Are you a spare-bedroom merchant? Time to start reporting sales to the IRS.

Three topics will dominate Obama's press conference tonight.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--President Obama's to-do list for Tuesday night's press conference is daunting: sell his $3.6 trillion budget to the public, explain the public-private partnership he's proposed to save the banking system and convey that despite rising unemployment and a shaky stock market, he remains the man who can safely return America to prosperity.

Making things harder: the lingering furor over $165 million in bonuses paid to executives at American International Group (nyse: AIG - news - people ) and concern that his budget is $2.3 trillion further in the red than expected. He'll likely be peppered with questions about whether he would veto a bill to impose a 90% excise tax on some bonus income and how the administration plans to win over skeptical lawmakers if it needs to prop up the financial system with more bailout cash.

Want an example of what Obama's up against? Look no further than what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced at a House of Representatives committee hearing Tuesday.

Geithner and Bernanke went to the Hill with a basic message: The government needs to establish a regulatory mechanism to allow for the orderly unwinding of non-bank financial firms like AIG, should they fail.

Instead, they faced a barrage of questions from lawmakers: What constitutional right does the Treasury Department have to keep dumping taxpayer money into failed companies? What role has Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ), an AIG creditor, played in government bailouts? Should the issuance of credit default swaps be grounded until further notice? Who know what about AIG's bonuses and when?

The administration is keen to put in place part two of its response to the economic crisis: its budget and a new set of guidelines to revamp the regulation of the financial services industry. President Obama has conceded that "the specific details and dollar amounts in this budget will undoubtedly change." But he wants it to contain at least four elements: investment in clean energy, commitment to education, reform of health care policies and a reduction in the federal deficit.

As for a financial services overhaul, the administration wants to, in part, plug a hole in the current regulatory system by allowing the government to act as a "receiver" for all financial institutions, taking on a role similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in dealing with failed banks. This would allow Uncle Sam to sell a business' assets and liabilities and renegotiate contracts with employees and counterparties.

 

Tuesday night, also expect the president to talk about fiscal responsibility, stressing the market's 500-point gain Monday in reaction to Geithner's plan. He'll likely mention the need for broad fiscal stimulus worldwide, as he prepares to meet with leaders from other G-20 nations in London in less than two weeks.

But before he does any of these things, President Obama will first need to regain control of the dialogue.

The DNS infrastructure of the Internet plays a critical role in resolving host and domain names into IP addresses. A great deal of effort has gone into ensuring that DNS works efficiently and is resilient in the face of server failures, incorrect data, or malicious attempts to disrupt the system. But even with these safeguards in place, the system is still subject to attack.

The potential benefit for someone involved in Internet fraud is huge. If you can change the DNS records for a major bank so that they point to your fake site, then you can potentially capture the account numbers and passwords of anyone who logs into the system. This approach sidesteps the need to send out email messages that try to get users to log in, but it does require a high level of technical sophistication. Two approaches have been used: DNS Poisoning and Pharming .

DNS servers around the Internet keep their tables updated by querying other more authoritative servers. The structure is a hierarchy with the network root servers at its origin. In a DNS poisoning attack, DNS servers are manipulated to fetch updated, incorrect DNS records from a server that has been set up by the attacker. This is a sophisticated type of attack to which modern DNS servers are largely immune. But successful attacks do still take place, usually by exploiting bugs in the server software. In March 2005, the SANS Internet Storm Center reported one such attack in which users were redirected to sites that contained spyware, which was then downloaded to users' computers. A detailed report on this attack can be found at http://isc.sans.org/presentations/dnspoisoning.php.

Pharming is somewhat of an umbrella term for several different approaches to manipulating DNS records. Rather than going after DNS servers directly, an attacker may try to con a domain registrar into changing the authoritative DNS record for a domain to point to their fake site. Examples of this form of social engineering have included someone simply calling a registrar on the phone and persuading them that they represent the owner of the target domain.

One example of this involved the New York-based Internet service provider Panix. In January 2005, an attacker was able to transfer control of its DNS records to a server in the United Kingdom, with all company email being redirected to a server in Canada. Even though the problem was spotted quickly, the impact on the company and its customers was substantial.

Another form of attack takes advantage of the fact that most operating systems have a local file of hostname-to-IP-address mappings that will be queried before making a remote DNS query. If such a file contains a match, then that address will be used without any further lookups. This has been exploited by a computer virus called the Banker Trojan. In addition to logging user keystrokes, it adds lines to the end of a host file on a Windows system that will redirect users to fake bank sites. Many variants of this trojan have been found.

