Ruddock fury over Woomera computer game: It's a dose of virtual reality that the Immigration Minister could probably do without: a computer game in which players try to escape from Australian detention centres has received $25,000 in federal funding.

Video-Game Merchants Under Fire: In an effort to protect kids from violent imagery and the rest of us from violent kids, the state of Washington is prepared to make it illegal for stores to give youngsters access to interactive images of mayhem. A bill that restricts the sale or rental of some violent video and computer games to adults-only customers passed unanimously in both the state House and Senate.

Blindsided by Bandwidth Fees, Online Barkers Think Twice: Giving things away, even digitally, can cost a lot. I hadn't realized just how much until I turned on my computer one day last month and discovered that I might owe $15,000 to an Internet company. Two days earlier, I had started giving away the electronic edition of Real World Adobe GoLive 6, a book I wrote in March 2002 with Jeff Carlson about a Web publishing tool.

Moore's law 'is biggest threat to privacy': Phil Zimmermann, the man who created the PGP encryption product, believes that Moore's Law and surveillance cameras make for a particularly dangerous cocktail "The human population does not double every 18 months but its ability to use computers to keep track of us does," he said, referring to what he sees as the threat to privacy from the increased use of surveillance cameras. "You can't encrypt your face."

A New Way to Catch a Hacker: For a computer security professional, Lance Spitzner has an unusual goal: He wants ill-intentioned hackers to steal more Social Security numbers and medical records.

Microsoft's plug-and-play biometrics: AuthenTec, a maker of fingerprint-recognition sensors, announced on Monday that it had signed a deal with Microsoft to integrate software support for biometrics into the Windows operating system.

Six Technologies That Will Change the World: Imagine robots that can read your mood and ink-jet printers that can crank out transplantable hearts. The visionaries you are about to meet have not only imagined these things - they're hard at work building them. [...] - God's Ink Jet - Robots You Can Relate To - The Plane That Does Hong Kong and Back in a Day - All-Day Portable Power - Electronic Paper - A Swarm of Sensors

Off the hype meter: In a Wall Street Journal interview, Ellison was quoted saying, "We became the largest industry in the world by selling things that people didn't want to buy." That's because the technology industry has elevated hype to an art form.

Two-thirds of spam contains falsehoods: Internet users skeptical of junk e-mails promising easy money, miracle cures and dream dates are right to be wary: The government says two-thirds of the "spam" messages clogging online mailboxes probably are false in some way.

Turning Points in Technology

Expert Users Move Away from Google: 24% of those surveyed indicated they have stopped using Google. Nearly half of the Expert users identify that they have stopped using Google and a percentage of Intermediate Users. And what they now use as their starting point for information are RSS search tools, link surfing and News Reader Subscriptions.

High-definition DVD on the way: Beyond better video, HD-DVD discs may hold seven-channel soundtracks and more interactive bonuses, such as automatic software that, through a Net-linked home entertainment server, could connect online for additional language soundtracks and live chats with filmmakers and actors.

Patents Go Global: A single global patent system could simplify the international patent process. Will the United States sign on?

Webby Awards ceremony canceled: The poor economy and fears about traveling were blamed for the cancellation of the seventh annual ceremony, which was scheduled for June 5 in San Francisco. Instead, the winners will be announced on the Internet.

Does IT Really Make Us Productive? It's taken for granted, just like Moore's Law: Technology makes people more productive. But researchers are going to test that notion.

Futurist Fears End of Innovation: Author Howard Rheingold believes the freedom of technologists to innovate is under attack as never before.[...] "Our freedom to innovate is not necessarily going to be as free as it was in the pre-Internet era," he cautioned. "We are at a pivotal point in the history of technology and a lot of assumptions should be questioned."

Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System: [The] ease with which the high-tech surveillance cameras can be set up and used worries people who are concerned about the invasion of privacy. The Washington Police Department came under fire for a system it purchased from Axis that enables it to monitor activities through a network of cameras mounted at busy intersections, in the subway system and at tourist sites like the National Mall. The system, which is activated during heightened terror alerts, allows the authorities to manipulate the cameras so they can, for instance, pan and zoom in on activity they consider suspicious. The remote access also means that officers can view images on computer monitors installed in squad cars.

