Bishops seek saint for Internet: Fed up with hackers, a flood of spam and lousy connections, Italian Roman Catholics have launched a search for a patron saint of the Internet. And they hope their online poll will yield a holy Web protector by Easter.

Coding from Scratch: A Conversation with Virtual Reality Pioneer Jaron Lanier Currently, he is working on something he calls phenotropic computing, in which the current model of software as "protocol adherence" is replaced by "pattern recognition" as a way of connecting components of software systems.

Sneaky Toolbar Hijacks Browsers: It's the most evil thing on the Internet, according to some of its victims. But it's not a virus, a scam or a raunchy porn site. It's a browser toolbar that some swear is doing "drive-by downloads" -- installing itself without users' permission -- then taking over their systems and making it impossible to uninstall. "When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I'd be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears," fumed one of Xupiter's many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting. Xupiter is an Internet Explorer toolbar program. Once active in a system, it periodically changes users' designated homepages to xupiter.com, redirects all searches to Xupiter's site, and blocks any attempts to restore the original browser settings.

Blogs open doors for developers: Secrecy has long been a hallmark of the software development process: Let too many people know too much about what you're working on too early, and somebody might steal your ideas. How has Blogger changed your life?

Here Come the Two-Legged Aibos: Your personal Jeeves is ready. It walks and, ah, well, did we mention it walks?

Beware: Your PC Can Kill You: doctors say too much PC time can prompt blood clots.

InformationWeek > Fred Langa >Linux Has Bugs: Get Over It [S]ome Linux proponents harm their cause by hiding from the facts--it's just as buggy as Windows XP.

The Lord Of the Webs: Tim Berners-Lee could well be the J.R.R. Tolkien of the computer world. Tolkien, a philologist and author of "The Lord of the Rings," created a fantasy world in which characters used languages he invented. Berners-Lee is the inventor who gave us the World Wide Web, a system built on "languages" largely created by Berners-Lee. He's now working on a sequel, called the Semantic Web. "It is a paradigm shift, like the original World Wide Web," Berners-Lee told scientists gathered at the National Science Foundation to hear his progress report Monday.

In Net Attacks, Defining the Right to Know: Among the new voices in the debate are two researchers at Harvard who argue that it is in the victim's interest to make its vulnerabilities public. The disclosure itself acts as a fortification of sorts, they suggest. In a paper presented at a cryptography conference this week, Michael Smith, a computer science professor, and Stuart Schechter, a doctoral candidate in computer science, argued that organizations or individuals that share information about computer break-ins are less attractive targets for malicious hackers. If an organization tells others about its security holes and the fixes it has made to them, the two researchers say, then others have the opportunity to make the same changes and spread the word. Ultimately, a company that clearly reports the details of a break-in and whether the perpetrator was caught reduces the chances that someone else will attempt to use the same path into a secured system. Hackers would prefer a company that has not reported news of a break-in to one that has.

"MyLifeBits": Um "backup" da vida toda: Não custa imaginar o papel afectivo que o "Memex" pessoal, partilhado em todo ou em parte, possa ter- o novo tipo de herança que pais deixarão aos filhos, a recolha das últimas palavras, as imagens da estima ou do amor. Sempre uma "construção", sempre subjectiva, porque, mesmo com muitos terabites, o MyLifeBits é uma "obra" feita de escolhas, da auto-imagem que fazemos de nós. Podemos inclusive imaginar que à sua volta apareça um novo tipo de obras de arte, uma nova percepção estética, que vem de novos instrumentos de interacção com a realidade.

Nueva consola ”Fantasma”: La consola Phantom ha sido desarrollada por la compañía Infinium Labs, y aspira a posicionarse como un producto diseñado para estar constantemente en línea mediante conexiones de banda ancha. El fabricante señala además que el producto tendrá un rendimiento superior a cualquiera de las consolas actualmente disponibles en el mercado.

Out of this world: NASA tests mobile IP in space: With the Jan. 16 launch of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA has been able to test for the first time how well the mobile Internet protocol works in space, according to Jim Rash, who leads NASA's Operating Missions as a Node on the Internet, or OMNI, program. Although other NASA missions have tested standard Internet protocol, this mission is the first in which the emerging mobile standard is being used. Testing is being done at NASA's Goddard facility in Greenbelt, Md. The shuttle flight will last through Feb. 1.

Microsoft tablets start strong in Europe: Sales of portables running Microsoft's Tablet PC software started strong out of the gate in Europe, according to market researcher Context. Despite only a partial quarter of sales, Microsoft tablet PCs accounted for 1 percent of European portable sales during the fourth quarter. Microsoft launched its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition on Nov. 7, with Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu-Siemens, Toshiba among the manufacturers selling portables using the software.

MS losing developers to Linux: Linux's popularity with programmers has already managed to make a huge dent on the market share of rival software Unix and now it's gradually threatening to do the same with Microsoft's dominance of the business software market. And giants such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell Computer are lending a helping hand.

How the net leaves itself open to attack: The net is making itself unnecessarily vulnerable to crippling attacks, warn experts. Analysis of the queries sent to one of the net's core address books show that 98% of them could have been handled by other parts of the network. Dealing with these queries on the outer reaches of the net rather than at its core could help limit the damage of concerted attacks on key servers say experts. The report and advice comes as the net recovers from the damage wrought by the Slammer worm that exploited holes in Microsoft software.

MPs urge changes to net snooping laws: The controversial plans to force internet service providers to keep records of a customer's e-mail and web browsing has enraged the industry and much of the legislation has yet to be implemented. It could be time to stand back and rethink the plans, said Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan, a member of the [All Party Internet Group].

Opera to release rewritten browser for the Windows operating system, adding features without increasing the browser's size.

Cell Phones 'Blind' Drivers, Study Shows: Drivers who use a cellular telephone, even with a "hands-free" device, suffer from a kind of tunnel vision that endangers themselves and others, U.S. researchers said on Monday. Legislation that seeks to make mobile telephone use by drivers safer by mandating the use of a hands-free device may be providing a false sense of security, they warned.

Hacker Insurance Market Boosted by Cyberattacks: Hacker insurance, also known as "network risk insurance," has been on the market for about three years, but is expected to explode from a $100 million sideshow into a $2.5 billion behemoth by 2005, according to insurance industry projections.

Microsoft Was Vulnerable to Worm Virus: Microsoft Corp. itself was exposed to the virus-like attack that crippled global Internet activity last weekend because it failed to install crucial fixes to its own software on many Microsoft computer servers, according to internal e-mails obtained Monday by The Associated Press.