Dating site hacker faces long-term relationship with prison

A British computer hacker has been found guilty of gaining unauthorised access to user profiles on a dating site and has been given an eight-month jail term, suspended for two years. Matthew Byrne used a dictionary attack to guess the passwords to member profiles on the loveandfriends dating site, which he subsequently defaced. Byrne gained access because of the simple passwords used on accounts, but did not manage to get into the site's database or servers. ...more

Pointing the moon red

The reflections of a man who wanted - through a collective pointing of lasers - to put a red dot on the moon. This laser-pointing, moon-painting idea was the brainchild of would-be American author James Downey. While working on a futuristic novel, he dreamt up the plan as a fictitious example of the 'crazy ideas' circulating at the start of the 21st century. ...more

SCO reports further losses

Unix company SCO posted its fifth consecutive loss late yesterday to the tune of $1.9mn or 11 cents a share for the second quarter. Despite increased efficiencies in running its Unix business, revenues for that segment were still down roughly $1mn on the corresponding quarter for 2004, at $9. ...more

Apple develops iPod Photo

Apple has launched the iPod Photo, a new version of its portable music player which stores and displays photos as well as music. The iPod Photo is the first iPod to come with a colour screen and can store up to 25,000 digital photos alongside a music library. The iPod photo can be connected to a TV to display photo slide shows, and synchs with iPhoto in the same way as current iPods synch with iTunes. ...more

Internet Explorer has six appeal

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 6, the latest version of its leading Internet browsing application. IE 6 is one of the core technologies of the forthcoming Windows XP but whilst it retains much of the functionality of its predecessor, it does have a number of new features designed to make it easier to get the most out of the Web. The principle new features are the Image Toolbar, Auto Image Resize and the Media bar. ...more