Getting realistic in the war on hackers: Give up on the notion that computer security can be improved by putting more people in prison

Microsoft reportedly seeking to buy Sega

Is That a Computer in Your Pants? Cyberculture chronicler Howard Rheingold on smart mobs, smart environments, and smart choices in an age of connectivity

How to Make Money on the Net: The second Internet boom is quietly taking shape -- and this one looks like it's going to last. Here's how six innovative businesses learned from the past and have begun to make the Web work for them.

Inside the Soul of the Web: 24 hours watching the world look for answers at Google.

Want to Beat the Enemy? Win the Information War: Bruce Berkowitz, a noted analyst at the RAND Corporation and the Hoover Institution at Stanford, has produced a readable and well-informed study of information technology and its implications for future warfare. Even though he wrote his book just before the conflict in Iraq, his observations about technology and its role in future warfare have not been radically altered by the outcome of the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Synapse Media Player 1.01: The Brain knows what you want and how you want it. It knows when you want it and it's going to give it to you. You've got to hear this.

Blogger New: Dano Rollout Plan

Puppet Animation

Office workers give away passwords for a cheap pen: If anything, people are even more lax about security than they were a year ago, the survey found. Nine in ten (90 per cent) of office workers at London's Waterloo Station gave away their computer password for a cheap pen, compared with 65 per cent last year.

Should You Hire a Hacker? can reformed hackers be trusted to guard the corporate henhouse?

Organised crime on the internet: hidden dangers: Management perceives major threats from viruses and teenage hackers. But bigger threats come from organised crime involving fraud and commercial espionage

Do you suffer from PPMT? People's anxieties and fears over e-mail etiquette and the inescapable phenomenon of digital blunders has given rise to a new term – pre and post mail tension (PPMT).

Trends in the Evolution of the Public Web: 1998 - 2002: Although the Web is still a work in progress, it has accumulated enough of a history to permit meaningful analysis of the trends characterizing its evolution. The Web's relatively brief history has been steeped in predictions about the direction of its future development, as well as the role it will ultimately play as a communications medium for information in digital form. In light of the persistent uncertainty that attends the maturation of the Web, it is useful to examine some of the Web's key trends to date, in order both to mark the current status of the Web's progression and to inform new predictions about future developments. This article examines three key trends in the development of the public Web - size and growth, internationalization, and metadata usage

Da Vinci: Father of Cryptography? Dan Brown's latest novel, The Da Vinci Code, published by Doubleday Books, is about the famous Renaissance artist and the oblique references to the occult contained in his equally famous paintings. It's also about ancient secret societies, modern forensics, science and engineering, and the history of religion. Most of all The Da Vinci Code is about the history of encryption -- the many methods developed over time to keep private information from prying eyes.

Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop Offline: The digital divide is not just about the haves and the have-nots. It's also about the yawning gap between those who are comfortable using technology and those who fear or despise it. [...] The usual suspects turn out in conspicuously low numbers online: minorities, people with lower incomes, the elderly and disabled people, according to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But another group is gaining among the offline population. Seventeen percent of people surveyed are Internet dropouts. They were online once but were tripped up by technical problems that have kept them offline sometimes for a year or more. And 25 percent are online now but have dropped off in the past for a lengthy period of time for the same reasons, the study found. [houve um estudo interessante sobre isto há alguns anos cujo título era algo como: "foram surfar e voltaram para a praia"...] Another emerging group left out of the Internet revolution are those who have the opportunity to go online if they want to, but don't. A total of 80 million American adults - 42 percent of the adult population - say they don't use the Internet, the study found. But 20 percent of them have Internet access in the next room and choose not to go online. Or, some of them get family members to go online for them. [...] About 27 percent of Americans are completely removed from the online world, according to the study. They've never tried going online and aren't surrounded by anyone else who uses the Internet.

