Industry fights 'casual piracy`

The record industry has undertaken a new war against "casual piracy", reports pcworld.com.

Sony BMG and EMI have begun shipping compact discs using technology that limits the number of times the disc can be copied.

By the end of this year, Sony BMG says most of its CDs sold in the US will incorporate this technology.

EMI is employing a similar strategy with its CDs, using technology from Macrovision that allows just three copies to be made. The first titles using the technology should be on sale in stores by the time you read this.

As of 9 August, HP`s Virus Throttler and ProLiant Essentials Intelligent Networking Pack will be able to run on the open source operating system, reports TechWorld.

The anti-virus software was developed at HP Labs to reduce the impact of virus infections. It has been available with the company`s ProCurve switches and on Windows versions of its servers since February of this year but had not previously been available for Linux users.

Virus Throttler is able to single out systems that behave as if infected by a computer virus, and the Intelligent Networking Pack is a suite of server software designed to help boost the performance of computer networks.

A spyware ring has infiltrated the IT systems of as many as 50 international banks and logged social security numbers, credit card and bank account numbers, passwords, eBay and PayPal account information and chat transcripts, according to the security firm Sunbelt Software, TechNewsWorld reports.

Sunbelt`s president wrote that the firm had discovered the identity theft operation while doing research on a CoolWebSearch exploit.

"Bad things happen. Always have. Always will," Steve Hunt, president of 4A International, a security consulting company, told TechNewsWorld. "So don`t expect to ever ever be completely free of risks like spyware -- but also don`t avoid reasonable precautions."

Advance Micro Devices (AMD) has released a program called SimNow that simulates its next-generation chips, a move to try to speed the development of software that supports upcoming features, reports CNet News.

One of its features, code-named Pacifica makes it easier to run multiple operating systems on the same computer using software such as Xen.

Nathan Brookwood Insight 64 analyst expects the simulator will let programmers prepare their products to use an AMD feature called Presidio, a security technology that ensures separate processes can`t interfere with each other.