DNS is fundamental to the operation of the Internet and usually works so well that people take it for granted. Attacks like these are a reminder that all components of the Internet are vulnerable.

A startup called Zeebo Inc. is betting that people in emerging markets want to play good video games just as much as people in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan do.

Zeebo plans to launch its "video game console for the next billion" in Brazil next month for $199 and other countries later in the year for $179. It was developed using the cell phone technology of Qualcomm Inc. (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ), the San Diego company best known for its mobile phone chips.

The Zeebo unit is light, and a little larger than the Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) Wii. But instead of playing video games on disks, the Zeebo will use digitally downloaded games - distributed through cell phone networks that players don't even have to subscribe to.

The console is not meant to directly compete with the latest, powerful devices like Sony Corp. (nyse: SNE - news - people )'s PlayStation 3, Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s Xbox 360, or the Wii.

Rather, said Zeebo CEO John F. Rizzo, it is targeted at consumers in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil and Eastern Europe who generally can't afford the latest high-end consoles, or the games published for them. In many of these countries, cell phone service is more readily available and cheaper than wired broadband.

Zeebo, unveiled Monday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, attaches to any TV and uses a fraction of the electricity that high-end gaming consoles need. Its batteries can be juiced with what looks like a typical cell phone charger.

The Zeebo's technological capability is somewhere between that of the original PlayStation, which launched in 1994, and its 2000 follow-up, the PlayStation 2. By U.S. standards this won't elicit many oohs and aahs, but Rizzo said the vast majority of the Zeebo's target market has not played an ultra-realistic modern video game. In Brazil, for example, a two-decades old system called Mega Drive, called Sega (other-otc: SEGNF.PK - news - people ) Genesis in the U.S., still sells well, said Reinaldo Normand, Zeebo's vice president of business development and licensing.

Zeebo hopes that by improving on systems like Mega Drive and offering wireless downloads of games, it will attract the emerging middle classes of India, China and Brazil to modern video games. A game like "Quake" may be old news to an American gamer today, but in 1996 it blew people's minds - just what Zeebo hopes it will do in Brazil.

Big game publishers like Electronic Arts Inc. (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ), THQ Inc. (nasdaq: THQI - news - people ) and Activision Blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI - news - people ) Inc. have agreed to make their games available for Zeebo. The question now is whether its target market, which the company estimates to be as big as 800 million, will sign on as well.

So far, video game consoles have not been successful in emerging markets. In addition to the price barrier for many consumers, piracy is widespread, which scares game publishers away.

Zeebo plans to sell games for a few dollars more than what pirated games cost on the black market (about $10 in Brazil, for example, compared with about $100 for a legally available game), hoping that the ability to buy games from the comfort of home will lure consumers. Next year, the company plans to drop the price of the console to $149.

Mike Yuen, senior director of games and services at Qualcomm, compared the Zeebo's content delivery system to the Amazon Kindle, the electronic book reader that requires no subscription fees - just the purchase of the device and the content. Zeebo also said it plans to let customers have access to the console's broadband wireless service by connecting the device to their PCs.

Zeebo did not say how much money went into developing the console, but Rizzo noted that the company has only five full-time employees. The system, he said, is "designed from the ground up to be economically viable."

"Launching a new console is not for the faint of heart," Rizzo said.

Zeebo's launch reminded some people in the industry of the Phantom gaming system, which earlier this decade tried to digitally distribute computer games - but didn't really get anywhere. However, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter pointed out a key difference. While the Phantom was meant for U.S. markets, which already had easy access to high-end gaming consoles, the Zeebo taps an entirely new market.

Citing McDonald's (nyse: MCD - news - people ), which popularized the fast-food hamburger, and Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ), the mother of one-stop stores, as examples, Pachter said "anyone who's ever made money in business has exploited an unexploited market."

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

It's probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week's Hive Five.

Picture background created with WEB2DNA Art Project.

The only proper way to follow up on the passionate flurry of voting that last week's Hive Five Best Linux Distributions created was to ask you about your favorite web browser. You didn't disappoint—Lifehacker readers came out in force, logging nearly a thousand votes to support their favorite browsers. We've tallied up the votes and we're here to share the top five browsers.