Porn spam - legal minefield for employers: Lewd e-mail promoting pornography may soon pose more than just a technical challenge in the ongoing fight against spam - experts say it's set to become an acute legal problem, too. Graphic images appearing unbidden on PCs by way of e-mail in-boxes could qualify as evidence of a "hostile work environment," something that's prohibited by federal employment law. As a result, porn spam could begin to crop up in sexual harassment complaints from employees offended by the material. Even if companies aren't the source of such messages, they could be liable for hefty civil fines if managers know that porn spam is a problem and don't move to address it.

Mona Lisa Lips-Synch

Court Hears Fight Over Numbers Used for Cellphones: The wireless telephone industry appealed to a federal court in Washington yesterday to block a government effort to allow consumers to keep their cellphone numbers when they switch mobile phone carriers.

Sports & Tech

Cyberattacks with offline damage: What's virtual is virtual, and what's real is real. Right? Maybe not.

Google's Brave New World: David Brandt, president of Public Information Research, which publishes the Google-watch.org Web site, said there are privacy concerns surrounding the cookies Google loads onto users' computers. ‘Google’ for Cops: Software Helps Police Search for Cyber Clues to Bust Criminals In Searching the Web, Google Finds Riches: In the last few years, Google has risen as a force on the Internet by offering its smarter, faster searches as a free public service. Now the band of technoinsurgents who run the company are striking a blow against the business strategies of giant Web portals like America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN by rewriting the rules of Internet advertising.

Testing Microsoft and the DMCA: Taking a break from working on his doctoral thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student Andrew "Bunnie" Huang decided that it might be fun to poke around the security systems protecting Microsoft's Xbox game console. With a little creative tinkering and a measure of precision soldering, Huang quickly isolated the main public security keys. Although legally prevented from sharing the keys with the world, he described his methods in detail in a widely distributed research paper, helping spur a wave of Xbox-hacking that has led to the development of Xbox versions of Linux and other homemade software.

Spyware - It's lurking on your machine

Stolen mobile rings in 'body cavity': Pandemonium broke out at a shopping mall in Negril on Monday, when a cellular phone which was stolen from a female shopper was found after it rang from within another shopper's vagina. Some bystanders were amused over the happenings, but some chided the young woman for sinking so low that she even embarrassed other women.

The Wi-Fi Revolution: The wireless Internet has arrived - and now the sky's the limit.

Viruses with a Cause: The viruses may be digital but their messages are political and try to make their mark upon the world

Mother of invention: How the Mosaic browser triggered a digital revolution The Killer Browser: It’s been only a decade since the release of Mosaic, the Web application that changed finance, commerce, culture - and the world ‘Out of Left Field’: Andreessen did Mosaic, then Netscape. He was at the center of the browser wars and dot-com mania. What’s he learned?

Steal this barcode: The Web site Re-Code.com parodies the design and chipper lingo of Priceline.com's "name your own price" shopping site. It invites shoppers to "recode your own price," by making their own barcodes using the site's barcode generator. The theory: There's just a 10-digit number standing between you and a better deal on anything that you want in a store, and this site will help you crack the code. The site's creators call it satire. Wal-Mart's legal counsel calls it an incitement to theft and fraud. [act.:] 'Bar Code' Web Site Closes Under Pressure

'Wayback Machine' Stars at Sex Court Trial: The mother of all Web sites dominated the "Sex Court" trademark trial Wednesday in Brooklyn. [...] The existence of the monster "Wayback Machine" - a service with a massive computer capacity of over 100 terabtyes - was disclosed to jurors in federal court in the suit brought by Playboy Enterprises against a Web enterpreneur Mario Cavalluzzo over use of the name "Sex Court."

Google washes whiter: Google has made its own statement on the 'Googlewash': by making The Register story that coined the phrase disappear from its search results. Report criticizes Google's porn filters: Children using Google's SafeSearch feature, designed to filter out links to Web sites with adult content, may be shielded from far more than their parents ever intended.

GoogleMovies: movie review opinion analyzer

Robodex 2003 (videos)

Internet ad revenue down 17% in 2002 In the Hands of Geeks, Web Advertising Actually Works: Useful ads that consumers like and are easy for businesses to manage.

Acrophobia is back! [aviso: jogo de acrónimos muito viciante :-)]

"Stupid Security" winners revealed (ver Stupid Security Competition)

Computers that watch while you work: Canadian researchers have designed a computer that pays attention to the person using it.

