Week in Review: Pirates and foxy speeds

Many users of Mozilla's Firefox browser will have noticed a noticeable speed increase, and that's because version 3.5 has been released this week.

Not sure what it's all about? We have a Firefox 3.5 cheatsheet on the new speed and features, as well as a review to give you the IT PRO take on the browser.

The end of The Pirate Bay?

It's been a thorn in the side of companies for years due to its easy downloading of copyrighted content, but it looks like the end is near for the Pirate Bay.

First of all, news broke that the Pirate Bay founders were denied the possibility of a retrial over supposed judge bias over his membership of copyright organisations.

Then it was officially announced that the founders had sold it off to the Global Gaming Factory for 4.7 million. Taking the site legal is very different to what the original ethos was about and it's very unlikely that the website will continue in its current form.

So maybe the businesses losing sales due to Pirate Bay pirating have won the battle but considering there are many other BitTorrent trackers out there, will they win the war?

Government timid and slow'?

Last week, the government released its first official cyber security strategy, but a new report this week has claimed that the current government's security work is "timid and slow".

It appeals to the government to get behind cyber security by working with IT professionals, and facilitate the cyber equivalent of the Neighbourhood Watch'.

Let go of data

The Government was also called upon to put users back at the centre of systems to improve services and cut costs.

The Centre for Policy Studies has told Labour to ditch transformational government and centralised IT projects.