A Brief History of Apple

Some historical context would be useful before we plunge into the various product launches of Christmas Past.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in the late 1970's from an infamous garage in California.

Jobs' mercurial personality drove the company to revolutionise the computer industry with products such as the Apple II and Macintosh.

But by the late-1980's, Jobs had been ousted by the very man that he himself had brought in to drive the company further -- John Sculley, formerly an executive for PepsiCo.

During his wilderness years, Jobs occupied himself with the NeXT computer -- essentially a more powerful version of the Macintosh in all but name.

NeXT ultimately failed as a hardware company but did have some success with their software -- WebObjects was one of the earliest e-commerce offerings taken up by large corporations.

The NeXT computer also has a place in history as the machine used by Tim Bermers-Lee to create WorldWideWeb -- the world's first web browser.

But NeXT may have failed to thrive because Jobs was more focused with his other company -- a computer animation studio bought from George Lucas called Pixar.

With the roaring success of movies such as Toy Story, it seemed as if Jobs was destined never to return to the scene of his first glory.

But as Jobs' studio was picking up Oscars, Apple was in serious danger of going out of business.

Sculley may have ousted Jobs but he and his successors ultimately failed to drive the company forward.

By the mid-1990s, the Mac OS was looking long in the tooth and frustrating users with frequent crashes.

The product line had stagnated with a confusing range of models that had bizarre features such as built-in TV tuners.

Apple's board took the bold decision to shore up the flagging morale of the company by purchasing NeXT and re-appointing Jobs as CEO.

Although it was initially an interim appointment -- Jobs joked that he was the iCEO -- his old management style kicked back in.

He was soon cutting a swathe through the decaying company by abandoning the Newton handheld and rationalising the confused range of desktops and laptops.

The ageing Mac OS was dropped in favour of the NeXT OS which was given a shiny new look to make it more Mac-like.

Jobs signalled a new era with the launch of the iMac -- the iBook, iPod, iPhone, and a host of other devices followed that assured the future of a company that once faced oblivion.

The point of all this historical meandering is to demonstrate two points.

Firstly, that Jobs rescued the company from itself and all his decisions are driven by the knowledge that Apple has to prosper at all costs.

Secondly, Jobs is not afraid of iconoclasm -- such as the first iMac having no floppy drive or launching a mobile phone without a keypad.

Past launches have inspired violent reactions but Apple has usually been vindicated -- most of the time.

Let's take a look back at past product launches to see what the reaction was -- and how they actually fared in the market.

1998: iMac

The iMac was the breakthrough product that revived Apple -- but it faced criticisms for lacking a floppy drive.

It also used USB ports -- a departure from the ADB and SCSI ports used previously -- drawing complaints from users that their old peripherals would be obsolete.

But the iMac went on to become the top-selling computer in its first year on sale.

800,000 iMacs were sold in that year -- with Apple's total retail sales jumping 176%.

After several revisions, the iMac is still a key part of the Apple product range.

2000: Power Mac G4 Cube

A rare failure for the company, the Cube was praised for its good looks but failed to make enough profits.

It was essentially the guts of a laptop in an transparent plastic cube measuring 8" x 8' x 8"-- reminiscent of the legendary cuboid computers made by NeXT.

But there was little love for the silent beauty and the device was put 'on ice' in 2001.

However, the Cube lives on in some shape or form as the Mac Mini launched in 2005 -- the dimintive Mini is the same basic idea in a smaller housing.

As the cheapest Mac in the range, the Mini has proved to be a strong seller for first-time buyers looking to switch from PCs as well as those looking for a 'media centre' they can hook up to a TV.

At the time of writing, Mac Mini models hold the number 2 and 3 spots in Amazon's list of top-selling desktops.

2001: iPod

Although MP3 players were nothing new, Apple entered the market with an innovative interface and a hard drive that allowed for far greater capacity.

But sceptics heaped criticism on the fact that it was expensive and only featured a FireWire connector -- ubiquitous on Macs but rarely found on PCs.

Consumers felt differently and snapped up the iPod as it succeeded where others had failed by integrating closely with the iTunes client software.

Within three years, Apple had taken 70% of the market share for MP3 players.

The iTunes Store then went on to popularise paid music downloads and Apple is now the largest distributor of digital music in the world.

2007: iPhone

The iPhone was the clearest demonstration of Jobs' iconoclasm -- a touchscreen phone with no keypad.

Worst still, the first model was 2G only and featured a risible 2 megapixel camera without a flash.

But the real kicker was the eye-watering price -- as well as paying for the phone, users had to sign an 18-month contract with AT&T for mobile service.

Apple did listen to critics and quickly dropped the price -- the iPhone now retails for one-sixth of the price of the original 8GB iPhone.

By the end of 2009, 33.75 million iPhones had been sold.

They also repeated history by creating the App Store to sell software to users in the same way they had popularised music downloads.

The billionth application sold on the App store was downloaded on April 23rd 2009.

At the time of writing, that figure has jumped to three billion applications downloaded.

And the moral of the story is...

Futurology is perhaps a job best left to prophets and augurs.

The knee-jerk criticism of the iPad puts me in mind of Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People's Republic of China.

When asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution, he replied:

"It is too early to say."

"The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call ‘superphones,’ with the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset making it as powerful as your laptop computer of three to four years ago," said Andy Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering for mobile.

"It's our way to raise the bar on what's possible when it comes to creating the best mobile experience for consumers."

The Nexus One is an improvement on the iPhone in many respects -- as well as having a faster processor, it also has a large bright 800x480 pixel screen, memory expandable by the user up to 32gb as well as a removable battery.

The software on the Nexus One also puts the iPhone to shame in some areas -- voice recognition features allow users to dictate and send emails and instant messages.

“The evolution we’ve seen around voice recognition in the past year or two has just been phenomenal,” said Erick Tseng, senior product manager at Google.

“We wanted to take it to the next level.”

Google have seen the success of the iPhone's App Store and have launched a retail site to offer apps as well as sell the phone hardware itself.

The Nexus One will be sold by Google in an unlocked version for $529 -- it will be available from $179 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile USA.

A deal with Vodafone means that the Nexus One will be available in Europe later in the year.

Although some see the Nexus One as a direct competitor to the iPhone, Google hopes to sell much more advertising served via the phone.

"This is the next front of our core business," said Rubin.

When Rubin was asked if a free ad-supported phone was a possibility in the future, he was reticent to disclose future strategy.

