Microsoft puts a price on virus writers' heads

Microsoft has announced it will offer $250,000 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the authors of the SoBig and Blaster viruses. The announcement came as part of a $5mn fund given to US and EU law enforcement agencies to help them crack down on those responsible for creating the swathe of worms and other malicious programs that have exploited flaws in Microsoft products this year. Indeed the Blaster worm was configured to launch a denial of service attack against windowsupdate. ...more

Users rate Nildram top broadband ISP

Nildram has been rated the UK's top broadband ISP, according to the first 'league table' of ADSL users' own ratings. ADSL Guide has collected over 200,000 ratings by its readers and found that the smaller ISPs' services have proved much more satisfactory than those from the big names. So while Virgin, Demon, BT, AOL, NTL, Freeserve and Tiscali occupy the bottom half the top 15, the list is headed by Nildram, Zen, Eclipse and Plus Net. ...more

Creative inspires upgrades

The complete audio set-up out of the box. Creative Labs is combining its Inspire 5.1 5300 speaker system with its SoundBlaster Audigy Player PCI add-in sound card in a bundle priced at ?149. ...more

Next-gen OpenOffice makes beta 2 available

Open-source office suite developer Openoffice.org has released beta 2 of the software, incorporating bug fixes and Windows compatibility improvements. Among the improvements over the previous beta, Openoffice highlights GUI support for XSLT-based filters; enhanced OLE editing support on Windows; support for printer-independent layout; improvements to PDF export and a raft of bug-fixes. ...more

AMD struggles to halt decline

AMD blames weak PC market demand for poor financial figures. Once again AMD has seen mobile phone-driven success for Flash memory products, but once again this is not enough to offset the harsh conditions for the PC microprocessor market. Recording a net loss of $254. ...more