An Australian researcher is on the road to riches after discovering a way to make broadband connections up to 100 times faster.

University of Melbourne research fellow Dr John Papandriopoulos is in the throes of moving to Silicon Valley after developing an algorithm to reduce the electromagnetic interference that slows down ADSL connections.

Most ADSL services around the world are effectively limited to speeds between 1 to 20Mbps, but if Dr Papandriopoulos’s technology is successfully commercialised that speed ceiling would be closer to 100Mbps.

Stanford University engineering professor John Cioffi, known by some as the “father of DSL”, was one of the external experts reviewing the research, which made up Dr Papandriopoulos’s PhD thesis.

Professor Cioffi, who developed the computer chips inside the first DSL modems, was so impressed he offered the 29-year-old a job at his Silicon Valley start-up company, ASSIA, which is developing ways to optimise the performance of DSL networks.

A New Jersey man has been jailed for more than two years after he was convicted of sending millions of junk mails to AOL members.

Todd Moeller, 28, was sentenced to 27 months behind bars and fined $180,000 at a sentencing hearing last Friday after he admitted offences against US anti-spam legislation.

Moeller and partner in crime Adam Vitale, who faces a sentencing hearing on 13 November, were caught in a sting operation after they offered to bombard 1.2m AOL members with junk mail. The duo previously boasted that they could send spam runs without risk of detection.

In an instant message conversation, Moeller told an informant that they could send untraceable junk mail thanks to access to 40 different servers. He bragged that a previous stock spam campaign had earned him $40K a month

The first hardware boxes with Microsoft’s Windows Home Server will go on sale worldwide Monday, as the company announces more partner support for its first server OS aimed specifically for home use.
HP Ships; Others Gear Up

Hewlett-Packard’s Amazon.com, Bestbuy.com, Buy.com, Circuitcity.com and CompUSA.com. Online retailers will ship the product to customers later in the month, when it also will be available on site at other retail outlets, Microsoft said. HP is selling the product in two versions– a 500GB version for $599 and a 1-terabyte version for $749.

In addition to HP, Microsoft has more than a dozen hardware partners that have signed on to develop offerings with Windows Media Center preinstalled, said Joel Sider, senior product manager, Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. has added college basketball and other ESPN programming to the growing lineup of video content available for download to its Xbox 360 video game console.

Microsoft and ESPN said people can purchase complete NCAA basketball and football games, the X Games sports competitions and programs like ESPN’s “Madden Nation,” which chronicles a competition of “Madden NFL” video game players, from the Xbox Live Web site.

Xbox 360 users can buy commercial-free standard-definition versions of select NCAA games for $3, and high-definition versions for $4.50, within 48 hours of the game’s conclusion. ESPN TV shows, like the other TV content on the Xbox Live download site, cost $2 for standard-definition and $3 for high-def versions.