Chrome

Windows only (for practical purposes, but soon on Mac and Linux, if we're lucky): Some browsers have roots going back to the early 1990s—Chrome, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block. Although Chrome has a distant relationship to Konqueror and is a cousin to the Safari web browser—both share the speedy WebKit rendering engine—Google's browser is less than a year old. Despite its youth, it's already garnered praise for its minimalist interface and snappy page rendering. Chrome also handles site errors and quirks well, and each individual tab is a unique process, so a crash or lag in one shouldn't pull down or crash the others. In general, though, Chrome has caught attention for running a performance-focused JavaScript engine in a lightweight GUI. Also worth noting, Chrome has been holding its own in the recent Pwn2Own security challenge, with the distinction of being the only browser left standing after the first day of security exploits and attacks. For a closer look at Chrome, check out our screenshot tour.

Opera

Windows/Mac/Linux: Opera is a rock-solid browser with roots stretching back to 1994. Many of the features baked right into Opera are either not implemented in other browsers, or require multiple extensions at the cost of system resources—navigation by mouse gestures is one of the flashier examples. Despite being feature-packed, Opera has a fairly small market share, due largely in part to being trialware up until 2000 and advertisement-supported until 2005—many people were turned off by the expense, if not the ads. Still, Opera proponents have long claimed that Opera beats Internet Explorer and Firefox when it comes to speedy rendering. Another selling point for Opera is the quality of the built-in tools. For many users, the built-in RSS reader, email client, and BitTorrent client do their jobs admirably, cutting down on the number applications they need running at once. Opera is extensible, but the pool of available extensions is radically smaller than that available for Firefox. More screenshots and details on Opera's features are available here.

Firefox

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox is the grandchild of the venerable Mosaic browser and free-roaming son of Netscape. Although Firefox has a myriad of user-friendly, forward-thinking features, a decently secure framework, and an open-source ideology, its most prominent is extensibility. When convincing a Firefox user to abandon Firefox for anything else, even temporarily, you won't have to fight them over giving up the AwesomeBar or about:config tweaks—you'll hear a common, understandable refrain: "What about my extensions?" The repository of extensions maintained by Mozilla currently has over 6,000 entries, covering everything from blocking advertisements, to managing your clipboard, to allowing you to further customize your browsing experience with scripts a la Greasemonkey (here's 10 of our must-have picks). Combine the passion people have for extensions and the ability to sync those extensions across multiple computers and portable installations, and you've got a force to be contended with. For a closer look at Firefox, make sure to check out our power user's guide to Firefox 3 and the top 10 Firefox 3 features.

Internet Explorer

Windows only: Internet Explorer still commands a healthy chunk of the browser market, mostly because it ships with the most popular operating system on Earth and fits, if not exactly elegantly, into corporate computer plans. While many or most IE users stick with it for lack of wanting to try something else, Lifehacker readers definitely don't fall into that crowd—the majority of readers who voted in favor of Internet Explorer are sporting Internet Explorer 8. By contrast, nearly 20 percent of those surfing the web right now are using Internet Explorer 6, which had its initial release in 2001. Version 8 could mark a resurgence for the brand, though. It's the first version of Internet Explorer to have a strong focus on web standards compliance, as well as increasing rendering speed. And like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 maintains a separate process for each tab to increase stability and security. Internet Explorer 8 has also beefed up its security measures from previous versions, including active filtering against malicious cross-site scripting and ActiveX isolation from the core of the browser. For more information about what's new in Internet Explorer 8 check out our screenshot tour and overview.

Safari

Windows/Mac: Safari is Apple's contribution to the web browsing world, built originally to fit snugly inside OS X. Like Chrome, Safari runs the speedy WebKit rendering engine for snappy page loads. In addition to its WebKit core, Safari also has the Nitro JavaScript engine, which lays claim to radically faster JavaScript execution than Internet Explorer and Firefox (in its own testing reports, anyways). Safari sports Apple's Cover Flow browser for perusing your history and bookmarks and an eye-catching display of the top 24 sites you've visited as the default page when Safari is loaded. For more features, check out our screenshot tour.

You've seen the top contenders. Now it's time to log your vote for the best browser:

A company called Genkii is hoping to rope a chunk of the 40-million worldwide web-connected phones and iTouches into a new 3D avatar-based virtual world, Sparkle. Too bad virtual worlds died around 4 years ago.

