Software scientists at Microsoft Research have teamed up with biomedical researchers in Seattle, Boston and Perth, Australia, to see if computer techniques used to defeat e-mail spam can also be used to help design a vaccine that can defeat AIDS.

"HIV mutates like crazy, but it does show a pattern," said Dr. David Heckerman, a physician and computer scientist at Microsoft Research.

"HIV mutates by making errors in its (genetic) copying," Jojic said. But it can make only so many errors, he said, if it hopes to retain the genetic equivalent of the spammer's intended e-mail.

South London students are being warned of a scam in which they may end up parting with up to 200 quid of their hard-earned cash for nothing more than a laptop bag full of spuds.

Police say two scoundrels have targeted Southwark unis and colleges, claiming to have a laptop or other mouth-watering piece of kit for sale at a knock-down price. They show their intended victims a PC in a car boot but, after trousering the wonga, hand over a case packed with potatoes.

Det Supt Jane Corrigan told the BBC: "If it sounds too good to be true, then it generally is. You could be spending hundreds of pounds for a laptop case with very expensive potatoes inside."

Late last month, administrators and service providers began seeing virus-infected messages with a new type of attachment hitting their mail servers: an .rar archive.

The emergence of .rar-packed viruses highlights the lengths to which virus writers are willing to go to evade anti-virus systems, as well as the limitations of those traditional signature-based defenses.

Experts say .rar files carrying viruses have been sailing past commercial anti-virus products and finding their way into the mailboxes of users, who are often unfamiliar with the file format. Administrators who have seen .rar-packed malware say that none of the messages have been stopped by their anti-virus defenses.

"Most users have finally gotten trained not to open .zips and executables, and now we have to worry about this," said the administrator, who asked not to be identified. "Our [anti-virus system] doesn't catch these yet, so we have to block it at the gateway in order to stop them."

Steal This File Sharing Book by Wallace Wang must be the worst nightmare of deluded music big boys everywhere. It's a guidebook to trading music, movies, photos, software and just about any other type of file. More than that, it's a guidebook for trading as anonymously as possible and via methods the big media companies would prefer the average person not know about.

Wang gives out solid advice for masking your email and IP addresses and for setting up proxy servers. The author dutifully warns readers that many identity protectors don't work quite as well as billed. Still, he provides comprehensive lists of sites and types of technology that can help anyone protect their identities whether they are file trading or not.

"Remember, don't break the law; just creatively skirt around the legal boundaries like any law-abiding politician would do," Wang writes.

The book gets the highest of marks for content, clarity and usefulness. If every file-trader on the planet gave it a read, the media moguls would have a much tougher time fingering prolific swappers for lawsuits.

Apparently Lexmark didn't get the message the first time the Sixth Circuit Court explained to Lexmark that they were abusing the DMCA for anti-competitive purposes in trying to stop Static Controls from making ink jet cartridges that work in Lexmark printers. The Court has now told Lexmark that they won't rehear the case and to go away and stop bothering them. There's still some remaining parts of the case to be heard, but this is definitely good news for those who believe the DMCA is regularly being abused for anti-competitive purposes, rather than to protect intellectual property, as it was intended.

Ending speculation about whether it was shifting to a paid model, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it will provide customers with its new anti-spyware software for free.

"Just as spyware is something that we have to nip down today, we have decided that all licensed Windows users should have that protection at no charge," Gates said.

While Microsoft turned its attention to general software security three years ago with its Trustworthy Computing Initiative, the spotlight on consumers began a year and a half ago, after the MSBlast worm infected millions of home PCs. The worm taunted Microsoft's founder with the message, "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!"

Microsoft has published a parent's guide to online slang, and we were unable to resist it. It aims to educate confused parents about the wacky online world their kids inhabit, so that mums and dads across America don't freak out when they spy on their offsprings' email, and can't understand a word of it.

The guide begins: "While it's important to respect your children's privacy, understanding what your teenager's online slang means and how to decipher it is important as you help guide their online experience."

The intention behind it may be good, and who can blame parents for wanting to make sure their kids are safe online? But the whole thing conjures up images of middle class parents trying to converse with their children in "leetspeak" over breakfast.

A 42-year-old Freedom High School chemistry teacher was arrested Monday after students told authorities he taught his class how to make explosives, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.

David Pieski, a teacher at Freedom for two years, used an overhead projector in class to give students detailed instructions in bomb-making, including advising them to use an electric detonator to stay clear from the blast, according to an arrest report.

On Feb. 8, sheriff's investigators interviewed Pieski at the school. He told investigators he detonated chemicals in a coffee can by a ball field four times for his students. He said he did this as a chemistry project to show a reaction rate, the arrest report said.

He was arrested at Cunningham's office Tuesday morning on a charge of possession or discharging of a destructive device and culpable negligence.

A Silicon Valley company unveiled Tuesday a new technology that it claims to be able to block 97 percent of the DVD-copying software used by Internet pirates, without interfering with a DVD's paly ability or picture quality.

Macrovision Corp. said its RipGuard system, which can be included in personal computers, DVD players and DVD recorders, would plug the digital hole through which unauthorized versions of DVD films can be easily copied on a computer and then "burned" to other discs or put online for downloading.

"Macrovision RipGuard DVD is designed to dramatically reduce DVD ripping," Steve Weinstein, head of the company's entertainment technologies unit, said in a statement Tuesday.

The Nosoftware patents site is reporting that Bill Gates told the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that 800 jobs would go if the country opposed the European Union's proposed directive on software patents.

It quotes a report in Danish newspaper Borsen, which alleges that Gates told Ramissen and two other Danish ministers last November that 800 jobs at Navision would go unless the EU passed the directive.

The ginger group also alleges today that the CEO of Philips put pressure on the Dutch government to support the proposed directive.