News written by James Delahunty (June, 2011)

TDL-4 rootkit is another major upgrade to notorious TDSS family.

The TDSS rootkit family (also known as Alureon or TDL) is something of an admired worst enemy of security researchers and vendors of anti-virus products. They hide deep in the Windows operating system, using and manipulating low-level instructions to avoid detection by anti-virus suites, and using encryption to protect their communications with command and control servers.

The latest TDL-4 version of the family is used (like the others) as a stealth backdoor installer of malware, and it has some huge advantages over its predecessors. It can infect 64-bit versions of Windows now by bypassing the Windows kernel mode code signing policy, and it creates ad-hoc DHCP servers on networks giving it new propagation powers.

Another major step forward for the malware is the ability to use the Kademlia P2P network for communications. This helps to keep the rootkit stay alive if legal action in the real-world takes down command and control servers.

TDL-4 is also protective of its control over an infected PC, and does not want to share power. It has its own built in anti-malware abilities, finding and killing ZeuS, Gbot and Optima malware infestations on systems it compromises. It even blacklists addresses of command and control servers used by rival malware.

Research firm highlights rise of mobile and digital purchases.

Consumers in the United States will dish out over $21.6 billion on gaming software this year, according to research firm Newzoo. In its report, Newzoo also says that half of the tally will be made up of games purchased on mobile phones and through digital distribution.

The overall figure will be slightly lower than 2010's take for the industry, but Newzoo predicts a 3 percent increase in 2012. "We expect console game spending to seriously recover in 2012 pushing the overall market back to growth. But that year will also witness App Stores and Cloud Gaming making a serious attempt to conquer the living room TV screen," said Peter Warman, Newzoo CEO.

"A new battle for the biggest screen is about to begin and will involve all big names from the digital space as well as exciting newcomers."

More info: Newzoo

Action-packed games pushing up against console performance ceiling.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 console will have been on the market for six years this November, and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been around just one year less. That's a very long time in the world of consumer technology, and resource demands for games are only increasing.

Bodycount game director Andy Wilson spoke about how the limits of the current generation of games consoles are being reached. He spoke to CVG about the complications of developing Bodycount for the console platforms.

"It takes a huge amount of effort to get all of that to even work on current consoles, because it takes sh*t-loads of memory, it sucks up performance out of the consoles like you wouldn't believe," he said. "It's been an unusually long console cycle and it's going to run on for some time yet,"

He continued: "You find the ceiling by building engines, tools and middleware which mean the next game you do on the current generation you've already done all of that stuff, so you can then push it even further."

Xbox 360 will join PS3 with morphological anti-aliasing features.

Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console can take advantage of morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) operations when rendering HD graphics. By removing forms of "jagged edge" pixelation, this can help to make high-detailed graphics look as smooth and as realistic as possible (though it does have its problems too).

Modern PC graphics cards can also take advantage of MLAA, which can go far beyond multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) found in games consoles too. Sony's utilization of MLAA can be seen in rendering of God of War III. While the effect it has on the graphics can be observed as positive, it is expensive from a computational perspective.

The MLAA used with the PS3 requires 3-4ms of rendering time spread across five SPUs. Still, the technology would benefit the Xbox 360 console greatly as the fight goes on to squeeze as much as possible out of the current generation of games console hardware.

Two developers, Jorge Jimenez and Jose I. Echevarria, are working on a GPU-based implementation that repoertly works very well on the Xbox 360 and the PC. "On the Xbox 360 we run at 2.47ms, with still a lot of possible optimisations to try," Jimenez told GamesIndustry.biz.

Web sales tax in California may force Amazon to dump affiliates.

The gigantic e-commerce entity has over 10,000 affiliates in the wealthiest state of the union, and it warned them on Wednesday that it may have to sever ties with them if the state forces Amazon to collect web sales taxes.

Amazon affiliates are paid a fee when they direct traffic to the Amazon.com website and generate sales. They are in the middle of a stand off between Amazon (and other e-commerce sites) and California legislators who say Amazon has a duty to collect sales taxes when affiliates operate within the state.

California's state legislature passed a bill on Tuesday that establishes such a tax, and Governor Jerry Brown signed it on Wednesday.

Traditional retailers such as Sears and Best Buy have voiced concerns in the past that online outlets have an advantage by avoiding sales taxes in states where they have no corporate presence. Amazon claims that such tax laws will kill jobs and lead to income losses for affiliates and the states.

"We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," Amazon said in an email sent to Californian affiliates Wednesday.

Flaws could undermine Google's focus on security of Chrome-powered devices.

Since Google's Chrome operating system is built to be used connected to the web, users' files and work will mostly be saved in the cloud. Using Google Docs applications for example, automatically stores the work on Google's servers so you can access it from anywhere across a variety of devices.

Google believes this is the future of computing, and its Chrome OS is designed specifically for Cloud-based use. It also allows Google to talk up security, as your documents are stored and well protected in the Cloud, whereas if somebody were to steal your Chromebook, they won't find all of your files on your HDD like they will if they steal your notebook PC.

However, researchers at an independent security firm say that Chrome's reliance on web computing also makes it vulnerable in other ways. WhiteHat Security researcher Matt Johansen was paid $1,000 by Google for reporting a flaw in the Chrome OS note-taking application that he successfully exploited to hijack a Google Mail account.

Since then, Johansen has said he found the same basic flaw with many other applications (or extensions). "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he told Reuters. "This is just evolving around us. We can see this becoming a whole new field of malware."

Hitachi wants to be part of combined LCD panel producer.

According to the Nikkei business daily, Hitachi Ltd is interested in joining on-going talks between Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corp to combine units that produce small and mid-size LCD panels. Sony and Toshiba reportedly kicked off the talks earlier this month.

The combined unit would make small and mid-sized LCD panels for use with smartphones and tablet PCs. A combined entity made up of the manufacturing units of Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony could be launched as early as this year, according to the Nikkei report.

Reuters also reported earlier this month that a stake in the new combined entity could be sold to the Japanese government for about $1.2 billion.

South Korean firm brings case to U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Samsung has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPad and iPod products. The filing alleges that Apple Inc.'s products infringe on five of Samsung's patents related to telecommunications standards and user interfaces.

Additionally, Samsung also filed a new patent lawsuit against Apple in Delaware on Wednesday.

Back in April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court for "slavishly" cloning the iPhone and iPad in its smartphone and tablet PC products. Samsung countersued Apple in California in response. Last week, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung in its home territory of South Korea.

If the ITC agrees to investigate Samsung's allegations against Apple, it could lead to a lengthy process to determine if import of the popular products should be banned.

While being a rival to Apple in smartphones and tablet PCs, Samsung also provides Apple with a large amount of microchips, including the A4 and A5 SoC's. Rumors this week suggest that Apple is looking to dump Samsung for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the production of the A6 SoC to be used in the next generation of Apple devices.

Advertising Standards Authority rules in favor of BT and Sky.

A Virgin Media website setup to criticize broadband services offered by rivals in the UK has been targeted by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The website accused its competitors of "conning" customers in the claims they made about their broadband services.

The website contained a letter from Richard Branson that claims their rivals are not keeping their promises to customers. It also offered a speed test service and linked to material published by the UK communications regulator Ofcom. A video on the website also parodied Sky broadband advertisements.

BT and Sky complained to ASA over the campaign, and Virgin Media defended it, saying it is merely highlighting widespread dissatisfaction among consumers about the advertising of broadband speeds.

Ofcom has tackled the issue before. UK customers who had services advertised as "up to 20Mbit" were found to be generally receiving much lower speeds. In only 14 percent of cases, customers received over 12Mbit, while 58 percent averaged speeds of 6Mbit or less.

Virgin Media had encouraged users to share the information, and after it went viral, the complaints were made to the ASA, which sided with BT and Sky.

Mozilla blog goes into damage control.

After the release of the latest Firefox web browser last week, questions had been raised about the new rapid release schedule for the web browser, and the negative consequences it had for business users. In a blog comment, Mozilla executive Asa Dotzle surprised business users in the tone used to reply to concerns about the schedule.

"Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don't have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can't imagine why we'd focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about," Dotzle stated.

Both Google and Microsoft picked up on the comment and posted their commitments to commercial customers and their concerns. Mozilla waited a few days and then finally decided to attempt to patch things up with business users.

"The Mozilla Community has focused our efforts on the needs of the individual user, and prioritized the product roadmap and features accordingly. However, as is the case with many technologies, loyal Firefox users and their IT departments have sought to bring Firefox into their places of work." the blog entry reads.

Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) published Certification-ready Specification.

On Tuesday, WiGig announced the publication of the 1.1 specification addressing enhancements identified by member companies during the product development process. WiGig pushes the adoption and use of 60 GHz wireless technology.

The WiGig specification allows for communication between wireless devices at multi-gigabit speeds, with WiGig tri-band devices capable of data transfers at rates up to 7 Gbit/s. That is an improvement of more than ten-fold over the 802.11n standard.

Soon WiGig members will be able to test their WiGig-based products to ensure interoperability within the ecosystem and provide end users with reliable solutions at product launch. "We are marching toward enabling the fastest wireless technology for practical applications such as Wireless Docking, Wireless Display and Wireless Networking," said Dr. Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance president and chairman.

"Our continued diligence in the MAC-PHY specification development process and collaboration with the Wi-Fi Alliance to build an interoperable multi-gigabit wireless solution based on our latest specification will soon provide an unprecedented user experience that changes people's lives."

FAQ is mixture of good and bad news for users of the software.

Apple unveiled the new Final Cut Pro X software last week, the successor to Final Cut Pro 7. The new version was built from the ground up and fundamentally changed some details about the program. The response from some professional users was very negative, as they felt the software is inferior to Final Cut Pro 7.

One of the biggest concerns for users is that Final Cut Pro X cannot import projects from past versions of Final Cut Pro. Apple addressed this issue in the FAQ, and the news is not good.

Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?
"Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to 'translate' or bring in old projects without changing or losing data."

It goes on to say that you can still use Final Cut Pro 7 after installing X, and that Final Cut Pro 7 will work perfectly with Mac OS X Lion. It then also states that you can still import the media files used in past projects, which should have been completely obvious. The problem is not the media files, it is the editing information stored in saved project files that has pro users upset.

