News written by James Delahunty (May, 2011)

NVIDIA announces YouTube is giving users the ability to view thousands of 3D videos on their NVIDIA 3D Vision PCs and notebooks.

The videos will work with the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. "We're excited to introduce HTML5 and WebM support to the thousands of 3D videos available on YouTube," said Jonathan Huang, 3D Product Manager at YouTube. "By embracing these open standards, NVIDIA 3D Vision users now have a great way of experiencing YouTube's library of 3D content."

With the growth of 3D camcorders for the consumer market, the amount of content that can be created by consumers and uploaded to sites such as YouTube has risen. YouTube's support of NVIDIA 3D Vision technology extends its existing commitment to 3D, enabling even more consumers and 3D enthusiasts to share their 3D videos online.

"Firefox with 3D Vision creates a stunning and smooth 3D video experience using HTML5 video based on open standards," said Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla. "3D Vision from NVIDIA is a great example of the rich, innovative experiences that are being built on top of the speed and graphics power that Firefox delivers to the Web."

Social networking site dismissed claims of "scam artist" again.

Facebook Inc has urged a court to throw out a complaint made by a New York man, claiming he owns a substantial amount of the multi-billion valued social networking giant. The lawsuit is a "brazen and outrageous" fraud, according to a filing made with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

Paul Ceglia claims that back when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, was a student at Harvard University, he entered a contract with him that provides him with a 50 percent stake of Mark's stake.

Facebook and Zuckerberg have dismissed the lawsuit from the very beginning, and have described Mr. Ceglia as "an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders."

Prisoners in Chinese labour camps were forced to play online games for hours to make money for the guards.

The practice of excessively playing online games to build up virtual currency (or other virtually valuable assets) is known as "gold farming", and it is particularly rampant in China where estimates put as many as 100,000 gold farmers throughout the region.

Liu Dali, a former prisoner of the Jixi labour camp, used to have to break rocks, dig trenches and other manual hard labour by day, and then was forced at night to play online games to build up virtual credits which the prison guards would then trade for real money.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Even though playing games excessively is not as physically demanding on the human body as the hard manual labour he was forced to endure, he revealed that there were real consequences for not managing to fill a "quota" for the guards.

Members of the House of Representatives push AT&T chairman for answers on proposed $39 billion buy-out of T-Mobile.

The deal, which would see AT&T become the largest carrier in the United States, has been criticized from all angles because it further reduces the number of wireless carriers. Critics also say that T-Mobile's discount prices in comparison to others might be lost in the merger.

Chairman of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, told the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet, that the deal is a path to extending the company's reach into rural areas, and other underserved areas in the U.S.

"It's about achieving this with private capital," he said. "We continue to invest at a very aggressive pace."

If the deal were to go ahead, it would mean that 80 percent of U.S. wireless contract customers would be served by just two providers. To go ahead, it needs the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The panel pressing Stephenson for details has no say either way.

A group of Finnish record labels are attempting to get the Pirate Bay BitTorrent website blocked in the country.

The group has filed a petition in court to block access to the controversial BitTorrent tracker, accusing it of providing copyrighted music, movies and other material to Finnish users.

"The development of a legal online market is impossible in Finland if illegal services like The Pirate Bay are freely allowed to continue their operations," said Lauri Rechardt, of the Finnish IFPI branch. The petition asks the courts to force ISP Elisa to block access to the Pirate Bay from subscribers within the country.

This is not the first attempt to block the controversial website in a country, and it wont be the last. The Pirate Bay has survived several raids since it opened initially in 2003, and still remains operation even after its founders were given prison sentences and hefty fines for copyright infringement offenses.

Apple is pushing out a promised update for Mac users to remove and prevent infection of MacDefender variants, as another variant comes out thats harder to avoid.

MacDefender malware, including MacProtector and MacSecurity, were installed by thousands of Mac users who found them in search results targeted by their developers. The scareware works just the same as similar scams work with PCs; presenting fake security scan results and offering to remove the phony malware for a fee.

Some people are thought to have become infected because of the default Safari settings, allowing software to be downloaded and queued for installation.

Those who install it and then fall for the fake results could end up paying as much as $70.

Now a new variant of MacDefender, picked up by security firms, does not require any user permission to install on a system. Intego is recommending that Mac users disable the Safari feature that allows files deemed "safe" to be installed automatically.

The new MacDefender variant is also spreading the same was as the older ones, by targeting popular Mac-related search results.

