Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Do you hate your cell phone but can't live without it? You're not alone. Nearly one in three adult Americans told researchers in a study released Wednesday that the cell phone was the invention they hated most but couldn't live without Thirty percent of the adults in the researchers' sample put the cell phone at the top of their necessary evils lis...

A hornets' nest of fury over a video game that urges its players to "kill the Haitians" has prompted a South Florida city to approve -- at least initially -- a sweeping ordinance to regulate games sold or rented to minors. The law, proposed by North Miami's Joe Celestin, a Haitian-American, imposes a $250 fine on anyone who sells or rents to minors without their parents' consent games in which players kill or cause harm "to a human form."

An established, clandestine network of compromised computers could become the launching pad for a superworm that would have a massive impact on the Internet The malware network was created by an unpublicized Trojan -- a malicious program that poses as a benign one -- called Sinit, which has already infected hundreds of thousands of computers, accor...

Digital video recorders that allow consumers to skip commercials in television programs they record might be more difficult to find in the future due to the "chilling effect" of a court case ended by a federal judge last Friday Judge Florence-Marie Cooper dismissed a lawsuit filed against 28 entertainment companies by five owners of a ReplayTV DVR ...

Linux is irritating Microsoft, and the software giant isn't going to take it anymore On Monday, the maker of the Windows operating system launched what it says will be a prolonged advertising campaign to "get the facts" before the IT community about the cost benefits of its OS over its open-source competitor....

Lawyers for the makers of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" (GTA/VC) are proposing to move a lawsuit against the controversial video game from state to federal district court in Florida "Big, powerful corporations usually try to make it as difficult as possible to litigate against them, so they move cases into the arena that is most costly for the plai...

The past year was a good year for bad guys on the Web. Fraud complaints surged 60 percent to 120,000 from 75,000 a year ago, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center in Fairmont, West Virginia The Center, which changed its name last week from the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, maintains a database on Internet crime and acts as a clearingh...

Distributing software for sharing files on the Internet is legal even if the application is being used for illegal activity, the Supreme Court of The Netherlands ruled last Friday In upholding a lower court ruling, the high court found that Sharman Networks, maker of the Kazaa file-sharing application, did not infringe on the rights of music and mo...

Within six months, Philips Electronics expects to release a new interoperable digital rights management (DRM) system. That will be good news for music consumers currently befuddled by a hodgepodge of schemes promoted by the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Napster and RealNetworks "It is Philips' opinion that DRM solutions will be necessary to enable the...

Customers of big banks, beware. You might be surfing the Web with a bull's-eye on your browser. That's because Internet scam artists have targeted the customers of large financial institutions for their nefarious efforts The technique used by the grifters is a cyberspace version of the old bait-and-switch tactic that in the Internet age could be ca...

A scheme to counter the Balkanization of digital rights management (DRM) on the Internet was unveiled Wednesday by a standards group whose members include ARM, ContentGuard, Macrovision, Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Universal Music Group and VeriSign The group -- called the Content Reference Forum (CRF) -- has posted specificati...

Smut distributed through peer-to-peer networks isn't inherently more dangerous than titillating matter found elsewhere on the Internet That was one of several findings by the research arm of the U.S. Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO), in a letter responding to written inquiries by the Senate Judiciary Committee following the panel's hea...

Some folks find flattery in imitation, but spam fighters are finding it in denial-of-service attacks. The attacks are being generated by a nasty but undistinguished virus called Mimail-L, which, as part of its mischief, is commandeering its victims' computers to deluge with e-mail eight prominent antispam sites. The targeted sites include Spamhaus.org, SpamCop.net and SPEWS.org (Spam Prevention Early Warning System) as well as others, such as Disney's Go Web site...

An industry group has approved a standard for the next generation of DVD players, but the move could be just the first skirmish in a future format war The Tokyo-based DVD Forum has given its nod to a design for "blue laser" DVD players proposed by Toshiba and NEC. Blue-laser players use DVDs that store five times the data of current DVD discs. That...

Apple Computer lured millions of PC users into its online music store when it released a version of its popular iTunes software for Windows, but it also attracted a less savory element -- hackers Just 10 days after the release of "WinTunes," a crafty codesman at Trinity College began distributing MyTunes, a program that turns the Apple software int...

A bill to take the "spy" out of spyware got a public hearing before a Congressional subcommittee Wednesday The legislation filed by Rep. Mary Bono (R-California) would require spyware purveyors to inform computer users of the presence, nature and function of their applications, as well as seek permission from users before downloading intrusive good...

In a classic duel between wetware and software this afternoon, the world's number one chess player will battle a computer program in the last of a four-game set in virtual reality. After three contests, the opponents -- Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, 40, and X3D Fritz -- are deadlocked at one win each with one draw "It's really been fascinating," X3D ...

A patent that critics say will vitiate the Web will be reexamined in a rare move by the U.S. Patent Office The patent, No. 5,838,906 -- or 906 for short -- governs the embedding of components into Web pages, a practice that, among other things, enables use of such popular applications as RealAudio, Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat a...

While some PC makers talk a good consumer electronics strategy, Gateway is turning talk into products That's what Gateway executive vice president Scott Edwards told TechNewsWorld in an exclusive interview following a New York City press conference at which the computer maker with the bovine brand introduced 14 new business and consumer products....

An outfit that has exploited a networking feature in Microsoft Windows to send pop-up ads to consumers' computers as frequently as one every 10 minutes has been slapped with a temporary restraining order to halt the practice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C The order also bars the spammers from ...