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The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and performing rights group TONO have given up efforts to legally force Norwegian ISP Telenor to block the Pirate Bay BitTorrent website. The case had seen Telenor triumphant twice after it refused to block the Pirate Bay and the IFPI brought the case to court.

In November 2009, a court decided that Telenor had no obligation to comply with the IFPI's demands. TONO confirmed that the verdict would be appealed, but in February the Borgarting Court of Appeal rejected the appeal on the grounds that there was no basis in Norwegian law for the claim.

The next option for the IFPI and TONO was to go to the Supreme Court, and most thought it would happen. However, the IFPI and TONO have decided not to take that route. "We wanted to get a legal clarification on whether under Norwegian law it is possible to order ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay," a TONO statement reads.

LG Electronics has revealed that it plans to release its line-up of 3D televisions and other products in the UK in May this year. The electronics giant's initial line-up includes two LED TVs and a Blu-ray Disc player. The televisions use active-shutter 3D technology which requires suitable glasses that will not be included.

The 47-inch and 55-inch LC9900 series televisions will feature 400Hz frame interpolation, 4 HDMI ports and 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The backlighting for the 47-inch comprises of 864 LEDs, whilst the 55-inch set had 960 LEDs. Both come packed with Freeview HD receivers.

Bluetooth and WiFi are included in both sets, and they also feature USB 2.0 ports for playing DivX HD, MP3 or JPEG Images from portable media.

According to an article in the New York Times, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs feels that Google violated the alliance it had with the iPhone-maker. The article highlights the growing bitter rivalry between Apple and Google Inc. due to Google's release of products and software that would compete with Apple technologies.

"We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business," Jobs was quoted as saying at a company meeting. "Make no mistake; Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won't let them." The article says that the comments were reportedly met with "thunderous applause" from the Apple employees present at the meeting.

After Google released its Android operating system for mobile devices, relations between the companies reportedly started to sour. A number of heated meetings between Apple and Google executives reportedly followed the software release, many of which apparently turned confrontational with Jobs accusing Google of stealing features from the iPhone.

Apple Inc. pushed out Safari 4.0.5 earlier this week to address a slew of security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. In total, Safari 4.0.5 fixes 16 known security vulnerabilities with the browser. The update is available for Mac and Windows.

Among the vulnerable Safari components are ColorSync, ImageIO and the WebKit engine, which were hit with critical code injection and information disclosure bugs. Unpatched Windows machines running the browser are more vulnerable than those running Mac software.

Apple's advisory on the update is available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4070

Safari for Windows: https://www.afterdawn.com/software/network_software/web_browsers/safari_win.cfm

Safari for Mac OS X: https://www.afterdawn.com/software/alternative_platforms/mac_software/safari_mac.cfm

Swiss security firm Objectif Sécurité was able to crack 14-digit LMHash Windows XP passwords with special characters in just 5.3 seconds. The firm optimized its rainbow table of password hashes for use with solid-state drives. Objectif Sécurité's Philippe Oechslin said that the result was 100 times faster than previously possible.

The test showed how much of a bottleneck the speed of hard discs are in password cracking based on password hash lookups is. The test rig itself was hardly amazing, running with an AMD Athlon X2 4400+ processor and the optimized tables with 80GB of password hashes on an SSD.

The company claims it is 500 times faster than a password cracker from Russian firm Elcomsoft that utilizes NVIDIA GPUs.

Free web-based demo: https://www.objectif-securite.ch/en/products.php#demo

Ofcom has proposed that frequencies reserved for 2G (GSM) networks be used by 3G technologies, complying with an EU deregulation directive on the 900 and 1800MHz bands. The proposal is part of a bunch of changes that Ofcom is proposing, which includes permitting radar installations at level crossings for safety reasons and rule changes on Ultra Wide Band.

While moves by the European Union meant that eventually the UK would permit the use of 2G bands for 3G networks, the subject has been controversial in the UK.

2G frequencies were allocated for use in the UK, whereas 3G spectrum was bought at enormous costs on the basis that it was the only way to operate 3G networks in the region.

Allowing 3G on 2G had its good points, but it devalues the 3G spectrum that operators spent enormous amounts of money to obtain. However, with the UK government standing firmly behind the plan and the EU directive mandating it, Ofcom's final approval should go through in August this year.

AMD is pushing its 'Ontario' dual-core chip for use in netbooks, according to an "AMD Notebook Platform Roadmap" slide that is doing the rounds again. The chip though is not "new" news, with Ontario being made public by AMD in November 2009. The chip is part of AMD's "Fusion" line-up. It contains AMD's "Bobcat" core and will have an on-board DirectX 11 graphics processing unit (GPU).

AMD has treated the market for notebooks and ultrathin devices quite differently from Intel. Intel has developed its Atom line of chips specifically for these small-scale devices whilst AMD maintains that they are essentially just tiny notebooks and don't need dedicated chips.

Maybe AMD is correct in a way, as sales show that users buy the netbooks with larger screens (relative to netbook sizes), larger hard-drives and with software capabilities of their notebooks. Linux-based netbooks haven't sold as well as Windows, and low-storage-space SSD netbooks lose out to traditional HDD-based netbooks.

Microsoft Corp. is racing to release a patch for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 to address a serious security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a victim's computer. The Redmond-based software giant has picked up the pace on this particular flaw since the public release of exploit code by Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu.

