A leaked draft of the Internet chapter of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) reveals that ISPs will be held liable for the infringements of their customers, unless they disconnect those accused. The draft aims to strengthen the power of the entertainment industries and other copyright holders, at the cost of the public.

Windows 7 is a valuable upgrade delivering an awesome new user interface, but don’t expect any major improvements in security.

Anti-virus software vendor Sophos tested Windows 7’s built-in anti-virus capabilities by feeding a clean system 10 pieces of the newest malware. Eight out of the 10 samples ran successfully, claims Sophos.

The Google Dashboard brings together the host of popular services now offered by Google, and displays them in a simpler fashion.

"We think of this as a great step towards giving people transparency and control over their data, and we hope this helps shape the way the industry thinks about these issues," said Alma Whitten, Software Engineer on Privacy and Safety.

Dr. Ron Paul speaks on the U.N. trying gain global power through climate control and internet.

While parent company struggles with change, payment service flourishes

Most people know eBay Inc. for its online marketplace, where deals abound on everything from gadgets to antique furniture. But soon, eBay's biggest business will likely be PayPal, the online payments service that has been growing steadily even as the economy has stumbled.

If the video link doesn't work, you can watch it here:
http://bytestyle.tv/node/186

What sort of privacy do you expect when you send an email? As Americans increasingly rely on the Internet for communication, Justice Department lawyers increasingly argue that Americans have no right to privacy there—notwithstanding repeated congressional efforts to bolster these rights. A recent case out of Oregon shows how the privacy expectation associated with emails and other Internet communications is being frittered away.

A citizen is so tired of his country’s copyright laws he has reported himself to an anti-piracy group. In his written confession, the ‘pirate’ admits to copying more than one hundred purchased movies and TV shows for his own use – legal in Denmark – but breaking DRM on the same is an act forbidden under Danish law.

The flaw, as discovered by Estonian Apple Site AppleSpot: If the user visits a site which uses Motion-JPEG (most commonly used for security cams and live feeds) in Safari, Safari will continue to gobble up bandwidth even after Safari is closed. Safari is one of the few apps that Apple allows to process in the background, and Motion-JPEG streams appear to continue streaming, even if the stream is in another tab or in the “closed” application.

Schmidt, of course, didn’t quite it put it this way. According to him, in five years time, a real-time, broadband intensive, video and app-centric web will be overrun by Chinese-language content. No surprises there, especially since he wrapped up his prophesy in the orthodoxy of the social web, arguing that user-generated networked information would increasingly replace professionally created content as the backbone of the online knowledge economy.

Businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the internet's addressing protocol that will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

People who illegally download music spend more on official releases than anyone else, according to a new survey.

The study, published today by think-tank Demos, found those who admit to file sharing spent an average £77 a year on singles and albums - £33 more than those who claim never to have wrongly accessed music for free.

Researcher Peter Bradwell said the findings should force companies and politicians to 'wake up to the changing nature' of the music industry as the Government plans to disconnect illegal downloaders from the internet in a 'three strikes and you're out' rule.

15 Free Guides That Really Teach You USEFUL Stuff

As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.

The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lieberman says U.S. is still behind in cybersecurity efforts

The United States is well behind the curve in the fight against computer criminals, Sen. Joe Lieberman said , as Homeland Security officials opened a $9 million operations center to better coordinate the government's response to cyberattacks.

Even well-defended computers can leak shocking amounts of private data. MIT researchers seek out exotic attacks in order to shut them down

The 3 Phases of Owning a Computer

A large number of web services are geographically restricted, such as Hulu, Pandora and Spotify. The reasons are usually to do with content licensing restrictions, or because US visitors (or visitors from other advanced economies) are of a higher value from a monetization perspective.

Peter Mandelson confirmed yesterday that illicit file-sharers could have their Internet connections severed as part of the government’s aims to reduce piracy by 70% in 2 years. TalkTalk, the UK’s second largest ISP, is said to be dismayed at the decision and is now threatening legal action over what it claims is a breach of human rights.

The 40th anniversary of the birth of the Internet was celebrated in the US with events being organised at the University of California and the Computer History Museum in Los Angeles to mark the occasion.

Industry leaders, researchers and analysts, among others, attended the function at the California University Thursday, Xinhua reported.

Computers might struggle to exhibit intelligent behaviour, but blindly performing arithmetic calculations is surely their forte. Or is it?

The failure of Google's online calculator and Excel's apparent inability to give correct answers to simple calculations are both well-known problems among programmers, but these aren't really bugs in the normal sense of the word. Instead they're just a consequence of the fact that computers suck at maths.

A new tool aims to fix misbehaving programs without shutting them down.

Martin Rinard, a professor of computer science at MIT, is unabashed about the ultimate goal of his group's research: "delivering an immortal, invulnerable program." In work presented this month at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in Big Sky, MT, a group of MIT researchers, led by Rinard and Michael Ernst, who is now an associate professor at the University of Washington, developed software that can find and fix certain types of software bugs within a matter of minutes.