Independent label in the UK visits schools to educate kids about the work that goes into making music, and how illegal downloading threatens the whole system.

Shed Records, an independent record label in London, is visiting schools and allowing children to use some of its equipment to put together their own music tracks. The aim is to teach the students how much work goes into making just one track, and how many people have to be paid for their part in the process.

The effort is being backed by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the recorded music industry in the UK.

They want the children to understand that it is not just artists who lose out to piracy. "A whole army of people work behind the scenes to bring you new, fresh music," said Paul Shedden, Head of Label at Shed Records.

"Everything from the songwriters through to production, artists, engineers, radio pluggers, PR companies all those people need to get paid. Otherwise they can't continue doing the jobs they love and the music you love will stop coming out."

Currently, the scheme is targeting five schools as a trial, and if successful, the plan is to extend nationally, with other labels around the country providing similar sessions in schools.

Chief Financial Officer confirms that increased R&D costs in Sony's books are largely due to next generation console development.

Masaru Kato, Sony CFO and executive video president, was asked about the increased costs of research and development for the company, following the release of its annual earnings report on Thursday.

"We have a portable NGP to be launched later this year, so we have development expenses to be incurred for this product and for the home equipment," Kato said.

"The PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform--when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that--but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there."

Nintendo confirmed rumors of an upcoming Wii successor last month, saying the console would be playable at E3 next month. Microsoft also started looking to fill positions for the development of next generation Xbox products in March.

UK websites given one more year to comply with EU cookie laws.

The EU's Privacy and Communications Directive comes into force today, but it is clear that most of Europe is lagging behind its requirements. It mandates that Internet users be offered to give their consent before cookies storing information on their usage are saved and then later retrievable by websites.

In the UK, the government has said it needs more time to find the best solution, favoring light-touch regulation.

"We recognise that some website users have real concerns around online privacy but also recognise that cookies play a key role in the smooth running of the Internet," said communications minister Ed Vaizey. "But it will take some time for workable technical solutions to be developed, evaluated and rolled out so we have decided that a phased in approach is right."

The UK government has already formed a working group with browser developers to see if a browser-based solution can be found. Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox already offer settings to protect users from services with college and harvest data, and Google is building "Do Not Track" features into Chrome.

Software that would be used for France's 'three strikes' anti-piracy policy found to be tremendously flawed.

Last week, plans to implement a three strikes policy in France that could lead to the disconnection of file sharers caught sharing illegal files were put on hold after it was revealed the company tasked with tracking activity had been hacked.

TMG's server software could then be examined by hackers to understand how it works. The result shows that the software is very insecure, and should cause concerns about TMG's involvement in the three strikes policy.

TMG servers were running a custom administrative program written in Delphi, which didn't require any authentication at all. Basically, anyone could connect to port 8500 and start sending commands directly to the server.

While the commands supported were limited to shutting down, rebooting, start/stop P2P client, software updates and others, they were sufficient to allow hackers to do whatever they wanted with the servers.

For example, the update command connects to an FTP server, retrieves a file and then automatically executes it. Remarkably, it does not have a pre-set FTP server and literally allows for any FTP server to be specified as part of the update command.

Intel CFO reveals firm would consider producing non-Intel silicon chips for selected customers.

Speaking to journalists after an investor event in London, Intel chief financial officer Stacy Smith said a proposal to use the company's manufacturing capacity to produce chips that were not based on Intel processor cores would trigger an in-depth discussion, depending on the specifics.

"There are certain customers that would be interesting to us and certain customers that wouldn't. If Apple or Sony came to us and said: 'I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it,' I wouldn't blink. That would be fantastic business for us." Smith said.

"Then you get into the middle ground of 'I don't want it to be a IA core, I want it to be my own custom designed core,' and then you are only getting the manufacturing margin, and that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis."

Architecture developed by Intel is at the core of the vast majority of all PCs in the world, and Intel remains far ahead of its competition in that area, having just announced its new "3D" transistor technology that will let it produce faster chips that consume less energy.

Internet communications giant stops working for thousands of users.

Social networking sites like Twitter lit up with reports today that Skype wouldn't work for users, and the official Skype website went down under heavy traffic from concerned users. The problem affected those on Windows, OS X and Linux systems.

Skype's official blog has reported since that the source of the problem has been identified, and that a fix should be released later today. The speed of the response is much better than a December outage, caused by a software bug, which took the service down for two days.

In the meantime, users can decide to get Skype working again by locating and deleting a file on their systems.

