A member of the Anonymous hacker collective who led an October 2010 denial of service attack against genesimmons.com and two other sites -- which were knocked offline -- has copped a plea.  Kevin George Poe, 25, was originally indicted last year on two felony charges that carried a combined maximum of 15 years in prison. However, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, he's expected to get off with probation and possibly one year of house arrest.

Why would Anonymous want to attack Gene Simmons?  Apparently, for speaking his mind about music piracy when he advised the entertainment industry to “sue everybody, take their houses, their cars. The music industry was asleep at the wheel and didn't have the balls to sue every freckle-faced kid who downloaded tracks.”

The assault on Simmons' websites, dubbed “Operation Payback,” was surely a combined effort of hackers. But while Poe’s indictment says that he conspired with “others known and unknown” to a federal grand jury, Poe appears to be the only individual charged with participating in the Simmons attack.

Don't you wish these script kiddies would do something useful like attack phishing sites and other online scams instead of someone expressing their opinion?  What I wouldn't give for a giant botnet when one of those goddam "you just won a free iPad!!!" scams pops up on Facebook.  I dream of being the Internet version of Dexter.  Yes, I kill.  But I only kill the bad guys.