A lot of the spam you find in your mailbox, in particular of the enlargment pill and pump & dump variety originates from a zombie botnet that is created by a trojan known as SpamThru.
It looks as if the media industry, represented by the World Association of Newspapers, is finally starting to recognize that in order to generate revenue on the Internet, they need to work with search engines, not against them. So they've come up with the brand new idea (how is that for subtle irony) of using machine readable metadata to regulate how search regine robots make use of content available online.
A young british boffin, Jonathan Friend, and his startup company Friend Media Technology Systems is causing quite a stir these days with his claims about being able to stop film and music piracy. On September the 8th, Financial Times (Joshua Chaffin: Young gun, FT, Sep. 8th, 2006) devoted two full pages to him and his company.
According to Microsoft's Dave Heiner, Adobe has requested Microsoft remove the "save as PDF" option from the new Office (Office 2007) . Adobe has also requested that Microsoft removes support for Microsoft's XPS-format (XML Paper Specification, formerly known as Metro – a Microsoft controlled alternative to PDF).
A brand new year has arrived – the time of year for renewal of licenses for virus- and spyware programs, the time of year for urgent reports about a "new" security hole in Microsoft Windows.
