After discovering the Pirate Bay logo hadn’t been registered with the patent office, a Swedish company took the opportunity to claim it as their own in order to commercially exploit it. After bloodless negotiations, the company now seems prepared to play nice and let their application slide. But they don’t go away empty-handed
Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) have made Europe’s first arrests in the battle against the ZeuS or Zbot Trojan which threatened to compromise thousands of computers. Officers from the PCeU, assisted by Greater Manchester Police, arrested a man and woman, both aged 20 years, in Manchester for offences under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and the 2006 Fraud Act
Researchers have demonstrated a tiny chip based on silicon that could be used to diagnose dozens of diseases. A tiny drop of blood is drawn through the chip, where disease markers are caught and show up under light. The device uses the tendency of a fluid to travel through small channels under its own force, instead of using pumps
Revenue earned by artists from both concerts and recorded music sales has risen steadily over the past five years as revenue earned by labels has declined dramatically, therefore making the case that the only real loser from illegal file-sharing has been the record labels themselves
The city wifi system that was shut down by the MPAA
two weeks ago is back up. The Coshocton County courthouse based Wi-Fi system is up and running again after it was taken offline due to a single copyright infringement notice
Bacteria which glow green in the presence of explosives could provide a cheap and safe way to find hidden landmines. The bugs can be mixed into a colourless solution, which forms green patches when sprayed onto ground where mines are buried. Edinburgh University said the microbes could be dropped by air onto danger areas. Within a few hours, they would indicate where the explosives can be found
US military boffinry chiefs have stated that they will shortly issue a brace of contracts for refrigerator sized
laser blaster cannons. One of the deals will see a full-power ground prototype built which will be the final stage prior to America’s first raygun-equipped jet fighter
Mozilla will add a new lockdown feature to Firefox 3.6 that will prevent developers from sneaking add-ons into the program. The new feature, which Mozilla dubbed component directory lockdown
, will bar access to Firefox’s components
directory, where most of the browser’s own code is stored. The company has billed the move as a way to boost the stability of its browser
Today marks the end of an era, as The Pirate Bay team announces that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is shutting down for good. Although the site will remain operational for now, millions of BitTorrent users will lose the use of its tracker and will instead have to rely on DHT and alternative trackers to continue downloading
The communications watchdog has welcomed a bipartisan effort by Optus and Telstra to crack down on premium SMS providers operating on their networks. The decision of the two carriers follows industry statistics revealing skyrocketing complaints about premium SMS services and the Federal Court’s decision to impose $15.8 million worth of fines on a Queensland mobile messaging company and its directors for breaching spam laws. Telstra and Optus have agreed to engage mobile advertising and messaging compliance specialist WMC Global to monitor premium SMS services to ensure they comply with industry codes
Private New Zealand aerospace company Rocket Lab completed its final ground-based test today and is now ready to launch New Zealand into the space race with its Atea-1 launch vehicle
Seen by millions of people worldwide, the ship design used by The Pirate Bay is one of the most recognisable logos on the Internet today. But after discovering that the iconic emblem had not been officially registered, a Swedish company has hijacked the trademark as their own, with an eye on commercial exploitation
To the envy of geeks everywhere Australia’s most powerful computer has been officially launched in Canberra, ushering in a new era for scientific research. The supercomputer, jointly funded by the Australian National University, the CSIRO and the federal government, was officially launched by Science Minister Kim Carr at its new home today. The supercomputer will be operated by National Computational Infrastructure and director Lindsay Botten says the computer brings Australia’s capability into line with the top systems around the world
URL shorteners are problematical, as everybody knows, but with the rise of Twitter and its ilk they seem to be a necessary part of the landscape. Some of the biggest questions around services such as bit.ly, TinyURL, and is.gd is what happens when they go out of business (as tr.im did last August). Now a group of such companies, organised under the auspices of the Internet Archive, has formed a non-profit entity to hold URL-shortening databases in escrow, with the intent of continuing to resolve a member company’s links should it get out of the business. At announcement, the 301Works organization has 21 URL-shortener members, including the largest, bit.ly. Many others are not (yet) on board. The members have agreed to cede control of their domain names to 301Works.org should they exit the field, and to back up their URL mappings regularly to the organisation — via Slashdot
When a block of IP addresses or a collection of domain names becomes associated with bad action — spamming, jabbering, denial-of-servicing — various ad-hoc Internet groups will add it to a blacklist of rogue IPs
or badware domains
that are blocked at a very low level in the network. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to readily diffuse an all clear
signal to everyone who follows along with this block, which means that gradually, the net is acquiring slums
— blocks of useful space that can’t be occupied by legitimate users because someone bad once lived there and now no one will accept their traffic — via Boing Boing
A new spam campaign is targeting a financial transfer system that handles trillions of dollars in transactions annually and has proved to be a fertile target of late for online fraudsters. The spam messages pretend to come from the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), a US nonprofit association that oversees the Automated Clearing House system (ACH). ACH is a widely used but aging system used by financial institutions for exchanging details of direct deposits, checks and cash transfers made by businesses and individuals. In 2002, ACH was used for nearly 9 billion [b] transactions worth more than US$24.4 trillion
Internet security experts say that misconfigured DSL and cable modems are worsening a well-known problem with the Internet’s DNS (domain name system), making it easier for hackers to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against their victims. According to research set to be released in the next few days, part of the problem is blamed on the growing number of consumer devices on the Internet that are configured to accept DNS queries from anywhere, what networking experts call an open recursive
or open resolver
system
Hewlett-Packard will acquire 3Com for $2.7 billion and take on Cisco Systems in the networking market, a battle that has been building since 2005. HP’s Dave Donatelli said the 3Com acquisition will provide HP customers with support from the edge of the network to the heart of the data centre
. One focus for HP and Cisco will be China
If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever — or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer-grade DVDs, then start-up Cranberry has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium. Cranberry’s DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company. DiamonDiscs contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate
SP Telemedia, owner of TPG and Soul internet service providers, has announced its intention to acquire Pipe Networks for $373 million. The acquisition will give SP Telemedia an extensive dark fibre network across major Australian business centres, such as Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, and will also give it Pipe Networks’ newly lit-up Sydney to Guam international cable
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