UK men jailed over TK worm

Two British men have been jailed for helping to spread an Internet worm that affected thousands of PCs around the world.

Computerworld reports that the two, Jordan Bradley (22) and Andrew Harvey (23) were part of an international group called "TH34t Krew" that created the TK worm, a Trojan horse that surfaced on the Internet sometime before February 2003.

Officers from the UK`s National Hi-Tech Crime Unit estimated that the worm caused millions of dollars in damage, infecting 18 000 computers around the world. The program could also take control of computers it infected.

Newcastle Crown Court jailed Harvey, an electrician, for six months, and Bradley, who is unemployed, for three months.

Intel will unveil new chips today that it hopes will close a performance gap with rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in the market for server system chips, says Reuters, quoting a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Chips from Intel provide the processing power for the vast majority of x86 servers, which typically run the Linux operating system or Microsoft`s Windows.

Intel`s move follows a chip launch from AMD, which in April debuted its dual-core server chips featuring two electronic brains on a single piece of silicon. Aided by the additions to its Opteron line, AMD`s share of the market for x86 server chips rose to 7.4% in the second quarter from 5.6% in the first period, the Journal reported.

Intel said the new products will join the company`s Xeon chip line. The latest model, which carries the designation DP, is tailored for servers with sockets to use as many as two chips.

A model for four-chip servers is expected in a few weeks, the Journal said.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ignored strong lobbying from software makers and signed legislation that bans the sale of violent video games to children, reports Reuters.

Passed by the California legislature last month, the measure follows heated national debate after game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software pulled its best-selling game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from retailers this summer because of hidden sex scenes.

"I am a parent myself and I think this is extremely important that we know what our kids watch or what kind of games that they play," Schwarzenegger told reporters.

The Stanford Racing Team`s robotic car, "Stanley", drove autonomously across 131.6 miles in the Mojave Desert in six hours and 53 minutes, to win the DARPA Grand Challenge car race at the weekend.

The customised Volkswagen won its makers a $2 million prize when it beat three other unmanned robotic vehicles to the finish.

ZDNet reports that all of the teams made history during the weekend. They were the first autonomous vehicles to travel far within a specific time frame, as well as the first to finish the military race.

DARPA, or the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, is the research and development unit of the US Department of Defence.