Spammer faces slammer

A New York man, who was snared in federal investigators' sting operation targeting senders of junk e-mail, pleaded guilty to spamming 1.2 million AOL subscribers, reports the Register.

Adam Vitale, 26, of Brooklyn, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to violations of the CAN-Spam Act.

He faces 11 years in prison and a fine of $250 000 at his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for 13 September, according to a press release provided by the US attorney who prosecuted the case.

Ultra-low-power Bluetooth technology will become a reality within a year. Nokia has announced the merging of the Wibree Forum, a group handling Nokia's low-power wireless technology, with the official body for Bluetooth standards, reports Silicon Republic.

Wibree, which came out of the Nokia Research Centre in 2001, is a short-range digital radio technology, very much like Bluetooth, and is designed to complement its applications.

Marrying these groups and technologies together is hoped to encourage development of smaller devices that consume lower power.

Google, Intel and a host of PC and component companies on Tuesday unfurled the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an effort to increase energy efficiency in PCs, reports News.com.

At the heart of the initiative is a push to get PC makers and consumers to adopt more efficient power supplies and voltage regulators. These two components, working together, convert AC power from a wall socket to 12-volt DC power that a computer uses.

Roughly 50% of the power delivered from a wall socket to a PC never actually performs any work, according to Urs H"olzle, Google fellow and senior VP of operations.

Security researchers have already found eight bugs in the Windows version of Safari Apple, released on Monday. They are blaming Apple's "hostile attitude towards security researchers" for the problems.

Just hours after Apple released a Windows version of Safari, security researchers had uncovered more than half a dozen vulnerabilities in the browser beta, including at least three that could let attackers grab complete control of the PC, reports PC World.

PC World's Erik Larkin is not surprised that Safari would become a security risk. But Apple's claims about the new browser's security have touched a nerve with security researchers. Two of the researchers blamed Apple's "false claims" about security and what they called its "hostile attitude" toward bug finders for the rush to dig up flaws.