A lawyer who sent out hundreds of thousands of threatening letters demanding that alleged file-sharers pay 400 euros, has been banned from operating for 6 months. Elizabeth Martin, who had been working with Swiss anti-piracy outfit, Logistep, was condemned by the Paris Bar Council
The head of one of Britain’s biggest internet providers has criticised the music industry for demanding that he act against pirates. The trade body for UK music, the BPI, asked internet service providers to disconnect people who ignore requests to stop sharing music. But Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, which runs the TalkTalk broadband service, is refusing. He said it is not his job to be an internet policeman
Microsoft has dropped two strong hints in the past two days that the next version of its Windows operating system will arrive in 2009, shaving up to a year off previous expectations. It could also be a signal that Microsoft intends to cut its losses with Windows Vista, which has been poorly received or shunned by customers, especially large companies. Microsoft has long said it wants to release Windows 7 about three years after Vista, which was released to manufacturing in November 2006 but not officially launched until January 2007. Given Microsoft’s recent track record — Vista arrived more than five years after XP — most outsiders had pegged some time in 2010 as a safe bet for Windows 7’s arrival
Microsoft has announced that a version of Windows XP Home will continue to be available until either 30 June 2010, or one year following the release of its next-generation Windows 7 operating system
Firefox 3 Beta 5 was released today. This last beta release sports performance-boosting improved connection parallelism. Not only has ‘the memory leak’ been fixed: Firefox now uses less memory than other browsers. The final release of Firefox 3 is expected in June — via Slashdot
Google plans to split off its search marketing arm from its affiliate marketing business and sell the search marketing business at its recently acquired DoubleClick advertising technology unit. The online search and advertising leader is looking to spin off its Chicago-based search marketing business, Performics, which employs 200 of DoubleClick’s 1,500 staff. Tom Phillips, director of DoubleClick’s integration efforts with Google, said the company wants to dispose of the search marketing business to eliminate the perception Google might favor the unit in its search results and other efforts
Adobe is readying a new version of its Creative Suite, the software bundle that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and other applications for print and Web design. Only this time there’s a twist: The new version of Photoshop will support 64-bit memory addressing for the first time — but only if you’re running Windows
Microsoft’s bid to make the Open XML (OOXML) file formats international standards has succeeded, barring any last-minute changes
The federal government has cancelled the contract for Optus and Elders to build a WiMAX broadband network
An embryonic planet detected outside our Solar System could be less than 2,000 years old. The ball of dust and gas, which is in the process of turning into a Jupiter-like giant, was detected around the star HL Tau, by a UK team. Research leader Dr Jane Greaves said the planet’s growth may have been kickstarted when another young star passed the system 1,600 years ago
Google Docs is getting offline access baked in with Google Gears starting with a small number of users today, the Official Google Docs blog reports — via lifehacker
Virgin Media in the UK has announced that it is working with the music industry to chase down its file-sharing customers and disconnect them from the internet. At the same time, it will offer an enhanced service which will see its customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the music industry
If you’ve ever wondered where stolen credit card numbers end up, Finjan might have part of the answer. The security company-cum-cybersleuthing outfit has uncovered a Web site supermarket for stolen card data. The SellCVV2
Web site, as it is called, was found to be trading the card numbers and other data in a number of sophisticated ways. Criminals visiting the site would be able to earn discounts based on volume bought and choose from a range of tiers, starting at the least valuable Classic Visa or MasterCard — those with the lowest credit limits — through more valuable Gold, Platinum and Corporate levels
Users of Google Calendar are angry and frustrated that they have been unable to access the Web-based application at various times over the past two weeks. Google, in a note on its Calendar help page, said Google Calendar was experiencing temporary performance issues
that were affecting users of Google Account and Google Apps. It gave no indication of when the problem would be fixed. Google Calendar users who are unable to access their calendars are venting their frustrations on the Google Calendar Troubleshooting Group
Three-quarters of phishing sites are built on hacked servers that have been tracked down using pre-programmed Google search terms, according to research from brand-protection firm MarkMonitor. Among other activities, MarkMonitor tracks phishing attacks that target brand names. Researchers compiled a list of 750 Google search terms that are used to track down websites likely to have easily exploitable vulnerabilities — mostly PHP-based sites
Mozilla Lab’s push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it’s running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications. Chris Beard, VP of Labs for Mozilla, wants the new online/offline, browser/service to be more intelligent on behalf of its users. Early examples of this intelligence include the awesome bar
, which is what Mozilla calls the new smart address bar in Firefox 3. It offers users smart URL suggestions as they type based on Web searches and their prior Web browsing history. He’s looking to extend on this with a linguistic user interface
that lets users type plain English commands into the browser bar — via Slashdot
US cable operator Comcast said that it would change the way it managed its network and would co-operate with critics to resolve allegations that it had unreasonably interfered with some Internet file-sharing services like BitTorrent
The Church of Scientology has come under fire for some items on their recently launched video channel. Most notably, claims have been leveled that dignitaries in one of their videos were faked and at least one of the people featured in the video is claiming their statements were taken out of context — via Slashdot
Whilst one site may have closed its doors thanks to the MPAA, after continuous legal pressure, another has prevailed today in court. Torrent.is has won in court over the Association of film rights-holder in Iceland (SMÁÍS)
Due to server complications, CBC decided to team up with mininova and let them seed the torrent files for Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister
. It is great to see that mainstream broadcasters use BitTorrent to share their content online, and even better, that they use mininova’s content distribution platform to do so
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