Marketer Challenges Anti-Spam Crusader

Eyes Over Baghdad: Our secret street-fighting weapon [drones]

Introducing the Laser Turntable: The record player without a needle!

Al Qaeda Website Refuses to Die: Repeatedly tossed off the Internet, a website believed to be al Qaeda's primary online method of communication continues to resurface as an uninvited guest on other websites.

The Invisible Web: Hidden Online Research Tools

Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed... in 42 days

Pioneer news site to end: One of the Internet's oldest news sites soon will vanish. The Nando Times will cease to exist within about 90 days, said Christian A. Hendricks, vice president of Interactive Media for the McClatchy Co., the Sacramento, Calif.-based parent of Nando Media and The News & Observer. The site no longer fits the company's strategy, Hendricks said.

Free content: Why not?: While the battle rages on, piling up legal fees and taking the joy out of music, a simpler solution is on the horizon. The best way to stem this tidal wave of thievery is to give the music away.

World's media conned by April Fool: Dutch P2P platform provider is a prank The project, called The Honest Thief, is a publicity stunt for a book with the same title

Microsoft Covets Google's Niche: "We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That's something that we're actively looking at doing," said Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft's MSN Internet services division. Visse said the company was making some significant investments in developing a better search engine. But the company has not offered specific plans. Microsoft Denies Paid-Search Plans: "Microsoft and MSN are completely committed to our relationship with Overture," said Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN. "We have no intention of developing our own paid-search platform." Visse said the company continued to invest in search, but apart from the paid-listings area.

NASA excited by 'invisible' coat: Kazutoshi Obana's gray, hooded coat doesn't just keep him dry in a downpour. It can also make him seem invisible. [...] In fact, Tachi's "invisibility" coat is a camera trick. A video camera behind the coat is linked to a projector, which bounces the image off the front of the coat's reflective surface. Because there is no time lag between what's happening behind the wearer and the image cast on the front of the coat, the viewer has the illusion he is seeing straight through the coat.

That Championship Season, in Code: For 27 years, the Association for Computing Machinery has attracted teams of programmers from several dozen countries for the annual finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest. For five hours they code their hearts out, cramming a semester's worth of problem-solving into one exhausting, nerve-shattering morning. They are billed as the world's top young programmers, 263 standouts (only seven of them women) winnowed from a contestant pool of more than 23,000.

Google And The Big Brother Nomination

Got Game? Gaming, networks, multiplayer, strategy, personal technology, consoles, mobile

Does Security Mean Sacrificing Privacy? Given the backdrop of war, tightened national security, and new legislation aimed at expanding government powers, the discussions and debates due to take place at the 13th Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in New York this week promises to be lively.

The Games People Slay: While many young men and women face the real and serious hazards of the war in Iraq, just as many - maybe more - in the United States are blowing up Baghdad on a regular basis from the comfort of their homes. As the war in the Gulf region moved into its second week and casualties on both sides mounted, a number of video games were emerging online that let players live out the conflict vicariously through their computers.

Sweden Beats U.S. as Top Web-Savvy Nation: Of the 60 countries surveyed, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were at the bottom of the list with 2.37 and 2.52 points respectively out of a possible 10. Sweden scored 8.67, up from 8.32 a year ago. The United States was little changed at number three with 8.43 points, on par with the Netherlands and Britain. The differences were small between the top 14, all scoring more than eight points as a result of plentiful cheap Internet connections, software and technical support, legal and government frameworks and populations which think it is cool to spend time on the Net.

Cyberwarriors guard virtual front: As coalition forces continue to engage the enemy throughout Iraq, the number of battles being fought in cyberspace also has risen, according to one Army information assurance officer. High-Tech Tools of War: The U.S. military has integrated its formidable warfighting capability with higher technology and created a fighting force unmatched by any army, navy or air force in the world. The technology gap is so pronounced that the rest of the world may never catch up. The Doctrine of Digital War

PC screen turns into speaker: A British company called NXT has found a way to turn a computer display into a speaker, without interfering with the quality of the picture.