Analysis Every now and again, an event comes along and takes our breath away by reminding us just how far out of step the legal system can be with today's changing world. The latest example is last week's attempt by a federal judge in California to shutter Wikileaks, a website devoted to disclosing confidential information that exposes unethical behavior.…

UK "media consultancy" ST16 has discovered the secret to viral marketing: Hot Girl Sex.…

Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has revealed the name of the next Ubuntu release - Meeky Meerkat.…

Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has revealed the name of the next Ubuntu release - Meeky Meerkat.…

The Australian government has admitted that the AUS$85m it spent trying to protect kiddies from internet porn was AUS$85m too many.…

Data Domain wants to give its de-duplication technology a comfier fit in the wiring closet with a shrunken system for remote offices.…

3Com's proposed takeover by a US private equity firm and a Chinese rival lay in tatters today, with the three companies admitting defeat in their attempts to mollify US government national security concerns.…

A Marilyn Monroe expert has been left looking a bit of a twit after a photo he verified as being a hitherto unseen nude snap of Marilyn Monroe actually turned out to be one of unihibited popstress Madonna.…

Larry Lessig may battle Washington Corruption from the inside.…

Dietary software specialist Fastscale has tied a bow around a new version of its flagship software and offered up the package to customers.…

Microsoft has flung open the door for anyone interested in getting their mitts on release candidate 2 of Windows XP SP3.…

Make a note in your diary and start limbering up, because Nintendo has finally revealed that both the Wii Fit and Mario Kart video games will hit the UK in April.…

A discredited doctor has forced an ISP to silence a website that aimed to debunk claims made by his "Royal College of Alternative Medicine" (RCAM).…

Miami police have purchased a small Dalek-like aerial surveillance droid capable of "hover and stare" missions. The American cops intend to trial the flying wastebin surveillance platform in urban "tactical operations".…

After 15 years of utopian gibberish about the "internet as a platform" that (of course) "changes everything", the pigeons are finally flying home to roost. In 2008, IP networks look less like the future of media, and more like tarpits that promise to bankrupt anyone who tries to run one. Especially the middlemen - as the distributors look like going to the wall first.…

Dell is gunning to sign up a select bunch of channel resellers to the certification part of its two-tier programme over the next few months.…

Contrary to popular opinion, programmers are not a dry and humourless bunch. What old mainframer can fail to chortle at seeing the graffiti legend "Data error rules, OC7"?…

A South Korean man suffering from a bad case of the booze-fuelled munchies decided his landlady's Chihuahua would do nicely as a post-session snack, but ended up part-flambéd and cuffed for his trouble.…

Musicbrigade, a Swedish company that provided websites including Channel4.com with music video content, has gone titsup.com.…

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith today put forward a scaled-down version of a 'points for passports' citizenship scheme floated last summer. Under plans announced to Parliament today, non-EU immigrants would be faced with a pre-citizenship probationary period involving a deal of conspicuous joining in, and they may not have a lot of choice if they want to stay in the UK after their visa expires.…

A health adviser to the government has formulated a cunning plan to tackle the UK's binge drinking epidemic which some claim has seen this green and pleasant land converted into a booze-fuelled version of a bad Saturday night in the Democratic Republic of Congo - simply ban the sale of alcohol in supermarkets.…

Updated The American military has issued further warning notices to aircraft and shipping in the Pacific, offering further opportunities for US warships to destroy a malfunctioning secret spy satellite before it descends to Earth. Meanwhile, NASA has cleared the space shuttle Atlantis to land as scheduled in Florida this afternoon, allowing the first satellite shot to be attempted above the Pacific in the early hours of tomorrow morning (UK time).…

The enviroloonies seem to have found their way out of the asylum again: this time to tell us that 70 per cent of Britons should die for the sake of Gaia. That's not quite the way they put it, of course. Rather, the Optimum Population Trust (there's a pedantic part of me that wants to tell them it's Optimal) tells us that the maximum sustainable population of the UK is 17 million: given that there are north of 60 million currently, we can only avert the coming End Times if the extra pop their clogs soonest.…

