A hacker who hijacked hundreds of PCs to create a botnet has been sentenced to 41 months in jail by a US court. Robert Matthew Bentley of Panama City, Florida also faces $65,000 (¬£33,000) in fines and will be under supervision for three years on his release. The hijacked PCs were used to attack other computers and install programs that plagued users with pop-up adverts. He was caught following an investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Computer Crime Unit
Canada, one of the shining lights in the copyright and intellectual property world, has a shadow approaching that may dim that for all. The name of that shadow? Bill c-61, which was formally introduced by Industry minister Jim Prentice an hour or two ago. One of the highlights
is the abolition of court’s flexibility in statutory damages, fixing it at CA$500
An advanced satellite that will improve greatly the ability of UK military forces to communicate around the globe has been launched into space. The Skynet 5C platform rode into orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. It joins the 5A and 5B satellites lofted successfully last year and which are already handling secure traffic for UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. Thirty-six Labour MPs joined forces with Conservatives and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals. But that was not enough to defeat them — although the government still faces a battle in the House of Lords
The Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons division is looking for technologies that could disable
aircraft, before they can take off from a runway — or block the planes from flying over a given city or stretch of land. The Directorate’s program managers don’t mention how engineers might pull off such a kill switch. But, however it’s done, they’d like to have a similar system for boats, as well. They’re looking for a device that can, from 100 metres away, safely stop or significantly impede the movement
of vessels up to 40 feet long, with minimal collateral damage
— via Slashdot
WiMax is forecast to take off in the Asia Pacific region, reaching 43 million subscribers and estimated revenues of US$11 billion by the end of 2013 — but Australia will not be featuring heavily in the mass adoption. Australian WiMax users will only make up for two per cent of the multi-million dollar market in 2013
Mozilla announced Wednesday that it plans to release the final version of Firefox 3 on Tuesday, 17 June, less than a week away
Gears, Google’s project to make Web browsers a better foundation for elaborate online applications, now supports Firefox 3
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events
This Sunday, the Swedish Left Party voted in favour of a motion calling for the legalisation of sharing copyrighted files for personal use. The party, which currently holds 22 seats in the Swedish parliament, sees piracy as something positive, much like public libraries
Apple previewed the next generation of its popular Mac OS X operating system — Snow Leopard — on the opening day of the Mac-maker’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco
Three major US internet provides have agreed to block access to web sites and online discussion groups featuring child pornography. The pervasiveness of child pornography on the internet is horrific and it needs to be stopped,
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement on the agreement with Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable
Apple has unveiled a next-generation iPhone with faster internet access that will run on advanced wireless networks and sell for as low as US$199 — half the current entry-level price
All paper is made of cellulose, which at the nanoscale level is quite strong, but paper processing makes large, fragile fibers that break easily. Researchers in Sweden have have come up with a manufacturing process that keeps the fibers small, resulting in nanopaper
with over 1.6 times the tensile strength of cast iron (214 megapascals vs 130 mPa). And since cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, it’s cheap to use compared to other exotic, expensive-to-produce options — such as carbon nanotubes — via Slashdot
Scientists unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise
The encyclopaedia Britannica web site is rolling out a new system allowing readers to potentially contribute to articles. Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia’s user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Unsurprisingly then, it is keen to stress that its new web site will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it as a collaborative process but not a democratic one
. Indeed, under the new Britannica scheme those who wish to contribute will need to create a profile outlining their qualifications and expertise in the area they are commentating on. They will then be able to add comments to encyclopaedia entries, or write their own. This content will then be reviewed by the expert editors of the site, and if any of it is deemed worthy of inclusion, added to the main article with a credit
In a first, Google is opening up its testing process by calling on tens of millions of Gmail users to put new features of the service through their paces. Gmail Labs has launched 13 settings for users to play around with and tell engineers directly what they think of them
A dog trained to sniff out pirated discs, from a Malaysian unit that has faced threats from criminals, has been found dead. Manny, a one-year-old golden Labrador which arrived in Malaysia in February, died about a week ago and that authorities were trying to determine how it died
Comcast may have agreed to end its practice of using forged TCP reset packets to hinder the P2P traffic of its customers, but the cable provider isn’t out of the woods yet. Three class-action lawsuits were filed against Comcast this week in California, Illinois, and New Jersey, alleging that the company deceived and misled consumers by advertising that it offered unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer
Windows XP SP3 has been named as the culprit causing home routers to go into a crash and reboot cycle. One router maker has released firmware updates to fix the problem, but has not yet revealed what is actually different about XP SP3’s networking stack or UPnP behaviour that causes the problem. Router maker Billion Managing Director Raaj Menon said as Microsoft plans to make Windows XP SP3 an automatic upgrade this month, the number of affected routers may increase significantly
— via Slashdot
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