A Missouri man is the first to be indicted under a new federal law that prohibits people from secretly videotaping movies when they are shown in theaters, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.

Curtis Salisbury, 19, used a camcorder to make copies of recent releases "The Perfect Man" and "Bewitched" and then distributed them through illicit computer networks that specialize in piracy, the Justice Department said.

Salisbury, who faces up to 17 years in prison, could not be reached for comment.

Entertainment-industry insiders and tech-savvy hackers use "warez" networks, as they're commonly known, to distribute movies, music and software for free, often before they're released to the public.

"The creative works of the entertainment industry belong to the millions of people who make them and are not for others to steal or unlawfully distribute," said Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

One of the 'features' touted on the new Microsoft Vista (nee Longhorn) operating system is the Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management (PVP-OPM).

In a nutshell, unless you have a display device that is equipped with specific technology intended to foil recording, the operating system will degrade the image quality so bit for bit copies cannot be made. Sounds good, right? Well, considering that almost NO monitors are currently shipping with this technology, it means that if you want to view a movie off a HD-DVD as it is encoded, or stream HD content from a Blue-Ray disk to a display, the operating system will kill the video outputs and give you nothing. If you are lucky enough, like me, to have a projector that can handle RGB signals or DVI inputs, you can get a signal but it will be run through a downscaler then an upscaler to reduce the quality.

Wow. If I am running a projector or a TV off video outputs I'll see nothing? If I am lucky enough to have a set that will allow for RGB or DVI I can pay for the privilege of having my 720p or 1080i signal degraded to DVD quality or less? Where do I sign? Paid a premium for a graphics card with component output to reap the rewards of that Hi-Def set? Too bad. Isn't technology wonderful?

Virus writers have created proof of concept viruses targeting the scripting language behind prototype versions of Vista, the next version of Windows. An Austrian virus writer has published five simple viruses targeting Microsoft Command Shell (MSH), the command line interface and scripting language, in a virus writing magazine. None of these pieces of malware have been named as yet [How about phista - Ed?].

As MSH (codenamed 'Monad') is scheduled to ship as the default shell for Windows Vista (which was released in beta form last week), these five items of malware could be classified as the first viruses for Windows Vista. However anti-virus firm F-Secure is careful to note that it's still uncertain whether or not MSH will ship with Vista or not. MSH is a replacement for shells such as cmd.exe and command.com and although currently slated for inclusion in Vista it may end up in products such as the next version of Microsoft Exchange instead.

A republican senator says that the UN is too incompetent to run the Interweb and he wants the US to remain in control.

"My probe revealed management that was at best, incompetent, and at worst corrupt," said Coleman.

"Putting the UN in charge of one of the world's most important technological wonders and economic engines is out of the question. This proposal would leave the United States with no more say over the future of the Internet than Cuba or China—countries that have little or no commitment to the free flow of information," he said.

According to recent research by online publication The Marketing Experiments Journal, up to 29.5% of paid search traffic could be fraudulent.

Click fraud, as defined by The Marketing Experiments Journal, is "any paid-for-click that originates in a malicious attempt to drain an advertiser's budget". Occasionally advertisers will try to drive up their competitors' marketing costs by clicking on ads for high-priced search terms.

Flint McGlaughlin of MEC labs said that people committing the fraud were more likely to be using specially designed programs or sophisticated devices, rather than repeatedly clicking on an ad over and over. "Our random sample of PPC campaigns uncovered as much as 29.5 percent PPC fraud and showed that Google was able to account for and credit only a tiny portion of those fraudulent charges," said McGlaughlin. He added, "Companies should be aware of how big of a problem it really is and be equipped to more aptly detect it."

Michael Lynn made some well reported comments about a Cisco vulnerability at a recent Black Hat conference. His presentation was being shown at sites like www.infowarrior.org.

Infowarrior took down the presentation over the weekend after getting a nasty letter from ISS. The letter said that not only was Lynn being sued by Cisco and ISS, the two had also called in Inspector Knacker of the Yard to investigate alleged industrial espionage by Lynn.

Copies of the 1.9MB PDF file have popped up on a number of websites, after Cisco first pressured Lynn's former company Internet Security Systems (ISS) into removing the presentation from the line-up at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

One of the things that is really strange about this, is that people who have seen the presentation say that Lynn demonstrated how the flaw could be exploited but obscured much of the technical details that an attacker would need to know to pull it off.

There were several contests at Defcon, about 10 official ones, and a lot of unofficial ones, most of those involving copious amounts of alcohol. Some of the official ones were the Wi-Fi wardriving and fox and hound competitions that Renderman brought his rig for, a scavenger hunt and lockpicking contest.

There was also a lockpicking contest, if you want physical access, you need to get through the door first. Umm.... I mean, if you lock your keys in your house, it is a handy skill to have. The best of the bunch were picking locks in under ten seconds to get to the final rounds, where a bunch of extremely difficult locks slowed things down.

There was a lot of interest in lockpicking at Defcon 13, it seems to be the new in thing for the modern hacker. In addition to the contest, there were a lot of workshops to teach you the skills you need to, umm, free your keys from an evil car, and almost anyone could walk away with enough knowledge to start picking. Advanced classes went all the way up to safecracking, a very useful skill in the modern world.

If confirmed, the discovery by Mike Brown of the respected California Institute of Technology would be the first of a planet since Pluto was identified in 1930 and shatter the notion that nine planets circle the sun.

It's the farthest object ever discovered to orbit around the sun," Brown said in a conference call of the planet that is covered in methane ice and lies nearly 15 billion kilometers (nine billion miles) from Earth.

The planet was first spotted on October 31, 2003 with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California.

But it was so far away that its motion was not detected until the scientists reanalysed the data earlier this year, Brown said.

The planet has not been noticed previously because its orbit is at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the solar system, he said.

Microsoft representatives said Friday that the company has begun distributing a beta version of its Web-based Communicator messaging software to qualified customers. The company said the tool is similar to its Outlook Web Access product and provides customers with new methods for accessing corporate IM systems and integrating collaborative applications with older operating systems, among other functions.

The software giant said the launch brings it closer to fulfilling its strategy of making real-time communications and presence-sharing capabilities available to workers regardless of their location. Microsoft said previously that the interface for Communicator Web Access will closely mimic the controls the company has built into the desktop version of the messaging tools which are labeled Microsoft Office Communicator 2005.

Microsoft's bid to refuse access to updated versions of Windows has been foiled by hackers.

The Vole had demanded that those who wanted Windows updates, other than security improvements, had to download an Active X program that sniffed their operating system to see if their OS had been pirated.

It took about 24 hours for hackers to come up with a solution involving IE script, the hackers claim.