Microsoft showed Internet Explorer 9 for the first time at its Professional Developer Conference, but a technical preview won't be available before next year (perhaps at CES 2010 in January).

Instead, Windows Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky demonstrated the latest test version, with the Trident rendering engine running on DirectX instead of GDI - to show that IE development is still going on, and making progress on performance and support for standards.

It is ironic that President Barack Obama would travel to China and speak against government control over the internet. If the American Department of Homeland Security has its way new cybersecurity laws will enable Obama’s administration to take control of the internet in the event of a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights.

Lord Mandelson is seeking to grant himself significant powers in the fight against copyright infringement – the ability to do just about anything so long as it's in the interest of protecting copyright, and without having to go through parliament.

This is disturbing not just because it represents a triumph of executive power over the normal democratic process, but also because it also reflects the increasing hunger our politicians have to control the internet. For the politicians that's a hopeless dream, but the damage they can do in the trying is real.

Cory Doctorow has the scoop on BoingBoing and if accurate, the new legislation will be a disaster for the privacy of all Internet users while giving unprecedented powers to the entertainment industry. Under the new bill the Secretary of State would be able to pass secondary legislation without Parliamentary oversight in order to protect rights holders.

Reports indicate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have refused to embed a “report button” that would allow users to report abuse.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has devised the free “abuse button” that would link children and teenagers to advice and put them in contact with counsellors and law enforcement officers.

The Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit made two arrests earlier this month for suspected use of the Zeus Trojan.

A man and a woman, both 20, were apprehended in Manchester on 3 November in Europe's first arrests with regard to Zeus, according to a Met Police statement on Wednesday.

A Met Police spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Thursday that a man and a woman had been arrested for suspected criminal distribution of the Trojan, which is also known as Zbot.

Two suspected computer hackers have been arrested by detectives investigating a sophisticated virus which steals personal details from people using the internet.

Thousands of computer users have been struck by the Zeus or Zbot Trojan that bypasses security software and downloads banking details.

Investigators believe the information could be used to compromise accounts, enabling organised crime gangs to steal ''substantial'' sums of cash.

More here:
http://ByteStyle.tv/node/190

Your ISP, if Net Neutrality disappears

Google More Intelligent vs. Less Intelligent

5 Windows 7 Features You Probably Didn't Know About

Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.

Scientists have unveiled the world's first universal programmable quantum computer, capable of processing two quantum bits or qubits which store more data than the simple "on" or "off" bits of conventional computing.

But, the test programme has revealed significant hurdles which the scientists claim must be overcome before it is ready for real work, the 'New Scientist' reported.

Microsoft has opened up its Windows 7 operating system to advertising, allowing brands to advertise on PC desktops.

The technology company has struck a series of deals with the likes of Porsche, Pepsi and Twentieth Century Fox, which will allow users to add the branding of each company on their desktop.

It is pilot scheme which will run until next October and will be extended to Windows 7 borders and sounds – as well as Internet Explore 8 add-ons, which will direct people back to each advertisers’ homepage.

Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or Mortal Kombat can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life, according to two studies appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Furthermore, violent video games may be more harmful than violent television and movies because they are interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor, say the researchers.

When you’re a huge web company, and you choose a name for something as important as a new programming language, you should take great care to investigate whether the name is already taken.

The hosts of ''Tokudane'' a morning show on Japan's Fuji TV giggle as the guy demonstrating Microsoft Windows 7 struggles with the new operating system.

1 out of 3 ain't bad.

Urges users to block ports until a patch is ready, but workaround cripples browsers.

Mike,

I wanted to be sure you got this. The GCN links for WRH On Demand and podcasts are for the WRONG DATES. For instance, this Thursday's podcast is a show broadcast last Friday. I sent you and e-mail about it.

REPLY: GCN is playing some earlier shows in my absence this week, so the dates for the podcasts are current, but the dates on te shows are, of course, repeats.

There's much more to this - read more (some of the things I *wish* I had said during the interview) & take action here:
http://bytestyle.tv/node/190

If you want to draw attention to a problem, try hiding it. That's the strategy of several military bases when it comes to the H1N1 vaccine.

Shortly after the Pentagon announced that all Armed Services personnel would soon be facing a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program, I started receiving email from soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors because of a previous story I had written on the anthrax vaccine. Mandatory vaccine programs are a sensitive subject in the military, so it's not a huge surprise that swift and visceral reactions to the program gained speed.

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

During a four-day conference which starts on Thursday, representatives from the social network Facebook, the search engine Google, the YouTube video sharing website and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia will explain the importance of "new media" in the lives of young people.

The bishops will also learn how to combat the threat of hacking, with advice from a young hacker from Switzerland and an Interpol expert on cybercrime.

Purdue University researchers are making progress in developing a new type of transistor that uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips.

The fins are made not of silicon, like conventional transistors, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide.

The secret project first came to light in August 2009, when the Google’s search engineers publicly invited web developers to test the new version of the search engine and give their feedback. However, the company has now taken down the developer preview web page and replaced it with an announcement declaring Google Caffeine will go live in its first data centre soon.

The statement thanks all the people who have tested out the new back end technology, intended to speed up indexing and reduce the time between new content being published online and it then appearing in a Google search result.

Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.

Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen.

Read the leaked document here:
http://bytestyle.tv/node/189

Ever wonder where you stored a certain file on your computer? If you have the new Windows 7 or even Windows Vista on your computer, you won't need any extra software to answer that question. The functionality already built into Windows 7 and Vista beats the performance offered by four free search programmes, the experts at Germany's Computer Bild magazine found.

