Reuters yesterday reported that work to lay the new data cable is expected to start next year and will cost investors in the region of ISK 36 billion (EUR 226.76 million).

“This project has been under intense preparation for several years,” Þorvaldur told Vísir.is. He says that the new cable will be the highest speed connection which has so far been laid under the North Atlantic. He said that there are already 14 cables between Europe and the USA; but all of them are much slower than the one Emerald Networks wants to lay.

According to Þorvaldur the new cable will increase the likelihood that Iceland can become a global hub for data centres. In order for that to become a reality several different pieces need to fall into place. Firstly there needs to be a plentiful supply of cheap electricity; which Iceland has. Number two, he says, is to use Iceland’s often-cold air to cool the servers; replacing the need to pump masses of water around the buildings. There also needs to be enough available land to build the data centres — which Iceland also has. Then there is the need for excellent high-speed internet connections; which the new cable would ensure.

“The fifth element is peripheral things like, for example, the tax environment,” Þorvaldur explains. “Alþingi has passed regulation stating that foreign data centre customers do not need to pay value added tax in Iceland. That makes Iceland competitive compared to other data centre locations in Europe and the USA.”

The goal of the website is to directly link voters to their representatives, allow MPs to call for ideas and opinions from the public and to increase overall political consensus, RUV reported.

“This is, in itself, not a huge or complicated thing to open the website, it is just done like this: and with this I declare Better Iceland formally open,” said Gunnar Grimsson, one of the website’s founders, when he opened it officially in the tent on Wednesday.

The website has a sister in the form of the already well-established Better Reykjavik; but the new website is specifically for national issues instead of those about the Icelandic capital city.

The site gives people the chance to affect some of the varied decisions which are taken in the Althingi parliament and to put forward new ideas. Arguments and information on the issues most important to the website’s users will be sent to relevant Althingi committees as documents. The idea has worked well on local matters at City Hall and some twenty issues raised by the Better Reykjavik website have already been willingly taken on by city council committees.

“The fact is that there are some things on there which could be really useful to MPs in their own jobs, quite apart from what comes from the public,” Gunnar Grimsson said when asked whether he thinks MPs will actually bother to use the new website. He believes the double benefits of direct contact with the public and a library of research information will mean that members of Althingi will slowly but surely begin to use the website on a daily basis.

The men have been identified as being part of an online community that gives its members access to a certain amount of home-made child porn, depending on how many pictures and videos they upload themselves.

US authorities have arrested 52 people already from the user base of 500, with a further 72 remaining under investigation. Thirteen of those arrested have admitted guilt, whereas four have already been sentenced to between 20 and 30 years in jail.

All of the children who were victims of abuse on the site were under 12 years-old, while some were only babies. There were also parts of the network that could only be accessed if the member uploaded material in which the child was visibly suffering.

Police are holding a man in his forties from the Sodertorn district of Stockholm on suspicion of pornography offences and raping children overseas. Another 32 year-old man from Blekinge, who is accused of raping a six year-old girl at least 70 times, has been committed to a psychiatric institution.

Liz Berglund, from the National Police Agency’s IT crimes section, said, “We received information from the US that there was a Swedish suspect involved. We have so far been able to identify three Swedish girls featured in the material.”

“Many 11 year-old children are closed-mouthed and spend most of the afternoon at home in front of a computer screen with games, films and Facebook,” Pernille Due, research programme director for NIPH, told Berlingske newspaper. “There has been an enormous change in how children socialise with one another,” she added.

Anders Colding-Jorgensen, who specialises in social media psychology, said that the trend reveals how the social skills of modern children are being compromised by online technologies.

“Social media cheat the brain into thinking we are together with other people and that all of our social needs are being met,” Jorgensen said in a Copenhagen Post report. “But the body knows very well that it is just sitting still, totally without noticing body language, without noticing the nearness or scent of other people. It’s a little like drinking a cola, which also tricks the brain into thinking it is getting nutrition and vitamins,” he added.

“Not just any firm of our size gets a Super Bowl advertisement or goes into such visible cooperation with so big a player as Fox, so yes, there is a certain status in that,” said Rovio Mobile CEO Mikael Hed in a YLE report.