In Windows, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "%appdata%Skype" directory.

In OS X, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "~/Library/Application Support/Skype" (where ~ is your Home folder).

On Linux systems, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "/home/YourLinuxUserName/.Skype" directory.

In all cases, restart Skype after deleting the file and that should fix all connection problems if you do not want to hold on for a fix.

HTC Corporation is expected to bring a new line of tablet PCs to the market before the end of the year.

According to a report from DigiTimes, the first of the devices will enter production in June. The HTC Puccini has been spotted in the wild, and details out so far suggest it is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 1.5GHz processor and is based on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

The device reported features a hybrid touch-screen display with both capacitive and resistive capabilities. A new digital stylus offers users a new way to interact with the tablet device. It also will be 4G-capable and is expected to head to the United States on the back of AT&T's network.

If the details are true, then HTC's upcoming offering would challenge its rivals in terms of power and performance.

However the company has not yet confirmed anything about the Puccini tablet PC.

Danish man in his 20s pays high cost for uploading DVD Screener because he was "bored".

In February of last year, anti-piracy group Antipiratgruppen (APG) carried out a raid on a house in Herning, Denmark. The target of the raid was a man in his last 20s, who was identified as a source uploader of a DVD screener copy of the Anders Matthesen movie "Black Balloon" using the Pirate Bay.

The man, whose username was Icenfire, did not upload much else to Pirate Bay, yet at the time of the raid, the significance of it was played up by APG, with lawyer Maria Fredenslund claiming to have uncovered "massive violations of copyright."

After taking out an injunction to stop Icenfire from continuing any piracy activity, APG said it would review evidence and seek compensation for losses. APG said that Icenfire was targeted because he was the initial uploader, but they they would not "sue him to hell."

A District Court in Herning has now ordered the man to pay 150,000 kroner ($28,200) to compensate for losses due to the activity, and an additional 40,000 kroner ($7,500) in legal fees.

"It is a very important decision because it establishes that it is a serious violation of the law to be the first to make illegal material freely available to other users," said Fredenslund in response to the fine.

An independent researcher has demonstrated a flaw in Internet Explorer that he says can be used to steal access credentials to Facebook, Twitter and hoards of other sites.

He calls the technique "cookiejacking", as it relies on the cookie information stored by the web browser to keep users access credentials and other information for certain websites. Depending on many conditions, stealing cookie credentials (which is by no means a new attack method) could allow a hacker to access the account of a victim on a certain website.

In this case, the Italian researcher, Rosario Valotta, finds that to exploit the flaw, you need to persuade a victim to click an item in the browser, drag it and then drop it somewhere. While it sounds like a difficult task, Valotta put it to test with his Facebook account with surprising results.

He built a puzzle which allows a user to use their pointer to undress a photo of an attractive woman. The drag/drop motion needed by the puzzle is enough to exploit the flaw in IE.

"I published this game online on FaceBook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server," he said. "And I've only got 150 friends."

Two-day forum in Paris highlights rift in philosophy between tech giants and policy makers.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt used the e-G8 forum in Paris to warn governments to be very careful when it comes to regulations and restrictions imposed on the Internet.

Zuckerberg received a warm reception at e-G8, with comments about how Facebook was used as a tool in the creation and rise of democracy movements in the Arab world. "People tell me on the one hand 'it's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring, but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," Zuckerberg said.

"But it's hard to have one without the other .... You can't isolate some things you like about the Internet and control other things that you don't."

Eric Schmidt had also put his views forward on a number of occasions. He warned that technology moves forward faster than any government, and so it would be unwise to legislate quickly without understanding the possible consequences of the actions.

Movie and video games rental service confirms the acquisition of the digital distribution service.

GameFly officially confirmed that it has acquired Direct2Drive, but did not offer up any financial details of the deal with IGN. News Corporation (IGN owner) will maintain a minority stake in GameFly and will have a representative on the company board.

However, News Corp (or IGN) will not play any direct part in the future running of GameFly or Direct2Drive. Currently, Direct2Drive offers 3,000 games for PC and Mac users.

"We're very excited to bring the D2D team on board at GameFly and expand our ability to deliver games to consumers," said GameFly CEO David Hodess.

"Only GameFly can offer a complete library of physical and digital games for the PC, Mac and consoles in one place."

New Internet traffic report shows that Netflix is now the application responsible for the highest levels of traffic in the U.S.