A leaked draft of the Internet chapter of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) reveals that ISPs will be held liable for the infringements of their customers, unless they disconnect those accused. The draft aims to strengthen the power of the entertainment industries and other copyright holders, at the cost of the public.

Windows 7 is a valuable upgrade delivering an awesome new user interface, but don’t expect any major improvements in security.

Anti-virus software vendor Sophos tested Windows 7’s built-in anti-virus capabilities by feeding a clean system 10 pieces of the newest malware. Eight out of the 10 samples ran successfully, claims Sophos.

The Google Dashboard brings together the host of popular services now offered by Google, and displays them in a simpler fashion.

"We think of this as a great step towards giving people transparency and control over their data, and we hope this helps shape the way the industry thinks about these issues," said Alma Whitten, Software Engineer on Privacy and Safety.

Dr. Ron Paul speaks on the U.N. trying gain global power through climate control and internet.

While parent company struggles with change, payment service flourishes

Most people know eBay Inc. for its online marketplace, where deals abound on everything from gadgets to antique furniture. But soon, eBay's biggest business will likely be PayPal, the online payments service that has been growing steadily even as the economy has stumbled.

If the video link doesn't work, you can watch it here:
http://bytestyle.tv/node/186

What sort of privacy do you expect when you send an email? As Americans increasingly rely on the Internet for communication, Justice Department lawyers increasingly argue that Americans have no right to privacy there—notwithstanding repeated congressional efforts to bolster these rights. A recent case out of Oregon shows how the privacy expectation associated with emails and other Internet communications is being frittered away.

A citizen is so tired of his country’s copyright laws he has reported himself to an anti-piracy group. In his written confession, the ‘pirate’ admits to copying more than one hundred purchased movies and TV shows for his own use – legal in Denmark – but breaking DRM on the same is an act forbidden under Danish law.

The flaw, as discovered by Estonian Apple Site AppleSpot: If the user visits a site which uses Motion-JPEG (most commonly used for security cams and live feeds) in Safari, Safari will continue to gobble up bandwidth even after Safari is closed. Safari is one of the few apps that Apple allows to process in the background, and Motion-JPEG streams appear to continue streaming, even if the stream is in another tab or in the “closed” application.

Schmidt, of course, didn’t quite it put it this way. According to him, in five years time, a real-time, broadband intensive, video and app-centric web will be overrun by Chinese-language content. No surprises there, especially since he wrapped up his prophesy in the orthodoxy of the social web, arguing that user-generated networked information would increasingly replace professionally created content as the backbone of the online knowledge economy.

Businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the internet's addressing protocol that will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

People who illegally download music spend more on official releases than anyone else, according to a new survey.

The study, published today by think-tank Demos, found those who admit to file sharing spent an average £77 a year on singles and albums - £33 more than those who claim never to have wrongly accessed music for free.

Researcher Peter Bradwell said the findings should force companies and politicians to 'wake up to the changing nature' of the music industry as the Government plans to disconnect illegal downloaders from the internet in a 'three strikes and you're out' rule.

15 Free Guides That Really Teach You USEFUL Stuff

As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.

The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lieberman says U.S. is still behind in cybersecurity efforts

The United States is well behind the curve in the fight against computer criminals, Sen. Joe Lieberman said , as Homeland Security officials opened a $9 million operations center to better coordinate the government's response to cyberattacks.

Even well-defended computers can leak shocking amounts of private data. MIT researchers seek out exotic attacks in order to shut them down

The 3 Phases of Owning a Computer

A large number of web services are geographically restricted, such as Hulu, Pandora and Spotify. The reasons are usually to do with content licensing restrictions, or because US visitors (or visitors from other advanced economies) are of a higher value from a monetization perspective.

Peter Mandelson confirmed yesterday that illicit file-sharers could have their Internet connections severed as part of the government’s aims to reduce piracy by 70% in 2 years. TalkTalk, the UK’s second largest ISP, is said to be dismayed at the decision and is now threatening legal action over what it claims is a breach of human rights.

The 40th anniversary of the birth of the Internet was celebrated in the US with events being organised at the University of California and the Computer History Museum in Los Angeles to mark the occasion.

Industry leaders, researchers and analysts, among others, attended the function at the California University Thursday, Xinhua reported.

Computers might struggle to exhibit intelligent behaviour, but blindly performing arithmetic calculations is surely their forte. Or is it?

The failure of Google's online calculator and Excel's apparent inability to give correct answers to simple calculations are both well-known problems among programmers, but these aren't really bugs in the normal sense of the word. Instead they're just a consequence of the fact that computers suck at maths.

A new tool aims to fix misbehaving programs without shutting them down.

Martin Rinard, a professor of computer science at MIT, is unabashed about the ultimate goal of his group's research: "delivering an immortal, invulnerable program." In work presented this month at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in Big Sky, MT, a group of MIT researchers, led by Rinard and Michael Ernst, who is now an associate professor at the University of Washington, developed software that can find and fix certain types of software bugs within a matter of minutes.

Amazon have said that Windows 7 was bigger than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in pre-order sales. The difference is that people couldn’t wait to crack open and start reading about the latest adventures of the boy wizard as soon as it slid through the letterbox, but those Windows 7 disks seem to be staying on the shelf in rather large numbers.