The exploit code release means Microsoft will issue a patch for the flaw before the next 'Patch Tuesday'. "We have seen speculation that Microsoft might release an update for this issue out of band. I can tell you that we are working hard to produce an update which is now in testing," said Jerry Bryant, senior security communications manager lead at Microsoft.

"This is a critical and time-intensive step of the process as the update must be tested against all affected versions of Internet Explorer on all supported versions of Windows. Additionally, each supported language version needs to be tested as well as testing against thousands of third party applications," he wrote in an advisory on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, 4G-capable mobile handsets may be available through Verizon Wireless by mid-2011. Verizon Wireless opted to use Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology for its 4G networks in the United States, whereas Sprint opted for WiMax in order to get to market faster.

Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer, Anthony Melone, told the Wall Street Journal that he expected Verizon to offer 4G-capable mobile handsets within 3-6 months after a commercial 4G network is launched by the operator. This would be about twice as fast as previously expected.

Before handsets are available, the 4G networks will be accessed by users through USB air cards for faster Internet access compared to 3G products. Initial handsets will still use CDMA technology to provide access to Verizon's 3G network for voice traffic and when the 4G service is unavailable for data.

Verizon CTO Dick Lynch said at a panel discussion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February that getting voice to work over LTE has been particularly challenging. The operator recently said that speeds in tests of its LTE network showed peak data rates of 40-50Mbps.

Mozilla's Firefox 3.6 has been downloaded over 100 million times since it was released in January this year. The 100 million figure doesn't include existing users that upgraded to Firefox 3.6 from older versions using the built-in upgrade system in the browser.

Still, a lot of existing Firefox users have not yet updated to the newer version of the browser, and so Mozilla has begun to push notifications to users who haven't updated yet.

Firefox ranks highly against other browsers when it comes to pushing updates, with about 85 percent of users switching to new versions within 21 days of a release.

Google's Chrome is the only browser that ranks better than Firefox in this area, largely due to its agressive background updating system. Mozilla celebrated a milestone of 1 billion downloads for Firefox last year, and the browser is used by an estimated 350 million people each day.

The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has upheld the jury verdict against Microsoft in its patent case with small company i4i, over the customizable XML used in Microsoft's extremely popular Word processor.

With the ruling upheld, Microsoft must pay i4i $240 million USD, as well as continue to sell Word 2003 and 2007 stripped of certain custom XML features.

"A reasonable jury could have concluded that Microsoft 'willfully' infringed the '449 patent based on the evidence presented at trial," wrote the judges in the new ruling. "Similarly, there is no evidence Microsoft ever made a good faith effort to avoid infringement; internal emails show Microsoft intended to render i4i's product 'obsolete' and assure 'there won't be a need for [i4i's] product.'"

Evidence presented at the trial showed that Microsoft employees had been part of i4i demos and received sales kits that clearly identified the software as patented technology.

Of the decision, adds Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i: "From our perspective, there are only so many more avenues for appeal for them. It also resulted in an even more detailed and structured decision in our interest."

Apple has announced the Battery Replacement Service for the iPad today, and notably the company has decided to not only replace the battery, but replace the entire device for $99 if you ever need a battery replacement.

"If your iPad requires service due to the battery’s diminished ability to hold an electrical charge, Apple will replace your iPad for a service fee," says Apple. However, buyers will "receive a replacement iPad that will not contain any of your personal data."

The service is $99 and $7 shipping, and Apple says it will take about one week turnaround from the time you send in your dead iPad to the time you receive your replacement.

To not lose your data, Apple suggests syncing first.

"Before you submit your iPad for service, it is important to sync your iPad with iTunes to back up your contacts, calendars, email account settings, bookmarks, apps, etc. Apple is not responsible for the loss of information when servicing your iPad."

According to government officials, it appears that the Android Marketplace may be banned from South Korea, as its game contents have yet to receive approval from the nation's regulating body, the Games Ratings Board.

The Ratings Board sent a letter to Google's Korea branch detailing what must be done, and board official Lee Jong-bae adds: "If Google does not take any measures, we may block the Android market here."

Over 4000 games have not yet been rated by the country's board, but still remain available to South Korean users, which appears to be the problem. Korea has two Android devices, from Motorola and LG, with up to five more promised for 2010.

Google is currently reviewing the letter.

AndroidCentral reported yesterday that Verizon's Nexus One listing in the Equipment Guide showed a reference to HTC Sense, the user interface seen in most HTC-made Android devices, but not used by the current T-Mobile Nexus One.

Today, the carrier has removed the reference to HTC Sense, replacing it with "Google Experience UI," which makes much more sense.

Also notably is the fact that Verizon will not offer the phone in retail stores, and will be available only at google.com/phone, squashing rumors that users would be able to demo the phone in Verizon's thousands of retail shops.

Fortune magazine writer Philip Elmer DeWitt is reporting that Apple sold 90,000 iPad tablets in the first 6 hours of availability yesterday, with the majority purchasing the Wi-Fi-only 16GB version. By the first 24 hours, that number had swelled to almost 120,000.

The group of analysts compiling the data is asking that anyone who purchased an iPad please just email their order number to ipadsales10@gmail.com to keep the tally current.

Original estimates showed around 50,000 sales in the fist two hours, and then 75,000 in the first 4.5 hours.

The numbers are unofficial, but rest assured if they are anywhere near accurate, Apple will release a press release on Monday noting the extremely strong pre-order sales.