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The European Union revealed a "serious" cyber attack against EU bodies on Wednesday, the eve of a summit held in Brussels.

"We're often hit by cyber attacks but this is a big one," a BBC source stated. The commission assessed the scale of the threat at the time and shut down accross to e-mail and to the institutions' intranet to prevent the disclosed of unauthorized information. Staff were also asked to change their passwords and other information as a precaution.

"The Commission and External Advisory Service are subject to a serious cyber attack," Antony Gravili, the spokesman for the inter-institutional relations and administration commissioner, told BBC News. "We are already taking urgent measures to tackle this. An inquiry's been launched. This isn't unusual as the commission is frequently targeted."

France's Finance Ministry was targeted in December. Attackers attempted to steal information about the G20 summit which was held in Paris in February.

French Budget Minister Francois Baroin confirmed the attack at the time and said an investigation had been launched into the source.

UK Chancellor George Osborne's budget will lead to some tax relief for the games industry in the region, according to TIGA.

The trade group represents the games industry in the United Kingdom, and has been lobbying for tax breaks for UK gaming firms to help it compete on the world stage. The group said that the plans in the budget to enhance R&D tax credits is a "decisive victory" that will be worth around £7 million to the industry.

Osborne did not go nearly far enough to protect the UK games industry however, according to TIGA. The group has been lobbying for more aggressive tax measures to help the ailing UK games industry, as international competitors are offering all kinds of incentives to bring the business to within their borders.

"The R&D tax credits will deliver 60% to 70% more value to games studios than the current tax credit regime," TIGA chief executive, Dr Richard Wilson, said. He was unhappy that the new coalition government was unable to go further however.

"Failure to deliver TIGA's Games Tax Relief is a dismal decision that displays a complete lack of imagination and one which will leave the UK video games industry swimming against the tide internationally," Wilson declared. "Our key competitors have tax breaks for games production. The UK does not."

United States senators have cried foul over applications for smart phones that they say enable people to drive drunk with less chance of getting caught.

Senators Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Harry Reid of Nevada, Charles Schumer of New York and Tom Udail of New Mexico, all Democrats, signed a letter sent to Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, RiM's James Balsille and Scott Forstall, Apple executive in charge of software for iPhone.

"Giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern," the letter from the senators states. They have asked the firms to remove the apps from stores, saying they present a real threat to public safety.

The apps apparently allow users to alert each other to the locations of police stops. The letter does not name the apps specifically, but claim they have as many as 10 million users and offer databases of police checkpoints updated in real-time.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, around 10,000 people are killed each year in accidents that involve drunk drivers.

The Chinese government has denied accusations made by web giant Google Inc. that it is disrupting its e-mail service in the region.

Google said on Monday that users in China were experiencing some problems with their GMail service, and that it was a result of government blocks and not a problem with the e-mail service itself. It went further to say that the blockage was "carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu denied the charge from Google on Tuesday. "This is an unacceptable accusation," she said during a regular news conference.

According to affected users, the disrupting experienced with GMail in China comes amidst calls for protests against the government like those seen in the middle east recently.

Google scaled back its presence in China last year after it blamed China-based organizations for attempting to hack e-mail accounts of known Chinese human rights activists. Beijing still denies any involvement in the spat that caused tension between China and the United States.

Prompting Federal Judge Kimba Wood to call the request "absurd," the record labels are demanding $75 trillion from the now deceased file-sharing giant LimeWire over copyright infringement.

At its peak, the P2P client had 50 million active users trading hundreds of millions of files.

Late last year, LimeWire was officially shut down, following a federal ruling that found the company liable for copyright infringement. Within a month, the RIAA won its case and demanded $1 billion from the dead site.

Law.com says "the record companies demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, and argued Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act that provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable."

Judge Wood did call the filing ridiculous, noting that the award would be many times more than the music industry has made, combined, since the invention of the phonograph in 1877.

LinkedIn has announced this week that it has reached a major milestone, 100 million users.

