[H]ardNews - Blair's Weekend Tech

Busted By Google:

Student cheats at Waikato University are being caught out by Google - the world's most popular internet search engine. Lecturers reported 87 cases of plagiarism at the university last year - up from 26 in 2001. In most cases the students were cutting and pasting sentences or phrases from the internet. And that was their downfall, said Waikato University pro-vice chancellor David Swain.

Privacy Group Makes Point:

A privacy group, seeking to highlight the lack of protection of sensitive personal data, says it bought the social security (news - web sites) number of CIA (news - web sites) chief George Tenet and other top US officials for 26 dollars. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights said it obtained on the Internet the social security numbers of Tenet as well as those of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Rooftop Networking:

A few weeks ago, MIT graduate student Shan Sinha canceled his broadband Internet service. Now his Net connection comes through the chimney. From a computer in the living room of his Cambridge, MA, apartment, a few blocks from the MIT campus, a cable goes into the fireplace up to the roof, where it is attached to an antenna. From there, data packets hop to another roof-mounted antenna at a nearby student’s apartment.

Tweaking IE?

Will Microsoft tweak IE? The software giant tells a standards body that it's considering making changes to its Web browser in light of a recent patent infringement ruling against the company. Microsoft told the Web's leading standards body that it's considering making changes to its Internet Explorer browser in light of a recent ruling against the company in a patent infringement lawsuit

Font Theft?

When your organisation is publishing in print or on the web, does anyone check where the text fonts came from? Do you have a licence for the fonts you use? If not, the message today from the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) is that you are taking a serious risk. Font designer Agfa Monotype has joined forces with FAST to tackle the growing issue of unlicensed fonts – which costs the UK font industry 40% of its revenues, according to Agfa.