Cody Taylor

VonGuard writes “On April 9, ECMA International produced the final draft for the first major update to JavaScript since 1999. It’s called ECMAScript 3.1, but will soon be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. You’ll know it as JavaScript, the Next Generation. Mozilla will begin implementing these features after Firefox 3.5, and Microsoft is already showing prototypes behind closed doors. The question, however, is what this will change for JavaScript coders. To get those answers, I tracked down Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s CTO and the creator of JavaScript. I transcribed the interview without any editorial since he explains, perfectly, what’s changing for programmers. Long story short: Json will be safer, getters and setters will be standard, and strict mode will make things easier to debug.”

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An anonymous reader writes “A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, according to newly declassified documents obtained by Wired.com. The so-called ‘computer and internet protocol address verifier,’ or CIPAV, is delivered through links to websites controlled by the FBI, and it silently reports back to a government server in Virginia. Among other cases, the FBI used it to track a Swedish hacker responsible for cracking thousands of computers at national labs and NASA’s JPL in 2005.”

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myvirtualid writes “The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, ‘Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was “commercially driven” when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.’ The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. ‘Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,’ Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter.” Update: 04/17 12:16 GMT by T : Several updates, below.

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by Mats Lewan The four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay trial face year-long jail terms if found guilty when the verdict gets announced in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday.

A win-win situation. That’s what author Anders Rydell, who wrote a book about the Swedish piracy movement, calls the pending verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, due to be issued on Friday. Four men associated with the defiant BitTorrent tracking site are on trial for contributory copyright infringement.