Technology

Australia’s Federal and State police forces have deployed resources to investigate virtual worlds to combat money laundering by cybercriminals.

NSW Detective Superintendent Commander Colin Dyson told iTnews at the Cards and Payments Australasia conference in Sydney today that cybercriminals were using virtual, gaming platforms to communicate and transfer funds around the globe.

Dyson declined to name what virtual worlds were under investigation, noting only that they were a growing area of interest for State and Federal cybercrime-fighting teams — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Western Digital has introduced a new line of external hard disks featuring dual drives and 2TB, 4TB and 6TB capacities. Called the My Book Studio Edition II, the new storage line will provide creative professionals and Mac enthusiasts with 33 percent more storage than the previous hard-drive models while maintaining the same footprint, the company said. — via redwolf.newsvine.com

20GB of data storage for $5 a year or 16TB for $4,096. That’s Google’s offer for cloud storage despite the loss of data for some Gmail users. Google’s User Managed Storage has been extended to apps such as Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, and Blogger photos. An analyst said User Managed Storage should be limited to expendable data — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Part of the process of becoming a new eBay employee is selecting your company laptop. I was offered a choice: Lenovo Thinkpad or MacBook Pro. Coming from a Linux development world, I picked the Mac, thinking it would be closer to what I am used to.

Man, did I fuck up.

Thankfully, I still have my Ubuntu workstation to get real work done on, but the Mac does it duty — running Outlook, maybe Firefox or Google Chrome every now and then. Oh, I also have VMWare installed on it so I can boot Windows to browser test in Internet Explorer. I should have picked the PC, at least then I would save myself the step of booting VMWare.

So what’s wrong with using the Mac as a development machine for Milo, a Python application backed by PostgreSQL and Redis (or any web project, for that matter)? Well, sacred cow, here come the spears — via redwolf.newsvine.com

I’ve often wondered why people who use their PCs for basic stuff–like checking e-mail and browsing the Web — are required to buy hardware that’s far more powerful than what they really require. With that power comes the complexity of operating systems preloaded with applications and utilities that many people will never use, making PCs unapproachable for people who aren’t tech savvy.

That’s all changing–first, with the introduction of netbooks, and now even more so with the iPad. Apple’s tablet brings appliance-like simplicity to light computing needs, and brought my mother, who is in her early 60s and had never used a computer before, onto the Web. I’ve documented her fresh perspective on the iPad in this interview — via redwolf.newsvine.com

US scientist Paul Baran, whose work in the 1960s helped pave the way for the internet, has died aged 84 — via redwolf.newsvine.com

There is no evidence that illegal downloading has led to a decline in new music and it is the war on piracy itself that has docked big record label revenues by preventing them from embracing the digital age faster, new studies have found.

The new research comes after revelations last week that the entertainment industry, particularly the music business, has been frequently dishonest with the public about the impact of piracy — via The Sydney Morning Herald

Learn how Boot Camp maps Microsoft Windows functions and special keys to the external Apple Keyboard (Ultra–thin USB), as well as which keys to use for various functions — via Apple

A man who used child pornography and offensive messages to deface online tribute pages for two slain schoolchildren has been sentenced to a year in prison.

Bradley Paul Hampson, 29, yesterday pleaded guilty to trolling the Facebook pages of an eight-year-old Bundaberg girl, abducted from her home, and a 12-year-old boy, stabbed to death at a Brisbane school — via redwolf.newsvine.com

More than half of second-hand mobile phones still contain personal information of the previous owner, posing a risk of identity fraud, CPP has warned — via redwolf.newsvine.com