Second Life in child porn probe

Second Life is at the centre of a child porn probe after reporters discovered participants trading indecent images of minors. A reporter from the German television programme, Report Mainz, claims to have been invited to 'child pornography meetings' in the virtual world, during which he was put in touch with traders of real child pornography. German prosecutors are reportedly probing the claims, whilst a spokesman for Second Life has promised to help identify the culprits and help the police with their inquiries. ...more

ICANN future up for debate

The US Commerce Department will today debate the White House's plans to surrender control over Internet domain names by the end of September this year. The Bush Administration has set out places to privatise ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. ...more

Industry and governments convene Internet Governance Forum

More than 1,500 delegates from industry, governments, and other influential bodies met today in Athens under the auspices of the UN for the first day of talks at the Internet Governance Forum. At stake is the future of the Internet, and while no actual policies or decisions will be made, the aim is to reach consensus on the key issues regarding the future governance of our online world. The Forum follows on from the work of the World Summit on Information Society, which met in Tunis last year, and will look at four main topics: openness, security, diversity and access. ...more

Windows Xmas security hole

Fix available for critically severe vulnerability. Microsoft has issued an alert over a security hole in Windows XP that, at worst, could lead to an attacker gaining full access to the PC. Certain installations of Windows Me may also be affected, as are Windows systems that have the Windows XP's Internet Connection Sharing client installed. ...more

Samsung's new memory chip 'twice the speed of DDR2'

Samsung, the world's biggest memory manufacturer is claiming another breakthrough in DRAM design. The company claims a new ultrafast prototype chip can deliver data at 1066Mbits per second. If true, the 512Mbit part, inevitably dubbed DDR3, is twice as fast as the current generation of DDR2 designs and five times that of the original DDR devices. ...more