That pattern goes something like this: hear that a huge explosion was averted and lives were saved, find out the plotter was an American citizen, find out he was under investigation by the FBI for several years, and then finally find out that it was the FBI that egged on the suspect and built his "bomb" for him.

"The bomb, which was inert and had been constructed by FBI technicians, didn't explode, according to federal authorities."

An old adage that many programmers stick to: "It takes a certain type of mind to learn programming, and not everyone can do it."

People may study success in college-level courses and conclude "some people aren't fit to learn programming". However, such a conclusion severely oversteps the bounds of the observed evidence. How much failure could instead be attributed to how the programming is taught (too abstract?), or which style of programming is taught (too imperative?), or the programming environment (compilation, no immediate feedback?).

From now on, companies can only make one more application for IPv4 addresses and, if successful, will only get 1,024 of them.

On 14 September Ripe NCC got down to its last 16 million IPv4 addresses. While this might sound a lot, said Mr Pawlik, the use of this last substantial block would be so heavily restricted that the supply could be considered to be at an end.

Other techniques based around technical tricks that share IPv4 addresses among many different devices would prove increasingly unworkable, he said.

Red Hat has taken a unique step in defending itself from a patent infringement claim from Twin Peaks Software: a counterclaim that Twin Peaks is in copyright violation on mount, the file management app that is licensed under the GPLv2.

Curiously, the storage technology that Twin Peaks is claiming as infringed was originally developed by Gluster… but it wasn't until Red Hat acquired Gluster in October 2011 that Twin Peaks got around to suing Gluster and its new owner.

Red Hat's legal-fu is massive, because it's using the fact that there is still a lot of non-compliance of the GPL out there to its clear advantage. And, as Groklaw reported this morning, the risk to Twin Peaks is far greater now.

After his account was connected to a series of previous infringements, a 40 year-old man was summoned to court today. Despite a third-party admitting that the music piracy in question was carried out by them and not the accused, the court still decided to fine the account holder.

According to the Hadopi law it doesn’t matter that the man didn’t carry out the infringements himself – as the owner of the Internet connection in question he is responsible for what happens on it.

Thomas-Rasset, a young Minnesota mom, was the first US file-sharer to take her RIAA-initiated lawsuit all the way to a trial and a verdict back in 2007. Five years, three trials, and one appeal later, she owes $222,000 to the recording industry for sharing songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network, but she doesn't plan to quit fighting.

Thomas-Rasset will follow Joel Tenenbaum, the second US resident to take his file-sharing case that far.

The reader, who asked not to be identified, is an ICT co-ordinator at a secondary school. He tells how his “image-conscious” headmaster was seduced by a scheme that allowed all the school’s staff to replace their laptop computers with an iPad 2.

“Some staff are needing to produce documents and resources by remoting in [to a PC] on an iPad,” our source reveals. “Trying to operate Microsoft Word using a remote app that dumps you out of the connection is a nightmare.”

“One of the biggest problems is the storage, since you can’t connect USB memory sticks to it,” our teacher writes, adding that staff are now experimenting with Dropbox to get documents on their tablets, which raises inevitable questions about data security.

Thousands of websites hosted by one of the world's biggest internet domain registrars and web hosts, GoDaddy, were reported down on Monday.

"If it is true, then that has not been constructed to scale up in a sisable DDos. The GoDaddy site can cope with a sizable amount of traffic, but its DNS may not have been.

After ordering a violin smashed earlier this year and freezing an account designed to let people donate toys to underprivileged children, the payment processor appears to be trying to put a more human face on its corporate image.

So is PayPal turning a leaf and serious about improving customer relations and communications? We shall see.

"I wanted to let you know that with Kindle Fire HD there will be a special offers opt-out option for $15. We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We're happy to offer customers the choice."

The ensuing reaction on social media was, suffice it to say, mostly negative. Even though it's widely understood that the sponsorships help keep the Kindle prices low, the lack of choice struck a nerve with potential consumers.