The Finnish firm produced the popular puzzle game that sees the player use a virtual catapult to launch wingless birds at pigs. The highly addictive application has been downloaded more than 50 million times and was top of the Apple App Store charts in 60 countries last year.

Rovio has already outgrown its premises twice and is looking to move offices again in August as the company expands. The firm has also set up training programmes as suitable employees are said to be in short supply.

“There are about 1,200 people working in the games industry in Finland and, at this stage, when we recruit dozens of them, this is already quite a high percentage,” said Hed.

In 2011, the runaway success story will see Angry Birds secure its own TV series, film and spin-off products as well as a special release for game consoles.

The website stated that Arni Pall Arnason had decided to resign due to increasing public displeasure with him. More information was promised later that evening. At the end of the spoof message, he thanks the public and apologises for not having done well enough in his job. According to the Ministry for Economic Affairs, talk of Arnason’s resignation has been massively exaggerated. The message was inserted into the website by a hacker.

RUV was unable to contact the minister personally about the matter, as he is currently in Brussels.

Girls cited monotony as the major turn off when it comes to ‘techy’ subjects, with only one in five saying they would consider studying ICT. The image of slaving away over a hot keyboard all day was also thought to be decidedly unglamorous.

”While girls generally believe ICT jobs suit women, few consider the sector as an option personally,” said researcher Susanna Bairoh in a report by YLE. ”Girls want to work closely with other people. The fact that this is what IT work environments are like hasn’t reached many people.”

Bairoh, who is concerned that the IT workforce in Finland could become an entirely male-dominated realm in future years, has called on schools and businesses to help change the dowdy reputation of the IT world and make computers accessible to the fairer sex.

“Polytechnics and universities still to some degree assume that new students already know how to programme. Many girls feel that they don’t meet expectations in this regard,” she said.

Women currently make up only 25 percent of ICT students at the country’s universities and 15 percent of those at polytechnics.

Readers of the magazine voted for their favourite games, placing EVE Online among some well-known names, including World of Warcraft, Quake and Doom.

The magazine compiled a Top 20 list of best computer games of all time – and Half-Life 2 came out on top with EVE in third.

PC Gamer is one of the biggest computer games magazines in the world and has been writing for gamers since 1993, Visir.is reports.

The list of all the top 20 games can be found here.

The signal operator received a second warning after his penchant for pornography caused numerous train delays in the east of the country, reports The Local.

The Swedish Rail Administration’s disciplinary board handed-down the follow-up warning last month after numerous delays around Gavle Station. The signal operator’s relaxed approach has caused passenger, cargo and even high-speed trains to be delayed.

Two years ago, the administration’s local computer system became infected with a slew of viruses that were tracked back to the man’s seedy surfing habits. Since then, the man has been summoned to his boss’s office on a number of occasions to discuss his various breaches.

The man has also been accused of tardiness, failing to communicate critical information over track developments and even falling asleep while on duty, leaving a frustrated driver stranded outside the station.

The signal operator’s first warning came in 2007 after it was discovered that he had been visiting gambling and pornographic websites on at least 50 occasions at work. He has also been sent to a behavioural therapist to help improve the quality of his work.

The disciplinary board said that tougher action may be taken in future against the man and that further warnings were unlikely.

Over a one month period, Jonkoping officials measured how students and employees utilised some 8,000 computers across the municipality and were surprised by the results released last week, says The Local.

On occasion, up to 80 percent of the internet capacity was being utilised for file sharing; frequently for illegally-shared files.

Officials were also surprised that students and employees would spend so much time visiting websites that featured gambling, gaming, pornography, weapons and racist messages. “I would have never thought the problem would be this widespread,” said Martin Andreae, Jonkoping’s city director.

A total of 1,300 hours was spent visiting inappropriate websites in the month-long survey, equating to four full-time employment positions. Further evidence that the city’s computers were being used for unsuitable purposes was made evident by the high rate of anonymous use or attempts to cover computers’ IP addresses.

“If we had realised how big the problem was, we would have done something to address it sooner,” said Andreae.

Jonkoping has now scheduled technology upgrades worth an estimated SEK 500,000 to block inappropriate websites and allow managers to have increased visibility of how employees use the internet.