FBI pounce on software piracy gang

Reuters reports that the FBI has indicted 19 members of an international piracy gang thought to have cracked software, games and films worth some $6.5m. 'Operation Jolly Roger', focused on the RISCISO gang, believed to number as many as 60 and led by 26-year-old Sean O'Toole of Perth, Australia. ...more

OD2 hooks the cost of music into mobile bills

The company underpinning UK music services from the likes of Virgin, Freeserve and Microsoft's MSN, is to enable downloads to be billed to a mobile phone. The scheme, which will be introduced next week, is aimed at the youth market, according to Reuters. 'This payment option opens up our services to a much wider demographic. ...more

Quadro2 Goes mobile

NVIDIA has announced the Quadro2 Go GPU for mobile systems, which Fujitsu-Siemens has incorporated into its Celsius mobile workstations. The Quadro2 Go chip supports OpenGL 1.3 and Direct3D and boasts a second-generation T&L engine, accelerated anti-aliasing and two-sided lighting. ...more

Microsoft lifts lid on Zune price tag

Microsoft has announced that its imminent Zune portable media player will retail for $249.99, matching the price, as well as the storage capacity, of the 30GB iPod. Zune-compatible music downloads will likewise cost the same as iTunes songs, 99 cents. ...more

Holes in US air-traffic control

The US air-traffic control system is vulnerable to hackers according to a congressional report due to be released today. The report, according to the US Today newspaper, states that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has failed to adequately address ''pervasive weaknesses in its computer security programs”. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigators also found that the FFA has not performed adequate background checks on computer experts hired to test the system or on foreign nationals hired to tackle Y2K problems. ...more