The movie streaming service accounts for 24.71 percent of peak time aggregate traffic in America, ahead of BitTorrent which stands at 17.23 percent. In comparison, in Europe, BitTorrent accounts for 28.4 percent of peak-time traffic, just ahead of all http traffic.

BitTorrent remains #1 in the United States for peak upstream traffic, with 52.01 percent, but Netflix again tops the Downstream chart with 29.70 percent (Downstream traffic is great than upstream by about 4:1).

In regions where there are very few legal services, P2P services dominate the charts. In Latin America, for instance, the Ares Galaxy file sharing network accounts for 15.48 percent of peak-time traffic just behind HTTP.

Netflix is helped by the nature of its relatively inexpensive bundles, and a broad number of platforms on which subscribers can view content streamed directly from Netflix.

Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom predicts that Microsoft will capitalize on its $8.5 billion acquisition of the service.

"Skype's full potential hasn't been realized yet," he said in an interview at the e-G8 forum underway in Paris. He suggests that Microsoft could push Skype into higher places if they expand it more into the mobile territory and if they make dramatic improvements to the quality of video calling on the Internet.

"I think that Microsoft has a huge opportunity to integrate it into a lot of their different services," Zennstrom said. "Of course they have so many different assets. If they do a good job integrating Skype, the company can grow even more."

Zennstrom will sell all of his shares in Skype once the Microsoft deal closes, and will no longer retain a management role at the company which he founded with Janus Friis in 2003. Skype has grown a lot since then, and touts 145 million users per month. eBay also owned Skype from 2005 until a consortium (of which Zennstrom was a part) bought it back in in 2009.

Microsoft can combine Skype services with many of its own existing products and services. One possibility is integrating it to the popular Outlook application so to provide video conferencing for business users. It will likely use Skype to boost its position in the mobile space however, after making several moves in the territory recently, such as partnering with Nokia.

Twitter will alert users that they are being pursued if they are forced to hand over user information to authorities.

Tony Wang, who heads up Twitter's European operations, commented when asked about an online privacy dispute that is beginning to boil over in the UK. "Platforms should have responsibility not to defend the user, but to protect that user's right to defend him or herself," said Wang.

On several occasions, information has shown up on Twitter that could be found to violate the law in the UK. This often includes personal information about people in the public eye, such as celebrities and athletes.

The case that has brought the questionable legality of some tweets to the front pages started with a so called superinjunction granted to a Premier League footballer when it became clear that the mainstream media was throwing around a story alleging he had an affair.

When a superinjunction of this nature is issued, the mainstream media (newspapers and their websites, television news stations etc.) generally honor it. However, it becomes blurry when you consider that a UK citizen can use Twitter to publish that information quite easily, and it can quickly spread across the site.

YouTube has just turned six years old, and has more milestones to report to the world on its relentless growth.

Founded in 2005, YouTube's ease of use and potential has attracted hundreds of millions of people to the service. The idea that a video in almost any format could be uploaded by the user, and then converted and provided on its own YouTube page (and could be embedded anywhere else) attracted drones of people to the service.

That growth only seems to accelerate for YouTube, which is now reporting that over 48 hours of video is uploaded to the site every single minute. So in just one minute, two whole days of video content has been added to YouTube's incredibly vast digital vaults.

To compare that to last year, it represents a 100% increase in the amount of content being uploaded at any given time.

All of that content needs viewers to have any purpose on the video sharing giant, and YouTube is now reporting that it delivers 3 billion video views every single day.

According to Eurogamer, Microsoft is set to announce full stereoscopic 3D features for the Xbox 360 games console very soon.

The report says that the support works exactly like the PlayStation 3's 3D effects, providing HDMI stereoscopic 3D in the 1280x1470 twin 720p framebuffer configuration, giving a 720p image per eye.

"They'd be mad not to do it, is all I can say," said Eurogamer's source, who is said to be close to continued Xbox 360 development. "The machine is not only very capable, it's more capable than the PlayStation 3 of doing stereo, assuming you don't have one of the old crappy ones with the composite leads... assuming you have a HDMI Xbox."

The source went on to hint that the announcement will be made at E3 this year. "Microsoft is going to have to go on stage to say something, aren't they?"

The PS3 officially got stereoscopic 3D functionality last June bia a firmware update, and is still the only console to offer it as a feature. Some titles for the Xbox 360 do tout the effect, but render using 3D techniques based on the principle of two distinct images crammed into one 720p framebuffer.

The widely reported mass suing of sharers of the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker movie has bloated to include 24,583 file sharers.