Kazuo Hirai to hand over day-to-day running of gaming unit.

Andrew House, 46 from Wales, will take over as President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI) from September 1. Kazuo Hirai will become chairman of the video games unit as he continues to wait to get Sony's Howard Stringer's job.

The current SCEI Chairman, Akira Sato, will retire from the position on August 31.

A Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesman has denied that the gaming united reshuffle has anything to do with the April PlayStation Network (PSN) hack that leaked details on 77 million customers.

Kazuo Hirai is considered the favorite to replace 69-year-old Howard Stringer as the Chairman, President and CEO of Sony Corporation. "He's in pole position to head the whole company, so he needs to focus on that, which is probably why they sought out a successor for the videogames business," said analyst Nobuo Kurahashi of Mizuho Investors' Securities.

Tuesday court filing says Paul Ceglia's lawyers will be replaced.

Two law firms representing Ceglia in a lawsuit over ownership of Facebook Inc. have reportedly withdrawn from the case. Paul Ceglia claims that a contract he signed years ago when Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard student entitles him to a large chunk of Facebook.

Tuesday's court filing did not give a reason for the change in representation. The lawsuit gained widepsread attention because of the involvement of DLA Piper, an international law firm that touts 4,200 attorneys which commonly represents corporations.

Dennis Vacco, a former New York State attorney general, a law firm that also represented Ceglia, declined to give any comment on Tuesday's filing. Facebook has branded Ceglia an "inveterate scam artist," and claims that the contract is a complete forgery.

The case was originally filed in July of last year. Ceglia will now be represented by attorney Jeffrey Lake.

Twitter co-founder's mobile payment service gets 9-figure investment.

In the financing round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Jack Dorsey's Square service secured $100 million. Square enables people to use their mobile phones to accept credit card payments from others. Visa has previously invested in the company (though the sum was never disclosed).

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers sits on the Square board.

Mobile payment services are starting to roll out and everybody wants to get their share of the pie. Square is in a business where it has many competitors, and plans to use the new financing to accelerate its growth, according to Dorsey, who acts as CEO.

To use Square, you need to sign up to get a free Square card reader (shown in picture). The card reader attached to your phone or iPad. A free application is available for iOS (iPhone) or Android devices. There are no contracts, monthly fees or merchant fees, when you use a card with Sqaure there is just one 2.75 percent fee.

Google gives social networking another blast with its most ambitious Facebook-killing attempt yet.

Google's failure to capitalize on the growth of social networking online has been notable over the past few years. Google's Buzz service, a sort of Twitter-mimic, was a failure and only seemed to annoy most GMail users. Google's position as the web's heavyweight giant is under threat as Internet users change the way they use the web, and the reasons why they do.

The failure of the search giant to really tap the new resource has been a put off for investors, and a frustration for a company that is accustomed to success. Enter Google+! Google revealed detailed information on its new social network experiment this week on its blog, and in a few videos which I've included here (warning: prepare for some cheese!).

The Google+ project aims to make it easier to connect with other users online, while maintaining the subtlety of real-world interaction. "In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering at Google, wrote in the company's official blog.

Google+ targets your relationships and interests in an intuitive way. It recognizes that not all relationships we hold with other people are the same. The information we share with certain friends and family can be vastly different to what we'd consider appropriate to share with others.

Acer America announces forthcoming U.S. launch of Acer AC700 Chromebook.

The AC700 (pictured) is the first in Acer's planned line of products that will run Google's Chrome operating system. The company says its first Chromebook is ideal for savvy mobile consumers, educational institutions, and business people that spend most of their time on the Internet for cloud computing such as using web-based email, uploading photos to sites like Flickr and Picasa, and keeping up-to-date on the latest news and events.

Powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor, the AC700 boots up to Chrome in less than 10 seconds, and resumes almost instantly. It features an 11.6-inch HD Widescreen CineCrystalTM LED-backlit LCD, and a HDMI output to watch content on high-definition televisions and other displays.

The Intel Atom N570 dual-core processor and 2GB of DDR3 memory provide the performance to speed through the web, access files, enjoy video and more. It has a 16GB SSD for storage, has two USB 2.0 ports and a 4-in-1 card reader that accepts popular flash storage.

Acer InviLink Nplify 802.11b/g/n Wifi Certified will keep customers connected to the Internet. To support this always-on connection, the Acer AC700 provides excellent battery life of up to six hours with its 6-cell battery.

'Re-built from the ground up', but professionals are not impressed.

Apple recently released Final Cut Pro X, the newest version of its mega-popular Final Cut Pro series of video editing software. After its unusually low-key announcement, reviews started to flood in with many of them painting a less-than-rosy picture of the new 64-bit video editing suite.

The $299 Mac App Store product is just not as good as the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7, for many Mac users it seems. Various claims of Apple providing refunds to unhappy customers chave surfaced online since. AppleInsider documents one such case where an Apple customer sent an e-mail to the company saying that Final Cut Pro X does not meet the standards set by its predecessor.

An Apple adviser responded and admitted that Final Cut Pro X, "does not contain properties that were highly regarded in the last version." The customer was granted a refund for the sale.

Daily figure jumps by 100k in in about six weeks.

Google had revealed in December of last year that about 300,000 Android devices were being activated daily. That number jumped to 400,000 by May 10th. On Tuesday, Google's Andy Rubin announced that customers are activating half a million Android devices daily.

He said that Android's weekly growth rate is around 4.4 percent, but did not split the growth into smartphones and tablet PCs. Android smartphones are more popular than iPhones because handsets from Apple's biggest rivals, including Samsung, pack Android.

Similarly, the same handset makers are using the Android operating system for their tablet PC devices, and the mobile OS is only likely to grow in use.

NVIDIA shows off fastest Notebook GPU.

On Tuesday, the graphics chip-maker announced the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M, the fastest graphics processing unit (GPU) for notebooks. It is featured now in the Alienware M18x (pictured).

"The best game support. The best gaming features. The best gaming performance available anywhere. That's the essence of the GeForce GTX 580M," said Rene Haas, general manager of notebook products at NVIDIA. "With power like this, you can turn all the knobs to 11."

The Alienware M18x provides the option to use two GeForce GTX 580M GPUs in a single system, using NVIDIA's single link interface (SLI) technology. Also, the soon-to-be-launched Alienware M17x will pack NVIDIA Optimus technology which helps to boost battery life by intelligently tinkering graphics based on use (so a five hour full charge on Facebook, yet 100 frames per second for Call of Duty: Black Ops).

"Gamers aspire to experience games at their highest settings," says Eddy Goyanes, product marketing manager for Alienware.

"Alienware activates the technology designed to enable those aspirations. With the launch of the GeForce GTX 580M on the Alienware M17x, and a dual card option on the M18x, that synergy continues -- Alienware delivers the ultimate gaming experience."

New boards for AMD Llano A8 and A6 Accelerated Processing Units (APU).

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. launched its latest series of motherboards supporting the new AMD A75 series chipsets, and the latest AMD A-Series APUs. Gigabyte A75 based motherboards offer DIY PC builders and integrators a new world of 3D and multimedia performance with the most scalable, and best value upgrade path imaginable.

The new boards features an AMD A75 "Hudson" chipset supporting the latest 32 nanometer AMD A-Series APUs. These processors are the first ever to combine a DX11-capable, high performance graphics processor with a choice of a dual or quad core CPU in one silicon die.

Using Gigabytes's Easy Tune 6 utility, users can overclock the AMD A-Series APU to gain further performance enhancements over stock settings. The AMD A75 series platform showcases AMD Dual Graphics technology, allowing users to further boost 3D graphics performance by adding an additional discrete AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 series graphics card to the system.

The boards feature Hybrid EFI technology (for booting from disks over 3TB), 3 Power Boost USB ports (speeds up charging times for connected devices) and High-end 108dB HD Audio.

1plusV sued the U.S.-based web search giant for €295 million, or about $418 million.

The lawsuit comes as the European Commission is probing Google for alleged anti-competitive practices. Google has been accused by several companies (including Microsoft) of abusing its dominant position by giving preferences to its own services at the expense of potential rivals in its search results.

In the United States, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also formally notified Google that it has opened an investigation into its business practices. 1plusV, which operates the ejustice.fr legal website, filed its claim with the Paris Commercial court on Tuesday.

"Between 2007 and 2010, no less than 30 vertical search engines created by 1plusV were blacklisted, some of which showed significant business potential," the complaint reads.

Google has not commented specifically about the case, only confirming that it just received the complaint itself.

British price comparison site Foundem, along with Microsoft, German price comparison service Ciao and 1plusV really kicked off the complaints against Google's practices in Europe.

Excellent Infographic spells out major points of history in both companies.

Manolution has created an infographic (about 3MB) that chronicles some of the major points in the histories of Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc., from their formation in 1975 (officially) and 1976 respectively, right up to the launches of Windows 7, Windows Phone 7 and OS X Lion.

Alone the timeline it gives information on stock value, while giving little nuggets of information alongside product launches of major changes in a company.

Manolution is encouraging everyone to embed the infographic wherever they want, and to remember to link back to its original source.

(If viewing this on news homepage, be warned that the image you are about to download is about 3MB in size, so remember that before you click Read More.)

Launch geared toward small- to medium-sized businesses.

At a media event in New York, Microsoft officially launched Office 365, which has been in beta phase since last year. Over 200,000 organizations signed up and began testing the service after it was announced. At the core of the demo was need for collaboration between users, and how Office 365 can deliver it across distance.

Office 365 is now available in 40 different markets, with more expected, bringing together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service. It is available at a predictable monthly subscription.

More than 20 service providers around the world announced today plans to bring Office 365 services to their customers. Among them are Bell Canada, Intuit Inc., NTT Communications Corp., Telefonica S.A., Telstra Corp. and Vodafone Group Plc.

Steve Ballmer talks Collaboration

Unpopular Sony Chief Executive asserts connection between anti-piracy measures, and hacks targeting the company.

Howard Stringer told a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday that the company was targeted by hackers because it tried to protect its content against piracy. "We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames," Stringer said.

In April, the PlayStation Network (PSN) service was breached and details of up to 77 million user accounts were leaked. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Stringer finds motive in Sony's protection of its own corporate assets.

