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A British couple have divorced after the husband was caught having a "virtual affair" with a female character in an online role-playing game. David Pollard and Amy Taylor met in an online chat room in 2003 and married after discovering a shared love of the Internet game "Second Life." In the game, players create characters known as avatars, which then interact with others in a virtual world. To his wife's horror, Pollard's interaction included virtual infidelity with a female character playing the role of a prostitute.

SAN FRANCISCO: Attackers bent on shutting down large Web sites — even the operators that run the backbone of the Internet — are arming themselves with what are effectively vast digital fire hoses capable of overwhelming the world's largest networks, according to a new report on online security. [ ... ] The report, which will be released Tuesday, shows that the largest attacks have grown steadily in size to over 40 gigabits, from less than half a megabit, over the last seven years. The largest network connections generally available today carry 10 gigabits of data, meaning that they can be...

A federal grand jury has indicted a former Intel employee whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has accused of stealing trade secrets from the company. Biswamohan Pani, 33, allegedly was found with more than 100 pages of Intel documents, with 13 "top secret" file also discovered inside his residence. Intel put more than $1 billion of research and development money into the documents Pani stole, which includes future CPU designs. "The indictment was not a surprise," said Bradford Bailey, Pani's attorney. "We knew it was coming. We will enter a plea of not guilty when an arraignment date is...

"Federal agents seeking to generate MD5 hashes from files on a suspect’s hard drive must now obtain a warrant before doing so, says a Pennsylvania U.S. District Court, as such an act constitutes a government search protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The case in question, United States v.Robert Crist, involves accusations of child pornography"

Finally the iPhone unleashed! Break away from the stranglehold Jobs & Co. have on you and your iPhone. Download and install the software you've really been wanting to use. Never again suffer from "windows" envy or be ridiculed for having a small software repository. Upgrade NOW to the NEW, Dual Boot Windows iPhone Mobile...Coming in Jan. 09.

The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill. As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later time' response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote. “We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn’t completely crash,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website...

Things are a-brewin’ in Sweden. Sweden is not just home of the infamous bikini team, it is also the home of Outpost 24, an equally sexy software-as-a-service network scanning service, and the employer of my friend Robert E. Lee and his colleague Jack C. Louis. These guys are the inventors of UnicornScan, a user-land TCP stack turned into a port scanner. Never heard of it? Use Nmap exclusively? Well if you run Linux, I suggest checking it out, especially if missed ports in your portscan is inexcusable. But I digress. Robert and Jack are smart dudes. I've known them for...

BLINK and you would have missed it. The expression of disgust on former US president Bill Clinton's face during his speech to the Democratic National Convention as he says "Obama" lasts for just a fraction of a second. But to Paul Ekman it was glaringly obvious. "Given that he probably feels jilted that his wife Hillary didn't get the nomination, I would have to say that the entire speech was actually given very gracefully," says Ekman, who has studied people's facial expressions and how they relate to what they are thinking for over 40 years. It seems that Clinton's micro-expression...

WESTFORD -- Gary Levaseur looks cool driving his electric blue snowmobile down the street in the summer. Well, it's not really a snowmobile anymore. The drywaller has built a prototype and patented his invention that converts snowmobiles to three-wheeled motortrikes. The conversion can be done in just two hours, meaning the sleds that usually gather dust for eight or nine months a year can be used year-round. His converted Arctic Cat is a slick-looking machine that can go up to 75 mph and get and estimated 30-plus mpg, Levaseur said. "It turns a lot of heads," he said. "I like...

Mainly to help FReerepublic folders, but anyone can take advantage of this deal. Item number 7387-A11 (Refurbished) Lenovo 3000 J115 - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 2 GHz - RAM 1 GB - HD 250 GB - DVD±RW (+R DL) - Memory card reader - LAN- Fast Gig - Modem - Vista Home Premium. 1 year manuf. warr. incl. Subtotal: 210.00 Sales Tax: 0.00 Shipping: 30.32 Order Total: 240.32 Actually they are $230.00, but if you call the guy below, and ask him for a "folding@home" discount, he'll give you an additional $20.00 off. Tech For Less Cory -719-886-8000 ext....

The sound on my computer is not working properly. When I play mp3, mov, wav, wmv, wma, rm, and avi files, there is a beeping/crackling noise. Most of the time the jibberish noise is complete. Sometimes, a bit of the intended audio can be heard through the beeping/crackling. The only audio that plays well is from YouTube videos and .flv files. I have a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy sound card. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers for the sound card with no success. I have removed the sound card and reseated it with no success. My speakers are 6.1 Cambridge...

By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP. That's probably okay with Barack Obama: Biden likely got the nod because of his foreign policy knowledge. The Delaware politician is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who voted for the war in Iraq, and is reasonably well-known nationally after...

Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the servers were taken offline. Security specialists and administrators have been working since then to analyze the intrusion and the extent of the compromise as well as reinstall Fedora systems. We are using the requisite outages as an opportunity to do other upgrades for the sake of functionality as well as security. Work is ongoing, so please be patient. Anyone with pertinent information relating to this event is asked to contact fedora-legal redhat com One of the compromised Fedora servers...

I have been hijacked by an adserver/virus. I am running AdAware, but does not fix problem. I consider myself tech-savvy, but this is ridiculous. Problem started this morninng, and occurs on FR, and any other website I visit. Any suggestions, or ideas? Thanks.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has confirmed that the iPhone 3G has a kill switch that can remotely remove software from the devices. {snip} But the real controversy started when Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the books iPhone Open Application Development and iPhone Forensics Manual, discovered a URL buried in Apple's firmware. That URL links to a file dubbed "unauthorizedApps" where malicious or simply bad apps might go once they disappear from the App Store. According to Zdziarski, I Am Rich isn't the only app to disappear. BoxOffice (renamed to Now Playing) and NullRiver's NetShare were also removed. But removing the applications...

Marisel Garcia is one of eight or nine women in the Gainesville, Florida who is a victim of a Webcam Spy Hacker voyeurism scandal, orchestrated by Craig Feigin. Craig Feigin, a computer programmer, worked on Marisel Garcia's computer to fix her laptop. When she got her machine back from Feigin, it had a slew of other problems so she brought it to another area repair man. One of the new problems was that the computer's built-in camera light came on every time she was near the machine. When Marisel Garcia got her computer back, she learned that Craig Feigin had...

A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found. The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators. Several security experts say that although attacks against network administrators are not new, the systematic use of administrative software to spread malicious software...

George Ledin teaches students how to write viruses, and it makes computer-security software firms sick.In a windowless underground computer lab in California, young men are busy cooking up viruses, spam and other plagues of the computer age. Grant Joy runs a program that surreptitiously records every keystroke on his machine, including user names, passwords, and credit-card numbers. And Thomas Fynan floods a bulletin board with huge messages from fake users. Yet Joy and Fynan aren't hackers—they're students in a computer-security class at Sonoma State University. And their professor, George Ledin, has showed them how to penetrate even the best antivirus...

Microsoft is incubating a componentized non-Windows operating system known as Midori, which is being architected from the ground up to tackle challenges that Redmond has determined cannot be met by simply evolving its existing technology. Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64, ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process. According to published reports, Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft and an alumnus of...

What do you think of this router, printer server, and firewall? I need a wireless router for a laptop with DSL service, 2 old printers, and a portable printer (USB)? Frequently Asked QuestionsZoneAlarm Secure Wireless Router Z100G Discussion ForumZoneAlarm Secure Wireless Router Z110G - Is It Worth The Price? (post March 19, 2007) Other thoughts are a Belkin F5D8230-4 and a Belkin F5D7230-3.