This was the month that was: An Australian laborer became New South Wales's first person prosecuted for photographing topless women with his cell phone camera. Peter Mackenzie pleaded guilty in Waverley Local Court after admitting to roaming Coagee beach and snapping images of topless sunbathing ladies November 6, photographing their breasts as he passed them by. "I really feel," Mackenzie said, after having first claimed to be innocent, "like I've blemished 25 years of being a decent person."
Getting the buggers out of pirated software, games, music, and movies online is a full-time job that's landed its first Iowan. Jathan Desir of Iowa City pleaded guilty to copyright infringement and conspiracy and faces up to 15 years in the freezer at his March sentencing. He admitted to joining others in building and operating two Web sites offering pirated software, games, music, and movies.
Working out the bugs is one thing, but Hewlett-Packard claims they've done it in a way that slows the spread of worms and viruses within servers. They call the program Virus Throttler, once shelved (in August) but now back on track. The problem: Integrating it to Microsoft Windows server software. The solution: Creating access through a network driver. HP chief technology officer Tony Redman told Software Universe in Madrid this month that Virus Throttler would be available in early 2005 for ProLiant servers running Windows 2000 and 2003 and for HP ProCurve network switch devices. HP is also working on a version for personal computers but isn't saying yet when that would be released.
Scotland landed a dubious first, too: its first guilty plea in a cybersex case. This from a 31-year-old man, Neil Ross, who admitted to having a five month online relationship with a 13-year-old girl whom he told he was 19 years old. Ross was said to have watched the girl pose naked on live webcam and to have performed a solo sex act for her at the same link. The girl's parents intercepted their text messages and Ross was busted. He could be seeing up to five years in the joint for his trouble.
Australia hopes it sees results from launching its first known spam reporting system, after the Australian Communications Authority teamed up with ISP Pacific Internet to run it. The trial is letting Pacific Internet users report spam by way of the ACA Web site or a Microsoft Outlook plugin developed by Spammatters. After that, the ACA can take legal action under Australian anti-spam law.
Internet advertisers Fastclick are moving up in the world: the Santa Barbara, California company said December 22 they filed for a $92 million initial public stock offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, with Credit Suisse First Boston and Citigroup as the lead underwriters. Fastclick's prospectus did not yet reveal how many shares of common stock would be involved in the offering, nor did the company reveal just yet the price of the initial sale, which they said they'd disclose in future filings.
Now, as the man on television used to say back in the day, let's go hopscotching around the cyberworld for headlines…
>They figured that out, eh? "Hillsborough (Florida) school officials have decided that pornography and public schools are not such a good mix after all."
>We're peddling as fast as we can. "[T]oday, as [Attorney General John] Ashcroft prepares to vacate the highest law enforcement office in the land, anti-porn advocates are deeply disappointed with the Bush administration's record – under Mr. Ashcroft's guidance – for pursuing peddlers of smut."
>What a guy! "The Romanian Prime Minister is offering to sleep with the wives and girlfriends of journalists on a Romanian newspaper to stop them claiming he is gay."
>That'll teach him. "A middle-aged romeo has been banned from an Internet dating agency for sleeping with more than 100 women. Ex-miner Clive Worth, 55, had 119 dates in five years and ended up in bed with most of them."
