John Lister

A Russian man has appeared in a US federal court accused of running a network of infected computers that had the capability of sending 10 billion unsolicited emails a day. Oleg Nikolaenko is said to be responsible for a third of the world's spam ... messages. 23-year old Nikolaenko has denied the charges, brought under the federal CAN-SPAM act. That doesn't make sending unsolicited email an offense in itself, but rather places specific restrictions upon the practice. In this case, the claim is that the email messages contained false information, for example by disguising the identity of the ... (view more)

Electronic reading devices (or E-Readers) such as Amazon's Kindle are not just best-sellers, but also the most-requested items on automated online shopping wish-lists. However, until now it's not been possible to buy electronic books as a gift. ... Instead, users could only pay for gift vouchers. That's changed with two leading companies offering gifting options for eBooks. The first to launch the feature was Kobo, a Canadian company that originally started as an electronic books retail website, but later launched its own portable reading devices, stocked in stores such as Borders and Indigo / ... (view more)

Microsoft is reportedly planning to become a "virtual cable TV operator" through a broadband service. It's seen by many as an attempt to challenge Google TV. The plan, which wouldn't take effect for at least a year, would be to team up with cable TV ... networks towards offering channels directly to users via the Xbox 360 games console, with the content delivered through a broadband connection. The service would work along the same lines as traditional cable TV, with a basic tier-based package and then a premium fee for some individual channels. There will also be interactive, options such as the ... (view more)

In a bid to avoid an enormous $290 million fine, Microsoft is challenging the Supreme Court's handling of patent infringement cases. The company was hit with the financial penalty after it was found that Microsoft Word violated an XML tag patent ... owned by Canadian company i4i. Having failed in a federal appeal, Microsoft is no longer able to challenge the ruling that it did indeed violate the patent. However, Microsoft has continued to argue that the patent is not valid. It claims to have evidence that products using the technology patented by i4i were on sale more than a year before the ... (view more)

Recently leaked US State department documents make the strongest claims yet that the Chinese government was behind attacks on Google systems late last year. The claims appear in a collection of 250,000 cables: confidential messages between the State ... department and the various United States consulates and embassies around the world. The collection appears on the controversial Wikileaks.org site, which publishes a wide variety of leaked material relating to many countries and from many sources, but has hit the headlines with large-scale leaks relating to military conflicts in Iraq and ... (view more)

Facebook recently confirmed its enhanced messaging system, Facebook Messages. Officially launched November 15th, the system is designed to channel email, instant messaging and SMS text messages (cell phone messages) into a single @facebook.com email ... address so that users can manage their communications through a single inbox. (Source: eweek.com ) @Facebook.Com On-the-Way The idea of the service, which builds on the existing Facebook messaging feature, is to break down the barriers between different forms of communication such as email, site messaging, live chat, instant-messaging and the text ... (view more)

Home users have expressed dismay at news that Microsoft is to remove a key feature from its Windows Home Server software. Drive Extender, a handy options that allows users to add extra hard drives, will be axed from Windows Home Server's next ... edition. Share Files Easily with Windows Home Server Windows Home Server is designed as an easy way for with multiple computers to share files. One of the computers is designated a server, and the others are classified as clients, in much the same way as many large businesses operate their networks. However, the system is specially designed to be easy to ... (view more)

The Supreme Court is re-examining the hotly disputed issue of video game violence. In an ongoing case, it's deciding whether to uphold a California law that would ban violent games being sold to kids under 18 years of age. The law, passed in 2005, ... would have introduced a $1,000 fine for any retailer caught selling "violent" games to minors. However, it wouldn't have stopped parents or other adults buying games and letting children play them. The law soon came under challenge and in 2009 California's highest court rejected it. That ruling said that there was no conclusive evidence that playing ... (view more)

With Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system (OS) recent debut, experts are already debating whether or not it's a success. One source claims first-day sales were nowhere close to the release of other high-profile phone systems, ... while others report significant stock shortages. The sales figures come from an unnamed market research source speaking to a financial news website. The source claims a total of 40,000 handsets running Windows Phone 7 were sold the first day it went on sale. That compares poorly to the 1.7 million sales of the iPhone 4 in the first three days it was on ... (view more)

It's likely going to be many years before people stop buying movies on DVD. But rental giant Netflix is not only preparing for that day, but attempting to bring it closer. The company has announced that it will, for the first time in the US, be ... offering a special package that only allows users to stream rented titles over the Internet, with no option to obtain discs. To encourage users to make the switch, the new package will be $7.99 a month (the lowest ever offered by the company), while the price of the packages that include getting discs by mail will rise by at least $1 a month. The price ... (view more)