Convicted Aryan Brotherhood Bosses Used 400 Year Old Crypto

After a five month trial and two weeks of deliberation, a jury in Santa Ana has convicted two leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang of racketeering and murder. Barry The Baron Mills and Tyler and The Hulk Bingham were found guilty of ordering attacks on black inmates from maximum security cellblocks, and are now eligible for the death penalty. How did they order hits from within such high-security cells? With 400-year-old crypto, and invisible ink made from urine — via Boing Boing

RIAA Will Drop Cases If You Point Out That an IP Address Isn’t a Person

For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorised files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network

United States Cedes Control of the Internet

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet’s instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organization a more international body

The Latest Attempt At Gecko-Derived Adhesives

Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors. The plastic, known as Synthetic Gecko, has been developed by researchers at aerospace and defence firm BAE Systems. Like the reptile’s foot, the polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip — via Warren Ellis

Microsoft Tags IE7 High Priority Update

IE7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a high priority update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday in the US. Automatic Updates is a Windows feature typically used for security updates, but Microsoft has also used it to push its antipiracy tool WGA Notifications

CEO Shawn Hogan Takes on MPAA

Shawn Hogan, CEO of Digital Point Solutions, has found himself on the receiving end of an MPAA lawsuit claiming he downloaded a copy of Meet the Fockers on Bittorrent. Mr Hogan both denies the charges as well as claims he already owns the movie on DVD. After being asked to pay a $2500 extortion fee, Mr Hogan lawyered up and has vowed to challenge and help change the MPAA’s tactics. They’re completely abusing the system, Hogan says. Although expecting to pay well over $100,000 to defend himself, he claims I would spend well into the millions on this via Slashdot

ISPs Scramble After Fault with Link to US

Australians should not be experiencing problems accessing US Web sites despite network issues connecting the country to the USA, according to Southern Cross Cable Network. The owner of 30,000 kilometres of cable network linking Australia and New Zealand to the US, Southern Cross said a hardware failure in its network located in California — not the undersea cable itself — was the cause of the downtime. However, traffic was re-routed to its secondary line this morning as soon as the failure was detected

IPTV for Kiwis, but Australia Waits

New Zealanders will be able to watch video services such as internet protocol television as early as next year using a high-speed network developed by Telecom New Zealand. The likelihood of Australians using such services on a widespread basis soon are low, with news yesterday that Telstra’s talks with the competition regulator over a $4 billion fibre-network have all but collapsed

New Disk-Lubricating Process Could Bring 1-Terabyte Laptops

A disc drive manufacturer has patented a process that may bring about computer hard drives and handheld devices that can store as much as a terabyte of information. Researchers at Seagate Technology acknowledge that such levels of storage on small, commercial products are still five years to a decade away, but they feel confident they’ve hit on a way to overcome a major limitation in disk manufacturing and capacity via digg

Internode Paddles Upstream

Internode is planning a trial of a new flavour of ADSL it says will provide a major lift to upstream data speeds. An adjunct to the ADSL2+ standard, the Annex M protocol has the potential to lift data upload speeds to 2.5 Mbps, compared to the 1Mbps available under the current Annex A already in use. Download speeds remain the same, at 24Mbps

Growing Insulin

A Calgary biotech firm has developed a process to turn genetically modified safflower oil into human insulin in commercial quantities. The process reduces capital costs by 70% and product cost by 40%. SemBioSys says it can make more than one kilogram of human insulin per acre of safflower production. That amount could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year and, in turn, meet the world’s total projected insulin demand in 2010 with less than 16,000 acres of safflower production via Slashdot