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week in review Scientists believe they have found the "God particle," also known as the Higgs boson.

The leaders of the experiments running through the giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) said that their two teams had independently observed a particle consistent with the Higgs, which has until now been theoretical rather than a sure thing. The Higgs boson is thought to be responsible for mass in the otherwise-already-proven standard model of physics.

The scientists say they have more than "five-sigma" certainty that the particle they saw was the Higgs boson, which means they are 99.99999 … Read more

Vice President Joe Biden did not orchestrate the criminal case against MegaUpload, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Kim DotCom, the founder of MegaUpload, a cloud storage service accused of trafficking in pirated materials, said this week that he has proof Biden ordered the prosecution against him and six other MegaUpload managers.

"There was no White House involvement in the decision to charge this case," the office of Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote in an brief e-mail to CNET. MacBride is the federal prosecutor who filed a criminal … Read more

The film industry is laughing at allegations made by Kim DotCom, the founder of accused pirate site MegaUpload.

DotCom claims leaders from the major Hollywood studios gathered last June in Washington to discuss MegaUpload with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

In an interview with TorrentFreak on Tuesday, DotCom produced White House records that showed some of the chiefs of the six largest film studios, including Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures, and Ron Meyer of Universal Studios, met with Biden at the White House on July 27, 2011. He noted that also in attendance was Mike Ellis, an executive … Read more

MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom, a man indicted by the U.S. government for criminal copyright violations, conspiracy, money laundering and wire fraud, alleges that Vice President Joe Biden ordered a U.S. Attorney to pursue its aggressive case against him and his company.

If true, that shouldn't come as a big surprise to even the most casual follower of the antipiracy debate. (DotCom cited no evidence for his claim, telling the site TorrentFreak only that a "credible source" informed him Biden ordered the crackdown.)

Whether or not Biden was involved -- and my sources say he wasn'… Read more

Photo editing can be an extremely tedious and time-consuming process. Fortunately, many editing tasks can be performed automatically using batch-processing programs. BatchPhoto Enterprise is an easy-to-use program that can correct, adjust, resize, crop, and otherwise edit groups of images. It's not perfect, but we don't think we've encountered many programs that are more versatile and intuitive than BatchPhoto Enterprise.

BatchPhoto Enterprise opens with a wizard that walks users through the process of getting acquainted with the program, and copious documentation is provided, including video tutorials. Once we started using BatchPhoto Enterprise we were surprised by exactly how … Read more

The big news today on the antipiracy front is that a New Zealand court has ruled that police enforced illegal search warrants when they seized the assets of MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom.

What hasn't been made clear in the initial press reports is that this is not a final victory. Far from it. The ruling as it stands today does not impact DotCom's extradition hearing on August 6 or the charges facing him in the United States, according to legal experts. A hearing on the MegaUpload case is scheduled for tomorrow in U.S. District Court.

On January … Read more

The U.S. piracy case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom appears to have run aground, with a New Zealand court ruling that the search warrants issued in January were invalid.

New Zealand High Court Judge Helen Winkelmann ruled Thursday that the warrants did not adequately describe the offenses alleged, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. "Indeed they fell well short of that," she said. "They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid.''

She also ruled that it was unlawful for the data confiscated in the raid to have been sent offshore, saying "… Read more

Cloud storage service YouSendIt is in the midst of a multi-hour disruption, which remains unresolved.

The problem began earlier today and kept users from visiting YouSendIt's Web site or sending files through the service.

The company currently lists the issue as a "service disruption" versus a full-on "outage" with the promise of having a fix soon.

"YouSendIt Services are currently experiencing slow loading times and issues sending and receiving," the company said on its status page. "We are working to have this fixed ASAP."

On its Twitter account, the company noted … Read more

Kevin Mitnick can certainly empathize with Kim DotCom.

Mitnick, one of the best-known computer hackers of all time, knows what it is to be hunted by the American government and to face jail time as a result. That may be why Mitnick cheered DotCom on via Twitter.

DotCom, the founder of cloud-storage service MegaUpload is trying to fend off attempts by U.S. officials to extradite him from New Zealand and try him on various charges, including criminal copyright violations and wire fraud.

"I hope you win," Mitnick wrote to DotCom last night. "I saw this on … Read more