John Lister

If you love your 80s teen movies, you'll be very familiar with plots in which geeky teenagers (often played by Matthew Broderick) use dial-up modems and green-screen monitors to hack into their school computers and change their grades. Two ... California students have recently been charged over similar incidents where they reportedly used a blend of 21st century hacking and old fashioned brute force. Rather than simply looking in the principal's assistant's drawer for the password, they allegedly broke into the school and installed spyware on staff computers so that they could remotely access the ... (view more)

Many people have been wondering why the new 3G iPhone is much cheaper than expected. It turns out wireless carrier AT ... (view more)

Microsoft lawyers will be relieved today after the Chinese government appeared to deny reports that the company could fall foul of new anti-trust laws. The denial follows a report in a government-run newspaper, Shanghai Security News, which said ... officials were investigating large software companies. The report claimed local tech firms might bring legal action under laws which come into force on August 1. The main objection seemed to be that Microsoft has used its dominance in the Chinese market to price Windows (the equivalent of US $145-290) and Microsoft Office ($580-725) so high that the ... (view more)

Microsoft is launching a centre in Europe to study search technology, following the example of a similar facility in China. According to the firm, it's part of a specific plan to "help accelerate Microsoft's investments in Live Search and disrupt ... the search and advertising marketplace." That appears to be corporate speak for "compete better against Google and Yahoo". There's no official word yet on where Microsoft will choose as a site for the facility, though it has recently bought Fast Search and Transfer, a search engine company based in Norway that developed the AllTheWeb.com site. ... (view more)

Industry analysts are scratching their heads after Microsoft recently decided to join a project measuring how people are using open source software. The Open Source Census is run by OpenLogic, a company that aims to help organisations obtain, use ... and control open source software -- programs where the underlying code is open to everyone to see and to share ideas on improving it. The project launched in April and has so far taken details from more than 200,000 places where open source software is being used. It's got several industry backers, but Microsoft has become by far the biggest. It's ... (view more)

The man who once dubbed himself the 'King of Spam' is finding unsolicited messaging isn't always a cheap form of advertising. A court has ordered him to pay $6 million in damages and legal fees to MySpace. Scott Richter has already announced he ... won't appeal the award, which is just 5% of the $120 million that MySpace requested. Last month a court awarded the company a record $230 million against two men who'd sent almost 750,000 messages to MySpace members. Unfortunately, the pair no-showed the court date and went into hiding without paying the fine. Richter's fine could have been ... (view more)

It seems every polling day sees pundits hyping up "the first real Internet-era election", but the 2008 US Presidential race really has brought us close to that point. A study of 2,251 adults suggests that 46% of Americans have followed the elections ... either through the Internet or via text message. That's up from around 33% in 2004. However, that figure is a little vague as it incorporates gathering information, sharing opinions and influencing others -- three activities which most likely cover very different numbers of people. (Source: cnet.com ) And yet, the study did also find 35% of adults ... (view more)

In a recent interview, CEO of Google Eric Schmidt recently admitted the firm still hasn't figured out a way to make money from YouTube. He's also discussed the company's supposed web domination and its moral positioning. Speaking to a New Yorker ... journalist at a Syracuse University event, he said Google should be able to make "significant amounts of money" from the video sharing site considering it has such a huge audience. He also pointed out that Google is fortunate enough to have the time and money to invest in the site without an immediate return. With 129 million viewers a month, an ... (view more)

A tech firm is using a form of human GPS to let users know which nightspots are the most lively. Sense Networks, a newly-launched New York company, has developed a database system titled Macrosense. It brings together both the details of phone users ... who've installed their software, and other details, like where taxis are heading. The idea is based on the way GPS systems analyse the speeds of thousands of different cars to build up a picture of which roads are particularly congested. They are trying out the technology with Citysense, a free feature for smart phones such as the BlackBerry and ... (view more)

Three of the major US Internet providers have agreed to cut off their subscribers from accessing explicit images of children on the Internet. Sprint, Time Warner and Verizon have all made a voluntary agreement with the New York attorney general ... Andrew Cuomo. They'll also pay a combined $1.125 million to fund efforts to crack down on the problem. While some reports have said they'll be blocking websites, the main target is actually Usenet newsgroups. These are discussion forums which predate the World Wide Web itself. Once the web became popular, they lost a lot of their appeal for discussion ... (view more)