U.S. Hacker Gets 41 Months for Running Rogue Botnet

A U.S. hacker who hooked up a botnet within Newell Rubbermaid’s corporate network was sentenced to 41 months in prison on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Robert Matthew Bentley, of Panama City, Florida, must also pay US$65,000 restitution. He was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Bentley could have received a 10-year sentence. He pleaded guilty to charges of computer fraud and conspiracy to commit computer fraud for using the botnet to install advertising software on PCs located throughout Europe without permission.

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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Palm Centro gets down with the kids

Palm Inc has unveiled its new youth-orientated smartphone, the Palm Centro.

Nicely styled and available in a rather fetching ‘iPalm’ white, the Centro is an unashamed attempt by Palm to ditch the stuffy spreadsheets, kick off the brogues, slip into some Etnies, grab the snowboard and get on down with the kids.

As if to ram this last point home, the Centro website features a series of excruciating images of painfully trendy, overly self-confident preppy young folk. They’re laughing manically at whatever it is that happens to be filling the two-inch colour screen on their Centros. The whole point, remember, is that you can be just like them…

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Saturday, March 8th, 2008