"These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don't want us to protect them, they want everything to be free," he said.

You have to wonder if Stringer includes the removal of the OtherOS feature from the PS3 under the umbrella of "protecting corporate assets", because of everything Sony has done in past years, that is clearly the move that riled up more tech-savvy PS3 users than any other.

Eric Schmidt tells summit in Dublin that ongoing unrest in middle east might put employees in danger.

The Google chairman was speaking at the Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin on Monday, in which he warned about the desire for oppressive regimes to crackdown on the Internet as it helps to fuel and sustain uprisings and resistance movements in the middle east.

"The reason is that as the technology becomes more pervasive and as the citizenry becomes completely wired and the content gets localised to the language of the country, it becomes an issue like television," Schmidt said. "If you look at television in most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television imagery to keep their citizenry in some bucket."

Wael Ghonim, a Google executive, was previously detained and blindfolded for two weeks during the protests in Egypt that eventually led to the fall of Mubarak from power. Schmidt pointed out that Google has staff in countries where it is illegal to do things that Google actually encourages.

Dennis Durkin, corporate Vice President and COO for Microsoft Corp.'s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), wouldn't switch places with Nintendo or Sony in the games business.

In an interview with IndustryGamers.com, he revealed that Microsoft feels in no way pressured to develop a portable games console. "I'm not sure I would want to be launching a dedicated portable device right now into that market. I think the DS - if you look at the 3DS, certainly versus people's expectation's it's not been as successful as people would have thought," he said.

"So that's a very crowded market and a very, very red ocean right now with a lot of change happening. So I’m not sure it's a good idea. You only have a certain number of bets you can make as a company and you have to decide what you want to put your wood behind and I’m just not sure that that’s a place that I would put mine."

Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been on something of a high since the launch of the Kinect peripheral for the console in late 2010. Durkin thinks that Microsoft's position in the industry now is pretty good compared to the competition, to the point that he, "certainly wouldn't want to trade hands with either of them."

Report says high profile attacks could have been avoided easily.

Mitre, a US federal contract research laboratory, released a security analysis on Monday that addressed some of the high profile Data Breach incidents over the past year. It says that the attacks were carried out using mostly well-known software flaws, and could have been prevented with adequate testing.

It pointed to the attack on Sony Pictures as an example of an SQL-injection attack. It called SQL-injections the most dangerous flaw for web services, as it can allow outsiders to gain access to possible sensitive information or resources on servers.

The sixth most dangerous flaw it identified as "missing authorization," and pointed to the theft of records of credit card users from Citigroup in May. Identifying and fixing the flaws has a "low to medium cost", according to the report.

Complaints about flawed programming and architecture have gotten noisier in recent times. Programmers are generally not blamed for bugs in their software, and the process of reviewing their work is "uneven", according to Alan Paller, Sans director of research.

Motion Picture Association trying to force BT to block NZB site.

The trade group is going to court, applying for an injunction forcing BT to cut off access to Newzbin, a popular Usenet-indexing website. Newzbin hosts NZB files, which can be combined with a newsreader software to locate content on Usenet binary groups.

The MPA is targeting BT because it is the largest service provider in the UK, and it also supplies the "Cleanfeed" website-blocking system to other Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country. The MPA is arguing that BT should block access to Newzbin the same way it blocks access to sites hosting child sex abuse images.

The MPA originally took action against Newzbin in the UK in 2010. Since then, Newzbin went into administration and sold its assets to new owners who launched a fresh version of the website.

"Newzbin has no regard for UK law and it is unacceptable that it continues to infringe copyright on a massive and commercial scale when it has been ordered to stop by the High Court," said Chris Marcich, European president of the MPA, in a statement. "We have explored every route to get Newzbin to take down the infringing material and are left with no option but to challenge this in the courts."

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer will show Office in the cloud.

Taking on Google Inc., VMware Inc. and others, Microsoft is putting Office services into the cloud under the name "Office 365." It will be launched at a New York event on Tuesday. Microsoft's popular Office products have generated enormous revenue for the company, with nine out of every ten office computers running the software.

Microsoft is now going to try to convince users to make a switch to the cloud and do their work online from anywhere. Of course, launching products for the Cloud makes sense, as the market for Cloud-based services is projected to grow 27 percent annually over the next five years, reaching $73 billion in 2015 (IDC figures).

Like other services, Office 365 services can be bought based on demand. For example, a small company can subscribe to Office 365 and pay as little as $2 per month for each worker for the very basic levels of service. That charge can scale up to $27 per month for the equivalent of an enterprise user acessing the entire Office 365 suite, which won't be necessary in most cases.

Trial kicked off on Monday.

A new trial was launched in Cambridge, England today, to tackle a growing global issue. The phenomenal growth in Internet connected devices is fueled a demand for bandwidth that the currently allocated spectrum cannot continue to sustain while the technology evolves.

Congestion has become a big problem in some areas, leading to annoying dropped mobile phone calls and other service outages. The problem cannot be fixed by simply adding new call towers or building new fiber optic networks to take the load off.

Talk of changing how wireless spectrum is allocated has been getting louder for years, and now some in the industry think its time for that change. The Cambridge TV White Spaces Trial has a lot of industry names associated with it, including BBC, BSkyB, BT, Cambridge Consultants, Microsoft, Neul, Nokia, Samsung, Spectrum Bridge Inc. and TTP. Adaptrum.

A new generation of radio technologies might provide the key for the congestion problem by utilizing the (often unused) white spaces, and to avoid interference with licensed broadcasts and other primary uses. Wireless networks using the TV white spaces can provide connectivity similar to Wi-Fi, but with coverage areas measured in kilometers instead of meters.

Entertainment Merchants Association reacts to Monday's Supreme Court decision.

On Monday, the United States supreme court shot down a California law signed in 2005 by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger than banned the rental or sale of "violent video games" to minors. The law also mandated an age rating system, even though industry self-regulation already provides a rating system.

The Supreme Court decision (7-2) designates the content in video games to be protected free speech under the First Amendment to the United States constitution. The decision brings an end to the case that has dragged on for almost six years.

Bo Andersen, President & CEO, Entertainment Merchants Association, applauded the Supreme Court's decision in a statement issued by the trade group.

Story continues after the break.

GSV Capital Corp adds Facebook shares to its portfolio.

GSV announced on Monday that it had bought 225,000 shares of Facebook, the world's largest social networking website, at a cost of $29.28 per share. Facebook, which by one estimate hit 750 million global users recently, is threatening the Google / Yahoo / Microsoft establishment online as its worldwide traffic continues to climb.

This year, it will overtake Yahoo Inc. in revenue from online display advertising, with more than $2 billion. The company has roughly 2.4 billion outstanding shares, and executives have admitted that it is inevitable that the company will be taken public.

GSV's $6.6 million investment in Facebook shares represents about 15 percent of the California-based investment firm's portfolio.

A group of Facebook shareholders were reported to be trying to unload $1 billion of stock on the secondary market, in a transaction that would also set a $70 billion value on the company. With that valuation, Facebook would sit just below Amazon Inc., HP or Cisco.

When Finns buy a new phone, they love it long time!

Finland is a country of about five million people, so you really couldn't blame the population for much of Nokia's problems directly. However, according to research conducted by Recon Analytics, Finnish mobile users replace their handsets at a much slower rate than most others.

In the UK, mobile phone users replace their handset every 22 months, while in France they wait about two and half years. In the United States, handsets are replaced on average every 28 months. In South Korea, it is 26 months, and so on.

In Finland, the home of Nokia, which dominated the global mobile phone market for the majority of its life (well, since it got in the business), mobile phone users wait six years on average to replace a handset. "Maybe it's no accident that Nokia is having a tough time developing smartphones given that in their home market so few people are replacing their handsets," Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics, said.

Entner accepts that the research conducted by the firm cannot categorically prove a correlation between Nokia's recent decline particularly in the smartphone market, and the rate at which Finns replace their mobile phones. He does think however that the weak demand for new handsets may have dulled any sense of urgency for Nokia to keep up in the market.

Ryan Cleary gets to go home.

The 19 year old was arrested last week on suspicion of being involved with attacks on several websites, including the UK Serious Organized Crime Agency. Prosecutors had been opposed to bail for Cleary in a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London.

He now gets to go home but under certain conditions. He is electronically tagged, has to observe a curfew and cannot leave his home without his mother Rita. His PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, iPhone and computers were reportedly confiscated by police, and he is prohibited from using any device with Internet capabilities.

Cleary spent the past week undergoing interrogation from UK police and FBI agents, who had cooperated in the investigation that led to his arrest.

"Ryan Cleary is very relieved to be granted bail and to be home to his mum, his cats and his books. He has cooperated with police and will continue to do so. Ryan has last week been diagnosed with Aspergers... He will now be provided with the professional support he needs. His obvious intelligence can now be channelled into a worthwhile pursuit," Cleary's lawyer said outside the court.

Facebook jumps to #2, Microsoft pushed to third place.

Traffic to social networking site Facebook overtook that of Microsoft websites in the UK for the first time last month. According to UKOM/Nielsen, the boost in traffic for Facebook and similar services is coming from people aged over 50.

Facebook attracted 26.8 million visitors to the website in May, a rise of 7 percent compared to last year. Microsoft websites lagged behind at 26.2 million visitors. Google still ruled the UK with 33.9 million visitors during the month.

"The growth in audiences to these social networks is now primarily being driven by the 50-plus age group. Just a few years ago, this group may have found itself out of place on these sites," UKOM general manager James Smythe said.

Twitter saw a jump in visitors of about 33 percent, to 6.1 million in the month, reportedly helped along by the revelations about Ryan Giggs' private life that took off on Twitter. LinkedIn registered 3.6 million visitors in May, a rise of 57 percent from as year earlier.

Security official confirms Kuwait pair will be put on trial.

The role that has been played by social media in the middle east in recent protests and uprisings has been well documented. It highlighted how powerful such Internet services can be in countries where free speech is stifled by the ruling powers.

However, taking to Twitter or Facebook does come with risk. On Monday, a Kuwait security official said that two Twitter users, Nasser Abul and Lawrence al-Rashidi will be tried for using the micro-blogging website to post comments critical of rulers in the region.

Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi'ite Muslim, was arrested for posting tweets critical of the Sunni ruling families in Bahrain, while al-Rashidi was arrested for posting tweets critical of Kuwait's emir. In a couple of weeks time, the pair will face charges of harming the Gulf State's interests and defaming the country's rule.

Bahrain's leaders crushed a protest movement of mostly Shi'ite Muslims in March, aided by forces from Sunni-led states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has issued a statement about today's U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors.

The case, which went on for six years since it was signed into law by Arnold Schwarzenegger, came to a close today when the highest court in the land sided with the decision of two lower courts. Video games can now be considered as protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States constitution.

Michael D. Gallagher, President and Chief Executive, Entertainment Software Association.

"This is a historic and complete win for the First Amendment and the creative freedom of artists and storytellers everywhere. Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what we have always known – that free speech protections apply every bit as much to video games as they do to other forms of creative expression like books, movies and music. The Court declared forcefully that content-based restrictions on games are unconstitutional; and that parents, not government bureaucrats, have the right to decide what is appropriate for their children.

We are very gratified that our arguments – and those of over 180 other groups and individuals from across the ideological spectrum – were heard in this case. The Court has now definitively held that legislative attempts to restrict video game content will be struck down. It is time for elected officials to stop wasting time and public funds seeking unconstitutional restrictions on video games. Instead, we invite them to join with us to raise awareness and use of the highly effective tools that already exist to help that parents choose games suitable for their children."

Apple to cut ties with competitor?

Samsung made the A4 ARM system on a chip (SoC) that powered the iPhone 4 and first iPad for Apple, and also has gone on to produce the A5 processors. Now, reports suggest that Apple will drop Samsung for the production of the custom A6 SoC in 2012, favoring a partnership with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Recent media reports (EETimes) suggested that Apple was working with TSMC on the possibility of fabricating the A6 SoC using 28 nanometer process technology. TSMC is currently prodicing mobile processors for other manufacturers on a 40 nanometer process.

Samsung is currently producing the A5 on a 45 nanometer process, and so moving to TSMC could provide Apple with a competitive advantage over competitors in its next generation mobile products.

Additionally, Apple has recently swung its legal fists at Samsung over what it calls the "cloning" of its products. Its latest action against Samsung is a lawsuit filed in South Korea, Samsung's home turf, for alleged patent infringement, but Samsung has also sued Apple for the same reason. Talks between high executives at both firms are reportedly ongoing.

Supreme Court sides with rulings of District Court and Appeals Court. Video games are protected speech under the First Amendment to the Unites States Constitution.

In a case that stretches back almost six years (See: Schwarzenegger signs video games restrictions), California state law that bans the sale or rental of "violent video games" to minors, and affixes age rating labels (separate from those already affixed by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board) have been dealt a final fatal blow by the United States Supreme Court.

In a 7-2 decision, the court upheld rulings of a Federal District Court (see: Link) and subsequent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that found the law to conflict with the First Amendment to the United States constitution. The ruling represents the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the protection of content in video games.

The legislation was authored by California State Senator, Leland Yee (though he was part of the State Assembly at the time before being elected to his current position in 2006), who gained a Ph.D in Child Psychology from the University of Hawaii. The legislation was signed into law by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on October 7, 2005.

At the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) earlier this week, Intel committed to delivering a complete technological solution for ExaScale computing performance later in the decade.

The world's fastest supercomputer is the K Computer in Japan, built by Fujitsu, delivering over 8 PetaFLOP/s performance. It consumes almost 10 Megawatts of power and costs about $10 million a year just to operate. When the incomplete system is fully constructed, it will reach 10 PFLOP/s performance.

To get to ExaScale computing, we need to increase this performance by over 100 times. Clearly, that brings up some serious technological problems such as the energy consumption requirements. To put it bluntly, today's computing technology will not be able to deliver an ExaScale system with realistic costs.

High-performance Computing (HPC) has never been more in demand as it is applied to more and more problems in the real world. ExaScale computing can deliver on goals in areas such as Healthcare, Climate and Weather Research and Energy technology.

Why ExaScale? And How?

comScore publishes data that suggests Google achieves an Internet-first for traffic.

The report found that Google beat Facebook and Microsoft to be the first to hit one billion unique visitors in a single month, during May. Google saw an 8.4 percent boost in unique visitors during the month, while Microsoft made a 15 percent gain and Facebook witnessed a 30 percent boost.

Microsoft got 905 million unique visitors in May, while Facebook got 714 million. comScore started tracking in 2006, and at the time placed Google at 496 million unique visitors per month, behind Microsoft's MSN network which tallied 539 million.

The data is collected using a global measurement panel of two million users. comScore receives pageview data from around 90 of the top web content publishers, though Google does not share its data.

PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) to develop the new technology under a new working group.

The PCI Express cabled standard will take on the Thunderbolt interconnect developed by Intel and Apple. It would be based on PCIe 3.0, likely supporting a maximum of four parallel lanes for throughput up to 32 Gbit/s. A further version based on PCI Express 4.0 (16 GT/s) could push up throughput even further, though cable length is likely to be limited to about three meters.

It would be used for delivering high throughput I/O to small notebooks and tablet PCs, to connect to peripheral devices. A new working group being formed will define the standard, with the goal to deliver a spec that system makers can implement in products by June 2013.

The difficult task will be to define technical requirements and a new connector. A separate cable group formed in 2005 by PCI SIG already delivered a specification for 2.5 * 5 GT/s based on PCIe 1.1 and 2.0.

"This will help proliferate PCI Express into new business opportunities," said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG.

Xbox EMEA Vice President says Kinect provided a surge of adrenaline.

In and interview with MCV, Chris Lewis said that the Xbox 360 console - on the market since November 2005 - is enjoying an ongoing boost from the introduction of Kinect in late 2010. Some rumors lately have suggested that the Xbox 360 console might see a successor as soon as 2012.

"We see it as about halfway through. But yes you are right, Xbox is defying the normal curve you might expect. There's no doubt that Kinect put a huge shot of adrenaline into the business," Lewis said.

"What we are now seeing is massive swathes of families and younger audiences flocking to it. As you saw at the press conference, we are now in line with what we projected at E3 2010."

He said that Microsoft deliberately focused the initial Kinect software on families and children, but that now the company was looking to provide complementary experiences for core gamers too.

Nvidia makes good on promise to bring SLI to AMD systems.

At the end of April, Nvidia said it was responding to customers requests by bringing SLI to AMD-based boards. It announced that it had licensed SLI to the world's leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming mothers featuing AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets.

ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI were among the first to implement the technology which had previously been limited to systems running Intel CPUs.

Earlier this week, the support was made official with the release of new (beta) Nvidia GeForce drivers. The Nvidia GeForce 275.50 BETA software suite enabled SLI on supported AMD systems.

Of course, not all boards with 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets support SLI, only the certified boards, which will feature a logo on the packaging.

As many as 300 incorrectly accused of Internet piracy.

Up to 300 Irish Internet users were incorrectly sent "first strike" notices warning them about copyright infringement offenses. The 300 were customers of Eircom, who agreed a gradual response system with record labels that would see alleged pirates warned about their activities and possibly cut off if they persist.

Eircom has admitted that a mistake was made due to a software failure caused when the, "clock went back last October." This explanation suggests that the server clocks did not reflect Daylight Savings Time, and as a result, some innocent users were identified as the offender for something another user did with the same (dynamically obtained) IP address, at a different time.

The Data Protection Commissioner in the country is investigating the incident, which now may probe the legality of the entire system. When the High Court gave the green light for Eircom and the rights' holders to operate the system in the country, the only parties before the court had a vested interest in it being passed. The Data Protection Commissioner was not even represented.

At the time, the Commissioner was not convinced by the judgement, but until a valid complaint against the system would be made, the Commissioner could not take any action. Now that there is a valid complaint, the Commissioner has the power to issue an enforcement notice which would prevent Eircom from using personal data for the system (the Commissioner previously had said the usage of personal information in this way did not constitute "fair use").

Protecting critical infrastructure from cyber-attack.

Germany is the latest country to build itself its very own cyber-defense center to build a strategy to defend against cyber-warfare, a hot issue this year. The National Cyber-Defense Center is located in Bonn at the Federal Office for Information Security building.

For now, it had ten permanent employees with the German Federal Police, Federal Intelligence Service and Armed Forces to join the effort in the coming months. The Interior ministry said it recorded a record number of attempted cyber attacks last year, nearly double the number of attempts in 2009.

"At the heart of cyber-security is the protection of critical infrastructures," said Federal Interior Minister Friedrich. "Stuxnet and the most recent example of the hacker attack on the French nuclear company EDF (Electricité de France) have shown that IT systems represent critical infrastructure in the context of cyber-attacks."

Germany's move follows other's around the world, including the UK's Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC) and the United States' Cyber Command center. Estonia, which was the victim of a country-wide cyber-attack in 2007 in a dispute over the moving of a soviet-era war monument, is also planning to build its own cyber defenses.

Popular hip-hop sites and blogs on advertisement blacklist.

Advertising firm GroupM revealed a few weeks ago that it had adopted a new anti-piracy policy. It constructed a list of websites that it deemed to be either in support of piracy, or directly offering illegal downloads. The list of sites eventually got into the hands of the media and there are some bizarre listings on it.

For example, the list includes archive.org, which has nothing to do with piracy. It also includes Vimeo, a YouTube competitor. However, the real controversial part is the music-based sites that are listed. One listed site was SoundCloud, which is one of the most popular tools for musicians to promote new material to fans. The Beastie Boys streamed their latest album using the site.

Another blacklisted website is Vibe.com, the online portal of Vibe magazine, founded by Quincy Jones. A 2009 list of the top 50 hottest rap blogs was published on Vibe.com. These websites are where hip-hop producers really want to be featured. TechDirt points out that if you check that list against the GroupM "piracy sites" list, most of them are on it (7 of the top 12 alone.)

Ryan Cleary was arrested this week in FBI / Scotland Yard LulzSec probe.

The 19 year old was granted bail, but remains in custody after objections from the prosecution. Ben Cooper, defending Mr Cleary, said he was concerned about him remaining in custody. The court had been told that Cleary suffers from Asperger's syndrome, being highly intelligent but with social interaction difficulties.