“The first baby step here is: Let’s get an online story going and let’s figure out what they best way to enhance it in the future."

When a journalist decided to view the MSN Video page using a browser set to tell the server that it was IE 5.0 for Mac, he saw the following message:

"We recommend the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and FireFox 2.x on Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 2.x on Windows Vista, FireFox 2.x on Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger."

"What really caught our attention was the recommended browsers: IE 6 or 7 -- predictably -- but Firefox 2.0 as the second option, both on Windows and on Mac OS X," said Fernando Cassia of The Inquirer, an irreverent and much-loved website that reports on IT matters.

"So, we guess that Microsoft is still not aware of the Firefox 3.0 release, yet."

The move to endorse Firefox is notable as Microsoft originally recommended Mac users migrate to Apple's Safari browser when IE for the Mac was discontinued in 2006.

It also contradicts some of the remarks made by Microsoft's leader Steve Ballmer -- he has been scathing in the past about the value of free software packages like Firefox.

"Our goal is to try to educate people on what it means to protect intellectual property and pay for it properly," he said.

It could be said that recommending free software on your website is one way to educate people about paying for it properly -- or maybe not.

What is closer to the truth is that Microsoft have conceded defeat in the browser war -- at least on the ascendant Mac platform.

"We feel like it's smarter for us to do new things rather than bringing another browser to the Mac," said Ballmer.

Jeff Simmermon, 32, hails from Brooklyn and considers his right to drink coffee anyway he wants to be a fundamental right.

But he couldn't have anticipated the furore that a simple request for an iced espresso would cause when he walked into the door of Murky Coffee, which has a stringent list of rules about what customers can and cannot ask for.

Viewers of Seinfeld will probably be having visions of the 'Soup Nazi' when they read the following:

"We have some policies at Murky Coffee," said Nicholas Cho, owner of the coffeeshop.

"No modifications to the Classic Cappuccino."

"No questions will be answered about the $5 Hot Chocolate (during the months we offer it)."

"No espresso in a to-go cup."

"No espresso over ice."

"These are our policies."

"We have our reasons, and we’re happy to share them."

Out-of-towner Simmermon thus had no idea of what was waiting for him when he walked into Murky Coffee and asked for his usual summertime tipple of iced espresso.

"I’m sorry, we can’t serve iced espresso here," said the barista.

"It’s against our policy."

"Okay,” replied Simmermon, "I’ll have a triple espresso and a cup of ice, please."

That didn't violate their rules, so he was served the drink and as he prepared to mix it with ice, the barista took the opportunity to admonish him.

"Hey man, what you’re about to do...that’s really, really not okay," said David Flynn, the barista working on the counter.

"This is our store policy, to preserve the integrity of the coffee."

"It’s about the quality of the drink, and diluting the espresso is really not cool with us."

"So I mean, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, and I can’t stop you, but-"

"You’re goddamned right you can’t stop me,” Simmermon interrupted.

"I happen to have a personal policy that prohibits me from indulging stupid bullshit like this -- and another personal policy of doing what I want with the products I pay for."

He then proceeded to mix the two and set off something of a storm in a coffee cup.

His parting shot was to leave a $1 bill as a tip, inscribed with the legend: 'Fuck you and your precious coffee policy.'

Simmermon went on to blog about the incident at his site andiamnotlying.com -- which eventually got a reaction from Murky Coffee's owner.

But far from vindicating him, Cho's pretentious language only seems to confirm Simmermon's opinion that Murky Coffee are too 'precious' about coffee.

"The fact is, there's a lot more to coffee than people think, and there was a time that a career position like a 'sommelier' was completely absurd (before wine became 'fancy') too," Cho said.

"There's a craft to coffee, that most people haven't been exposed to."

"When we first opened our shop, nobody had ever seen 'latte art' before, or was thinking about coffee bean varietals."

"Just as the average person understands at least that a 'merlot' is different from a 'chardonnay', maybe someday people will understand that a coffee brewed from bourbon varietal from a particular coffee farm in El Salvador is different from a particular lot of Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia."

"Right now, to most people, coffee is coffee, just like a Diet Coke is a Diet Coke."

Cho clearly believes that keeping the integrity of his coffee is better than keeping his customers.

"To others reading this I will say that if you don't like the policies, I respectfully recommend that you find some other place that will give you what you want, or select something that we can offer you," he said.

For his part, Simmeron is ambiguous about his reaction to the incident.

"I have mixed feelings about it, and I'm not really proud of the behaviour that triggered this," he said.

"These things take on a life of their own, and I don't want to be a part of it."

"He had a bad day, the owner had a bad day, and I had a bad day."

"That's all."

Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found the five-year-old e-mail while preparing a major series of articles about Gates' departure from day-to-day life at Microsoft.

"It shows that even the Microsoft co-founder -- who champions the 'magic of software' -- isn't immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users," said Bishop.

The e-mail details Gates' difficulties in downloading a copy of Windows Movie Maker, a simple video editing program aimed at consumers.

Things started to go wrong when Gates had difficulty connecting to the download site.

"This site is so slow it is unusable," he wrote in the e-mail.

His problems multiplied when the complex nature of the Windows operating system turned what should be a simple operation into something more arcane.

"In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve," Gates wrote.

"It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations."

"This struck me as completely odd."

Gates attempted to continue installation of the software, but the process ended up damaging the 'Add/Remove Programs' control panel that should make installing software easy.

"Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?" he wrote.

"What an absolute mess."

It is clear from the e-mail that Gates was intensely displeased by his failure to complete what should be a simple task.

"So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package," wrote Gates.

"The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind."

When asked about the e-mail by Bishop, Gates was blase about the e-mail and the tone of its content.

"There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail...like that piece of e-mail," he said with a smile.

"That's my job."

CEO Steve Jobs indicated that the price cut is a deliberate move to make the iPhone as much of a mass-market item as the iPod.

"It changes the game for all smartphone makers," said Tim Bajarin, head of Creative Strategies, a technology consultancy.

The new iPhone also signals a new relationship between Apple and the mobile networks.

Previously Apple demanded a slice of the monthly revenue from each iPhone -- but that money will now be used by the networks to subsidise the price of the new iPhone.

"The vast majority of agreements we have reached do not have those follow-on payments, so you can conclude that the vast majority of carriers do provide subsidies for the phone," said Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer,

The change in business model will hurt AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the US -- the company expects a significant drop in revenue.