NSFW A group of chums who were less than impressed with the service at a Staffordshire restaurant learned the hard way that you don't mess with England's waiting staff and walk away unscathed.…

Microsoft has suspended distribution of one of the updates required for Vista service pack one (SP1), after customers complained that their PCs wouldn’t boot up properly once KB937287 had been applied.…

The BBC is considering ditching Adobe's Flash system for its iPlayer streams to improve the video quality of the on-demand service, it said on Tuesday.…

Heathrow's Terminal 4 was yesterday hit by a software glitch which affected its baggage-handling capacity, the knock-on effect of which means that some passengers travelling have been told to leave any hold baggage at home.…

The inclusion of a paragraph in the bill to nationalise the Northern Rock which exempts the bank from the Freedom of Information Act is completely unacceptable, according to the Tories.…

Review Every office has a luddite, even an organisation so devoted to the new and the technological as Register Hardware. There's always at least one person who clings to his or her fear and loathing of some aspect of the modern world.…

The Mozilla Foundation has opened up a new subsidiary tasked with developing the Thunderbird email software package.…

The trust which last October successfully got Avro Vulcan XH558 back into the air following a £6.5m restoration is rattling its tin again amid fears it may not have the cash to make the aircraft ready for the 2008 airshow season.…

Intel has formally launched 'Skulltrail', its two-CPU gaming motherboard that's ready for both AMD's CrossFire and Nvidia's SLI multi-GPU technologies.…

Unisys. Unisys. Unisys. No, we can't quite rememb . . . Oh, that's right - the company that sells hardware and services.…

Myths and legends It seems there is a disquieting trend in IT: concepts are getting steadily vaguer, and claims harder to verify.…

A South Carolina fire chief caught up in a scuffle for a gun had a close shave when a ricocheted bullet hit a DVD in his jacket pocket, saving him from a slug in the guts.…

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the latest government institution facing humiliation over its inability to properly deal with sensitive data.…

Wannabe Jedi Knights are advised to brush up on their lightsaber techniques, dust off their copy of the Jedi Handbook, and get down to Surrey, where two Star Wars aficionados have announced their intention to open a training centre dedicated to promoting the popular alternative religion.…

Update Symantec is working on a patch for a bug that generates errors in corporate security protection updates. Workarounds designed to quell the message storm are available but a more comprehensive fix is still in testing.…

eBay said today it expects to an increase in listings for HD DVD products following Toshiba's announcement yesterday that it is going to ditch its optical disc format.…

Analysis The story behind the story is always more interesting, somehow, than the story itself; and the story behind last week's Mobile World congress wasn't just the obvious stuff about backhaul capacity. Instead, people were mumbling furtively about piracy - intellectual piracy, that is. You know, like intellectual property, but acquired by devious means.…

O2 has plugged a security hole that allowed customers to view text messages sent by other UK subscribers online.…

Carousel and VAT fraud is far outstripping Europeans' traditional financial fiddles on EU funds, prompting MEPs to call on the European Commission to overhaul its anti-fraud operation to combat the problem.…

When Bill Gates says an offer is fair, he means it.…

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.…

Apple is offering the first major upgrade to its Storage Area Network (SAN) file system today, while kicking its RAID storage hardware out into the cold.…

Go ahead, Mark Hurd. Rip off those studious glasses and unbutton that blue Oxford shirt. We know there's a Superman costume lurking under the Clark Kent facade.…

Is Network Solutions attempting to reinvent reality? ICANN's looking into it.…

Sanmina-SCI, the US electronics contract manufacturing company, has sold its PC business to Foxconn, a major Taiwanese competitor, for between $80m-$90m. It is also selling its Mexican PC plant to Lenovo, for an undisclosed sum.…

Oleksandr Dorozhko made almost $300,000 in stock-option trading by using insider information that was obtained after someone hacked into the network of a company called IMS Health. Now, the Ukrainian resident is exploiting a loophole that may allow him to keep the ill-gotten gains for good.…

As web-based, on-demand computing continues to grow in popularity, there will be plenty of twisting and turning as companies feel the market out.…