The prosecution, which refused to reconsider the bail appeal, accuse Cleary of setting up a DDoS attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency on June 20, and attacked the websites of the International Federation of the Phonographgic Industry twice in late 2010.

He has also been accused of making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply a botnet to carry out distributed denial of service attacks against web targets.

If Cleary is released on bail, he will be banned from having possession of any device that can access the Internet. No Internet access will be permitted at his home, and he will be prohibited from leaving his home without his mother.

U.S. anti-trust regulators OK an Intel pursuit of assets from bankrupt firm.

Nortel Network Corp, a bankrupt manufacturer of telecommunications gear, has tech firms circling its carcass like vultures looking to get their hands on assets. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given the green light to chipmaker Intel to pursue the assets, competing with Apple (already given approval), Google and Ericsson to do so.

The biggest treasures to be plundered from Nortel's remains are in the 6,000-strong patent portfolio and patent applications that it wields. The patents cover everything from networking to semiconductors. Intel has been keen to make inroads into the wireless market, having purchased Infineon Technologies AG's wireless chip interests this year.

Having declared bankruptcy in January 2009, Nortel has already sold off most of its physical assets. Starting on Monday, the patents are to be sold off at auction. Apple and Google are expected to fight it out for patents relating to Long-Term Evolution (LTE), and other 4G wireless technologies.

Inability to scale the services has directed priority elsewhere.

Google announced on its official blog that both the Google Health and Google PowerMeter services will be retired within the next year. In both cases, the search giant is making it easy for users to download their data from either service in the meantime.

Google Health intended to give users access to their personal health and wellness information. "We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users," the blog entry reads.

"Now, with a few years of experience, we've observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven't found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people."

House democrats sent letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Attorney General Eric Holder, seemingly supportive of AT&T's proposed buyout of T-Mobile.

In the letter, the members of congress urge the pair to consider the benefits of increased coverage. They state that as part of the merger, AT&T has committed to building a next generation wireless broadband network that proposed to cover 97 percent of Americans, and that such a commitment will cost billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs.

Public Knowledge has made no secret of its opposition to the merger, and has responded to the letter from congress. Firstly, Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, notes that the letter does not specifically endorse the takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T, pointing out that it states all relevant issues including consumer prices, competition and innovation should be studied thoroughly.

However, there are claims made in the letter that Public Knowledge objects to. On the jobs creation claim, Sohn says that AT&T's next generation network proposals are only marginally better now than they were before anyway, and that a merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would cost jobs, not create them.

Baltimore man sentenced in city's first criminal hacking case.

Walter Powell, 52, of the 3800 block of Frankford Avenue pleaded guilty to charges of hacking into computer systems of his former employer, Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems Inc. He had been fired from his position there in 2009 and admitted to hacking into the computer network multiple times since.

One incident that landed him in hot water involved a powerpoint presentation made by the chief executive and intended to be displayed in front of the board of directors. Powell admitted to inserting pornography into the presentation.

The city's state's attorney's office said that this was the first computer hacking case to be prosecuted in the city.

Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock heard Powell's case, sentencing him to two years in prison with all time suspended, along with three years probation. He must now also carry out 100 hours of community service.

Search giant says it will cooperate with FTC investigation.

Google revealed on its official blog that it received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it has begun a review of its core businesses. "We respect the FTC's process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services," the blog entry stated.

Google states that while it is unclear what the FTC's primary concerns are at this time, the company is confident about where it stands. It goes into detail about how Google has always believed that if it focuses on the user, then all else will follow.

With that principal in mind, Google says it aims to help its users find relevant information quickly, and for free, knowing that the competition is just a click away at all times. "In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers," it states.

Google says that while it will cooperate with the FTC to alleviate any anti-trust concerns, it will follow the core principles that have guided it from the beginning, which it states are...

• Do what's best for the user. "We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results."
• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. "Today, when you type 'weather in Chicago' or 'how many feet in a mile' into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit 'enter'. And we're always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you."
• Label advertisements clearly. "Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn't."
• Be transparent. "We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We've recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules."
• Loyalty, not lock-in. "We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we're innovating and making our products better—not because you're locked in."

Worldwide operation involved simultaneous raids, froze dozens of bank accounts.

Co-operating with law enforcement agencies from eleven other countries around the world, including France, the United Kingdom and the United States, Ukraine's state security service was able to identify and break up a group responsible for infiltrating banking networks.

It is estimated that the hackers stole up to $72 million from compromised networks. The group was organized and led by Ukrainians, using computer viruses to make it possible to get through network security of international banks. The Ukrainian state security service did not name the affected institutions.

"According to preliminary estimates, damage to bank customers' amounts to about $72 million," it said in a statement.

Forty bank accounts located in Latvia were frozen as part of the investigation. Sixteen people have been questioned.

Apple removes Arabic language anti-Israel application from App Store.

"We removed this app from the App Store because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people," Apple said. The application was only made available on the App Store several days ago. Intifada refers to two violent uprisings against Israel in the past.

Earlier this year, Facebook removed a "Third Intifada" page for much the same reasons. In that case, the page was originally left online despite complaints, and then later removed. Facebook confirmed the decision to remove it came after the calls for peaceful protest turned to incitements of violence.

The application removed by Apple gave links to nationalistic Palestinian material, and listed forthcoming protests and other events. Israeli Minister of Public Affairs and the Diaspora Yuli Edelstein, wrote to Steve Jobs recently to express disappointment that the application was available.

"From browsing through the articles, stories and photographs that appear in the app, it is clear that this is an anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist application that in fact, as its name suggests, calls for an uprising against Israel," the letter stated.

Latest development in on-going dispute between both giants.

A court in South Korea revealed on Friday that Apple sued Samsung in the country, alleging that Samsung products infringe several of its patents. Samsung had previously sued Apple in South Korea, as well as Germany and Japan. Apple has accused Samsung of blatantly cloning its products.

An Apple lawyer revealed last week that top executives of both firms were in talks over the patent disputes, as they have a very strong business relationship. Apple was Samsung's biggest customer in the first quarter according to Samsung's reports, with Apple buying up enormous amounts of semiconductors.

Samsung is, however, one of Apple's biggest rivals. It's Android-packing smartphones compete directly with Apple in the mobile market, while Samsung has also emerged as the clear rival to Apple's iPad in the tablet PC market. Some of Samsung's products are strikingly similar to the iPhone, from the device dimensions, to the user interface, and even the packing.

That is no coincidence, says Apple, but Samsung has also accused Apple of patent infringement and said in a previous filing that it was seeking compensation for damages.

New boards designed to take advantage of new AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APU).

The new F1A75 Series motherboards are based on the latest AMD A75 chipset and FM1 socket, which supports AMD's new Llano APUs. This new series is also equipped with the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features, including the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM for precise power control.

The F1A75-V EVO is the world's first FM1 socket motherboard with dual x8/x8 PCI-Express for AMD CrossFireX support. The entire range of ASUS F1A75 Series motherboards are designed to support SATA 6Gbps and SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0).

AMD's new APUs include AMD Radeon HD 6000 series processor graphics. Dual Graphics support means an additional PCI-Express Radeon GPU can lead to a performance boost up to 128 percent, in Radeon Dual Graphics mode.

The new boards also feature an intuitive UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS, which features a graphical interface and support for a mouse to provide a more user-friendly experience. An EZ-Mode option built in allows for drag and drop boot priority settings, wwhile Advanced Mode allows experienced enthusiasts to tweak more intricate system settings.

Put your backups in the cloud for peace of mind.

The LaCie CloudBox is a solution for backing up files that dramatically reduces the risk of catastrophic data loss. When you store data on the CloudBox, it is also transferred to the Cloud each day, ensuring that your data is always safe and accessible from anywhere.

If you want to recover everything, the CloudBox can restore your entire online backup. If you just want to restore certain files, the CloudBox's Online Restore application allows you to browse and restore selections of files and folders, up to 10 previous versions.

The CloudBox provides multiple levels of data security including two copies of your files and 128-bit AES data encryption. Your files are encrypted before they are sent to the cloud, meaning that nobody can gain access to your files, not even LaCie.

PCI group doesn't see need to abandon copper interconnects just yet.

According to reports from the PCI SIG (PCI Special Interest Group) developers conference, PCI Express 4.0 is expected to deliver at least 16 GT/s when it debuts, double the 8 GT/s throughput achieved with PCIe Gen 3. The next advancement of PCI Express isn't expected to make a hardware debut for about four years.

"The initial report we got yesterday is a PCI Express 4.0 is feasible--we have to work out the details, but it is feasible," said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG. A group that includes AMD, HP, IBM and Intel have been carrying out experiments and have determined 16 GT/s is possible without having to jump to optical interconnects.

"We think we can eke out one more turn of the crank out of copper, so we are not looking at optics yet," chairman of the PCI SIG's serial communications working chair, Ramin Neshanti, said.

VESA announces support for longer active cables for DisplayPort standard.

VESA - the Video Electronics Standards Association - announced an extension to the DisplayPort v1.2 standard to support active cables, which can be as much as five times longer than passive cables. To achieve the extra length, active cables boost and equalize the attenuated DisplayPort signal.

The change, VESA believes, will help enthusiasts building / upgrading home theater systems, which are often strained by the short length of High-definition video cables (particularly those that come free with consumer electronics products.)

With the addition of active cables to the DisplayPort standard, cables lengths of more than 100 feet (33 meters) are possible. Because active cables are directional and require each end to be connected to appropriate devices, VESA has developed a new DisplayPort active cable logo to assist cable users in identifying the source and sink ends of the cable.

"Active cables are an important connectivity option for DisplayPort users," said Gourgen Oganessyan, vice-chair of the VESA Marketing Task Group and staff product marketing engineer at Intersil Corporation.

Sony Ericsson's Xperia ray unveiled along with Sony Ericsson txt and Xperia active this week.

The new Xperia ray smartphone runs the Android operating system (Gingerbread 2.3), and is powered by a 1GHz processor. It features a 3.3-inch display and packs an 8.1mp camera with Exmor R for mobile and HD video functionality.

the phone incorporates a front facing camera and a scratch resistant screen with excellent resolution and brightness and integrated touch keys. Integration of Facebook inside Xperia creates a new customer experience for great social interaction with friends.

