Human-induced climate change has affected global rainfall patterns over the 20th Century, a study suggests.

Researchers said changes to the climate had led to an increase in annual average rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

Climate models have, for a number of years, suggested that human activity has led to changes to the distribution of rain and snow across the globe.

"We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands," the researchers wrote in the paper.

This article at Whitedust displays some very interesting logs from Vista showing connections to the DoD Information Networking Center, United Nations Development program and the Halliburton Company; for no reason other than the machine was running Vista. From the article 'After running Vista for only a few days — with a complete love for the new platform the first sign of trouble erupted. I began noticing latency on my home network connection — so I booted my port sniffing software and networking tools to see what was happening. What I found was foundation shaking. The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state'.

Four enterprising prison inmates have been accused of trying to blackmail their way out of jail after they copyrighted their names and then demanded millions of dollars from jail officials for using them without permission.

Russell Dean Landers, Clayton Heath Albers, Carl Ervin Batts and Barry Dean Bischof allegedly sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma City and filed claims against his property.

Believing the warden's property had been seized, the inmates allegedly said they would not return it unless they were released from prison, according to the indictment.

The four and another man, who allegedly assisted in their scheme, have been charged with conspiring to impede the duties of federal prison officials and with mailing threatening communications with the intent to extort.

If convicted, they each face up to 16 more years in prison and a £250,000 fine.

They may never know it, but U.S. air travelers and others set off silent terrorist warning alarms nearly 20,000 times in 2006 when their names matched against the government's centralized terrorist watch list, according to a statistic buried in a Department of Justice document.

The number represents a 27 percent jump over 2005, and points to the growth in the federal Terrorist Screening Center, a joint FBI and DHS operation that controls the government's master list of suspected terrorists. Agencies from the FBI to the NSA nominate names to the database and assign threat level codes to each name. The criteria for inclusion is considered classified.

The MPAA is concerned that network neutrality rules might bring an end to such beloved technologies as digital watermarking, deep packet inspection, acoustic fingerprinting, and content filtering of all kinds.

The MPAA's concern is not with winning any sort of broad ideological ground in the debate over how the Internet should work, but to make sure that ISPs can "manage their networks to protect intellectual property in order to best serve the interests of content creators and the content-consuming public."

Going beyond the specific technologies listed above, the MPAA believes that ISPs need to have the right to control traffic shaping, quality of service guarantees, latency, and bandwidth hogging—all of special concern when it comes to regulating P2P traffic.

A massive hunt was under way last night to find the mole who leaked the new Harry Potter online.

American publishers Scholastic went to court to identify the person who revealed details of the novel five days before its official release date.

The mole breached the tightest security operation in publishing history to put the first two-thirds of the US version of the book on a website.

English publishers at Bloomsbury are said to be "spitting blood".

A source in America said last night: "Heads are sure to roll over this." Bloomsbury recently told how it spent £10million on a massive security operation to ensure no secrets leaked.

Its furious American counterparts at Scholastic launched a court order claiming infringement of copyright to track down the culprit.

Debbie Foster's battle with the RIAA appears to be finally over. Today, a federal judge in Oklahoma closed the book on Capitol v. Foster by awarding her $68,685.23 in attorneys' fees, a ruling first reported by Ray Beckerman's blog.

Foster was sued by the RIAA in November 2004 for copyright infringement. She denied infringement and began a legal fight against the music industry. In July 2005, the labels added her adult daughter Amanda Foster to the suit.

Judge West decided that $68,685.23 was adequate to compensate Barringer-Thompson and her legal staff for the time spent litigating the case. He also rejected the RIAA's argument that Foster was not entitled to fees incurred after "some point when she allegedly 'could have avoided [fees] altogether but chose not to do so,'" reiterating that she was fully entitled to fight the RIAA's charges and as a result, eligible for an award of attorneys' fees.

What's the cost of file-sharing? For Terri Frye of Hickory, NC, it was $300. That's the amount she'll have to pay the RIAA after agreeing to a judgment in a file-sharing case. Frye is a single mother living in state-supported housing who received one of the RIAA's settlement letters in November 2005.

Despite contacting Frye in late 2005, the RIAA did not actually file suit until March of this year. In the intervening period, Frye repeatedly informed the RIAA that they had the wrong person.

The end result is that the RIAA likely spent thousands of dollars to obtain a $300 judgment. And although Frye agrees to be enjoined against future copyright infringement, she does not admit to any wrongdoing.

MediaSentry flagged 706 songs on the computer that became the basis for the lawsuit, and at $750 per song, that works out to a total of $529,500. The RIAA settled for a minuscule fraction of that number, one curiously close to the 70¢-per-track figure a record industry attorney said is close to the labels' share of each track sold.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs. The company will now be allowed to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge into Lake Michigan every day.

These days it's hard to keep digital media locked up in any format. Our Zune ears recently heard tell of a program that strips DRM off of tracks purchased from the Zune Marketplace, or traded via Wi-Fi. What makes this more significant is the optional Zune subscription which allows users to download almost all the Zune Marketplace.

We decided to download and test the Zune DRM stripper for ourselves to see if it actually works. In fact, it was so effective that we have decided not to publish any links to it. Of course these things will get out regardless.