Man fined for bandwidth theft

In a landmark ruling, a UK court has fined a man ?500 for logging onto a domestic Wi-Fi network without permission. A jury in Isleworth found Gregory Straszkiewicz guilty under the 2003 Communications Act of dishonestly obtaining an electronics communication service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service. In addition to his fine, he was given a year's probation. ...more

Google Books turns a new page at Princeton University

Google has signed up another venerable institution, Princeton University in the States, to share the content of its libraries with Google Book Search. Google's controversial plan, to digitise and archive for search purposes all the world's books and historical documents, has advanced a stage further with another Ivy League recruit. It had originally co-opted four university libraries at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan, and these were followed more recently by the University of California, the University Complutense of Madrid and the National Library of Catalonia among others. ...more

New Internet Explorer cumulative patch made available

Microsoft has announced a new Security Bulletin regarding Internet Explorer. The patch is rated with a security level of 'critical' and Windows users are strongly recommended to update their systems. As well as being a cumulative patch that includes previously released fixes, Security Bulletin MS03-040 addresses two additional vulnerabilities. ...more

Nvidia to buy PortalPlayer

Nvidia has announced that it is to pay $357 million to acquire PortalPlayer, a manufacturer of processors, firmware and software for portable devices. PortalPlayer was founded in 1999 and is credited with pioneering technologies such as system-on-chip (SoC) that enabled the current generation of high-performance handhelds, including iPods, many of which also make use of graphics technology from Nvidia. Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia said that modern mobile devices are miniaturised yet powerful multimedia computers based on the integration of technologies. ...more

Kazaa sues its most vocal supporter

Peer-to-peer pioneer Kazaa has taken time out from its attempt to stay in business in the face of record industry lawsuits to sue one of its most vocal supporters. In one of the most bizarre legal developments of the year, Kazaa CEO Nikki Hemming and its owner, Sharman Networks, are suing Jon Newton, the Canadian owner and publisher of p2p.net. ...more