"We expect Xperia ray to appeal to consumers who are looking for a combination of beautiful design and a rich feature set. We are able to uniquely deliver this with a combination of premium materials and multimedia features provided by Sony," said Daniel Sandblom, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson's Xperia active unveiled along with Sony Ericsson txt and Xperia ray this week.

The new Xperia active smartphone runs the Android operating system (Gingerbread 2.3), and is powered by a 1GHz processor. It features a 3-inch display and 5 megapixel camera, is dust proof and water resistant. This smartphone features a corner user interface which comes pre-loaded with sports apps that enable users to easily track their fitness levels.

By using the built-in GPS, barometer and compass in combination with the on-screen heart rate & pulse monitor, and the iMapMyFitness app, users can easily monitor their day to day performance.

"Xperia active is the ultimate smartphone for an active life. Not only is it packed with all the features and applications consumers need for a worry free mobile life, it also comes with a set of accessories that make it fun and easy for them to take it everywhere, whatever their daily plans are," said Fredrik Månsson, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson txt is one of three handsets released this week (see Sony Ericsson Xperia ray and Sony Ericsson Xperia active).

The Sony Ericsson txt is a feature phone aimed at providing consumers with specifications inspired by Xperia at an affordable price. As its name suggests it is made for peoplee who like to send text messages very frequently, and sports a full QWERTY keyboard for the task.

The 2.6-inch screen and incorporates an SMS shortcut key for easy and fast messaging. It comes equipped with a "friends" application that integrates Twitter and Facebook more into the device.

Sony Ericsson txt is Wi-Fi enabled and comes equipped with a 3.2mp camera with video recording.

"Sony Ericsson txt is the perfect phone for easy and fast messaging on the move. We wanted to give consumers that prefer a full view QWERTY keyboard an entry point into the world of Sony Ericsson," said Quentin Cordier, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.

U.S. Feds work with international law enforcement agencies to disrupt two FAKEAV peddlers.

Two Latvian individuals have been indicted, and more than 40 computers, servers and back accounts have been seized as part of Operation Trident Tribunal, which targets peddlers of fake anti-virus scams. It is estimated that the gangs involved caused more than $74 million in total losses to more than one million computer users.

Scareware works by alerting users to fake threats allegedly residing on their computers with terrifying scan results, then offers to clean up the non-existent malware if the user will pay a fee for a full version of the software, using a credit card. There are many ways scareware can show up on a victims' PC, such as being tricked into installing it from a fake alert on a webpage, or it may be downloaded and executed by an existing malware on the computer.

The first of the international criminal groups disrupted by Operation Trident Tribunal infected hundreds of thousands of computers with scareware and sold more than $72 million of the fake antivirus product over a period of three years. An estimated 960,000 users were victimized by the scheme, some paying up to $129. Latvian authorties seized at least five bank accounts that were alleged to have been used to funnel profits to the scam's leadership.

Man pleads guilty to copyright infringement after being nabbed in raids against software piracy ring.

James Clayton Baxter of Wichita Falls, Texas, was the seventh man arrested in a software piracy ring that allegedly racked up $3 million in illegal sales from $15 million worth of pirated software goods. Baxter operated five websites that sold illegitimate products from Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, Symantec and others.

The websites he used included Amerisoftware.com, SoftwareCB.com, Costfriendlysoftware.net, TechKappa.com, and CigTechnologies.com. He faces up to five years in prison for his crimes, and a fine of up to $250,000.

"BSA appreciates the vigorous copyright enforcement efforts of the Justice Department and ICE," said Business Software Alliance Vice President of Anti-Piracy and General Counsel Jodie Kelley.

"What is happening to Mr. Baxter as well as the rest of the Wichita Falls piracy ring should serve as a warning to other software pirates: Breaking the law has real consequences."

The BSA assisted law enforcement in the investigation, performing evidence analyses and sharing information from its member companies.

Consumer groups attack proposals to block websites that offer illegal video streams.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) revealed earlier this week that a secret proposal had been presented to UK communications minister Ed Vaizey by rights holders. Consumer Focus, the official consumer watchdog, attended a meeting on June 15 where the paper was presented.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) were not invited to attend, nor were any similar groups.

"It is unacceptable for trade groups and government to conduct policy in this way. Censorship proposals must be made and discussed in public," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group.

"Many of us will oppose any censorship that impacts directly and widely on free expression. Governments would be wise to assess the strength of our arguments, rather than waiting for trade bodies to find their narrow, commercial arguments unravel once their proposals reach the light of day."

The proposals, which were presented by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Publishers Association, the Football Association / Premier League and Motion Picture Alliance. The paper was titled, "Addressing websites that are substantially focused on infringement."

Acer constructs 177 TFLOP supercomputer, ranks 42nd on latest TOP500 list.

After being awarded the contract in November 2010, Acer constructed the supercomputer for the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan. The 177 TFLOPS ALPS (Advanced Large Parallel System) supercomputer, nicknamed Windrider, utilizes the latest AMD Opteron 6000 Series processors. It features a total of 8 compute clusters, 1 large memory cluster and 25,000 compute cores.

As the leading research institute in Taiwan for high-performance computer (HPC), the NCHC works with enterprise and academic institutes to take part in joint research. The new system, the fastest of its kind in Taiwan, will be used for research in science and engineering, disaster simulations, alternative energy, biotechnology, chemistry and more.

NCHC's director, Kuo-Ning Chiang
"The decision to build this machine was made out of necessity. NCHC provides supercomputing resources to Taiwan's many research groups and universities, and our previous machine with only 20 TFLOPS had a long waiting list for running computing jobs. The new system by Acer not only satisfies the current demand, but gives us a lot of room to grow."

Nvidia and VIA follow AMD out of BAPCo consortium.

The Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo) is a non-profit consortium tasked with developing performance benchmarks for computer systems based on widely used software applications and operating systems. BAPCo has been developing the SYSmark 2012 benchmark intended to be used by businesses and governments to make spending decisions.

On Tuesday (June 21), AMD publicly announced that it has left the BAPCo consortium, and said it cannot endorse the SYSmark 2012 benchmark. AMD's Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau, had questioned some aspects of the benchmark in a blog post last year titled "Have you Paid the 'SYSmark Tax'?", in which he estimated that government and educational institutions had needlessly spent over $7 billion during the preceding five years as a result of the SYSmark benchmark.

According to Dessau, BAPCo's response to the blog was a threat to expel AMD from the consortium. Nowadays most of us use applications that run HTML 5, use Javascript and other elements that benefit greatly from GPU acceleration. Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Office, Windows Movie Maker and Adobe Flash are examples of applications given by AMD that benefit from GPU acceleration and are widely used.

Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), addresses PlayStation 4 (PS4) in Forbes interview.

There has already been hints that Sony is working on the development of the next generation PlayStation home console, generally referred to as the PS4. The PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been on the market since 2006, and Sony promised a ten year life-cycle for the system at the time.

The PS3 has had a mixed experience on the market so far, with early supply and cost problems, increased competition from Nintendo and Microsoft for home consoles and other notable problems such as the PSN breach. Still, Tretton thinks that the PS3 is just getting started and has warned not to get your hopes up if you are looking for a PS4 anytime soon.

"PlayStation 3 is really just hitting its stride. And technologically, I don't think it's possible to provide any advancement beyond what we have. What we've seen from the competition is trying to add features that already exist in PlayStation 3," Tretton said. "We invested heavily in that, we rolled a very heavy rock up a steep hill, through the launch period. But now I think that all pays off, and we've got a long run way behind it. So, I wouldn't look for any discussion of a next generation PlayStation for quite some time."

Mozilla hit June 21 target for the release of Firefox 5.

Compared to past upgrades to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the release of version 5 was much more muted. Mozilla said that it made over 1,000 improvements to the web browser, although most are just minor bug fixes and tweaks. The user interface is virtually the same as Firefox 4.

Among the biggest changes in Firefox 5 are improvements to HTML 5 support, and the CSS Animations standard to enable developers to build more visually-enhanced Web applications and websites.

Apple rebuilds popular pro video editing software from the ground up.

Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit application designed to work on the latest Mac systems in the market. The new iteration of the popular software tours a new Content Auto-Analysis feature that categorizes content on import by shot type, media and people, and a new Magnetic Timeline that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them, while other clips instantly slide out of the way.

Using Clip Connections, you can link primary story clips to other elements such as titles and sound effects, so they stay in perfect sync when you move them along the Timeline. Related story elements can be combined into a Compound Clip that can be edited as a single clip.

The Content Auto-Analysis feature scans media upon import and tags the content with information that helps it organize the clips into Smart Collections letting you filter clips easily by the type of shot (close, medium, wide) or by the amount of people in them. An Auditions feature lets you swap between a collection of clips to compare alternative takes easily.

"Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We have shown it to many of the world's best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped."

Update earlier this year halts surge of 'Autorun' malware family infections.

Microsoft released an update on February 8 for the Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms. The update targeted the "AutoPlay" feature of the operating system that let an Autorun.Inf file in removal media dictate what to execute immediately upon insertion.

The change would stop the Autorun feature from being enabled automatically on the platforms, except in the case of optical disc media. The update was sent out in response to a surge of detections of malware abusing the Autorun system to spread by removal media (USB sticks etc.)

Microsoft security products had tracked the malware under the family Win32/Autorun, and toward the end of 2010, the number of detections on systems skyrocketed past other frequently detected malware such as Win32/Conficker, Win32/Rimecud and Win32/Taterf.

Popular cloud-storage solution experiences huge security lapse.

Dropbox founder and CTO Arash Ferdowsi used the company's blog to explain a major bug with the Dropbox authentication mechanism. On Sunday, Dropbox updated some code and unknowingly introduced a bug affecting its authentication mechanism, which potentially exposed its users data to anybody.

Between 1:54pm and 5:41pm (Pacific time), users could have logged into accounts without the correct password. Ferdowsi says that a very small number of logins were made during that time (much less than 1 percent of userbase.) After the problem was discovered, it was fixed (and was live) within minutes.

