Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Earlier this year, the new Napster was given a bit of a fright when reports began circulating that its recently introduced subscription service had been "hacked." Those reports stung Napster in two ways They suggested that the service, which in its original incarnation was shut down by the music industry as a rat's nest for tune nicksters, had, how...

More than 1,000 individuals and groups have signed a letter urging the U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to open its meetings next month on global patent and copyright policy to more government outsiders The forums to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, are expected to set the tone for future action impacting the economic growth of...

The thinking inside the box for producing a personal computer for users with shallow pockets is to start subtracting features from a more expensive model until you reach the price point you want, then toss the works into the same dull cabinet as the pricier offering Apple has shown over the years that it doesn't have a penchant for such in-the-box ...

When Dell Computer announced last month that it would begin shippingnotebook computers incorporating a chip to make the units more secure, itsent analysts scurrying to their calculators. That's because Dell'sinclusion of "trusted computing" hardware into its machines would be givingthe technology a big boost in the coming year According to the late...

Could the American spy community improve its intelligence activities throughblogging? A captain in the U.S. Army Reserve thinks so and says as much inthe March issue of Wired magazine Capt. Kris Alexander, a millitary intelligence officer, argues in an essay that blogsshould be incorporated into the intelligence community's classified computernetwo...

American companies have always had to worry about their overseas facilitiesbeing red, white and blue bull's-eyes for terrorists, but now their offshoringpartners may be in the crosshairs of subversives, too A reported raid last Saturday by police in Delhi, India, in which three menwere killed and another arrested, uncovered plans to attack software...

Comments by a powerful U.S. senator sent a shudder through the cable andsatellite television communities this week Ted Stevens, the Alaskan Republican who heads the SenateCommerce Committee, reportedly told a group of broadcasters what must have sounded likesweet music to some of their ears: He wants to extend the rules forindecency that apply to t...

Supporters of file-sharing programs Grokster and StreamCast scourgedthe entertainment industry yesterday following the filing of briefs with theU.S. Supreme Court in a case that could be Armageddon for the peer-to-peersoftware industry The High Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the dispute on March29. Entertainment industry groups are at...

Has Nanosolar found the Holy Grail of solar energy? For years, the price of solar energy has been so high that, without some form of subsidy, it has beenunable to compete with power from the electrical grid. Now Nanosolar, a Palo Alto,California, start-up claims it has developed a "commercial-scale technology"that cuts the cost of delivering solar ...

As a judicial panel heard arguments this week on a scheme to fight thepiracy of digital television broadcasts, a civil libertarian group in SanFrancisco launched a guerrilla program to undermine the plan The scheme is the so-called "broadcast flag," a digital rights management(DRM) system for controlling what consumers can do with digital televisio...

Caution: Click-through agreements may be hazardous to your rights of privacyand free speech Those are the sentiments expressed in a white paper released by theElectronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as part of a campaign to raise consumerawareness of some of the dangerous terms found in End User LicensingAgreements (EULAs), commonly found on the Inter...

The University of Calgary is at it again The Canadian school gained some notoriety two years agowhen its computer science department launched a course on computer viruses,which included, as part of the coursework, writing a virus....

Congressman Mike Thompson is hoping three times is the charm for hislegislation to create a national recycling program for electronic waste The California Democrat has twice before filed bills to establish nationalstandards for handling e-waste only to see them whither and die in aparliamentary backwater....

Federal regulators launched a two-prong attack this week on the US$200 million diploma mill industry, an industry populated with online enterprises where students can purchase a degree with minimal or no course work The first prong was spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), which keyed up a searchable, online database of educational...

A free software program to help parents police illegal movie and music files on their household computers is garnering mixed reviews The application, called Parent File Scan, was unveiled last week by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) -- alongside an announcement of the organization's intent to file more lawsuits against people who i...

Anyone who sells, advertises or distributes peer-to-peer (P2P) softwarewithout taking "reasonable care" that the software won't be used for anunlawful act would be slapped with a fine up to US$2,500, a year in county jailor both under a bill filed in the California Senate last week Although the measure, filed by Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, is...

A group that defends civil liberties on the Internet has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to determine if the government is secretly gathering information on the surfing habits of citizens In a copy of the FOIA obtained by TechNewsWorld, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundatio...

A developer of security software for Linux had some harsh words yesterday for what he sees as a lax attitude toward security in the operating system's community "Linux is being presented by commercial vendors as a professional, enterprise-ready product," Brad Spengler, of grsecurity, said. "When it comes to security, I don't see it as either profes...

A call for financial support by the operator of a BitTorrent server that'sbeen targeted by the motion picture industry as a hub for pirated films hasachieved initial success Edward Webber, operator of Loki Torrent, posted a plea for money at his Website last week to fight a lawsuit slapped on his outfit by the MotionPicture Association of America (...

A popular online community for selling goods and finding jobs and housing isdiverting US$50 million to $65 million annually in classified advertising fromnewspapers in the San Francisco Bay area, according to ClassifiedIntelligence, a consulting firm in Altamonte Springs, Florida The firm released a report this week, a copy of which has been obtain...