But analysts believe that in spite of the lower price and loss of call revenues, Apple will come out on top.

"It is still a very profitable business," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research.

"Now the negative is they announced the elimination of some of the monthly fees."

"But I can't really imagine the economics really being too much different."

"These lower price points seem somewhat designed to cope with the economy, the softer environment."

"They definitely make this product more resilient."

As well as support for faster mobile broadband over 3G networks, the new iPhone also boasts GPS and tools to allow easy access to corporate networks -- making iPhone a serious competitor to devices such as the Blackberry, manufactured by RIM.

"This positions Apple well vis a vis other smartphone competitors such as Nokia and RIM," said Shannon Cross of Cross Research.

"iPhone is no longer an expensive device."

"It's now priced at the mass market."

"This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime," said Bob McDonnell, Virginia's Attorney General.

"Spam not only clogs e-mail inboxes and destroys productivity -- it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia's economic prosperity."

Jeremy Jaynes was one of the world's most prolific spammers -- he is thought to have made millions of dollars in revenue from sending unsolicited bulk e-mail.

His lucrative trade came to an end when Virginia prosecutors took advantage of the fact that his e-mails transited via a server located in the state, operated by AOL.

Jaynes was sentenced in 2004 to nine years in jail for violating the Virginia Anti-Spam Act.

He has been under house arrest during the appeal process -- Jaynes hoped that his e-mails would be protected as free speech under the US constitution.

But the state's Supreme Court took the opposite view in a 4-3 decision, ruling that commercial material was not covered by the constitution.

The dissenters on the Supreme Court's panel took a different position, stating that the decision sets a difficult precedent.

Justice Elizabeth Lacy claimed that the Virginia Anti-Spam Act was 'unconstitutionally overbroad on its face, because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States constitution.'

Jaynes' defence took consolation from the dissenting opinion.

"Unfortunately, the state that gave birth to the First Amendment has, with this ruling, diminished that freedom for all of us," said Thomas Wolf, the lawyer representing Jaynes in court.

"As three justices pointed out in dissent, the majority's decision will have far reaching consequences."

"The statute criminalises sending bulk anonymous e-mail, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion."

Jon Praed, a lawyer with Internet Law Group, described the ruling as 'groundbreaking.'

"Before this case, the only spammers who had been convicted were convicted of things that were crimes without reference to their spamming activity," he said.

"It was important to establish that spam is illegal because it's unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail -- without regard to the quality of the content that you're advertising."

Jaynes' case may now go up for appeal before the US Supreme Court, according to his lawyer.

"We are going to study these lengthy opinions, but I don't see us giving up on these important constitutional issues," said Wolf.

Although format wars in the past have been costly for all involved, Toshiba thought that it could take on the might of Sony -- originator of the CD along with Royal Dutch Phillips -- but they had underestimated the power of Sony's gaming division.

By installing Blu Ray into the third version of Sony's Playstation console, Sony has already bought themselves a tremendous advantage over Toshiba.

But it was last month's decision by Warner Brothers to drop HD DVD in favour of Blu Ray that signed the death warrant for the nascent format.

"That had tremendous impact," said Atsutoshi Nishida, president of Toshiba.

"If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

In some parts of Toshiba's global empire, senior executives are manfully spinning the defeat into a victory of sorts.

"The projected lifespan of HD DVD has shortened significantly due to the acceleration of digital content distribution via the internet," said Mark Whittard, general manager of Toshiba Australia.

"We believe that technology developments will leapfrog high definition, whether it be HD DVD or Blu Ray discs."

Sony refuted Mr Whittard's argument in no uncertain terms.

"I think if he'd seen the digital download numbers he wouldn't say that," said Michele Garra, managing director of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"The perception versus the reality is that it's happening a lot more slowly then anyone figured."

"It may still be eight to 10 years away -- at the earliest five if we're wrong."

Consumers with a collection of HD DVD discs may now be feeling disappointed, but Korean manufacturer LG have offered them some comfort.

The company have pledged to retain support for HD DVD for now.

"LG believes that at this present moment in time, it is necessary to provide a player which supports both formats and therefore create simplicity and convenience for the existing HD DVD consumer," read a statement from the manufacturer.

"From today onwards nobody should ever get caught short again, and we understand how important that is, be it for a young mum with children in tow, older people or friends on a shopping trip or night out," said Councillor Alan Bradley, cabinet member for street environment.

Westminster council aims to make a 'substantial impact on reducing street urination.'

"45,460 litres of urine is at risk of ending up in the city's streets and alleyways through irresponsible and anti-social behaviour," they say.

The service came about as a result of an innovation competition run by the council.

"When I'm out with friends we're always ducking into McDonalds or department stores to use their loos but we feel a bit bad about it," said Gail Knight, a 26-year-old student and the brains behind the idea..

"I thought a text service would be really useful for people on the move."

SatLav has received a warm welcome from the British Toilet Association, the campaign for better public toilets.

"It's the first fully managed service that we're aware of," said Richard Chisnell, British Toilet Association director.

"Thank heavens for Westminster's public toilets."

"This is going to bring the Internet into cell phones in a very cool way," said Andy Rubin of Google's director of mobile platforms and originator of the Android OS that underpins their mobile strategy.

The company is basically giving away for free that which Microsoft wants you to pay for.

Windows Mobile runs on millions of phones, PDAs, SatNavs, and the like -- but they demand a license fee from the manufacturer, which the consumer ends up paying.

Google's Android however will be free of license fees -- and unlike Windows Mobile, it will be 'open source.'

This means that anyone will be able to access the source code that makes up the software -- meaning that it can be endlessly improved by anyone that chooses to do so.

Android's open nature will also make it easier for developers and manufacturers to create new applications -- in stark contrast to the relatively closed iPhone made by Apple.

"This is a shot that is going to be heard around the world, but it's just the first shot in what is going to be a very protracted battle in the next frontier of the mobile Web," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president. of industry analysts Jupiter Research.

The company also announced an alliance with over 30 manufacturers -- as well as stalwarts such as Motorola and Samsung, new kids on the block such as China Mobile have also signed up.

"Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models," said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive and Apple board member.

No mention was made of Apple's iPhone -- Schmidt appeared onstage with Steve Jobs when the device was first presented to the public, demonstrating a Google Maps application.

How Google's move to enter the mobile marketplace will affect their relationship with Apple remains unclear -- but they definitely sees mobile devices as vital to their future.