Amazon have said that Windows 7 was bigger than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in pre-order sales. The difference is that people couldn’t wait to crack open and start reading about the latest adventures of the boy wizard as soon as it slid through the letterbox, but those Windows 7 disks seem to be staying on the shelf in rather large numbers.

The Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring that, absent special circumstances, the government obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before entering. This is strong privacy protection for homes and the items within them in the physical world.

When a person uses the Internet, however, the user’s actions are no longer in his or her physical home; in fact he or she is not truly acting in private space at all.

Robot-maker Boston Dynamics showed for the first time on Tuesday a new prototype robot that walks upright like a human.

People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.

He confirmed that it would become government policy, following months of speculation.

It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing disconnection from the network.

ISP TalkTalk said the plans were "ill-conceived" and said it was prepared to challenge measures "in the courts".

"What is being proposed is wrong in principle and won't work in practice," the firm said.

Throughout human history, one eternal truth has emerged: where there are hordes of people, there will be scams. Rarely has this been so evident than on the Internet, which offers special advantages (namely lack of face to face contact) to scammers that no other medium can. When the only barrier between your bank account and an unscrupulous con man is a glass monitor or laptop screen, it’s no wonder Internet scams have become one of the largest sources of crime in the young 21st century. Today we will look back on 12 of the top Internet scams of the 2000’s and what makes them so attractive to their targets.

Visitors to technology blog Gizmodo are being warned that they could have picked up more than tips about the latest must-have gadget.

According to security firm Sophos, the website was delivering advertisements "laced with malware" last week.

A statement on the Gizmodo website admits that it was tricked into running Suzuki adverts which were in fact from hackers.

It follows a similar problem on the New York Times website.

What makes it so revolutionary? Ken Auletta, author of a new book on the company, shares his insights on why it's uniquely successful and what that means for the media world
In researching his new book, Googled: the End of the World as We Know It, to be published next week by Penguin Press, author Ken Auletta had extensive access to the company's inner workings and reported widely on its impact on the media landscape.

It’s a common problem among computer users: after a few months, our computers become weighed down by programs and all sorts of other junk, and inevitably become sluggish. For the less tech-savvy users, this may induce thoughts like “Why is my computer so terrible?” or “I guess I could always upgrade this… what-cha-ma-callit RAM thing”.

Regular maintenance is usually required to keep a computer optimized and running at its best. Here are four programs that will make your computer faster, and four trade-offs to help make the best use out of the amount of RAM that’s installed on your computer.

Some people who are upgrading their PC's from Windows Vista to Windows 7 are finding the upgrade paralyzes their computers, leaving them in a never ending rebooting cycle, unable to use either operating systems.

Many users started to post the problem in a forum on Microsoft's own website on Friday, one day after the highly touted new operating system was released. As of this afternoon, 3 days later, there are still people posting the same problem and no fix from Microsoft for most of the users.

...

To make matters worse, Microsoft was aware of this exact problem back in July, when it was posted on the Microsoft support website. The article is dated July 27th, 2009, or approximately 3 months before the public release of Windows 7, yet the problem wasn't fixed.

Windows 7 adds loads of great shortcuts for switching between apps, moving windows around your screen, moving them to another monitor altogether, and much more. Here's a quick-reference master list of the best new Windows 7 shortcuts

We're nuts for keyboard shortcuts here at Lifehacker, and Windows 7 brings a handful of great new ones to add to your muscle memory. It's also got a few handy mouse-based shortcuts you'd do well to add to your repertoire. So let's get shortcuttin'.

Months after the initial announcement, today, it becomes official: Yahoo has shut down GeoCities — one of the original kings of free web hosting services.

Now, all of those GeoCities websites (excuse me, "Web Sites") are coming down. It's got me more tear-jerkingly nostalgic than Where The Wild Things Are.

No doubt, GeoCities started a revolution, but many of its ways have gone by the wayside. While Yahoo deploys the virtual demolition crews, let's make one last toast to a few of the relics they'll leave in the rubble.

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names — or addresses — that can be written in languages other than English, an official said.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN — the non-profit group that oversees domain names — is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

A group working to produce an open and transparent voting system to replace current proprietary systems has published its first batches of code for public review.

An online dating agency that excludes ugly members is to launch worldwide despite criticism that it is superficial.

While searching the Web for the latest celebrity news and photos may be your favorite Internet pastime, it can also potentially lead to some unintended pain.

That's because some people use the popularity of celebrity searches on the Web to lure unsuspecting surfers to their sites, where they then unleash their viruses, spyware, spam, and other threats.

Computer security company McAfee released its third annual list of the celebrities whose searches lead to the highest percentage of risk-laden websites. Here are the 16 celebrities (with two tied for a single spot) that comprise McAfee's riskiest celebrity searches.

[Any/all mail] weighing more than 13 ounces bearing only postage stamps as postage may not be deposited into a collection box, Postal
Service lobby drop, Automated Postal Center (APC) drop, Postal Service dock, customer mailbox, or other unattended location. These mailpieces are also precluded from pickup service. The sender must present such
items to an employee at a retail service counter in a Postal Service facility. The Postal Service will return improperly presented items to the sender for proper entry and acceptance.

