The Internet Crime Complaint Center (I3C) has released its annual report of online misconduct, with 2007 showing a huge increase in the amount of money lost to theft.

Though the number of complaints has been steadily decreasing since its peak in 2005, the total losses were the highest yet at $239.09 million. This is an increase of $40.65 million over 2006, or about 20.5% year over year.

Two Google counsel said in a blog post this morning that Google didn't really want wireless bandwidth, even though it did place a bid during the FCC's recent 700 MHz spectrum auction.

Verizon Wireless spent $9.6 billion to win a majority of licenses for spectrum in the coveted C block. But Google is claiming at least partial credit for the auction's results, with the search engine leader saying today its intent was to drive up the asking price "in order to reach "the $4.6 billion reserve price that will trigger the important 'open access' and 'open applications' license conditions."

A printed tape offered as evidence of the integrity of a Sequoia Voting Systems machine failed a very obvious test last week, as a Princeton professor noted a simple column of numbers actually added up to 105, not 106.

The Princeton University professor who has received national acclaim for his efforts to assess the true integrity of electronic voting machines, discovered one very simple error amid the evidence one manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems, had actually offered in its own defense. In recent weeks, Sequoia has found itself in hot water again for as many as sixty separate discrepancies reported in a single election in New Jersey last February 3.

The third update to Redmond's answer to Flash addresses several bugs within the platform.

The technology is still not seeing widespread use outside of Microsoft's own sites, but that is not stopping Microsoft from pressing forward with Silverlight. The company is simultaneously working on the second major version as well.

Motorola said Monday it had reached an agreement with the activist investor to place two of his allies on the company's board, one of them effective immediately.

Icahn Enterprises chief Keith Meister will be appointed to serve on the board immediately, and also be nominated for election to the board on the 2008 proxy statement. Additionally, investment banker William Hambrecht will be nominated.

After years of legal struggles over the two Harvard-rooted social networking sites and their respective origins, ConnectU and Facebook appear to be finally settling.

The suit dates back to 2004 in Boston's Federal District Court, when ConnectU's founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra sued Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly illegally using source code in his site that he had written for ConnectU's predecessor, called HarvardConnection.

A complete withdrawal from the table at this point might spur shareholder resentment, but Yahoo's executives and board had to make some signal in light of Microsoft's claims last week of foot-dragging.

In recognizing what many independent financial analysts termed an untenable position, Yahoo's new chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang responded to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "time is running out" statement on Friday by saying it would be unopposed to some kind of fair transaction with Microsoft that Yahoo's board would feel is in the best interests of its shareholders.

An advance notification regarding Microsoft's Patch Tuesday promises eight security updates to Windows, Office, and IE vulnerabilities and eight more non-security related updates for Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services.

Five of the patches are rated as "Critical," the highest level of severity given to updates, and most of those patches affect Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The remaining three updates are classified as "Important." These updates may require a restart. There will also be eight high priority but non-security related updates on Windows Update and Windows Server Update Service.

Intel, Phoenix Technologies, Fujitsu-Siemens, Lenovo, and McAfee have announced their collaborative effort to create a remote access solution that allows a laptop to be locked down in the event of a theft or loss.

Precisely how Intel's Anti-Theft Technology (ATT) will function was not fully elucidated today at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, but it has been said that it will be added to the Active Management Technology present in Centrino vPro systems, which enables remote management functions.

When it looks like things couldn't get any worse, OnSat Network Communications is expected on Monday to pull the plug on thousands of Internet users who reside in Navajo Nation. Residents use the wireless connection of reservation chapter houses after they get home from work or school.

Navajo Nation is a 27,000-square-mile Indian reservation spread across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and is home to more than 175,000 residents.

Citing troubles in setting up backhaul connections, Sprint said its XOHM WiMAX service will not see widespread commercial availability until "later this year."

As the first company attempting a major WiMAX deployment in the United States, Sprint's service has seen its share of doubt from analysts and consumers alike, citing the company's budget problems in operating three separate networks, and instability in upper management.

Now that the FCC has lifted its gag order on Auction 73, major wireless bandwidth stakeholders are talking about their strategies around 4G LTE wireless, where AT&T will play in the B Block of the 700 MHz spectrum and Verizon Wireless in the more tightly regulated C Block.

Verizon Wireless, the big winner in the C Block auction that ended on March 20, confirmed in a conference call today that it will use its newly won bandwidth to launch LTE services for consumers in the 2010 time frame.

Ericsson recently unveiled its M700 platform, a next-generation mobile chipset for 4G LTE broadband that will offer up to 100Mbit/s download and up to 50Mbit/s upload rate.

The announcement comes during the same week of CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas, where mobile technologies such as WiMAX have been snapping up news headlines. WiMAX is a competing 4G standard backed by Sprint, Motorola and Intel.

Microsoft developer Ashish Thapliyal has published a roadmap for the Silverlight 2 Web platform, confirming a final launch scheduled for the summer, and noting that Silverlight won't be able to play back .flv Flash video files.

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 made its debut at MIX 08 last month with a limited non-commercial license. Beta 2 is slated for release this quarter and will allow developers to launch commercial applications built atop the platform. Microsoft typically lets developers to do this with its near-finished betas using what it calls a "Go-Live" license.

The British Home Office today announced it wants to stop convicted sex offenders from using social networking Web sites by making it illegal for them to sign up. Parliament is scheduled to take a look at the legislation before 2009.

Registered pedophiles would be forced to give their e-mail address to police authorities, who will turn the e-mail over to social networking sites for them to be blacklisted. If caught violating the law and using an e-mail address not given to the government, convicted child sex offenders could face up to five years in prison.