"This partnership will help unleash the potential of mobile technology for billions of users around the world," said Schmidt.

National Defence Force (NDF) spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope said that it "is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have."

"It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

The NDF are now investigating if the cause of the failure was due to errors in the software.

But a pessimistic note was sounded by defence expert Helmoed-Römer Heitman, who believes that if "the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

According to defence engineer and entrepreneur Richard Young, this is not the first time that a computerised or so-called 'smart' weapon has malfunctioned on South African soil.

Young's company C2I2 were commissioned by the SA government to deliver two air defence artillery upgrade programmes during the '90s.

“I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” said Young, referring to shooting trials at the state-run Alkantpan shooting range.

“They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the poles down.”

Young attributes the problems with smart weapons to the SA defence force's acquisitions agency, Armscor.

In the '90s, Armscor would allocate money on a yearly basis, resulting in programmes that were often rushed.

“It would not surprise me if major shortcuts were taken in the qualification of the upgrades," Young said.

"A system like that should never fail to the dangerous mode, except if it was a shoddy design or a shoddy modification."

“We saw that when people are speaking on the phone, typically they were doing something else,” said Ariel Maislos, head of the system's developer Pudding Media.

“They had a lot of other action, either doodling or surfing or something else like that.

"So we said, ‘Let’s use that’ and actually present them with things that are relevant to the conversation while it’s happening.”

The system is similar to the Adwords service that has generated millions of dollars in revenue for Google.

Whilst Google targets ads based on web searches and text in web pages, Pudding Media are using voice-recognition algorithms to pick out keywords in conversation and serve up ads accordingly.

The software is still in beta and is not always accurate.

"Sometimes crazy things pop up. It actually enriches the conversation, which is very cool," said Maislos.

Potential advertisers have given the development a cautious reception, as concerns over privacy refuse to go away.

“We can never obtain too much information from the targets, and I would love to get my hands on that information,” said Jonathan Sackett of Arnold Worldwide, part of the global marketing and advertising network Havas.

“Still, it makes me caution myself and caution all of us as marketers.

"We really have to look at the situation, because we’re getting more intrusive with each passing technology.”

Pudding Media claim that they do not store phone calls themselves or keep records of keywords used by individual callers.

"Have you talked about mountain biking? We wouldn't know," Maislos confirmed.

"I am delighted to welcome Anthony to the BBC," said Erik Huggers, controller of BBC Future Media and Technology Group, and a former employee of Microsoft.

"His knowledge and expertise in the digital media field is world class. I look forward to working closely with him to take our on demand services to the next stage."

The BBC has already courted controversy over the shape of the corporation's digital strategy.

A project to create a broadband TV player known as the iPlayer opted to use proprietary technology from Microsoft -- shutting out users of Macs and Unix boxes amongst others.

At the same time, the BBC hired the above quoted Erik Huggers to head up the coming programme of digital services -- a man who worked at Microsoft for over a decade, ending his career as senior director of Windows Digital Media, responsible for the business strategy at their entertainment division

This latest hiring shows that Ashley Highfield, the corporation's head honcho in the field of New Media, is unafraid of making controversial decisions.

As well as Rose's experience of P2P file-sharing, he also has expertise in the field of Digital Right Management (DRM) -- the anti-piracy technology advocated by Microsoft that restricts the rights of users to playback and store the media they own.

It is Microsoft's use of DRM that prevents the BBC iPlayer from working on other platforms such as the Mac -- the Redmond-based software company refuses to support computers that don't use their Windows operating system.

Although the BBC press office released the news through their own site, at the time of writing it is conspicously absent from their main news site.

Perhaps Highfield is afraid of controversy after all?

“The iPod touch is a landmark iPod, ushering in a whole new generation of features based on its revolutionary multi-touch interface and built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

“People are going to be amazed at how thin it is and how much it does.”

The newest iPod has less memory that the iPhone, but is much thinner -- the new device is a mere 8mm thick.

Apart from playing songs and videos, the iPod touch comes with wireless networking and the Safari web browser.

"Others have done this and have failed," Jobs said, possibly alluding to the botched implementation of wireless networking on Microsoft's Zune music player.

"We think we know why it's failed. What's the problem with adding Wi-Fi? Part of it is getting on Wi-Fi itself.

"When you're at home, you might need a password. When you're in the office, you might have a password.

"But everywhere in between can be challenging. You go to any hotel, and to log in, they throw up a web page. Portable devices don't know how to deal with web pages.

"You go to an airport, you'll see a web page. Even walking through Stanford University, to use their Wi-Fi, you have to log into a web page.

"So you can view all those web pages, zoom in, log into any Wi-Fi network pretty much. But beside that, you get an incredible web browser -- the best web browser on any mobile platform."

Jobs also announced a version of the iTunes music store that runs on the iPod itself -- as long as there's a Wi-Fi connection available.

Apple have formed an alliance with Starbucks -- the coffee chain has become a significant record company in its own right, boasting artists such as Ray Charles and Bob Dylan on its roster.

The new iPod touch will allow users sitting in Starbucks to purchase the track that they are listening to at the moment, as well as reviewing the previous ten tracks played.

Early coverage of the new iPod has been generally positive, ranging from the guardedly cautious to something approaching gushing hyperbole.

"Apple you’ve done it again. It’s time the competition just packed up and went home," wrote one correspondent on the website of T3, a glossy magazine for gadget aficionados.

In the opinion of this correspondent, the device is clearly a shot across the bows of the mobile networks.

Many of the problems with the iPhone's launch related to AT&T's infrastructure -- which was out of the control of Apple and no doubt caused immense frustration to Steve Jobs, a notable control freak.

The iPhone was also notable for eschewing mobile-only standards such as WAP browsers and MMS messaging in favour of the more universal HTML browser and e-mail.

Apple and AT&T fundamentally have different agendas -- Apple is in the commodity business of shifting units, be they Macs, iPods, or iTunes tracks.

AT&T are in the business of constantly selling services eg net access priced by the kilobyte, ringtones, and other forms of content bought over their network rather than downloaded onto a computer and then sideloaded onto a phone.

Jobs has seen which way the wind is blowing -- the next generation of Wi-Fi is WiMax, which has the potential to be available over long distances.

Expensive proprietary solutions from the mobile networks may be rendered obsolete by WiMax and associated technologies.

The iPod touch is Steve Jobs' subtle way of telling the mobile operators that their days are numbered -- the day will come when he doesn't need them anymore.

