Vodafone today launched Australia’s first unlimited music download service, allowing customers to access as many songs as they like for $2.75 a week. The subscription can be switched off at any time with one button on the handset but all tracks are then disabled until the user resumes paying the fees
The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional Friday and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world’s most prolific spammers. The court unanimously agreed with Jeremy Jaynes’ argument that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails. Most other states also have anti-spam laws, and there is a federal CAN-SPAM Act as well. The Virginia law is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution,
Justice G Steven Agee wrote
Microsoft has decided that Windows 7 won’t include built-in programs for e-mail, photo editing, and movie making, as was done with Windows Vista. The software maker included Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Mail, and Windows Movie Maker as part of Vista, but later chose to offer separate downloadable Windows Live programs that essentially replaced those components with versions that could connect to online services from Microsoft and others. Microsoft told CNET News late Monday that it has decided to remove those features entirely from Windows 7 and instead offer only the service-connected Windows Live versions as optional free downloads
The email accounts of Internode users were stranded over the weekend as the internet service provider battled a major storage infrastructure failure and was forced to fall back to its disaster recovery centre to restore lost services
Yahoo Mail isn’t the only Web-based mail service that could be duped into giving up someone else’s account password, the tactic that some have argued was used to break into Governor Sarah Palin’s e-mail earlier this week. Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo’s Mail all rely on automated password reset mechanisms that can be abused by knowing a username associated with an account and an Computerworld reporters and editors were able to break
into their own and colleagues’ accounts on all three services, then reset passwords armed only with the account’s username and the correct response to one of a limited number of common security questions, such as mother’s maiden name, the name of a favorite pet or the make of a first car
Two leading dissident Burmese websites have been shut down by a sophisticated cyber attack believed to have been initiated by the military junta a day before the first anniversary of Burma’s so-called Saffron Revolution. The web sites, run by the Democratic Voice of Burma and The Irrawaddy news magazine, are operated by exiles in Norway and Thailand respectively. Both were disabled on Wednesday. Inside Burma, internet services were reportedly running slowly, suggesting an attempt by the regime to stem the flow of information in and out of the country at such a sensitive time
Gmail users may have noticed a recent spike in spam clogging their inbox, but Google says it has fixed the problem. For the second time in as many months Gmail users saw a sudden increase in spam, and they reported the issue in the webmail service’s official discussion forum in recent days. On Thursday, a Google employee named Sarah chimed in by posting to the main thread devoted to this topic to say that the complaints were well-founded and had pointed Google toward a solution
Two digital rights advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the US Trade Representative in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret international treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge filed the lawsuit Wednesday after USTR ignored their repeated requests to turn over information about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work. The failure, known as a quench, caused some of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees. The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva
A court has ruled that a site providing links to P2P downloads is operating legally. The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that Sharemula.com, a site offering eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games does not break the law. The court’s decision is final and cannot be appealed
Google and General Electric said on Wednesday that they would work together on technology and policy initiatives to promote the development of additional capacity in the electricity grid and of smart grid
technologies to enable plug-in hybrids and to manage energy more efficiently. The companies said their goal was to make renewable energy more accessible and useful
With the addition of enterprise instant messaging pioneer Jabber, Cisco Systems bolsters what it calls its presence
product portfolio and makes no bones about its overall goal: to become No. 1 in the unified communication/collaboration business
Researchers at Cern have confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider managed only a few hours of operation before being shut down. The multi-billion dollar apparatus went live on 10 September and beams were sent around the 27km underground acceleration ring successfully. However, a large transformer failed a few hours into testing and has had to be replaced
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance
Amazon is readying a Content Delivery Network to compete with the likes of industry veterans Akamai Technologies and Limelight Networks. It’s another step toward cloud computing
Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called graphene
as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power
For some odd reason, Bill felt the need to spam this twice:
May I contact,by email, and discuss my ideas with
Red Wolfas I have some rather unique, perhaps unheard of, ideas that warrant some professional respect and feedback? Before I take more time and space that this little,amateurish site provides? If not Red Wolf,whom may I contact inre toThe X FilesThank You for your attention; I earnestly desire some feedback
I have repeatedly attempted to explain to Bill, using really small words, that I have no connection to Chris Carter, The X-Files or anything else he seems obsessed with. I have had no luck explaining that I’m not even in the same country he is, but it all seems to fall on deaf ears.
Oh well, I figure he’ll be back again next week.
Samsung Electronics, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, has made an unsolicited $5.85 billion cash offer for SanDisk, a Silicon Valley maker of flash memory cards that are critical components of popular devices like MP3 music players and digital cameras
Angus & Robertson today became the first Australian book chain to install the Espresso Book Machine, capable of printing, trimming and binding a paperback book on demand within minutes. Shoppers will initially be able to choose from several hundred out-of-print or difficult to get hold of books, but Angus & Robertson said the range would expand daily, reaching 10,000 within 18 months. They would cost the same as the current shelf price of paperbacks or less, the retailer said
Internet surfers will be able to walk through their favourite web sites as if they are characters in a computer game with the launch of one of the first 3D browsers in Australia today. Melbourne-based software developer ExitReality has created software that can be quickly downloaded to computers and that converts standard two-dimensional web pages into virtual rooms. Individual web users are then shown as avatars (virtual people) in the same way as people are featured in virtual games
RSS – Posts