Some video iPods made after 12 September have the RavMonE virus loaded onto it. In Apple’s announcement they take a swipe at Windows security and encourage Windows users to install anti virus applications
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an international version of the MPAA, is breathing down the necks of 8,000 users of file-sharing software. The new cases cover file sharers in 17 different countries who have been allegedly using sites including BitTorrent, eDonkey, SoulSeek and WinMX. For the first time legal action is being taken in Brazil, Mexico and Poland. The IFPI said the actions affect a wide-variety of people: a laboratory assistant has been charged in Finland, while a parson has been served with action in Germany
Creative Labs has updated
two of its MP3 players in order to break their FM radio recorder features. If you bought your Creative device because it said, Record FM radio!
on the box, you’re shit outta luck now — Creative just stole that value out from under your nose. Guess that means I’m not going to be buying anymore Creative devices — via Boing Boing
Wired News editor and former hacker Kevin Poulsen wrote a 1,000-line Perl script that checked MySpace for registered sex offenders. Sifting through the results, he manually confirmed over 700 offenders, including a serial child molester in New York actively trying to hook up with underage boys on the site, and who has now been arrested as a result. MySpace told Congress last June that it didn’t have this capability. Wired News says they will publish Poulsen’s code under an open-source license later this week — via Slashdot
Just days after patching four bugs in PowerPoint, Microsoft is warning of a new attack targeting its presentation software. Microsoft is not aware of any attacks that take advantage of the bug, but with code now in circulation on public Web sites like Securitydot.net, the attack is easily available to attackers
Microsoft is making several key changes to its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system in an attempt to soothe European antitrust worries, while keeping its worldwide distribution plans on schedule
The details of a day in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Britons will reportedly be recorded and compiled into a digital time capsule that will be stored permanently at the British Library. The One Day in History project, described as a blog for the national record
, will feature British celebrities such as actors Stephen Fry and Derek Jacobi, and the writer Bill Bryson contributing to the compilation, along with any Briton with access to the internet who wants to participate
The Australian ISP Exetel has decided to cut bandwidth for P2P traffic in half from noon to midnight. This move will save Exetel about $45,000 per month, while it only takes $75,000 to implement the bandwidth throttling mechanisms
A Hungarian airport has been bilked into trying an insane scheme to RFID-track every passenger. This panopticon was invented by snake-oil salesmen from University College London. It will track every passenger to within one meter, and it will contain countermeasures to prevent passengers from removing or trading their snitch-tags. The idea is that safety
is something abstract that can be enhanced by treating air travelers like rapists on day-release — as opposed to each traveller’s personal security of being free, and un-spied-upon. Imagine the things a terrorist could do with perfect knowledge of the location of every passenger in the airport: I think we’ll put the bomb there
— via Boing Boing
Eudora is going open source — it’ll be based on Thunderbird, the email client from the Mozilla foundation, the folks who run the Firefox project — via Boing Boing
China has partially unblocked Wikipedia. Wikipedia refused to censor itself to appease totalitarian Beijing, but China unblocked it anyway. China needs Wikipedia and Chinese net-users would access it using circumvention tools — the block on Wikipedia made Chinese Wikipedia users into automatic dissidents. Readers in China report having problems getting to the Chinese language version, and English-language articles on certain subjects, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 — via Boing Boing
The US Department of Homeland Security plans to develop software that analyses and summarises opinions expressed in articles, providing a possible tool for better monitoring what is written about the United States in the global press
Social networking web giant MySpace.com has moved to protect its Australian operation and users from music copyright infringements
Google has finally integrated Writely and spreadsheets into Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Writely.com now redirects to this new location. The design has also changed to match the look of other Google services
Microsoft appears to be more deeply involved in SCO’s legal battles against Linux than previously reported
IceWeasel is a version of Firefox created for use in free
operating systems like Debian (and its derivatives, such as Ubuntu), which eschew any element that can’t be freely reused by anyone, for any reason. Iceweasel was developed because Firefox and the Firefox logo are trademarked, and because some of the default Firefox plugins can’t be freely redistributed. Iceweasel will be synchronized with the current Firefox release, but without the non-free artwork and plugins — via Boing Boing
Mexico’s Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life. Starting Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message. Those contributions — part of media company Yahoo’s Time Capsule project — will be digitalised and beamed with a laser into space 25 October from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City
CNet looks at what happens to the loved ones of people who take their passwords to the grave — Microsoft and Yahoo will provide you with your departed’s mail (but Yahoo requires a court order!), while data that is locked up locally may not be retrievable at all — via Boing Boing
iiNet has sold its New Zealand operations, ihug, to mobile phone giant Vodafone for $NZ41 million (AU$36.4 million). ihug, New Zealand’s third biggest internet service provider, was put up for sale in July after iiNet said it had received a large number of approaches to buy the company
Google Buys YouTube
Google has agreed to purchase online video phenomenon YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. YouTube will operate independently, and the companies will work together on building new features for independent users as well as for aspiring directors, they said in a press release. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006
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