Police arrest and caution Wi-Fi thieves

Worcestershire police have cautioned two people who were arrested for accessing unsecured wireless networks in breach of the Communications Act 2003. Last weekend officers were alerted to a man sitting in a car with cardboard blocking the windows. They found him using a laptop to access a network in a nearby house. ...more

Panasonic introduces industry-first 12x zoom

Panasonic releases a beltful of mobile devices - including a digital camera with a 12x optical zoom The DMC-FZ1 boasts the industry's first 12x optical zoom, claims Panasonic - equivalent to a 35-420mm zoom lens on a 35mm film camera. Panasonic's Mega Optical Image Stabiliser keeps vibration to a minimum, including that caused by pressing the shutter button, the company claims. The camera also comes with technology developed to speed up power up time and reduce the time between pressing the button and capturing the image. ...more

Opera smoothes browser

Opera has released an important security update for its eponymous Web browser and email client, adding a few bug fixes for good measure. Three vulnerabilities are addressed, involving download dialog spoofing, fixed image dragging and link hijacking, which could have been exploited to retrieve users' files or trick users into running malicious files. Bug fixes provide greater stability, better plug-in handling and improved spelling checking. ...more

Toshiba pushes the flash memory envelope

Good news for gadget designers - Toshiba has managed to double the capacity of its NAND flash memory, with 4Gbit ICs. Greater memory capacities, of course, give improved scope for miniaturisation or more powerful functionality, for devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players, smartphones and the like. Described by Toshiba as the semiconductor industry's first 4Gbit single-die, multi-level cell (MLC), NAND flash memory, the chip is made on 90-nanometer process technology and reportedly doubles the capacity of Toshiba's present largest single-die NAND flash memory. ...more

SCO offers some of its Linux customers its Unix IP licence free

SCO is to offer its existing Linux customers its Unix IP licence for free, and has removed its Linux downloads from public access Following its very public attack on the legal standing of the GPL licence, under which Linux is distributed, SCO has removed Linux code on its site from public access, and asked its existing Linux customers to re-register all products to get a password for access. The reward is a free Unix IP licence. A statement on the site reads: 'SCO offers at no extra charge to its existing Linux customers a SCO UNIX IP license for their use of prior SCO or Caldera distributions of Linux in binary format. ...more