John Lister

Prominent PC makers say Microsoft's warning that the recent MS Word injunction could cause the company and the industry "irreparable damage" is no hype after all. The claim comes as i4i makes it clear it won't be backing down in the fight to protect ... its patent. As reported yesterday , Microsoft is asking a court to overturn an order that it stop selling Word in its current form from October 12; it wants the order put on hold until the appeals process is complete. The firm says that the order would cause it "irreparable harm". That's not an understatement. The term "irreparable ... (view more)

The gang accused of one of the biggest online security heists ever have been indicted over the incident. The alleged ringleader, a government informant gone bad, has also been charged with other high-profile breaches. Albert Gonzalez was formally ... charged with breaking into the networks of payment processing firm Heartland Payment Systems, regional supermarket Hannaford Brothers, and three national retailers including 7-Eleven. His alleged loot from these attacks was 130 million credit and debit card numbers. Two other accomplices are listed in the indictment but not named, referred to only as ... (view more)

Facebook's purchase of a "social aggregation site" has prompted speculation that it may be planning to challenge Google's domination of the search market. The buyout of FriendFeed has been seen as the first step in an attempt to improve search ... through social networking. FriendFeed is a site which allows users to bring together information from their accounts with around 60 websites. These include social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, plus other services which have user accounts, including YouTube, Flickr and Amazon. As well as bringing together the user's own information from ... (view more)

Microsoft has been accused of failing to do enough to prevent rogue pharmaceutical ads on the results page of its new search engine, Bing. But the claim comes in a report from a group with a clear commercial interest and uses language which gives a ... misleading impression. The authors of the report searched Bing for ten pharmaceutical products, covering a mix of drugs for sexually-related conditions and drugs with the potential to be abused. They then looked at the "sponsored search results" which appear on the right-hand side of the screen. According to the authors, 89.7% of the drug providers ... (view more)

Though it's been out of the headlines for some time, the Conficker virus is alive and well. Researchers say it appears the virus has kept working despite little if any attention from its creators. According to Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure, one of the ... firms investigating the virus, there are still more than 5.5 million computers infected by Conficker, with Brazil, Vietnam and China particularly affected. That may be because computer owners there are less likely to be able to afford security software and more likely to be running pirated copies of Windows which are less likely to update Microsoft ... (view more)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has quit the Apple board. His resignation came after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began investigating why Apple refused to carry a Google program in its app store. Schmidt's departure comes four months after ... another government agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), began probing his role on the board . A 1914 antitrust law bans people from sitting on the boards of rival companies if they compete with one another. That was becoming more and more problematic as Google moved into its own browser and being heavily involved in the open source operating ... (view more)

A British newspaper claims Apple ordered a customer whose iPod exploded to keep quiet about it. The Times says the company refused to refund the customer unless they signed a confidentiality agreement. Ken Stanborough one day found his daughter's ... iPod overheating to the point when he could no longer hold it. He threw it from his back door and within 30 seconds it exploded and flew "10 feet in the air." He contacted both the retailer where he bought the device, Argos, and Apple itself. Eventually he received a letter from Apple offering him a full refund but denying any liability. The letter ... (view more)

Microsoft announced a couple of weeks ago that some retail stores would be opening "right next door to Apple stores" this fall. At the time it wasn't clear if this was a deliberate strategy or merely a coincidence. That said, Microsoft has announced ... the locations for its first two retail stores: one will be located in The Shops at Mission Viejo, California and the other in Fashion Square in Scottsdale, Arizona. The California location already has an Apple store, though with two floors and more than a million square feet of store space in the mall, the Microsoft outlet won't necessarily be a ... (view more)

Security researchers have demonstrated how both Windows Mobile and iPhone handsets can be hacked simply be sending a text message. It's also emerged that a flaw in the way secure websites worked could cause problems for Firefox users. The news comes ... from the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, where it's joked that "black hat" hackers find these issues for criminal reasons, while "white hat" hackers are merely trying to improve security. However, it's generally understood that those who speak at the conference do so to highlight problems rather than exploit them. SMS from a SOB ... (view more)

Apple is trying to make it more attractive for iTunes shoppers to buy full albums rather than just single tracks. The plan involves giving customers additional electronic material to simulate the experience of owning a physical product, like a CD. ... Codenamed 'Cocktail,' Apple's scheme reportedly has the support of all four major record labels. It would mean album buyers not only received electronic copies of album covers, liner notes, lyrics lists and other printed material, but that there'd be some degree of interactivity -- for example, by having the track listing act as a menu. (Source: ... (view more)