There's a slightly odd article doing the rounds that says laptops running Windows Vista could burn through their batteries more quickly than users expect because "some wireless access points aren't configured to take advantage of the new operating system's Wi-Fi power-saving mode".

It sounds like what's happened is that Vista supports a newer technology than many access points -- which is to be expected in the world of computers, since every product isn't on the same release cycle. But what makes this story so strange is that it's written almost as if the problem is with WiFi, not with Vista. It seems rather ridiculous to imply that WiFi access points should be more accommodating to Vista, rather than the other way around, or to suggest that access points are broken because they don't support this feature Vista does.

A study released last month by the security firm Postini found that unwanted messages now account for 91 percent of all e-mail, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 percent.

A separate report by California-based IronPort Systems concluded that worldwide spam volumes increased from 31 billion messages daily in October 2005 to 61 billion messages per day in October 2006.

Image spam reached a new high of 25 percent of total spam volume in October 2006, an increase of 421 percent in a year, according to IronPort.

"Spammers are using advanced mathematical and graphical techniques like random modification of image pixels and dynamic construction of images from multiple components to bypass spam filtering tools," he said.

In the past two years, the number of consumers using pop-up blockers and spam filters has more than doubled, according to a new study, "Consumers Love to Hate Advertising," from Forrester Research. More than half of all American households now report using these ad-blocking technologies to block unwanted pitches.

Broadband households have become even harder to reach: Some 81% of those with high-speed Internet access employ pop-up blockers and spam filters.

And that distaste is strong. "Only 13% of consumers admit that they buy products because of their ads, and a paltry 6% believe that companies generally tell the truth in ads," the report states.

Forrester also notes that ad avoidance is becoming more common on television. Today, 15% of consumers acknowledge using their digital video recorders to skip ads, more than three times as many as in 2004.

The 18 year-old, Peyton Strickland, was killed last Friday as he went to answer a knock at the door. Outside was a band of heavily armed police who, it is suggested, blasted him to kingdom come because the games controller he had in his hand may have looked like some sort of weapon.

The assassination squad had seen pictures of Strickland and pals posing on the Interweb with a selection of assault weapons. So naturally they went in tooled up and took no chances. Stickland's dog, Blaze, was also blasted to bits. He probably had big teeth.

Americans are warned either to open their door promptly when it is knocked at, or to swiftly leg it out the back an see how far they get. On no account should they dither about or have anything in their hands.

The politics of unwanted email is changing with China set to overtake the US any day now as the originator of most Irish inbox clutter.

Figures for November from Irish email monitoring firm IE Internet show that although the US is still the world leader with 27 per cent of dodgy emails originating there, this is a huge drop on October's figure of 48 per cent.

China is now second in the monthly world rankings of spam-producing countries, followed by Britain (21 per cent), France (15 per cent), India (seven per cent), and Turkey (four per cent). South Korea doesn't figure in the top six global spam machines for the first time in several months.

Meanwhile, as the world's spam merchants have been getting ready for their Christmas onslaught, virus writers have been busy too.

Two new viruses made it into the top five this month: W32/Warezov and W32/Tricky-Malware. And both are spreading fast, according to IE Internet.

Lawyers for Saddam Hussein have lodged an appeal against the former Iraqi president's death sentence for crimes against humanity, court officials say.

The appeal was lodged just two days before the expiry of a deadline and a month after the sentence was imposed.

A panel of nine judges will review the verdict, which has been criticised by human rights groups as flawed.

The country's interior ministry has said that civilian deaths in November rose by 44% compared to the previous month.

He and six co-defendants are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the killing of at least 100,000 Kurds in northern Iraq.

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies.

A BBC article from 2004 reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activiation method. "A mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug," the article said, "enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down."

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.

The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.

"The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, 'We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,'" Goldberg said.

Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts.

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said.

British police investigating former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko's death in London say they have found traces of radioactivity at 12 sites in the city -- and in five aircraft, as well. The Kremlin has consistently denied any involvement in the death of Litvinenko, who blamed President Vladimir Putin for his death.

In Parliament, Britain's Home Secretary John Reid linked the contamination in London to polonium-210, the radioactive element found in Litvinenko's body. He said that about 24 sites were being investigated, and 12 of them had shown traces of radioactivity.

The investigation also includes five aircraft, two of which have been confirmed to be contaminated.

Some 30,000 people have flown on those two aircraft alone since police believe they became contaminated a month ago. Police are focusing on four flights between London and Moscow from the end of October into early November, but the aircraft used on those flights have taken at least 200 other flights, carrying thousands more passengers since then.

An official document posted to Digg today summarizes an agreement between the U.S. and Russia in which Russia has agreed to close down AllofMP3.com, and any sites that "permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works."

"This agreement sets the stage for further progress on IPR issues in Russia through the next phase of multilateral negotiations, during which the United States and other WTO members will examine Russia's IPR regime," states the document.

The document specifically names AllofMP3.com as an example of the types of Web sites that they will shut down. We contacted AllofMP3.com and the company sent us an official statement stating their legality. It says that the company has offered to remove illegal music at the copyright holders' requests.