Remember Samy? The creator of the infamous worm was unfortunate enough to be the the target in MySpace's latest litigation. As was said in the earlier story, the script was "written for fun" and caused no damage. The source and technical explanation for the "attack" was not even released until after MySpace had patched the vulnerability. Apparently this was enough to get the 20 year old (19 at the time of writing the worm) three years of probation, three months of community service, pay restitution to MySpace and is also banned from the Internet. Clearly, disclosing security vulnerabilities doesn't pay.

From the class action 'Comes et al. v. Microsoft' suit, some very enlightening internal Microsoft emails are now made public. Emails to and from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, etc all make for some mind blowing reading. One of my favorites is from Jim Allchin to Bill Gates, entitled 'losing our way,' in which Allchin states 'I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.

Vista is shiny and its maker can't even come up with a decent list as to why you should care. May I suggest you take your $400 and pick a new hobby using this as seed money? You won't get a DRM infection, you won't sell your soul to licensing agreements, and you will have a computer that is actually more functional. What more do you want?

INTEL filed a legal action against Mr Sean Torongeau. Torongeau, it said, is trading as PROINTELL and that might confuse people and devalue Chipzilla's mark.

"By combining Intell with the generic and laudatory term 'pro', Defendant has caused and is likely to continue to cause confusion that Intel is the source of sponsor of Defendan'ts computer services, or that there is an association or relationship between the companies."

PROINTELL repairs computers, designs websites, hosts websites. Intel lawyers think PROINTELL will "tarnish, blur, or dilute, or likely tarnish, blur or dilute the distinctive quality of the famous Intel mark."

After the RIAA dismissed its file sharing suit against Patti Santangelo last year, it decided to go after her children. Both Michelle Santangelo, age 20, and Robert Santangelo, 16, were targeted by the RIAA after the record labels determined that they were responsible for whatever file-sharing went on in the Santangelo household.

In his answer, Robert Santangelo denies the charges and demands a trial by jury, while accusing the record labels of engaging in a "wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States." Santangelo also calls the labels a "cartel" that acts in collusion, violating US antitrust laws by "entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in an identical manner and through common lawyers."

Indeed, Santangelo and his attorneys appear to be using every entry in the file-sharing defense playbook in this case. They argue that making music available does not constitute infringement; that the statute of limitations on the alleged infringement (which supposedly occurred five years ago) has expired; that the music industry has "enticed and encouraged children to download music for free," and that the damages sought by the RIAA are unconstitutionally excessive.

MS will tell you that Vista is the next great thing in every way, it took billions of dollars to develop, millions of man-hours, and undoubtedly will be the best selling OS ever launched. The problem is that Vista brings almost nothing to the table that can't be described by as three year old as "shiny".

Let's look at it this way, ask yourself what good new features Vista brings to the table. Most will respond that it has Aero Glass, a really pretty UI. How may other things does it bring that are positives? I can't honestly think of one, and I'll bet if you ask the next ten people you run into, they won't be able to tell you any either.

Repeat the same exercise in the negative, what bad new things does Vista bring? Massive crushing DRM infections, unacceptable licence terms, bloated hardware requirements, and a list of cut features long enough to paper your bathroom.

VMware on Monday released version 3 of Converter, its application to move software from ordinary physical computers onto virtual machines. The new version of Converter permits the process to be automated so many servers can be converted at once, lets customers clone a machine's configuration as it runs, and understands Microsoft's virtual-machine storage format so those virtual machines can be imported as well.

While viewing my school (the University of Massachusetts Lowell) with Google Maps, I noticed that a select portion of the campus was pixelated: the operational nuclear research facility on campus. Curious, I attempted to view the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It too was pixelated. What or who is compelling Google to smudge out these images selectively? Will all satellite images of facilities that the government deems 'sensitive' soon be subject to censoring?

We had a chance to chat with Josh Newman, Intel's chipset product marketing director, and he claimed that G965 as well as 945G and 945GM run Vista Aero "beautifully".

Intel believes that Aero Glass is an "exciting new user interface". It is supported by Intel 945 and 965 products and has "the highest quality drivers available" to run "Aero interface beautifully today".

Sometimes we wonder whether the poor hardware vendors are all being led by the nose in some sort of Microsoft cattle market, but that's just a view.

Computer security guru Fyodor (pictured) reports waking up yesterday to find his website SecLists.org essentially removed from the web by his domain registrar, GoDaddy. After a bunch of phone calls to GoDaddy, he eventually got them to explain why: Because MySpace asked them too.

MySpace was apparently unhappy with a post that crossed Full Disclosure earlier this month, in which the author attached the spoils of a phishing attack against MySpace users, consisting of 56,000 user names and passwords.

These lists have surfaced in the security community before, allowing the white hats to see the data that the black hats have swindled out of unsuspecting users. Bruce Schneier did a fascinating analysis of an earlier MySpace password list in his Wired News column last month.