Dropbox is now conducting an investigation to determine if any accounts were improperly accessed. Upon finding the bug, all logged in sessions were ended as a precaution. If the company finds that any unauthorized account use happened during the time the system was vulnerable, it will alert the account holder immediately.

"This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.," Ferdowsi said.

"We are sorry for this and regardless of how many people were ultimately affected, any exposure at all is unacceptable to us. We will continue to provide regular updates."

Metropolitan Police arrest 19 year old man; media links case to LulzSec group.

Police officers from the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) carried out the arrest as part of a pre-planned intelligence-led operation, which included cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States.

The Met statement does not mention the group LulzSec by name, but it does say the investigation being carried out involves network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against international business and intelligence agencies by what it believes is the same group of hackers.

The Met statement comes the same day as confirmation by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONC) that it is investigating a claim that LulzSec has accessed data from the 2011 Census. "We are working with our security advisers and contractors to establish whether there is any substance to this. The 2011 Census places the highest priority on maintaining the security of personal data," the ONC said in a statement.

"At this stage we have no evidence to suggest that any such compromise has occurred."

The 19 year old suspect targeted by the e-Crime Unit was detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act, and Fraud Act offences and was taken to a central London police station, where he remains in custody to undergo questioning.

Nokia unveiled its first (and last) MeeGo handset today, the Nokia N9.

The first promotional videos from Nokia displaying the new handset were pretty uninformative, and left a lot of readers of Nokia sources asking for more details about the device. Nokia Marketing Manager Jussi Mäkinen filled the gap for a UI tour, and the most complete version of the handset specs were posted online the company.


Nokia N9 MeeGo User Interface Demonstration by Jussi Mäkinen

K Computer achieve's a world-beating 8.162 petaflops.

A collaborative effort of Fujitsu and RIKEN, the K Computer is part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The system is currently in its configuration stage, featuring 672 computer racks equipped with a total of 68,554 quad-core central processing units.

It is a wholly-made in Japan supercomputer, from the R&D steps to the development of the processors and ongoing assembly. The system took first position on the 37th TOP500 list announced today, marking the first time since 2004 that a Japanese supercomputer has made it to the top of the list.

The TOP500 ranking list is updated twice per year since 1993. The K Computer's processing speed was measured by the LINPACK benchmark program, clocking up to 8.162 petaflops (petaflop == 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second). Fujitsu and RIKEN aim to begin shared use of the supercomputer by November 2012. When it is completed in 2012, it is designed to achieve LINPACK performance of 10 petaflops.

Leaked Nokia N9 press photos posted by PocketNow ahead of tomorrow's announcement.

Nokia's N9 is expected to be announced tomorrow at CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore. The MeeGo-powered device was expected to feature a QWERTY slider, but instead the pictures show a very slim in bright pink, blue and black. No specific hardware information is available yet.

Hackers are given deterrent sentences.

Two men who allegedly targeted music artists including Dr Dre and Lady Gaga have been handed down prison sentences by a court in Germany. The pair targeted e-mail accounts to mine for personal information and other content which was then leaked online.

Details that the hackers are alleged to have stolen from music stars also include private banking information and personal communications. The investigation into the activity began when music industry investigators were alerted to a larger number than usual of pre-release (even unfinished) music tracks leaking onto the Internet, and at earlier dates than expected.

Anti-piracy teams narrowed down their search to Germany and alerted local authorities to the activity. The men were found guilty of copyright theft and computer intrusion. One of them was also found guilty of an extortion charge. They had allegedly profited from selling stolen pre-release tracks for up to $1,000 each.

To get the data they wanted, the hackers used phishing e-mails and also sent trojans disguised as music tracks. They then accessed the e-mail (and other) accounts of music artists and stole a large amount of personal and commercial content.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges misuse of copyright law in case involving third-party Xbox 360 memory cards.

The digital rights and privacy advocacy group filed an amicus brief with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. In the filing, the EFF urges the federal court to block Microsoft Corporation's attempt to thwart a competitor offering memory card products for the Xbox 360 games console.

The Redmond-based software giant is in the midst of a court battle with Datel Holdings, a British company that lists memory cards products for the Xbox 360 system among its line-up. At the heart of Microsoft's challenge is an assertion that end-users (yes, the gamers) violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if they use third-party cards with the Xbox 360.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA was created in the late '90s to address unauthorized access to copyrighted material by non-paying customers, and not as a weapon for a company to thwart competition in the free market or as a way to police users' behavior in regards to property they have bought.

The EFF warns that if Microsoft prevails in this argument, it could have far-reaching consequences in the consumer electronics market. It would effectively allow Microsoft to control the Xbox 360 aftermarket, and would make it acceptable for consumer electronics companies to put in place technological protection measures (which you cannot break legally under the DMCA) that have the primary goal of eliminating competition (and limiting consumer choice) instead of protecting copyrighted material from unauthorized access.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) hopes this time the U.S. Congress can bring Data Breach law to a national level.

News of major data breaches at some of the world's largest online services has been plastered all over the headlines this year. Some of the high profile cases include Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) and SEGA's ongoing investigation of a data breach that affects over one million people.

Other attacks of an even more serious nature have targeted the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Lockheed Martin in the United States and the European Union. However, what the BSA is really concerned about is how consumers will react to data breaches in systems run by the likes of Sony, and how it will effect confidence as industry and commerce moves even further into cyberspace than ever before.

The rise of cloud computing, for example, is promising for both enterprise and home customers as a low cost solution for all kinds of data computing and mass storage. The BSA is concerned that after the PSN hack saga and the increasing number of attempts to acquire consumers' personal information, a lack of confidence in data security could hurt the emergence of cloud-based services.

Across Russia, GPUs are being increasingly used for raw high-performance computation needed in research.

Moscow State University is upgrading its Lomonosov system (shown in picture) with NVIDIA Tesla GPU's. The upgrade will push the Lomonosov system into the world's faster supercomputer lists, comprised of 1,544 NVIDIA Tesla X2070 GPUs and an equal number of quad core microprocessors.

The upgraded system will provide up to 1.3 petaflops of peak performance, which will put it among the fastest in the world and easily the fastest in Russia.

"Our research requires enormous computational resources, and we need to deliver this performance as efficiently as possible," said Victor Sadovnichy, academician, Rector of Moscow State University. "The only way for us to achieve these twin goals is with a hybrid GPU/CPU based system."

The University system is used for research that requires staggering amounts of computational power, such as climate change models, ocean modeling, the formation of galaxies and post-genomic medicine.

Also in Russia, the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod (NNSU) and the Scientific and Educational Center of Parallel Computing at Perm State University are exploiting the high performance per watt promise of GPU technology.

PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso exploit new AMD hardware.

CyberLink has a track record of trying to keep up with hardware advances in its multimedia products. Now, the company has announced that its flagship products - PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso - have been optimized for the latest AMD A-Series Accelerator Processing Units (APU).

Keeping up with hardware evolution means CyberLink customers can benefit from available hardware acceleration for high-definition (and 3D) playback from Blu-ray, AVCHD etc., enhanced video editing and significantly faster video encoding.

"CyberLink is always striving to innovate the next generation of technology that creates the best consumer media entertainment experience possible," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp.

"We are delighted to leverage AMD's high-end A-Series APUs on CyberLink's complete product lineup to deliver enhanced and ultra-fast media experiences for consumers."

The popular PowerDVD 11 application leverages hardware acceleration technology of the AMD APUs in decoding Blu-ray, BD3D and AVCHD content, providing smoother Full HD/3D playback with much lower core CPU usage. PowerDirector 9 utilizes AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology to gain 2.2x faster rendering speed in tests.

Web payments firm setting the story straight.

There were some media reports in the latter part of the last week that PayPal had been hacked, and that PayPal account information had been made public by attackers. The company has responded to the claims, asserting with authority that, "the PayPal site has not been breached or hacked in any way."

In reality, a group of hackers claimed to have compromized another site, which PayPal points out is "less secure." From the breached website, the attackers mined usernames and passwords of a number of accounts. Upon releasing the information publicly, the hackers suggested that people try accessing personal online accounts on websites using the same credentials, and PayPal was listed as a suggestion.

So there was no breach of PayPal's system, instead the hackers were just suggesting that some users would have used the same password as they did for the compromised website.

"PayPal's security team became aware of this particular security situation early on and proactively began monitoring a number of accounts for suspicious activity, in order to protect our customers," the company stated.

"PayPal always safeguards our customers from qualified unauthorized payments sent from their accounts. We regularly monitor for unusual activity on accounts and will work directly with customers if they suspect their accounts have been accessed fraudulently."

If you wondered why Microsoft's thrust to add more features and functionality to its Internet Explorer browser has excluded WebGL, here's an answer.

You could be forgiven to tempt an assumption that a Microsoft snub of WebGL is simply the Redmond-based giant's way of ignoring an open standard, in favor of its own proprietary Direct3D, but Microsoft engineers have put forth some real questions for the emerging standard to answer on security.

WebGL stands for Web-based Graphics Library. It provides an (OpenGL-based) API for 3D graphics within web browsers, filling part of an increasing demand for a much richer web experience for end users. Mozilla, Google and Apple have backed the technology with their browser packages, but Microsoft is not yet ready to endorse it.

Microsoft engineers analyzed WebGL and found that they cannot endorse the technology from a security perspective, finding that Microsoft products supporting WebGL would have a difficult time passing Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle requirements.

The engineers split the problem into three main concerns with widespread use of WebGL.

• #1 - Microsoft: "Browser support for WebGL directly exposes hardware functionality to the web in a way that we consider to be overly permissive"
  Read more...

UK communications regulator warns that growth of 4G will cause TV reception problems for some Brits.

Ofcom will conduct a research program to figure out just how many people are likely to be affected. Currently, it puts the estimate at about 3 percent of people in the United Kingdom, but says using filters will solve the problem in most cases.

The problem has arisen becayse the chunk of spectrum reserved for 4G communications is next to that used for broadcasting digital terrestrial television. The 800MHz band is due to be auctioned off in 2012 and 4G services are expected to roll out in the country shortly after.

Signals from base stations might disrupt television viewing for as many as 760,000 people to some degree, Ofcom has warned. The regulator is considering running a public educational campaign to alert viewers that they may be affected, and how to deal with it if they are.

