"In the last two years, the software used to create the Mariposa botnet was sold to hundreds of other criminals, making it one of the most notorious in the world," said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in a press release. "These cyber intrusions, thefts, and frauds undermine the integrity of the Internet and the businesses that rely on it; they also threaten the privacy and pocketbooks of all who use the Internet."

The Spanish Guardia Civil arrested three suspected Mariposa Botnet operators in February (ip-192.com reported here and here). The suspected creator of the botnet was now arrested by the Slovenian police. "We are glad to cooperate with the United States; the FBI's assistance is invaluable and represents professional affirmation of our force," said the Slovenian Minister of the Interior Katarina Kresal and Slovenian Criminal Police director General Janko Gorsek in a joint statement. "This case shows that cyber crime issues call for international police cooperation that shouldn’t be hindered by geographical borders. The FBI has demonstrated a high level of collaboration in which our countries were equal partners, which was crucial for the success of the investigation and reducing the threat on a global level. This partnership serves as a solid basis for future cooperation."

Over the past two to three years, the creator of the Butterfly botnet did sell the virus to cybercriminals worldwide, allowing them to infect thousands of computers and create the Mariposa botnet.

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After review by various legal experts, Mullenweg uses the premium WordPress theme Thesis as an example of an alleged license violation. In an interview with Andrew Warner, owner of the website mixergy.com, Mullenweg said: "Thesis has stated publicly that they believe in a different interpretation of the GPL. The GPL doesn’t apply to them. That WordPress’ license doesn’t apply and they don’t need to follow it. That’s obviously harmful to the WordPress community and I would love them to join and be GPL."

According to Mullenweg, the issue is not that theme and plug-in developers have to offer their work for free. "You could even sell the theme itself," Mullenweg says. However, writing code and creating functionality on top of software distributed under the GPL license and not making this work available under the same license terms is violating the GPL, Mullenweg alleges. "…when you violate someone's license it is breaking the law. It’s a definition of breaking the law."

Hundreds of themes were already removed from the WordPress theme directory since they did not comply with GPL license requirements.

A video with the full audio of Warner’s interview is available here. The site has also a full transcript of the interview available.

Update: The Thesis WordPress theme is now in compliance and adheres to the GPL license terms. "Now, back to work. This has taken a lot of my time over the past few days and was going to consume more if it went forward," Mullenweg said on Twitter. "Thrilled, however, that Thesis is now legal and in compliance ..."

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The company also said that it has achieved all it set out to do, and that there are no plans to launch another smartphone. T-Mobile, the original US operator, has also unlisted the device from its website and recommends the HTC HD2 and the Motorola CLIQ-Titanium smartphones instead. A recent upgrade to the Android 2.2 operating system enabled a long list of new features on the device, including the ability to turn the Nexus One into a mobile hotspot (ip-192.com reported here).

Google will continue to sell the smartphone in Germany, the UK and France through Vodafone and KT in South Korea. Registered developers can continue to purchase the device from Google. In the near future, the website dedicated to the Nexus One will start to showcase smartphones that run on the Android OS.

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"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle," said Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. "The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books - astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

However, paperback books are still outselling hardbacks, and they were not included in the statement. Amazon said that it sold 143 electronic books for every 100 hardcover books in the full second quarter of 2010.

About 630,000 e-books are currently available for sale on Amazon.com, and roughly 80 percent are priced at $9.99 or less.

Thousands of titles are available as a free download.

Photo: Laeschke

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Google says that it plans to use technologies developed by Metaweb to filter search terms according to information on places, events, and people. The acquisition will eventually help to improve the management and speed of semantic web development. Google plans to maintain Freebase as a free and open database.

"With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better," says Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management, in Google official blog. "Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers."

Google did not disclose financial details of the acquisition.

Photo: Laeschke

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