The HD-DVD has been cracked, and high definition content is now being distributed freely over BitTorrent. We all knew this would happen sooner or later, looks it was “sooner”. The first HD-DVD to be uploaded to BitTorrent is Serenity, the Firefly movie.

It hasn’t even been a month since the HD-DVD ripper, BackupHDDVD was released and we’re already seeing high definition feature films pop up on torrent sites. Other than Serenity, it is rumoured that HD-DVDs of the movies 12 Monkeys and King Kong have been decrypted and consequently shown up on torrent sites. Yesterday, a handful of hackers figured out how to extract the unique volume key from HD-DVDs.

According to HDTV Blogger, the torrent is “a 19.6GB file in native EVO format that should play on PowerDVD and WinDVD with HD DVD playback.” Apparently, he got a “very, very nasty email” after posting about the first HD-DVD torrent. It seems the anonymous mailer was upset at the fact that he was bringing unnecessary attention to the P2P community. Looks like his plan just backfired.

View: Full Story Via: torrentfreak.com

Microsoft Virtual Labs launched a new Test Drive site to help give exposure to the Windows Vista operating system. The test drive site allows anyone to launch and try out various scenarios in a completely isolated, sandbox environment before they purchase and install the product on their own equipment.

In the past, many Microsoft applications have been made available on a test drive or trial basis by utilizing a Citrix client connection. The Vista OS trial is more of an “eat your own dog food” type demonstration as Microsoft is utilizing Microsoft Virtual Server to push out the trial.

In order to test drive this online trial, you must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, you must have JavaScript enabled, and you must install the ActiveX control “Virtual Server VRMC Advanced Control” from Microsoft. And don’t forget about your popup blocking software. Mine complained numerous times as I tried to launch various scenarios within this test drive.

View: WindowsVistaTestDrive.com
View: Full Story Via: InfoWorld.com

The facts are staggering… Spam emails are estimated to cost anywhere between US$10 to $87 billion per year in direct costs and lost productivity. What’s more, 90% of computer viruses are spread by email attachments.

Spam has become so insidious that every company has to consider the cost and means of reducing its impact. Sometimes it’s as simple as implementing a basic spam filter and applying best practices– i.e., following a few rules for recognizing and eliminating spam. On the other end of the spectrum are the most aggressive tactics, which involve turning the tables on spammers. This article provides ten tips to help eliminate spam email from your inbox.

View: Full Story Via: ITSecurity.com

Google revealed a glitch in what may be its second-most successful service, ranking only behind search.

The company confirmed Friday that some users of Gmail, its popular email service, had their email accounts wiped out, with messages and contact information being permanently deleted.

The glitch affected about 60 users, who “lost some or all of their email received prior to Dec. 18,” Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne wrote in a prepared statement. “We have extensive safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident.”

View: Full Story Via: TheStreet.com

An explosion of spam has security Relevant Products/Services vendors salivating over potential sales of filtering products this coming year, with levels of the insidious mail clogging inboxes expected to grow at unprecedented levels.

In the closing months of 2006, the volume of spam jumped enormously, according to e-mail filtering firm Postini, with an increase of 73 percent in just the three months leading up to December.

Spam now represents nearly 93 percent of all e-mail throughout the world — the highest level ever recorded by Postini — further driving the need for businesses to find solutions.

View: Full Story Via: CIO Today

Swarms of online shoppers armed with new iPods and iTunes gift cards apparently overwhelmed Apple’s iTunes music store over the holiday, prompting error messages and slowdowns of 20 minutes or more for downloads of a single song.

Frazzled users began posting urgent help messages Monday and Tuesday on Apple’s technical forum for iTunes, complaining they were either not allowed into the store or were told the system couldn’t process their request to download songs and videos.

It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by the slowdowns, and Apple Computer Inc. would not immediately comment Wednesday on what caused the slowdown and whether it had been fixed.

View: Full Story Via: Newsvine.com

Google, the search engine company, displaced Yahoo as the world’s second-most-visited Web site in November and closed in on the leader, Microsoft, a market researcher said yesterday.

Visitors to Google’s sites rose 9.1 percent, to 475.7 million in November from a year earlier, while those to Yahoo sites rose 5.2 percent, to 475.3 million, the researcher, ComScore Networks, said. Both sites trail Microsoft, which had 501.7 million visitors, ComScore said.

It was the first time that Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., attracted more visitors than Yahoo, reflecting Google’s growing popularity outside the United States. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is still the most-visited site within the United States, ComScore said. Microsoft’s visitors increased 3.3 percent from a year earlier.

View: Full Story Via: NY Times

Despite being pounded by the Holiday Blizzard of 2006, North American Aerospace Defense Command remains on alert for the nation and ready to track Santa Claus, according to NORAD officials. “NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center is schedule to begin operations as scheduled at 2 a.m. Christmas Eve,” said Michael Perini, Director of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command Public Affairs.

More than 800 Santa tracking volunteers will cycle through the center answering telephone calls and e-mails from children around the world wanting to get a fix on Santa Claus’ whereabouts.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command annually “tracks” the flight of Santa Claus and associated reindeer across the skies on Christmas Eve, posting sighting data and imagery of the icon on its website.

View: NoradSanta.org
View: Full Story Via: Playfuls.com

Google Translate is a translation service provided by Google to help you translate text or web pages to the language you desire. Some of the languages supported include English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, Japanese, etc.

If you want to translate a page from one language to another, here is the URL format:

http://www.google.com/translate?lan….websiteurl.com

where en|es is the language pair to translate from one language to the other (here it is English to Spanish), and www.websiteurl.com is the site you want to translate.

An interesting workaround to bypass your proxy server is to use Google Translate to translate the page you want to view from English to English, like this:

http://www.google.com/translate?lan….websiteurl.com

Here, since the origin language and the destination language are the same, Google Translate does not perform any translation and hence simply acts as a forwarder and forwards the page you want to view directly to you.

View: Full Story Via: O’Reilly Network

Even Santa isn’t safe from spyware and viruses.

With Christmas fast approaching, Santa Claus reached out for a little help from Stopbadware.org this week.

The consumer advocacy group said it was approached by an Incline Village, Nevada, man who has legally changed his name to Santa Claus, who asked them to help figure out why his Web site was being flagged by Google’s Web site filters.

It turned out that Santa’s Web site, Santaslink.net had been hacked.

View: Full Story Via: PCWorld