Cambridge University's Ross Anderson has given parliament advice on how to protect the UK from the excesses of technology. An influential security researcher has urged members of parliament to tighten up the law to prevent technology and media companies from abusing patents and digital rights management applications.

Trading was suspended for an hour at Russia's main stock exchange because of a computer virus, the Russian Trading Systems, or RTS, said Friday. Data processing was paralyzed late Thursday afternoon as specialists rushed to localize the virus and switch off the infected computer, according to a statement from the exchange. No permanent damage was caused and no information was lost.Spokeswoman Zoya Konovkova said it was not clear what virus had led to the shutdown.According to RTS vice president Dmitry Shatskoi, the virus entered the system via a computer used to test new software, which was connected to the Internet.

Chris Messina, of Flock. A devoted open minded guy, met with a few folks from Microsoft, had a dinner, chatted about DRM, Apple, Freedom, Technology, browsers, and just wrote a story about what was going on out there. Part One and Two.

Security watchers say the Kama Sutra worm, which is programmed to overwrite files on infected Windows PCs today, will have a damaging but not catastrophic effect. The Kama Sutra worm (or Nyxem-E or Blackworm) poses as an email message offering a variety of salacious content. Subject lines used in the malicious emails include: The Best Videoclip Ever, Fw: SeX.mpg, Miss Lebanon 2006 and Fuckin Kama Sutra pics. The worm, which can also spread across network shares, only affects Windows PCs.

Apple has killed off the 17" iMac G5 - at least, the machine is no longer available from either the UK or the US online AppleStores, or stores throughout Europe and Asia-Pacific, though it remains listed on the main Apple website. The move comes just days after Apple cut the price of the 20" iMac G5 by $200 in the States and GPB 150 in Britain.

"R is a rich statistical environment, released as free software, which includes a programming language, an interactive shell, and extensive graphing capabilities. This installment discusses creating reusable and modular components for R development. This article follows up two prior installments and looks at the object-orientation in R along with some additional general programming concepts in R."

"As more computer users move to larger, wide-screen monitors, Microsoft is staking a claim to that added real estate. Windows Vista, the update to the operating system due this year, will add a feature called Sidebar. Sidebar is a small panel at the side of the monitor that can be used to view photo slide shows, RSS feeds and other small programs, dubbed gadgets."

We barely got time to install the first one, the second one is still in the donwload queue, but the third one is already here. OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 3 has been released , and it includes a number of bug fixes - however, we can't really tell which since they placed the changelog on the first CD. Here's to hoping this won't set a trend.

RISCOS Ltd. detailed that "the full launch of the A9 computer, and then Select 4, are currently targetted for around May this year", perhaps at the Wakefield show, "and once completed attention can be focussed on the Iyonix." They will also issue new shares to fund the development of RISC OS 4.

"The United States-based body responsible for protecting the 'Linux' name appears to be making a renewed push to register it as a trademark in Australia. The nation's intellectual property regulator, IP Australia, turned down an initial bid by local body Linux Australia to register the name on behalf of Linux creator Linux Torvalds in September 2005, saying the name was not distinctive enough to be trademarked. But the US-based Linux Mark Institute, which acts for Torvalds worldwide appears to be in the process of appealing the decision."

VMware, an EMC subsidiary whose software lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer, is expected to announce next week that it will begin giving away one of its key products for free, CNET News.com has learned.

This article goes into the motivation and architecture for DTrace -- and describes some of the problems that remain to be solved in system observability. The article also includes a short case-study on using DTrace to find a real problem -- a problem that was ultimately due to some seriously fugly code in a monitoring app.

Microsoft's long-awaited Windows Server 2003 R2, the update to Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1, is finally generally available, the company said on Feb. 1. This widespread availability follows the December 2005 release to manufacturing of the final code for this server software. Microsoft customers will now be able to buy Windows Server 2003 R2 pre-installed on hardware through companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, and Microsoft's enterprise Software Assurance customers will get their Windows Server 2003 R2 updates in the near future.

For years computer interfaces have been held back by two dimensions. The power and flexibility of three dimensional interfaces have remained the stuff of science fiction movies, video games and very custom high-end applications. Aoren Software now brings that power to everyday applications and operating systems through a window server and framework technology called Vision. Vision was designed from the ground up to break away from old paradigms and provide the interface needs of the next generation. Application developers can get their hands on the technology with the developer preview release and start creating programs that have previously resided only in the imagination.