The company launched in 2003 as a "business social network," linking together professionals and students.

In 2009, the company hit 50 million users and it has taken just over 18 months to get another 50 million.

The company says it now adds a new member every second.

As part of the milestone celebration, LinkedIn posted interesting figures about its membership base:

-56 percent of users are from outside the U.S. and growth remains stronger internationally than in the States.

-Brazil had the strongest growth, 428 percent year-over-year. Mexico, India and France followed.

-LinkedIn usage peaks at noon for desktop, 8pm for mobile devices.

-20 percent of users are in "service" sector, 9 percent are in finance and another 9 percent are in tech industry. There are also 1 million teachers.

When the company IPOs later this year, it is expected to fetch $3 billion.

According to VGHQ, George 'Geohot' Hotz has fled to South America in an effort to avoid handing over his possessions to Sony.

Furthermore, Sony has caught Geohot lying on record, outing his PSN account which he claimed did not exist.

Sony's official document in the case, Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC v. Hotz reads:

Though the evidence establishing personal jurisdiction is already overwhelming, SCEA has little doubt that there is much more. However, over the last several weeks. Hotz has engaged in a campaign to thwart jurisdictional discovery at every turn –regardless of whether the Court has ordered such discovery or not.

Most seriously, after Magistrate Judge Spero ordered an inspection of Hotz’s devices and ordered Hotz to appear at a deposition in California, SCEA learned that Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and that Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral. Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd has ruled that Apple CEO Steve Jobs must answer questions from lawyers representing consumers that claim the company created a music-download monopoly with iTunes.

The lawyers in the anti-trust lawsuit will be given two hours to question Jobs, who remains on medical leave while he fights cancer.

In the suit, consumers allege that Apple runs a monopoly with iTunes and iPods, thanks to the Fairplay DRM that blocks music purchased on iTunes from being used on any device not sold by Apple.

RealNetworks, back in 2004, created a software that would let buyers purchase music from Real and sync it to their iPods. When Apple upgraded iTunes, they blocked Real's store, says the complaint.

In ruling that the lawyers could question Jobs, Lloyd says Jobs has "unique, non-repetitive, first hand knowledge about Apple's software updates in October 2004 that rendered the RealNetworks's digital music files once again inoperable with iPods."

In late 2008, Google reached a settlement agreement with authors and publishers in an effort to make thousands of books available online through Google Books.

Google has scanned 12 million rare, out-of-print books and hoped to have them easily accessible to anyone with a computer, and via academic institutions and public libraries. The eventual plan is to make every book ever written available, around 130 million, as of writing.

By late 2009, Google and all the parties involved agreed on an amended settlement, following input from the Department of Justice.

In February 2010, Google filed for final approval of the amended settlement.

This week, a New York judge has rejected the $125 million settlement, saying the deal would "arguably give Google control over the search market." Judge Denny Chin says the terms of the deal are so favorable to Google that it would give them the "defacto monopoly."

Despite rejecting the agreement, Chin says a new amended agreement could pass, as long as Google implements "opt-in," meaning they are not allowed to use copyrighted material unless the publisher opts in. The current deal would have allowed Google to use the material if the copyright owner did not "opt out" in time.

In just one day of availability, Mozilla's Firefox 4 has been downloaded 7.818 million times, and will break 8 million likely by the time this article is published.

Microsoft broadly boasted of 2.3 million Internet Explorer 9 downloads in the first 24 hours when it released its updated browser but it seems Mozilla has blown out that number.

You can check the Firefox download tracker here: http://glow.mozilla.org/?loc=interstitialskip

The browser adds App Tabs, better WebM and HTML5 support, "do-no-track" privacy, hardware acceleration and JavaScript improvements.

You can read more about the updates here at AfterDawn: Firefox 4 is here

Download Firefox 4 here: Mozilla Firefox 4 at AfterDawn

Following a two-week delay caused by the disaster that was the rollout of their February update, Windows Phone 7 users have begun receiving the long-awaited "NoDo" March update from Microsoft.

