The Israeli National Institute of Standards have being practicing in a controversial activity. In the name of “helping to inform the public�? the National Institute of Standards hired a company to send email messages thru the company’s distribution list (in other words spam list).

An Israeli hacker tired of getting these spam messages have taken an action and hacked to the server where the email database is stored. After he got access to the database he deleted all the data from the spammer’s database, deleted all user names and passwords to the database and changed the database’s admin password.

After the third time I got these spam messages I managed to hack into their management system and deleted their entire database, said the hacker, identified himself as Anti-Spammer.

Source: Ynet (Hebrew)

Digital video-recording company TiVo Inc., famous for helping customers skip commercials on their favorite television programs, is taking steps to encourage viewers to watch them.

TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., has announced plans to insert symbols that identify advertisers during commercial breaks, making them more visible even when a customer is fast forwarding through them.

The ID tags are designed to alert TiVo customers to certain products. If customers are interested in learning more, they can pause the show they are watching to receive a “long-format” commercial or obtain information about the product. The new campaign will be launched with General Motors and The WB Network commercials.

Related Stories: TiVo Box Just $99 for Limited Time

Source: AP

The open-source Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client will be updated for the second time in a week because of code changes that have unintentionally stopped some third-party extensions from functioning correctly.

The updates will take Firefox and Thunderbird to version 1.0.6, while the Mozilla Suite will be updated to version 1.7.10, wrote representatives from the Mozilla Foundation on the group’s developer news blog. Mozilla oversees the software’s development.

Source: News.com

Music fans have purchased and downloaded more than half a billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. The 500 millionth song, Faith Hill’s “Mississippi Girl,�? was purchased yesterday by Amy Greer from Lafayette, Indiana, and as the grand prize winner she will receive 10 iPods to share with family and friends, an iTunes gift card for 10,000 songs and an all-expenses paid trip for four to see Coldplay on their world tour.

A group of leading technology firms that includes Microsoft Corp., IBM, Yahoo Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. has submitted a new e-mail authentication standard to the Internet Engineering Task Force.

The specifications for DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) were submitted to the IETF last week for consideration as a new e-mail authentication standard. DKIM has been in development since August and combines technology from Yahoo and Cisco. In addition to backing the new standard, the authoring companies plan to license it for free and may release it to the open-source community, sources say.

Source: eWeek

An iPod with video? Apple Computer Inc. has been talking to several major recording companies, looking to license the sale of music videos through the popular iTunes music site, The Wall Street Journal reported in Monday’s editions.

Negotiations are an indication that Apple is moving to release a device that plays video files, possibly by September, The Journal said. Analysts see the development as likely because of Apple’s strength in video software, including the Quicktime movie format and video-editing software, such as Final Cut Pro and iMovie.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Source: AP

A court in Nigeria has sentenced a woman to two and a half years in prison for her part in the country’s biggest ever international fraud case.

Amaka Anajemba admitted helping her late husband to persuade an employee of a Brazilian bank to transfer millions of dollars into overseas accounts.

Banco Noroeste lost $242m through the latter half of the 1990s.

The court ordered Anajemba to surrender her houses in Nigeria, the US, UK and Switzerland to help repay the money.

Source: BBC

Amazon.com Holdings has launched a legal offensive against a number of websites including Orbitz and Avis, claiming that they’ve infringed Amazon patents.

Both brands are owned by Cendant, the travel and property services giant with twice the turnover of Amazon. Through Avis and Budget, Cendant owns owns a third of the car rental market, has interests in property franchising (Coldwell Banker) and hotel franchising (Days Inn, Travelodge, Ramada, Super 8), and last year acquired Orbitz.

The on-off bickering between the two was renewed on June 20, when Cendant filed suit in a Delaware court claiming that Amazon infringed its patent 6,782,370. The patent, granted last year, is entitled “System and Method for Providing Recommendation of Goods or Services Based on Recorded Purchasing History.”

Amazon and its search subsidiary A9 responded two days later, claiming Cendant and subsidiaries infringed on Patents 5,715,399 (”Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network”, filed 1995); 6,629,079 (”Method and system for electronic commerce using multiple roles”, granted 2003) and 6,029,141 (”Internet-based customer referral system” filed 1997).

Source: The Register

WinZip, which specializes in software that compresses large files for storage or mailing, has been bought by turnaround investor Vector Capital.

For years, WinZip’s eponymous utility has been one of the most popular shareware programs on the Web. More than 140 million people have downloaded the program, and it’s downloaded for free about 500,000 times a week, said Chris Nicholson, a partner at Vector.

Technically, WinZip charges $29 for the program after a 30-day free trial. Unfortunately, the honor system doesn’t work as well as it used to. Few customers end up paying for the program.

Vector will try to change that by reminding users a little more firmly that the software costs money, as well as likely coming out with features that only paying customers can download. Vector also signed a marketing and distribution agreement with Google.

Source: News.com