The significance of this follows the announcement from Apple who reported that after three days from release its new Safari browser was downloaded eleven million times.

These figures have probably been topped up with the automatic updates that both companies issued at the time of release.

Both sets of figures indicate that the gap between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the other browsers available to internet users is closing slightly but not at a rate that would cause Microsoft to be worried in any way, despite attempts by governments to prevent them from including the browser in with the companies operating systems.

Source [Vnunet]

These are known as hacks, but in reality, they are simply ways of making Wordpress work a little bit harder for you.

Here are some of the things that you can make the loop do:

Get Posts Published Between Two Dates
Use More Than One Loop On A Page, Without Printing Duplicate Posts
Insert Ads After The First Post
Get Posts With A Specific Custom Field And Specific Value
List Upcoming Posts
Display Posts Published One Year Ago
Use The Loop To Create An “Archive” Page Template
Create Your Own WordPress Loops Using The WP_Query Object
Get Only The Latest Sticky Posts
Create A Loop Of Images

Source [Smashing Magazine]

It seems that as technology becomes smaller and cheaper the more that technology is being used by the police, the gadgets that the police currently have at their disposal are:

Mobile Data Systems
Body-worn video cameras
Mobile CCTV
Breathalysers
Average speed cameras (SPECS)
Unmanned Airborne Vehicles
Tasers

This is just the tip of the technological iceberg, with the police getting more gadgets and access to the latest technology does this mean that more criminals will be caught or just that more ordinary members of the public who accidently drop a piece of litter or park in the wrong place are being fined.

Source [Tech Radar]

A lot of users will not be too pleased about this additional add on, and therefore will no doubt head over to the add on’s interface and simply uninstall the update as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it looks as if they will not be able to do that.

But Microsoft have disabled the uninstall button on this particular extension, in fact according to Microsoft the only way that this add on can be removed is by modifying the Windows registry, which as we know can be very problematic at the best of times, one slip up and the user can be in trouble.

Source [Washington Post]

The card details are gathered in a variety of ways, stolen cards or stolen details. A stolen or lost card is not so bad, because the user will no doubt know and can therefore put a stop on it, but stolen card details is a different matter because the card holder is not going to know until it too late.

This information can be obtained through the retailers website, the card processor or the bank itself, although the later is not the normal route. This information which is all the information on the cards strip and the CVV2 number is only worth around £5 to the dealer, but can cost the cardholder and the bank thousands.

Source [New Scientist]

This is political vision not from just one location, but from around the world. It seems that the politicians and the world’s internet service providers are working hand in hand to stop the next Google from coming along.

It is not that a firm like Google will not come along; it is just that the people behind it will be different next time.

The internet is key to the development of these businesses, yet we see far eastern countries with superfast broadband reaching all homes, while in the UK, the average internet speed is 3.4 Mbps, and even that comes with caps and rules.

Source [Guardian]

The favoured plan is to go down the three strikes and you are out path, this is where the ISP monitors their customers and if they are warned three times over illegal downloads they are automatically banned from the internet.

This means that the ISP’s will have to play cop on their own customers, which is something that some of them are unhappy about and believe that the copyright holders should get their own house in order by properly licensing their products in the first place.

Source [Ars Technica]

But although the very thought of surfing the internet at speeds faster than anything available in the UK, does this speed actually get to the end user?

It is believed that the likely hood of a consumer receiving 200 Mbps broadband is rare even when the fibre cable is connected to the home; this is because other factors affect the speed.

First up this is cable, so the more people that use it the slower the speed, then there are the routers, the standard 802.11g router can only handle 54 Mbps, while the older 802.11b router can only deliver 11 Mbps.

Source [Ars Technica]

But for those who do not want to wait, then there is always the Release Candidate testing version, this is available now to anyone who wants to give it go, the details of what is required are below:

To install and use the RC, you will need to know how to:

Troubleshoot problems. You are pretty much flying solo, so you will need to handle your own tech support, and rely on other RC testers for their know-how

Burn an ISO file to make an installation DVD

Install Windows

Backup and restore your PC

Set up a network

Create and use a system recovery disk

Here is what you need to have:

Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)

A PC with these system requirements:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Source [Microsoft]

However, with the new EU, law that requires ISP’s to store data for a minimum of six months, but the ISP says that if there is no data then the law cannot work.

It looks as if this is a Swedish internet revolution following the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders, but this more than just that, the ISP will think that their stand will add strength to their business and therefore encourage other internet users to join them in the quest to free the internet once more.

Source [Wired]