"This individual was getting paid for not working," said Margie Feinberg, spokersperson for New York's Department of Education and former employers of John Halpin.

Halpin had worked in New York schools for over 20 years, latterly as a supervisor overseeing carpenters.

His employers became suspicious about the timesheets that he was submitting and spent five months monitoring his movements using the GPS capability of his phone.

The data revealed that Halpin was frequently turning up to work two hours early -- but then leaving work two hours early as well.

A court hearing resulted in a recommendation that Halpin be dismissed for his misconduct.

He was damned by the fact that he falsified his timesheets, operating under the assumption that his chances of being found out were minimal.

Halpin's attempt to mount a defence on the basis that the GPS data was inaccurate as well as being an unethical approach failed to sway Judge Tynia Richard.

Judge Richard's decision called for his dismissal, stating that the Department of Eductation was under no obligation 'to notify its employees of all the methods it may possibly use to uncover their misconduct.'

New York has no legislation obliging employers to tell workers that they are being tracked -- Connecticut and Delaware are the only states in the US to have such a law.

Unions have stepped into the legislative void, negotiating with individual companies to prevent covert tracking.

One such deal has been formed between the Teamsters, a union of professional drivers, and the UPS delivery company.

UPS have agreed that GPS devices cannot be used to gather information that can then be used to dismiss employees.

"It's a horrible waste of money," said Tom, a student at a private school in Melbourne.

"They could get a much better filter for a few million dollars made here rather than paying overseas companies for an ineffective one."

The filtering software was distributed as part of the NetAlert programme launched by John Howard's right-wing goverment as part of their campaign against what they see as obscene content.

"Sadly, just as a seatbelt will never prevent every fatal car crash, as the government has always maintained, no filter is foolproof," responded Helen Coonan, Australia's Communications Minister.

Wood found that circumventing the software was a relatively trivial process.

"I downloaded it on Tuesday to see how good it was, because for AUS$84 million, I would have expected a pretty unbreakable filter," he said.

"Tried a few things, it took about half an hour and it was completely useless."

After Wood's exploits became public, a different filter was released for download -- it took him around half an hour to bypass it and render it useless.

He believes that even when anti-porn filters work, they don't offer a solution to the problems that net users face.

"Filters aren't addressing the bigger issues anyway," Wood said.

"Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I'd fix.

"They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them."

Fakers have been getting sophisticated when creating knocked off versions of sought after phones.

When LG launched their iconic Chocolate phone in Korea, they found that Chinese cloners managed to create their own version that was 'exactly like the real one in design,' according to a company spokesperson.

"Chinese people think it's LG electronics that manufactures the fakes."

Now Apple are discovering that their sought after iPhone has become the latest target -- fuelled by the company's decision to only launch the product in America.

LG have changed their launch strategy and now bring new phones to market in China as quicky as possible, eliminating as much opportunity for cloners as possible.

In Apple's case, the iPhone will only be available in the US for at least a year before other countries will see it in use -- meaning large profits for those companies that produce cheaper knock offs.

The first fake iPhone, known as the P168, first emerged a few days before the official launch of the real thing -- it has also been seen on sale in China, although the manufacturer is keeping a low profile due to the the threat of legal action.

Another company producing a fake iPhone has allegedly been threatened with lawsuit by Apple in a Hong Kong court.

Meizu have announced their miniOne, which looks similar to the iPhone but has extra features not found in the original.

Some commentators have pointed out that some of these fakes are superior to the iPhone -- unlike the original, they come with removable batteries and are not locked to one specific mobile network.

"If you're able to crash something you are most likely able to exploit it," said Lukas Grunwald, an adviser to the German parliament on e-passports.

Grunwald first cloned the embedded chip in the e-passport last year, making it trivial to create a duplicate of an existing document.

Now he has delved further into the actual data stored on the chip, finding flaws in the way that the e-passports have been implemented.

He found that the passport photo was stored digitally in the industry-standard JPEG2000 format -- used in digital cameras and on websites -- making it easier to recycle old methods of attack.

By employing a technique known as 'buffer overrun', he injected rogue data into the passport photo file.

At a security conference, he scanned the e-passport through two different makes of scanner and crashed them both.

It also emerged that the fingerprints of the passport holder are stored as a standard image file.

This would be enough to allow someone to theoretically create fake fingerprints from gelatine that could be placed on the fingers and fool the scanner.

Such a technique has already been demonstrated by Japanese security researchers.

At least three proof-of-concept viruses have been created by hackers as they stumble upon undocumented vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, Apple's rival to the Windows operating system.

The discoverer of the latest exploit harbours deep antipathy towards Apple's feelgood attitude around security.

“I do believe in being responsible and working with vendors, but I also feel that some vendors need to be treated like children and learn lessons the hard way," said Infosec Sellout.

“Apple has a very long way to go when dealing with security issues in their products.”

Although Apple has been diligent in patching holes in Mac OS X as they are found, the recent success of the company has brought so much attention that some of it has been of the unwelcome kind.

A series of bugs have been discovered by independent researchers affecting such key components as QuickTime, the video technology created by Apple.

Another factor causing this interest in Mac security may be the decision by the company's leader Steve Jobs to switch from using PowerPC chips to those made by Intel -- the same silicon used in rival Windows machines.

When Macs used PowerPC chips, the number of hackers able to manipulate the silcon at the most basic level would have been comfortably small.

But the switch to Intel means that a global army of budding virus writers familiar with their chips due to experience writing Windows viruses have a new hobby.

The key insight for the successful virus author is realising a strategy to fool a computer processor so that anti-virus software can't detect the malicious software they wish to deploy.

As it stands, these virii only exist 'in the lab' -- but a truly sophisticated piece of malware may already be out there in the wild.

In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, the first true Mac OS X virus could very well be one of those 'unknown unknowns.'

The six-month study show that Facebook users are more likely to come from wealthier homes than Myspace users.

Facebook users are also more likely to go to college that their Myspace counterparts.

"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," said Danah Boyd, the researcher behind the study.

Her research found that Facebook students were predominantly white and came from families keen for them to succeed.

"They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities."

Myspace users tend to come from families that weren't so keen on pushing their children to succeed.

She also found that Myspace users come more from non-white ethnic groups such as Latinos and Hispanics.

As opposed to Facebook, Myspace is a home to the marginalised.

"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers."

Whilst Boyd was wary of drawing conclusions from her research, she did think that society was being represented online.

