing off imported corn from Kosovo as Greek produce. I should also note that according to Mr. Kammenos’ accusations, the firm’s Vice President, Mr. Jose-Maria-Figueres, shares board membership on a separate NGO with none other than the Prime Minister’s own brother, Mr. Andreas Papandreou Jr.  

Bear with me now. The RDA dates back to 1959, and was maybe Bill Veeck's biggest hustle in a long lifetime of hustles. Veeck argued to the IRS that professional athletes, once they've been paid for, "waste away" like livestock. Therefore a sports team's roster, like a farmer's cattle or an office copy machine or a new Volvo, is a depreciable asset.The underlying logic is specious at best. As Fort points out, a team's roster at any given moment isn't actually depreciating. While some players are fading with age, others are developing and improving. But the Nets don't have to pay more taxes when a player becomes more valuable. And in any case, the cost of depreciation is borne by the athletes themselves, when they pass their primes and lose their personal earning power.  

But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark’s acid worked as advertised. “It was quite enjoyable, to be honest,” he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some “silver haze” pot purchased off Silk Road. “It was legit,” he said. “It was better than anything I’ve seen.”

Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Internet traffic in the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall.

Each year at Disney World, thousands of interns earn academic credit for flipping burgers or parking cars. Ross Perlin learns about vague assignments, long hours, and the meaning of the phrase “protein spill.”