This new number puts it on top of the list for the most number of potential defendants in a file sharing case, just ahead of the lawsuit against sharers of the "Expendables" movie, which initially took aim at 23,322 sharers. Both lawsuits are being managed by Washington, DC-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver.

Filed last year, the Hurt Locker lawsuit originally targeted about 5,000 file sharers, but has jumped to almost 25,000 since. Of the 24,583 people, 10,532 subscribe to Comcast services, 5,239 to Verizon, 2,699 to Charter and 1,750 to Time Warner.

This mammoth mass-lawsuit won't be carried out quickly however, as both Charter and Verizon have only agreed to provide between 100 and 150 subscriber identities per months, whereas Comcast hasn't agreed to hand over any details at all yet.

TorrentFreak is hosting documents that list all targeted IP addresses in the Hurt Locker case.

According to reports, Nvidia's Project Denver CPU will feature x86 hardware emulation.

Just like China's Loongson processors, the emulation will be achieved by use of an extra hardware layer, though it will come with a speed penalty of between 15% and 20% (still better than the Loongson's 30 percent penalty). Nvidia is expected to launch the CPU around 2013-2014.

Adding the x86 emulation to the package will help the graphics chip maker to better compete with Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices.

Project Denver is expected to launch around the same time as Nvidia's Maxwell GPU architecture, both of which could be interlinked to provide a very high-performance computing platform to drive the next generation of computers.

Its design allows it to be used for products that range from Desktop PCs right up to high-resource supercomputers.

Apple has decided to acknowledge the Mac Defender malware variants and says it will help fight the FakeAV software through an update.

Recently, Mac users started reporting problems with several fake security products. The Mac Defender family of malware products works the same as countless FakeAV/scareware products that target Windows users. It will alert the user of the system to fake malware results and then try to scam a credit card number to clean the system.

At first, Apple seemed to completely ignore the malware to the disapproval of many users. The company even reportedly told its AppleCare and retail staff not to acknowledge it to customers and strangely, not to remove it from users' computers.

Now Apple seems to have had a change of heart, posting an online support document with removal instructions and promising an update for Macs that will attempt to prevent future infection.

"A recent phishing scam has targeted Mac users by redirecting them from legitimate websites to fake websites which tell them that their computer is infected with a virus," Apple wrote in its support document. "In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants. The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware."

A security researcher has blasted Siemens for comments made by the company downplaying security vulnerabilities in its industrial control systems.

Dillon Beresford wrote that the German company was downplaying the threat of findings he made while testing a Siemens programmable logic controller (PLC). "The vulnerabilities are far reaching and affect every industrialized nation across the globe," he wrote in an e-mail posted to a public security list.

"This is a very serious issue. As an independent security researcher and professional security analyst, my obligation is not to Siemens but to their consumers."

Siemens PLC equipment is used in all sectors of industry, being found at oil refineries, manufacturing plants and waste treatment facilities. Their security has been called into question following the Stuxnet discovery and analysis, which apparently targeted Siemens equipment used as part of Iran's nuclear program.

Beresford discovered several security bugs with a Siemens PLC he got through his employer, NSS Labs. He took issue with comments of Siemens representatives made to the media, which claimed the bugs were discovered "under special lab conditions with unlimited access to protocols and controllers," and that the vulnerabilities would be difficult for hackers to exploit.

Everything Everywhere (partnership of T-Mobile and Orange) and BT are looking for volunteers to test new high-speed broadband in the UK.

Volunteers in South Newquay, Cornwall, will take part in the trial from September to December. The object is to see whether the LTE 4G network can provide a high-speed broadband service in rural areas where it would be too expensive to lay down new high-speed lines.

The network will provide speeds up to 100Mbit or faster to the volunteers. Some of them will be given wireless rotuers capable of connecting to the 4G network and providing Internet throughout a house, while others will be asked to test wireless dongles.

"Instead of building two networks, we're trying to do it with one," explained Emin Gurdeneli, VP of network services at Everything Everywhere.

"The customer will enjoy a broadband service at their premises, at their home etc, as if they had acquired it in the usual way. What will be different is our delivery mechanism."

The trial is being supported by Nokia, Siemems and Huawei also.

4G technology is expected to roll out properly in the UK by 2014, with networks set to bid on the 4G spectrum early next year. For the trial, BT and Everything Everywhere have been granted part of the 800Mhz spectrum, which is currently used for analogue television, which is in the process of being phased out in the UK.