As part of the update, device owners will get copy and paste capability, CDMA support, Marketplace search and "performance tune-ups."

If you own a WP7 phone, the update began rolling out yesterday and it is unclear how long it will take to reach all customers. Your phone will show you a notification when the update is ready.

All future WP7 phones will have NoDo pre-installed.

Earlier in the week, Microsoft confirmed that the Marketplace had surpassed 10,000 apps, now sitting at just over 11,000.

Showtime and Netflix have agreed to a new content deal this week, restructuring the current deal which ends during the summer.

With the new deal, two of Showtime's most popular shows, "Dexter" and "Californication" will be removed from the streaming "Watch Instantly" catalog of Netflix.

Episodes of "current originals" will now be available through the channel's "authenticated broadband service" Showtime Anytime.

Not all is lost, however, as the deal will add "The Tudors," "Sleeper Cell" and other shows to Netflix.

Says the premium channel (via reuters):

Current and past seasons of our original series will be available to our authenticated subscribers via our TV Everywhere service Showtime Anytime. A number of Showtime original series will continue to be available and stream on Netflix, including 'The Tudors' and 'Sleeper Cell,' among others.

Netflix has just announced the purchase of their first original series, buying a full two seasons of the David Fincher directed drama "House of Cards."

T-Mobile USA has announced today that it will double the speed of its HSPA+ 4G network in New York, Las Vegas and Orlando, bringing the theoretical speed to 42Mbps, lightyears ahead of LTE and WiMax connections from Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.

Long Island, parts of New Jersey and Chicago will get the expansion soon.

By the start of the Q3 this year, T-Mobile says 140 million Americans in 25 markets will have access to the boosted speeds.

The carrier will offer 25 HSPA+ capable smartphones and tablets this year.

Earlier in the week, AT&T announced it would be purchasing T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, barring any regulatory setbacks, making it the only GSM carrier in the United States.

Opera has announced today that Opera Mobile 11 is now available for Android and Symbian/s60 smartphones.

Users can download the app from the Android Market or from m.opera.com.

The change log:

Features:

Heads up to current users: Tap to zoom has been changed from single-click to double-click. You can now click links and activate Flash content in overview mode, without having to zoom in first (yes, that's right, the Android version now supports Flash).

Modernized new user interface
New UI optimized for tablet devices
Faster framerates when panning and zooming
No checkerboard, ever
Text stays sharp during zooming
Improved text-wrap on zoom
Smart-tap, auto-zoom and highlights links if ambiguous link click
Incremental zooming for devices w/o multi-touch
Buttons for jumping to the top/bottom of the page
Haptic feedback (if supported in hardware)
Share URL on social networks, email etc
Improved Geolocation support
Session restore

Rendering
Presto 2.7.81
JIT for greatly improved Javascript performance (was supported in 10.1 on some Symbian devices)
Adobe Flash support (Android only, Flash player available separately in Android Market)
Click-to-play, load Flash content on demand only
Application Cache
WebStorage and WebDatabase
DOM touch and multi-touch events
HTML5 Audio/Video
Support for CSS @viewport
Improved support for meta viewport
Support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
Support for Arabic ligatures
Improved form fields skin

According to tweets from Eldar Murtazin, Nokia is already testing up to four Windows Phone 7 devices, each of which will be aimed at different markets.

Says Murtazin (via Soft):

Nokia R&D - 4 Windows Phone 7 and 1 tablet (Win8 presumably). 2 phones used chassis 1, 2 based on chassis 2 - like HTC Ignate (middle end).

Perhaps the most notable piece of the tweet is the speculation that Nokia is working on a Windows 8 tablet.

Chassis 1 devices will likely run on 1GHz processors, have 8GB internal storage and a 5MP camera. Chassis 2 devices will be lower-end, running on 800MHz processors, like the HTC Ignite.

It is still unclear when the first Nokia WP7 devices will hit the market, and at what price.