"This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values.

"Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers.

"And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life."

Although sites from around the world were affected, the vast majority of infected computers were sited in Italy.

"We were referring to it as 'Italian Job 3,' in-house," said David Perry of security firm Trend Micro.

The compromised sites were mainly tourism sites with Italian domains ending in .it such as http://www.adriahotel.it, http://wwww.bestoftuscany.it and http://www.mothertheesacause.info.

"Do not go to these sites," said Perry.

Most of the infected Web sites are legal, Perry emphasised.

"These aren't porn sites, they aren't gambling sites; they are hotels, fish-and-tackle sites, tourist information," he said.

Surfers are only vulnerable if they are using older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The spyware takes the information from your computer and sends it to a server located in Chicago, USA.

Even if the server is located and shut down, the spyware can be reprogrammed remotely to send it elsewhere.

"Your system belongs to them," Perry said.

"If Chicago is shut down, they could move anywhere in the world."

"It is our understanding that Flickr users in China are not able to see images on Flickr, and we have confirmed that this is not a technical issue on our end," a spokeswoman for parent company Yahoo Hong Kong said.

"It appears that the Chinese Government is restricting access to Flickr, although we have not received confirmation from them."

The Chinese Government have yet to make any comment about the matter.

Problems with the site begin after photographs of an environmental protest in Xiamen were uploaded to the site for public viewing.

Thousands of local residents were demanding the relocation of a toxic chemical plant, and had clashed with police at points.

Coverage of the protest movement was subject to the usual newspaper censorship.

It was China’s growing army of bloggers that ended up covering the event, complete with videos and pictures.

The protest evidently rattled the authorites as a suspension of work on the chemical project was ordered until an environmental impact assessment could be carried out.

Until the situation can be resolved, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterworth has few words of comfort for frustrated users:

"We definitely haven't forgotten about you, but there is not much for us to announce publicly at this point.

"As soon as anything changes, will let you know.

"And we're all rooting for you!"

"Registration is refused because the proposed mark consists of or comprises immoral or scandalous matter," wrote Michael Engel, the lawyer reviewing the case for the US Government.

"The term ‘fucking’ is an offensive and vulgar reference to the act of sex. A mark that is deemed scandalous is not registrable.”

There have been 39 trademark attempts that included the word 'fuck', five that have 'fucking', and at least 50 with 'shit'.

None have been successful.

However 'bitch' is permissable and around 140 trademarks feature the word 'ass'.

Marc Randazza, the lawyer representing the parent company of fuckingmachines.com, has persuaded his client to appeal the decision on the grounds of free speech.

“This much maligned four-letter word has no intrinsic meaning,” Randazza wrote in a submission to the appeal court.

"Fuck can play a role as a figurative term, for example, ‘to fuck’ can also mean ‘to deceive.’ It is a word of force that can assist us in our expressions of joy when used as an infix, as in ‘abso-fucking-lutely’.

"‘Fuck’ helps us express rage when we scream ‘fuck you’ at a football referee, or at a motorist who has just cut us off in traffic.

"'Fuck' can help us express pain, as it is quite frequently the first thing out of most men’s mouths when they strike their thumb (accidentally) with a hammer.

"'Fuck' is a vehicle for our disappointment, when we see that our report card is not as good as we had hoped, or when our significant other is late for dinner, or leaves us altogether.

"'Fuck' is an old friend, who can always make us laugh."

Much of Randazza's argument rests on the fact that the law forbidding 'obscene' trademarks was formulated in 1905 and is thus outdated.

Also he points out that standards have changed over time as society's values shift.

He uses the example of how it is no longer possible to trademark the names of Native American tribes.

But for all his legal arguments, Randazza is not under any illusions about the prospects for success.

"I’m jousting at a windmill," he admits.

"Net cafes? Only the rich can afford them," said Koba, one of the new breed of 'McRefugees'.

"Even with a special night time deal, they still cost about 1,000 yen (£4) a night.

"So I sleep at McDonald's three or four nights a week.

"More McDonald's restaurants have started operating 24 hours since the spring and there are plenty of others like me who are sleeping there."

The infamous burger chain has helped spawn the nickname 'McRefugee' due to their popularity amongst thrifty homeless people.

"I sometimes stay overnight at family restaurants, but they have a late night surcharge," said Toba, a fan of McD's low prices.

"They do have the lure of an all-you-can-drink bar, but even that still costs more than 500 yen (£2).

"I only need to spend 100 yen (40p) at McDonald's and I can stay the whole night."

Economist Takuro Morinaga sees the McRefugees as trapped between the two worlds of being housed and being homeless.

"They're people who probably have a tad more money than those living on the streets, but not enough money to allow them to change their lives," he said.

"It costs about 400,000 yen (£1600) to 500,000 yen (£2000) to rent out an apartment, so people who can't afford to do that become net cafe refugees, sauna refugees and, now McRefugees.

"The vast majority of them are not full time staff and are probably only making about 1 million yen (£4000) a year at most.

"For these people, 500,000 yen is an enormous sum of money."

Morinaga is pessimistic about the prospects for the homeless in Japan.

"I think we'll see more of these types of people," he said.

"With society polarising the way it is now, I guess they'll be like Europe and the United States where all the same types of people gather together to form hamlets that eventually end up turning into slums."

The software ran on two websites maintained by Henry Ihejirika -- Ziinet.com and 700law.com -- which offered automated assistance for people going through bankruptcy proceedings.

Users would enter their personal information and other relevant details onto the website, and the AI would generate a complete set of bankruptcy forms -- including a fraudulent affidavit for users to sign claiming that they had done all the legal research on their own.

When a bankruptcy trustee noticed errors in forms submitted by Jayson Reynoso, he blamed the AI website and Ihejirika joined him in a federal court hearing.

The judge ruled that Ihejirika had committed fraudulent, unfair, or deceptive conduct through his computer program, and had effectively engaged in the unauthorised practice of law.

Ihejirika was fined, banned from offering the same service in the future, and ordered to give up the fees he'd collected from nine customers. He appealed but the appeal court upheld the ruling.

This represents a milestone in the history of computing -- the first, admittedly unlicensed, cyberlawyer. As AIs proliferate throughout the legal profession, regulators will have to find some way of dealing with a development that isn't going to just go away.

Terrorists 'bombed' retail stores from famous brands such American Apparel and Reebok as part of a campaign to wrest control from Second Life's creators Linden Labs.

