news aggregatorTory leader's stolen bicycle surfaces on eBay'It leans oddly to the right'
Hours after Tory leader David Cameron told the world that someone had nicked his bicycle, the much-discussed two-wheeler has turned up on eBay. Or so it seems.… Poker-faced Ballmer explains Google beating plansSend in the marines
When you report annual revenue of $60bn you'd expect Wall St would give a little credit where credit's due. Not take your stock price outside and rough it up.… Cancer doctor cites 'early' data on cell phone dangerQuick! Call a doct... oh damn.
The head of a leading US cancer research institute has sent out a warning to his staff to limit their cell phone use because of a risk of developing brain cancer.… Apple is Fisher-Price of sound quality, says Neil YoungThe revolution will not be podcast
Over five decades Neil Young has played a variety of roles including sixties protester, folk singer, Ronald Reagan supporter, grunge rocker and film maker. Now he's donning a new hat: Apple basher.… Court defends America's right to online smutFirst Amendment meets Groundhog Day
Ten years after it was rubber stamped by US lawmakers, the free-speech-throttling Child Online Protection Act (COPA) remains in legal limbo, but its chances of survival took another blow this week as a federal appeals court upheld an earlier ban on the statute.… XM-Sirius merger OKd in fines plus booster-dump dealWoo FCC with $19m in 'voluntary contributions'
… eBay auction fraudster jailed for four yearsHammer to fall
An Oregon man who auctioned counterfeit Adobe software on eBay under a variety of false identities has been jailed for four years. Jeremiah Mondello, 23, of Eugene, Oregon, was also sentenced to a further three years on probation following his release and 130 hours of community service a year for three years at a sentencing hearing this week. In addition, Mondello was fined $220,000 in cash and his computers were confiscated by order of US District Court Judge Ann L. Aiken, the Oregonian reports.… <em>Doctor Who</em> fans told to lay off HamletTrekkies also unwelcome at Stratford stage door
Fans of Doctor Who and Star Trek have been told to lay off autograph hunting at the stage door of the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford, where David Tennant and Patrick Stewart are thesping it up in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet.… iPhone Mail bug adds phishing dangerBe careful around the net
Flaws in the Mail and Safari applications bundled with the iPhone leave users of the device at greater risk of phishing attacks.… HP borgs VoodooHigh-end games join consumer unit
HP is merging the VoodooPC business it bought two years ago into its consumer PC division.… Eye of newt: Inside Google's AdWords auctionOr whatever it is
Analysis When Google chief legal officer David Drummond testified before Congress last week, he didn't disappoint. He splattered Capitol Hill with the sort of shameless nonsense we've come to expect from Mountain View's number one huckster. In short, Drummond told all those Congresspeople that if Google is allowed to rule 90 per cent of the search advertising market, the web will be a better place for just about everyone - including advertisers.… Towards a "Piracy" Endgame - but who are the pirates?From the BBC:
Six of the UK's biggest net providers (BSkyB, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse, and BT) have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online. The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music. But the music industry wants people's internet cut off if they ignore repeated warnings, something the web firms say they are not prepared to do. No change there, then - so what is different? The plan commits the firms to working towards a "significant reduction" in the illegal sharing of music. It also commits the net firms to develop legal music services, the BBC has been told. The BBC has been told that the firms have agreed to ensure their customers know it is illegal to share copyrighted music. It is believed that the memorandum also requires net firms to go further in their attempts to tackle illegal file-sharing. At the same time the government is also expected to start a consultation exercise that could result in laws that force net firms to tackle music piracy. We heartily endorse the formation of legal music services to compete with iTunes, and are delighted the government will tackle music piracy. A good start to tackling piracy would be to examine the absurd prices music companies goug.... charge for online music, when most of the cost of physical reproduction and distribution has been stripped away in the online model. This is not a one sided game, the music industry is as much an actor in its own travails as are those evil and venal members of the public. In fact, as iTunes showed, if you charge reasonable prices for a decent service there is a market to be made. Failure to address this issue will make any law an ass. But you know all this - and as Al Stewart once sang, the more it changes, the more it stays the same. (You can buy that legally over here) Update - the Indy suggests there will be a £30 flat fee licence for music downloading: Internet users could face an annual charge of up to £30 to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing. Ministers are backing proposals that would enable millions of broadband users to pay an annual levy which would allow them to copy as much – previously illegal – music from the internet as they wanted. The money raised would be channelled back to the rights-holders, with artists responsible for the most popular songs receiving a bigger slice of the cash. Some are wailing and gnashing teeth of course but that seems quite a sensible compromise. So long as the creators do see it..... Dell adds multi-touch to Latitude XTBigger SSD drives too
Dell has announced it's incorporating touch-screen functionality - in the form of an easy-to-install firmware upgrade - on it's Latitude XT tablets.… The return of Killer ChlorineJust when you thought it was safe to go back in the water
Numberwatch After many mind-sapping years of trawling through the morass of health scare stories, I formulated a number of laws, one of which was the Law of Beneficial Developments:… Southeast London is card fraud cesspoolUK danger zones named
London is the biggest single centre for credit card fraud with southeast London - particularly Thamesmead (SE28) - becoming notorious as the place with the most fraudulent activity in the UK, according to a new survey.… 
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