Genkii appear to have had Sparkle in the works for quite some time, but they must have spat out whatever drink they were drinking at the time when Apple announced their inter-app micro-commerce structure for iPhone 3.0, which is perfectly tailored to Second Life's "pay 65 cents, increase penis length by 200%" mini economy.

Currently, Genkii has a $5 IM app in the App Store that ties into your Second Life IM account. They hope to expand their actual standalone virtual world later this year, preserving the ability to tie into pre-existing worlds like Second Life and Playstation Home.

If there is anyone out there who can't wait to get a mini avatar on their iPhone, buy it clothes and an apartment, and seek out other mini avatars to IM with, forgive my skepticism. But I think Sparkle has missed the boat by about a half decade. We'll see what happens. [TechCrunch]

Nokia 7205 Intrigue Looks Like an Actually Decent Flip Phone

Best Buy, like many other stores, has a public "price matching" policy. But HD Guru reports that according to internal docs, personnel are trained to deny price-matches and even paid bonuses for shutting them down.

This all comes out of a lawsuit that was just granted class action status. Internal documents, plus depositions from past and current Best Buy employees reveal just how evil Best Buy is. A price match is when, say, Circuit City advertised a Sharp HDTV for cheaper than Best Buy, Best Buy's public policy is to match that price.

But Best Buy actually trains employees in New York how to deny legitimate price match requests, and the average Best Buy store denies 100 price matches a week. You even get paid bonuses based on how many price matches you deny!

Here's how it works, according to Phil Britton, a member of Best Buy's Competitive Strategies Group:

What is the first thing we do when a customer comes in to our humble box brandishing a competitor's ad asking for a price match? We attempt to build a case against the price match. (Trust me, I've done it too). Let's walk through the "Refused Price Match Greatest Hits:

"Not same model? Not in stock at the competitor? Do we have free widget with purchase? Is it from a warehouse club (they have membership fees, you know)? Limited Quantities? That competitor is across town? We've got financing! Is it an internet price? It's below cost!….."

If you live in NY state, and you've been screwed by Best Buy's anti-price matching, HD Guru has further info on the attorney to contact so you can take a piece out of Best Buy. What a bunch of scum.

Update: Giz reader Jake reveals how they scam you on model numbers to avoid price matching:

Example: A few months ago my wife and I were looking at a Frigidaire Washer. The model we were interested was the ATF8000FS. At Best Buy, we found the washer there however it was displayed as the ATF8000FSL. At first I figured "Oh this must be some variation on the original model number, like how manufacturers sometimes add a letter to the end of the model to indicate the product color." Anyways, to make a long story short, this ATF8000FSL was not available from the manufacturer.

The "L" was added on by Best Buy in order for them to skirt around price matching. This is so no one can come to Best Buy and claim to have found a lower price of this product because no one else sells the product under the model number ATF8000FSL. It's ATF8000FS everywhere else. Best Buy will tell people that its simply a different product, so therefore, no price matching. Even on the manufacturer's sticker on the washer, it said ATF8000FS, as it was supposed to. Upon further investigation I could see that Best Buy's internal computers even listed the model as ATF8000FSL.

Suncor Energy Inc. will acquire Petro-Canada in a US$15.5 billion deal that will unite two of Canada's biggest oil companies, the companies announced Monday.

The move is expected to yield savings in operating costs of over CA (nyse: CA - news - people )$300 million (US$244 million) year, and annual capital efficiencies above CA$1 billion (US$812 million), the companies said.

Under the deal, Petro-Canada (nyse: PCZ - news - people ) common shareholders will receive 1.28 common shares of the expanded company for each share of Petro-Canada, while Suncor shareholders will receive new shares on a one-for-one basis.

The share exchange represents a 25 percent premium for Petro-Canada shares, based on a 30-day weighted average of the share price. Based on the closing price Friday, the deal values Petro-Canada at CA$19.12 billion (US$15.5 billion)

Petro-Canada shareholders will hold 40 percent of the enlarged company and Suncor shareholders will hold 60 percent. Both companies are based in Calgary.

Monday's announcement marks the creation of the largest oil and gas company in Canada by market cap, though the merged entity will be smaller than other global heavyweights such as Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) and ConocoPhillips (nyse: COP - news - people ), which boast market capitalizations of US$326.6 billion and US$55.97 billion respectively.

"This merger creates a made-in-Canada energy leader with the assets, cost structure and financial strength to compete globally," said Rick George, president and chief executive officer of Suncor, who will continue in those roles in the new company.