Firms that win licenses for the 800MHz spectrum will have to contribute to the cost of the campaign.

For the vast majority of affected viewers, filters should easily solve the problems, but in very very few cases, viewers may need to find alternative ways to watch digital TV.

Technology giant reveals new set of predictions.

Cisco has said that the proliferation of Tablet PC devices, smartphones and other gear will boost the number of Internet-connected devices to over 15 billion by the year 2015. This, in turn, will drive up Internet traffic to an astonishing 966 exabytes (one quintillion bytes) a year.

Consumer video content will dominate this Internet traffic. According to Cisco, by 2015, one million minutes of video content will be watched by Internet users per second. About 40 percent of the world's population will be online by that time, Cisco predicts.

If this outlook is correct, it brings up some worrying concerns that experts and industry insiders have warned about for many years now.

"What you are seeing is this massive growth in devices, the way devices are being used and are connected to the internet and what users expect them to do," said Suraj Shetty, Cisco vice president for global marketing.

"All this is putting a lot of pressure on the internet and the next generation internet faces issues handling not just the proliferation of these devices but how they are going to grow and be intelligent enough to be connected to you. The most important question we face is how to manage all this traffic intelligently."

Police return MacBook to man who kept tabs on thief's activities.

Joshua Kaufman, of Oakland, California, had his MacBook stolen from his apartment after a break in on March 21. When he realized the MacBook was gone, he took advantage of an anti-theft application called Hidden which let him see images from the webcam, as well as content on the screen.

He originally took the evidence to the police, but due to resource restrictions, they were unable to help him even though he had photos of somebody using his MacBook.

Kaufman then took his campaign online to a blog, where he posted several images he had gotten back from his MacBook. Oakland police got in contact with him soon after and got to the task of attempting to track down the individual in the photos, which didn't take long with the mountain of evidence Kaufman already had.

"Update: (May 31, 8:37 PM PST) ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA! The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up. Nice work OPD!" he posted to his blog.

DVD rental and video streaming heavyweight expects large price tag to retain TV Shows and Films.

A deal between Netflix and Liberty Media's Starz network is set to expire early next year. It was originally struck four years ago, costing Netflix $30 million. Starz has the online distribution rights to content from Walt Disney Co and Sony Corp's Sony Pictures.

Netflix now has more than 23 million customers in the United States. It's video streaming service has gained considerable popularity, largely due to its integration with many different platforms (game consoles etc.).

To renew a deal with Starz is certainly going to cost considerably more than $30 million. When asked if the deal could cost up to $200 million, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that would not be shocking.

"We are paying more for content every time we renew," Hastings said about striking new content agreements. "We view that as a positive." Netflix is aggressively pursuing content deals to keep customers happy, targeting popular content such as Glee.

Google halts effort to access content in hundreds of GMail accounts.

Google Inc. revealed earlier this week that an attack on its GMail service originated from Jinan, Shandong province, China. Hackers attempted to break into hundreds of different GMail accounts, held by senior U.S. Government officials, Chinese activists and others.

Google said it detected and disrupted the attempts. "We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing," Google said on Thursday. "The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails."

South Korean officials also appeared to be targets of the campaign.

Google's announcement comes a year after it disclosed a cyberattack on its systems in China, an event that led to Google downsizing its presence in the market.

"Investors would like to see Google figure out a way to operate in China, and capitalize on the growth of the country," said Cowen and Co analyst Jim Friedland. "It's been a tough relationship. And this highlights that it continues to be a tough relationship."

Chief Executive says door is open to licensing operating system to other companies.

When Hewlett-Packard Co acquired Palm, one of the biggest factors in that decision was the WebOS rights. The mobile operating system has been repeatedly praised for what it offers to the market, and its acquisition by HP gave the consumer electronics company a weapon in the mobile space.

Instead of just putting WebOS on HP products, the company is open to licensing its use to other companies too. "I happen to believe that WebOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system," said HP chief executive Leo Apotheker. "It's not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices."

HP is preparing to launch its 9.7-inch TouchPad tablet, which is based on WebOS software. It hopes that WebOS will become the third most used operating system software in the space, behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

"Right now we are focused on getting it out in the market to gain the credibility," Apotheker said. "WebOS will also be adopted by many partners who provide services to small and medium businesses."

The Pentagon is set to publish a report on measures to tackle and respond to cyber warfare.

A cyber-attack last month targeting U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin has hastened the Pentagon's steps on the cyber-warfare plans. A report, due in a matter of weeks, is expected to deem cyber-attacks as an act of war, and to suggest whatever measures necessary to defend the country's infrastructure.

"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.

Areas of great concern include the already-strained power grid in the U.S., or systems that emergency response networks rely on. Attacks against systems particularly in urban areas could have devastating consequences for the civilian populations in the worst case.

"We reserve the right to use all necessary means - diplomatic, informational, military, and economic - as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests," states a White House statement put out on May 16.

Anne Muir gets three years probation sentence for sharing music online.

She is the first person in Scotland to ever be convicted of illegally sharing music content on a P2P file sharing network. Muir admitted to distributing £54,000 worth of copyrighted music files over an unnamed file sharing network.

Her case began with complaints from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as part of an investigation into heavy sharers of music. A formal complaint was made to Strathclyde Police, and Muir's home was searched.

Computer equipment was seized from the 58 year old's residence, and investigators found 7,493 digital music files and 24,243 karaoke files. The content has an estimated street value of £54,792.

Her lawyer said that Muir did not financially benefit from her illegal activities, and called the court's attention to Muir's ongoing state of depression, for which she is receiving psychiatric help.

Mac users feel the pain of Windows users caught in the middle of a cat and mouse game with malware authors.

It only took a few hours after Apple released an update to protect Mac users against recent MacDefender scareware attacks for a new variant to show up that is immune to the current targeted protection being offered by Apple.

A sophisticated social engineering attack that targets Google search results and Facebook has led to thousands of Mac users installing scareware products under the MacDefender umbrella. The scareware, like its Windows lookalikes, prompts users with a phony list of detected threats on the machine, and tries to scam credit card and other information from the user.

Apple had promised a fix for Mac users, and delivered one on Tuesday. The OS X update detects MacDefender variants and removes them, as well as detecting them before they can be installed by the user.

However, it is being reported that within eight hours of the update going live, a new variant was already doing the rounds that is "specifically formulated" to get around the security update.

Review of previous studies and evidence prompts group to call for further research.

The group of 31 scientists working under the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that a review of all the available scientific evidence and data from previous studies led it to a conclusion that use of mobile phones is "possibly carcinogenic."

Specifically, the group formally classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as Group 2B carcinogenic agents. The decision to do so came from a suggestion from previous research that mobile phone use increased the risk of a glioma, a particularly deadly form of brain cancer.

It is important to note that other agents listed under Group 2B include pickled vegetables and coffee, but also have unnerving agents such as lead, which shows the broad scope of "potential risk" that mobile phone use now fits in to.

Industry groups were quick to play-down the classification, pointing out that the IARC group did not do any new research in its findings. "This IARC classification does not mean that cell phones cause cancer," said John Walls, VP of public affairs, CTIA.

He also pointed out that other health organizations around the world had come to different conclusions, with the FDA in the United States finding that the weight of evidence suggests no link between mobile phone usage and brain tumors.

A privacy group that complained about being left out of Google's Buzz settlement gets a share.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had complained about being left out of a proposed settlement in a privacy dispute involving Google services. EPIC had complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last year about the Buzz social network, saying it threatened the privacy of GMail users.

Google has since settled that case with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and moved to settle a separate proposed class action lawsuit brought to it by a GMail user. The proposed settlement would include $6 million for groups that advocate digital and privacy rights for consumers.

The list of groups did not include EPIC, which pointed out that the majority of funds would be given to groups that "receive support from Google for lobbying, consulting, or similar services." Google dismissed the argument, but a U.S. District Judge James Ware found that there was no reason to leave out EPIC and awarded the firm $500,000.

"EPIC has demonstrated that it is a well-established and respected organization within the field of Internet privacy," Ware wrote. EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said that the group appreciated the court's recognition of its important work.

Chinese firm will buyout German rival to increase presence in Europe.

Lenovo has agreed to buy German PC and notebook maker Medion in a deal worth about $900 million. The deal will double its market share in Germany to 14 percent. Germany has the largest economy in Europe, but it is a slow-growing market which has prompted some analysts to question the decision.

"Lenovo probably wants to add to its presence in mature markets," said Vincent Chen, an analyst with Yuanta Securities.

"The question is why Germany, because that's a very slow growth market and it raises questions on how much benefit this will bring to them."

Medion offers low-priced computer and electronics devices in Europe, and its affiliated with German discount retailer Aldi has given its name a boost in the European market.

At the same time as Lenovo was spilling the details on the Medion deal, Acer announced it would write down excessive inventory and cover potential losses in Europe with a $150 million charge. It will also layoff 300 employees in Europe.

Some Hulu users will be able to watch popular films from Miramax' library.

Internet video streaming company Hulu has signed a multi-year agreement with film studio Miramax, which will see some of its subscribers gaining access to films from the studio. Hulu Plus subscribers will have access to titles such as Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting.

"Making our films available via premium digital distribution channels is extremely important to Miramax," said Mike Lang, CEO of Miramax.

Miramax recently stuck a similar deal with Netflix. Hulu is owned by Comact, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co., offering streaming videos of movies and TV shows.

No financial details of the deal with Hulu were disclosed.

Nokia has moved to dismiss rumors being reported early on Wednesday.

The Finnish mobile phone giant has described rumors suggesting that Microsoft would buy its phone business as "100 percent baseless." The news being reported said the Windows-maker would acquire the business in a deal worth around $19 billion.

Earlier this year, Nokia agreed to start using Microsoft software in its upcoming handsets, as opposed to its own Symbian operating systems. Also, Nokia's recently appointed chief executive, Stephen Elop, is a former Microsoft executive.

These facts made it easy for such a rumor to spread online, and even pushed shares in Nokia Oyj up on Wednesday. "These rumors are 100 percent baseless," a Nokia spokesman told Reuters.

Nokia's shares have taken a hit during the past couple of days after the company failed to deliver on recovery targets it had previously set.