"The movement contends that univeral suffrage is a right that should be established within Second Life immediately," according to a manifesto published by SLLA. "As Linden Labs is functioning as an authoritarian government the only appropriate response is to fight."

Although the SLLA uses similar language to left-wing guerrillas, the remedy to their grievances is all too capitalistic.

"The SLLA's demands are simple: The establishment of basic 'rights' for Second Life Players. Having consulted widely we now believe the best vehicle for this is for Linden Labs to offer public shares in the company. We propose that each player is able to buy one share for a set-price."

Creative dissent is generally welcomed in Second Life as long as it doesn't interfere with the ability of other residents to enjoy the virtual world, according to Linden Labs.

Linden Labs stopped charging a tax on items created by residents after the Boston Tea Party was recreated in the virtual world about three years ago.

"We do the utmost to ensure the protection of creative expression, within certain bounds," said Catherine Smith, marketing director for Linden Labs.

"Ultimately, instances in which residents engage in simulated violence will have to be taken on a case-by-case basis."

According to Smith, Linden will temporarily ban users who are found to have harassed other users as a result of SLLA actions.

"We believe recent events involving SLLA protest lack malicious intent," Smith concluded. "Resident reaction to such attacks has been decidedly tongue-in-cheek."

"We have acquired land next to the FN office," a spokesperson for the protestors announced, "and will be manning a protest there until FN go or are ejected. Wherever fascists are we will ensure they get no peace to corrupt and lie to decent people."

The announcement went on: "The whole idea of a 'race hate' group is in direct violation of Linden Lab's own Terms of Service, and if the rules are being read to say they aren’t in violation, then Lindens need to look at the rules again."

The protest began peacefully with protesters picketing the office with placards. But by the second day, protestors had begun deploying virtual weapons.

Members of the Front National responded in kind, leading to several days of colourful conflict between the two sides.

By the end of the protest, several sections of the office had been lost to sabotage or overload on the servers that host the game.

The Front National, possibly seeing the writing on the wall, disappeared without fanfare from that part of Second Life -- to be replaced by a casino that is reportedly doing a brisk trade.

But the Front National vow to return. "They're a bunch of losers," FN Officer Wolfram Hayek said about the protestors. "We're gonna tighten security and come back."

Raids on homes of insurgents last week revealed printouts of Google satellite photographs of British bases. Written on the back of one set of photographs officers found one camp's precise longitude and latitude.

"This is evidence, as far as we are concerned, for planning terrorist attacks," an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group said. "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?"

"We are concerned that they use them to plan attacks. We have never had proof that they have deliberately targeted any area of the camp using these images but presumably they are of great use to them.

"We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas such as tents."

Google is one of many websites that buy aerial imagery, usually taken by aircraft but sometimes by satellite, from governments or mapping companies.

A spokesperson for Google said the information could be used for 'good and bad' and was available to the public in many forms. "Of course we are always ready to listen to governments' requests," he said.

"We have opened channels with the military in Iraq but we are not prepared to discuss what we have discussed with them. But we do listen and we are sensitive to requests."

Ironically, one of the company's guiding principles is 'You can make money without doing evil.'

More than 1 in 10 people in the town of 11,000 were fooled into handing over money to premium rate phone lines, foreign lotteries and pyramid selling.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) claim that 6.5% of adults in the UK fall victim to marketing scams each year, meaning Oldham is nearly double the national average.

Oldham Council's Trading Standards Team released the figures in advance of new anti-fraud laws, which come into force on Monday 15th January.

Trading Standards Officers have taken action to tackle dozens of mass marketing scams operating in Oldham in the last year. One scam -- a bogus delivery and premium rate scam -- earned the perpetrators a £10,000 fine and an order to compensate all affected consumers.

Oldham's Head of Trading Standards Tony Allen said: "Developments of technology, such as the internet and cheap international calls mean that organised criminals and vulnerable consumers are in ever closer contact."

Research by the OFT reveals that over 30% of victims of scams will be scammed again within the following year. This is frequently the result of victims having their details sold on to other fraudsters.

Anshe Chung -- or Ailin Graef as she is known in real life -- made headlines around the world when she became the first person to make US$1 million from a property portfolio consisting entirely of online land in the popular Second Life 3D world.

During an interview with online news source Cnet that took place inside the virtual world, unknown saboteurs introduced a rain of digital models of human penises. The attack forced her to move to another location and ultimately crashed the server used to host the interview.

Now Chung has turned to the DMCA law in the US to force websites such as YouTube to take down videos of the incident, citing infringement of copyright of her online avatar. She has also demanded that the video not be shown in countries where the DMCA is not valid.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story with a screenshot of the attack. Chung's husband emailed the newpaper to demand that it should take down the photograph because the newspaper was hosting an infringing image.

"I have to point out to you that you, most likely by accident, posted an image that contains artwork copyrighted by my wife Ailin Graef and by Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd. and without obtaining our permission to do so," Guntram Graef wrote to Sydney Morning Herald reporter Stephen Hutcheon email.

"The source of the image, a video posted on YouTube, has already been removed. We can not authorize the use of this image and the replication of the artwork and textures of the Anshe Chung avatar in this context."

The legal action has drawn ire from several quarters as it threatens the freedom of the press to report on incidents of public interest.

Jason Schultz of internet rights group EFF said "The analogy I would draw is if there was a car accident in downtown New York, and the driver happened to be wearing an Armani suit, and there was a photographer who took photos and published them. That photographer couldn't be sued by Armani. News is news. And fair use gives news reporters and others the right to report what they see and hear, even if it includes your copyrighted work."

Security firm Determina have isolated a bug in the new Internet Explorer 7 (bundled with Vista) that allows viruses to be secretly installed on a user's computer if they visit a "booby-trapped site" while browsing the web.

Determina have also discovered a way to disable an office network's Exchange mail server by sending an infected email.

Meanwhile, an unknown Russian programmer has perfected a way to hack his user permissions on all Windows systems on a corporate network using a Vista exploit. This could give a hacker carte blanche to wreak devastation.

Finally, Trend Micro have located a hacker on a Japanese message board offering to sell information about a Vista security flaw for $50,000.

Last Friday, an executive from Microsoft stated that the company was 'closely monitoring' the vulnerability described by the Russian web site.

“Currently we have not observed any public exploitation or attack activity regarding this issue,” wrote Mike Reavey, operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center. “While I know this is a vulnerability that impacts Windows Vista, I still have every confidence that Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date.”

