Owners of unlocked iPhones who want to upgrade to the recently released OS 3.1.3 and want to retain the ability to use whatever Sim meets their needs can now do so. The iPhone Dev Team have released a suitable version of its PwnageTool utility.

The Team cautioned against updating. The iPhone OS update is claimed to improve the accuracy of the iPhone 3GS’ battery level readout, and if you’ve not noticed any untoward readings, the Team say, “there’s no reason to update to 3.1.3″.

If you must, PwnageTool 3.1.5 is what you need.

UGA police arrested the 37-year-old security analyst Monday on a felony extortion charge for trying to shake down a student who downloaded music in return for not turning her in to the UGA Office of Judicial Programs, according to university police.

UGA immediately fired him, police said.

Dehelean, who worked for UGA’s Enterprise Information Technology Services, called the student Jan. 25 to let her know that she’d been caught downloading copyrighted material - a violation of university policy - and “offered to make the situation go away in exchange for money,” UGA police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.

“All he was doing was (offering) to keep the information from going to Judicial Programs,” Williamson said, which could have leveled sanctions on the student ranging from a reprimand and suspension of computer privileges to probation.

The student told Dehelean she didn’t have the money and she told an official in her academic area, who in turn notified police.

GOOGLE is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly .

By building on existing technologies in voice recognition and automatic translation, Google hopes to have a basic system ready within a couple of years. If it works, it could eventually transform communication among speakers of the world’s 6,000-plus languages.

The company has already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week.

Google also has a voice recognition system that enables phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in.

Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller’s voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language. Like a professional human interpreter, the phone would analyse “packages” of speech, listening to the speaker until it understands the full meaning of words and phrases, before attempting translation.

A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update.

First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since.

The monthly security update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as “critical”.

The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs.

Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.

Two experimental add-ons, Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader and all versions of Master Filer were found to contain Trojan code aimed at Windows users. Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader contained Win32.LdPinch.gen, and Master Filer contained Win32.Bifrose.32.Bifrose Trojan. Both add-ons have been disabled on AMO.

Impact to users

If a user installs one of these infected add-ons, the trojan would be executed when Firefox starts and the host computer would be infected by the trojan. Uninstalling these add-ons does not remove the trojan from a user’s system. Users with either of these add-ons should uninstall them immediately. Since uninstalling these extensions does not remove the trojan from a user’s system, an antivirus program should be used to scan and remove any infections.

Microsoft has announced it will soon no longer support the original Xbox console on its Live online service.

From 15 April, Microsoft will “discontinue Xbox Live service for original Xbox consoles and games”, according to the software giant’s Major Nelson blog.

The decision will also impact Xbox 360 owners - specifically, those who play old Xbox games on their second-gen consoles over Xbox Live.

Microsoft let slip details about its Office 2010 “technology guarantee” plan yesterday.

Office 2007 purchasers to get free update from 5 March?

The apparent PR gaffe revealed that the software vendor would kick off the program on 5 March. Office 2010 is expected to hit retail in June this year, but Microsoft hasn’t yet confirmed an official date for its next big consumer product launch.

Apple’s iPhone is vulnerable to exploits that allow an attacker to spoof web pages even when they’re protected by the SSL, or secure sockets layer, protocol, a security researcher said.

The fault lies in a feature that makes it easy to configure large numbers of iPhones so they meet an organization’s IT policies, said Charlie Miller, a researcher at Independent Security Evaluators. Not only does the provisioning feature work over the internet, it can be tricked into accepting malicious configuration files.

Steve Jobs has dubbed Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra “bullshit.” Or at least “a load of crap.”

According to multiple reports, Jobs unloaded on Google last week during an Apple “town hall” meeting at the company’s One Infinite Loop headquarters. As originally reported by Wired, the Apple cult leader attacked his former Mountain View ally for its recent entry into the phone-selling business, before landing an unprompted blow on Google’s much-discussed “don’t be evil” corporate motto.

“We did not enter the search business,” Jobs said in reference to Google. “They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

According to Wired, an Apple employee then popped up with a completely unrelated question, but Jobs wasn’t done with Google. “I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing,” he said. “This ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra: It’s bullshit.”

But other reports insist Jobs didn’t actually say “It’s bullshit.” According to the Apple-obsessed Daring Fireball blog, he said: “‘Don’t be evil’ is a load of crap.”

99 per cent of files accessed through a Torrent network are unlicensed copyright material, according to a survey by an American undergraduate.

Only 10 of the 1021 files in the survey could be distributed over the Mainline network without infringing copyright. The ten works licensed for distribution included two Linux distros, game pack add-ons and trial software. Only 1 of the 145 pornographic files was considered non-infringing, student Sauhard Sahi found.

Facebook is expected to unveil changes to PHP, the language that helped make the social networking site a success - along with millions of other web sites.

SD Times has outed the planned change here. Facebook wouldn’t provide details when contacted by The Reg but said it would make more details available Tuesday morning, Pacific time.

The changes have been described as either a re-write of the PHP runtime or a compiler for PHP.

A change to PHP would be Facebook’s latest donation to the language, which has also had contributions from Microsoft and the former Sun Microsystems over the years.

Google says it will cease fully supporting Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 for its Google Docs and Google Sites applications on March 1. This deadline also applies to other older Web browser versions, including Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Apple Safari 2.0 and Google’s own Chrome 3.0. The move is part of Google’s push to rid the messaging and collaboration world of the dated, insecure IE 6 and put Google Chrome in its place. Chrome has 4.63 percent of the browser market and Google would love to chomp away at IE’s 63 percent share.