The Null Device

Never mind those Bardot newcomers, Australia's National Pop Star is, of course, Kylie Minogue. Her latest single, Spinning Around, is a piece of slick pop fluff that sits well alongside the material she did with Stock/Aitken/Waterman back in the early days; not surprisingly, it's doing much better than her misguided attempt at becoming the next Shirley Manson. Though it makes one wonder how long Our Kyles can keep making fluffy pop, and whether she'll end up following in the footsteps of John Farnham, Australia's answer to Johnny Hallyday.

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Coming soon to a network near you: software for blocking file-sharing programs like Napster and Gnutella. If the RIAA wins in court, such software may be necessary for ISPs wanting to defend against litigation. Of course, it's unlikely to be a permanent solution; only the latest round in an escalating arms race leading to more obscure and intentionally cryptic protocols and countermeasures.

because it uses the fundamental characteristics of the protocol itself in addition to relying on default port blocking, PacketHound is more difficult to bypass. When PacketHound is in monitoring mode, users are completely unaware of its presence. When it is in blocking mode, it kills unwanted activity by issuing a reset packet to the requesting machine; the user sees only a "connection reset by host" message.

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It's official, the first draft of the human genome is complete. It's believed that Celera Genomics, a private company, beat the public Human Genome Project to it, though there was a joint announcement for political reasons. Meanwhile, this will lead to some interesting intellectual property questions. (BBC News)

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