On Saturday, a spokesperson for Microsoft said the company was also investigating the reported browser flaw and that it was not aware of any attacks attempting to use the vulnerability.

Although Vista has been extensively tested, it is only now being exposed to the realistic challenge of the uncensored Internet in all it's gory glory.

“I don’t think people should become complacent,” said Nand Mulchandani, a vice president at Determina. “When vendors say a program has been completely rewritten, it doesn’t mean that it’s more secure from the get-go. My expectation is we will see a whole rash of Vista bugs show up in six months or a year.”

"We see virtual worlds as an extraordinarily promising new entertainment medium," said Adam Kline, Fox Licensing's vice president of media enterprises. "We believe Multiverse can deliver an experience that will remain true to the original series, while enabling a whole new level of personal involvement for fans."

Whedon made his reputation with series such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Fox no doubt saw him as a cash cow. But when Whedon delivered his concept for a futuristic space western where people swear in Mandarin, Fox executives failed to get it and canned the series before it had a chance to flourish.

Firefly refused to lie down and die however. The DVD set of the series sold like hot cakes -- spurring Universal to produce a movie based on the series called Serenity. Dark Horse have published a series of comics filling in the narrative gap between the end of the series and the start of the movie.

Fox have belatedly realised that there is gold in them thar hills after all. Which is why Multiverse have gained the rights to turn the Firefly universe into an online game, similar to Everquest or World of Warcraft.

"This all springs from the genius that is Joss Whedon," said Corey Bridges of Multiverse. "It's rewarding beyond words to be able to hopefully be a footnote in the history of Firefly."

Kevin Bakhurst, controller of BBC News 24, said: "Your News will make use of the huge range of material being sent to the BBC by the public, some of which has already provided real newsgathering value.Your News will reflect the stories catching our audience's eye and talk to them directly about the issues they feel really matter."

The BBC News website already receives approximately 10,000 emails a day with story ideas, comments and pictures from the public. Following on from this, the show will contain weekly features that will look at news reports covering issues raised by members of the public and a section where reporters try to find answers to questions sent in to the BBC by the public. The programme will also have a weekly feature focusing on images sent into the BBC by the public.

CNN has already launched a user-generated content portal on its homepage, featuring video, audio and written reports of what is known in the US as 'citizen journalism'. Newpaper publisher Gannett have also recently reorganised their newsrooms across America to involve readers in the newsgathering process.

The original incident took place a month ago at École Secondaire Mont-Bleu in Quebec when one student provoked the teacher into yelling at her, while a classmate secretly videoed the confrontation. Both girls have now been suspended. After the video was posted on YouTube, the teacher was so embarrassed that he stayed home from work -- where he remains.

Even though students have been told that they will not be searched, " if they even see an earbud coming out of your shirt, they're going to take it away," said one student at the school.

In the wake of this incident, the teachers' union is trying to get mobile phones and digital cameras banned from all schools in western Quebec. Parents such as Mike Geisterfer do not agree with such measures: "What's going to happen when doors [are] closed?" he asked. "Are students going to be taken seriously when they have complaints?"

As it turns out, incidents similar to the one that just took place are common, as a quick search using the words "angry teacher" reveals on YouTube. One such event took place earlier this month at another school in Quebec. School officials called police after learning that students had posted a video of the enraged teacher on YouTube.

This incident comes in the same week that a high-profile scandal erupted over another YouTube video — Michael Richards, who played Kramer on the Seinfeld television show, was exposed in the midst of a racist tirade in a comedy club. It seems that nothing can be hidden from public gaze in the 21st century.

To make matters worse, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) response to the attack was totally ineffective. Instaead of protecting 1,300 US-VISIT workstations as a priority, it concentrated on patching desktop computers. To avoid public embarrassment, the DHS resisted efforts to release documents on the crash -- not out of concerns that sensitive information on its systems might be disclosed.

Moroccan Farid Essebar (aka Diabl0) was jailed for releasing the Zotob virus in September 2006. As well as the DHS, other victims of Zotob included CNN, ABC, the Financial Times and the New York Times. The Zotob worm used using a vulnerability in Windows 2000's Plug and Play service to attack vulnerable machines.

Microsoft released a patch for the bug on 9 August, but many organisations such as DHS failed to apply a patch before the worm was released on 13th August. The DHS delayed patching US-VISIT workstations over concerns that more testing was needed because of the amount of peripherals they supported. Instead they concentrated its efforts on patching desktop machines, despite reports about widespread infection of US-VISIT workstations.

The infection led to long queues at airports, as border controls processed entrants manually or, in some cases, using backup computers. It took more than a day to bring the problem under a semblance of control. One day after the outbreak flared up, 72 per cent of the workstations were patched. But if the update had been applied on workstations at the same time it was applied to desktop PCs - 17 August - widespread problems could have been avoided.

A spokeswoman for DHS refused to comment on the incident this week. ICE declined to speak on the virus' infiltration of its network, referring inquiries back to DHS.

Business or private users may receive daily up to five emails written to appear as if they have been sent by banks or other reputable organisations, with the intent of luring the recipient into revealing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card details etc.

Typically, phishing attacks will direct the recipient to a web page designed to mimic a target organisation's own visual identity and to harvest the user's personal information, often leaving the victim unaware of the attack.
But the increase in sophistication of cyber attacks was underlined recently in ominous sign of days to come when three Florida banks have had identity-theft attacks, another name for phishing, launched from their own websites

"Attackers were able to hack servers run by the ISP that hosted three small banks' websites, reported Techworld. They then redirected traffic from the legitimate Web sites to a bogus server, designed to resemble the banking sites, according to Bob Breeden, special agent supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's computer crime centre.
Users were then asked to enter credit card numbers, PINs and other types of sensitive information, he said.

"The bad guys have created a way to take away the safety of typing the address of your bank," said Breeden. "We have to address it now and say to people, 'Even if you do go to your online bank's website, you need to be very careful.'"...

"Instead of clicking on a bogus web link in an e-mail, the attack hit users who had entered the correct URL for the banks in question. According to Breeden, the affected banks are Premier Bank, Wakulla Bank, and Capital City Bank, all small regional banks based in Florida."

For advice on how to fight e-robbers back go here but it is rather lamentable; or if you want to report the "spoofing" try security news, but bearing in mind that these attacks never last very long it would only be beneficial to public at large. Afraid, we all will learn from your misfortunes.