Microsoft have launched the latest version of its Windows operating system in a bid to 'make it easier for people to do the things they want on a PC'.

But Matthew Bath, technology editor at consumer watchdog Which?, said there was a lot of confusion around the pricing, adding that Microsoft 'hasn't helped itself' by having six different editions.

He urged customers to wait before buying in order that early teething problems were ironed out.

Blue Brain is an IBM computer built to simulate a human brain. It's powered by 2,000 microchips, each acting as a single neuron, that enable it to execute 22.8 trillion operations per second.

The internet has matured into a world of its own, and like the real world, it obeys certain immutable laws. Here are 10 of the most important.

An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen - on top of the email and telephone records already available.

It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.

Senior research associate Teena D. Moody, one of the authors of the study, said: "The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults."

The research, performed by psychiatrists and neuroscientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), looked at the brain circuitry of adults between the ages of 55 and 78 who had rarely used the internet, compared with those who used it daily.

Just got this email from Phil Kerpen:

As important as all the fights are that we're in right now, perhaps the biggest of all is the fight over whether the government will take over the Internet. That's because as long as the Internet is free, we can use it to communicate, educate, and organize. Tea parties, townhalls, and AFP events would be very difficult to organize if government owned and controlled the Internet and chose to interfere with it. That's what's at stake this week as the Federal Communications Commission decides on Thursday whether to move forward with so-called "net neutrality" regulations.

Scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the US are all set to make use of two of the fastest supercomputers in the world in their quest to “shine light” on black holes.
Since light cannot escape from the surface of a black hole, scientists rely upon computer algorithms to study the massive dark objects.

Researchers in the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at RIT are using supercomputers on campus and across the country to simulate with mathematics and computer graphics what cannot be seen directly.

YouTube may pay less to be online than you do, a new report on internet connectivity suggests, calling into question a recent analysis arguing Google’s popular video service is bleeding money and demonstrating how the internet has continued to morph to fit user’s behavior.

UK ISP TalkTalk has staged a wireless stunt, aimed at illustrating why it thinks Lord Mandelson's plans to disconnect filesharers is "naive".

TalkTalk has long been an outspoken critic of government plans to cut off persistent file-sharers.

The stunt demonstrates how innocent people could be disconnected from the network if the plans become law.

Online criminals are making millions of pounds by convincing computer users to download fake anti-virus software, internet security experts claim.

Symantec says more than 40 million people have fallen victim to the "scareware" scam in the past 12 months.

The download is usually harmful and criminals can sometimes use it to get the victim's credit card details.

The firm has identified 250 versions of scareware, and criminals are thought to earn more than £750,000 each a year.

Hollywood film stars including Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers are being banned from using Twitter because bosses think "tweets" are damaging the industry.

Like all major products spanning multiple decades, Windows has spawned multiple versions and many advertising efforts. Some good, some bad.

Traditionally it was employers who had to make themselves visible when looking to fill vacancies – posting adverts in the press, then choosing a pool of candidates from a veritable tsunami of applicants. But not any more.

There's mounting evidence that personnel specialists are now scouring social media sites and job boards for potential employees.

Want to stave off dementia? Browse the web, for a new study says that using the Internet can help boost brain power in people as they age.

An international team has carried out the study and found that Internet use can boost the brain activity of the elderly, potentially slowing or even reversing the age-related declines that can end in dementia.

The study has found that the Internet stimulates mind more strongly than reading and its effects continue long after an web session ends.

Microsoft releases Windows 7 to the world as the US software giant tries to regain its stride after an embarrassing stumble with the previous generation operating system Vista.
"It's a big deal for Microsoft," analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley said of the Windows 7 launch. "Windows Vista was a train wreck."

While computer users may not give much thought to operating systems that serve as the brains of their machines, the programs are at the heart of Microsoft's global software empire.

The CEO of Russia's No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet's biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world.

The comments by Eugene Kaspersky, who is also the founder of Kaspersky Lab, came during an interview this week with Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia. In it, he proposed the formation of an internet police body that would require users everywhere to be uniquely identified.

A super high-speed global Internet devoted solely to science and education has just expanded to include half the countries of the world, and yes, you at home can be jealous.

TalkTalk has criticised the government's proposals to cut off broadband service for unlawful file-sharers, after conducting a street-level test that found a high proportion of household Wi-Fi connections are vulnerable to hacking.

Computer technology is making it harder for Hawaii residents and businesses to skip out on their taxes.

The state collected more than $50 million in delinquent excise taxes since June 30, 2008, thanks to a computer program that links data from federal tax returns to state tax filings.

The state Department of Taxation has been checking federal tax returns of Hawaii residents to see if they claim business income. If they do, the state then looks to see if the same residents filed state excise tax returns. Those who didn't were sent warning letters, and many responded by paying what they owed.

The boost in delinquent tax collections comes at an opportune time for the state, which is facing a budget deficit of about $1 billion through June 2011.