TiVo Inc. has posted a quarterly profit following a legal settlement over patent infringement that provided the DVR maker with a windfall of cash.

The company agreed a settlement with Dish Network Corp and Echostar Corp in a patent dispute that stretches back several years related to DVR technology. It posted a profit of $139 million for the quarter, compared to a $14.2 million loss in the same period a year before.

A $175.7 million gain pushed the company's books into the black for now even as revenue fell by 25 percent to $45.8 million during the quarter.

The settlement agreement called for an initial payment of $300 million and a following $200 million to be paid in six installments before 2017. Both Dish and Echostar are controlled by Charlie Ergen.

Reuters cites sources in reporting that Google will unveil its mobile payments service on Thursday.

The Internet giant has teamed up with Mastercard Inc. and Citigroup Inc. to develop a system where users of some Android phones can use them to pay for purchases instead of using a credit card. It has signed up partners including Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the effort back in March, but was unsure whether the service would initially be limited to New York as speculated, or go nationwide.

Google has invited reporters to an event on Thursday where a Reuters source confirms it will take the wraps off the mobile payment service, which will work initially with phones from Sprint Nextel Corp running Android.

While similar NFC payment technology is in use in Asia, some Nordic countries and elsewhere around the world to pay for goods and services, it has been slow to come to the United States. This has been due to a combination of bickering within the industry over the technology, regulatory hurdles and concerns that consumers would ignore it.

Rumors suggest that Microsoft's upcoming Windows iteration could show up at the D: AllThingsDigital conference next week.

Microsoft is expected to launch Windows 8 for Desktop and Notebook PCs sometime around the end of 2012, going by the company's Windows release patterns. However, the Redmond-based software giant is expected to unveil a version of Windows 8 for tablet PCs and smartphones this year.

The company committed to supporting ARM microprocessors in Windows 8, and to provide a new interface designed specifically for multi-touch input. It was reported that Microsoft would publicly show off Windows 8 for tablets sometime before the end of June this year, with an eye on releasing it on devices by years' end.

Steven Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, has had an appearance confirmed for next week's conference and the odds are on that Windows 8 will get its first proper public demonstration at it.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman at Google Inc., has said proposed anti-piracy blocks on websites such as The Pirate Bay would be a disaster for free speech in Western countries.

Speaking at Google's "Big Tent" conference in London, he said the Internet giant would be prepared to fight against any laws that mandate blocking access to websites deemed to be hosting pirated content. Schmidt feels that such a move would set a disastrous precedent around the world.

"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily implementing simple solutions to complex problems," he said.

"So, 'let's whack off the DNS'. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' – that country would be China."

In the UK, the Digital Economy Act mandates such piracy blocking mechanisms be put in place. "It doesn't seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If the UK government do it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas," Schmidt said.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that kids under 13 years of age should be able to use the social networking service.

As things stand, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (1998) determines that children under the age of 13 should not be able to use such services for their own protection. Zuckerberg disagrees with the law and has said he would be willing to fight it.

"That will be a fight we take on at some point," he said. "My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. Because of the legal restrictions we haven't even begun this learning process. If they're lifted then we'd start to learn what works."

Speaking at a summit on innovation in California schools, Zuckerberg said finding ways to improve education was one of his passions.

While critics have concerns about children's privacy and cyberbullying as they upload content to sites like Facebook, it is becoming increasingly apparent that implementing effective age restriction mechanisms on websites is not easy.

Consumer Reports estimated that 7.5 million kids under the age of 13 are regularly using Facebook.

VUPEN Security has announced the discovery of a vulnerability in Google's Chrome browser software.

Google Chrome has survived assaults at the Pwn2Own contest for the last three years. Now, French security firm VUPEN says it is unhappy to announced that it has officially "Pwned" Google Chrome and its protective Sandbox measures.

VUPEN uploaded a video of the browser exploit in action which bypasses all security features including ASLR/DEP/Sandbox, without exploiting a Windows kernel vulnerability. It works on all Windows systems and with the latest versions of the Chrome browser.

In the video, a web page is loaded displaying just a text message - "Your browser is being Pwned!" - and after a few seconds of inactivity (and without a visible crash in Chrome), the windows calculator application runs. According to the VUPEN write-up, the calculator executable is downloaded and executed.

At Pwn2Own in March this year, VUPEN successfully attacked Safari in much the same way. A specially crafted web page was loaded and several seconds later, the Mac OS X calculator application was launched and a file was written to the hard drive to demonstrate that the Sandbox had been compromised.