Is it possible to make money off a product that millions have downloaded for free? The new owners of WinZip Computing hope so.

Technically, WinZip charges $29 for the program after a 30-day free trial. Unfortunately, the honor system doesn't work as well as it used to. Few customers end up paying for the program.

Vector will try to change that by reminding users a little more firmly that the software costs money, as well as likely coming out with features that only paying customers can download. Vector also signed a marketing and distribution agreement with Google.

As Microsoft inches closer to the first beta release of Internet Explorer 7, the company's development advisors have been advising Web site developers and managers to run certain tests now to prevent problems when the beta version does appear.

One area that Microsoft has clearly articulated as being one in which developers can start work now to prepare for IE 7 involves the UA (user agent) string.

First discussed in the company's Weblog in April, the code change prompted a reminder on Wednesday to developers, telling them that Microsoft continues to run across Web sites that are not expecting Version 7 of the browser, and urging them to test their UA strings.

"Developers should ensure that their sites are ready for the IE 7 user agent string and treat IE 7 just like they would IE 6," Schare said. He did not comment on what would happen if changes were not made, but said it is likely that testing issues will be discussed again on the development blog.

On July 16, 1945, the world's first nuclear bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico, marking the beginning of the Nuclear Age. Manhattan Project veteran Herb Lehr has no regrets: 'In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile. I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability.' Lehr will return to Trinity Site for the first time since the explosion. He said, 'I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back. Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there.'

Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.

Although Cooper didn't host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.

Tamberlin found against all other respondents in the case, namely ISP Comcen, its employee Chris Takoushis, Comcen's parent company E-Talk Communications, and its director Liam Bal.

Outside the Sydney court, Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Michael Kerin said the verdict sent a strong message to ISPs.

"The verdict showed that employees of ISPs who engage in piracy can be seen in the eyes of the court as guilty," Kerin said.

Cooper was not present in court. His legal counsel, Bev Stevens, said the verdict was "extremely disappointing".

A dutch court has told the music industry that forcing ISPs to hand over data on P2P customers would represent a breach of privacy.

The Brein Foundation asked five ISPs - UPC, Wanadoo,Tiscali, KPN and Essent Kabelcom, to hand over personal data on people downloading large amounts of music and films.

However, the Dutch court ruled that Brein had illegally obtained the names of the alleged internet pirates through a US research outfit MediaSentry.

The Court didn't like the way that MediaSentry's software scanned all the content of the "shared folder" on the customer's hard disk, which could also contain non-infringing data and personal information.

Personal data in the EU is a bit better protected than in the US where the music industry can do whatever it likes to obtain names of downloaders.

Raincoast Books of Vancouver discovered last Friday that Real Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam, B.C. had sold 15 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. So on Saturday, it sought the injunction from the province's Supreme Court.

Anyone who has directly or indirectly received a copy or any other form of disclosure of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is forbidden from revealing any information before 12:01 a.m. on July 16, the official release date.

The court order also calls for anyone who has received unauthorized material from the sixth book in the series to turn it over to the publishers and to erase any electronic copies.

Recently, two men in England were charged with theft after allegedly stealing copies of the latest book from a distribution centre. Police say the two tried to sell the book to a newspaper reporter.

According to Denver-based message security vendor MX Logic, spammers are continuing to adopt Sender ID and Sender Policy Framework (SPF), two of the prominent e-mail authentication schemes that are actually intended to stop spam.

MX Logic tracked a sampling of 17.7 million messages that passed through its servers from June 19 through June 25, and found that of the 9 percent from domains with published SPF records, 84 percent was spam. Of the even smaller number of messages from domains with published Sender ID records (just 0.14 percent), 83 percent were spam.

Microsoft recently reworked its free-of-charge, Web-based Hotmail service so that all messages not using Sender ID are identified as such. The Redmond, Wash.-based developer isn't, however, deleting non-Sender ID mail or trashing it by placing it in a junk mail filter. Yet.

"As adoption of Sender ID and SPF records grows, and the lack of a domain with an SPF record becomes the exception to the norm, we may choose to investigate unauthenticated e-mail more closely before deciding whether to deliver it to the users' inbox," said Craig Spiezle.

In other e-mail and spam news, MX Logic said that in June zombies accounted for a record 62 percent of all spam. In comparison, May's tally was 55 percent, and April's 44 percent.

A king cobra snake has died after biting a Hindu priest in India.

The 3ft 6ins cobra bit Biswanath Kanwar while he was feeding it milk at Barapgahar in Jharkhand.

The snake lay motionless on the floor, vomited blood and died, reports United News of India.

The priest regularly fed milk to the snake at the Nagdevata temple at Barapgahar.

Members of the priest's family took him to a local hospital where he is now reportedly out of danger.

The dead snake was also brought to the hospital to be examined by doctors but there was no sign of any physical injury.

Microsoft's delayed Longhorn operating system appears to be taking a page from the Unix management book by curbing user's administration rights.

Speaking at Microsoft's Worldwide partner conference on Sunday, Nash indicated the architectural change is part of a move to improve security of desktop systems by limiting the ability for end-users to install applications or for malware to take control of a machine, turning it into a zombie.

The move mirrors techniques used in various versions of Unix and Linux to create more limited variations of "the God user" or root account. This account provided a single user with total control of, and access to, an entire system's resources. Sun Microsystems, in particular, has touted very sophisticated user access controls with its new Solaris 10 operating system. This lets government agencies, for example, store information of different classification on the same computer, as the OS controls who is authorized to see the data.

Nash said a key Longhorn feature would be increased "granularity" in administration capabilities "so people need a lower level of privilege to install applications and printers. When a higher level of privilege is required, we can elevate that. You can use Longhorn in a very effective way without being an admin."

The Telegraph has a nice article about the steps that Scholastic is taking to protect the content of the print version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. They're delivering 10.8 million copies and need to ensure that this content isn't accessable by anyone before midnight. Technology includes high-tech (GPS to monitor delivery trucks progress and check that they did not deviate or stop.), low-tech (steel boxes & locks), social engineering notes (crates stacked up in the warehouses of delivery companies across America are marked: Please Do Not Open Before Midnight), and legal threats (As a final layer of security, booksellers have been forced to sign legal forms acknowledging that if they break the embargo, they will never again be supplied with a book by Scholastic). Think how much cheaper and easier it would be if they just used an E-book s with DRM. I'm all for Harry Potter protecting his rights; but it seems we keep getting closer and closer to the world described in Stallman's visionary The Right To Read article.