Ballmer's Asian IP warning set to backfire

When Steve Ballmer wants to make a stir he makes sure that he makes a big one. At the same venue where he spoke of Bill Gates receiving 4 million emails a day he also chose the meeting of Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore to spread another generous helping of fear, uncertainty and doubt about open source software. Citing a report published a few months ago, Ballmer said that Linux violates some 228 existing software patents. ...more

HP banks on Eastern promise for Linux PCs

HP is planning a summer launch of Linux PCs to the Far East The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said it had learned from the California-based company that it would launch desktops using the Open Source operating system into 12 Asian countries this June, including Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and India. Although the big US computer vendors have made it possible to buy their desktop hardware with the GNU/Linux operating system installed as an option, what is unusual is HP offering PCs with the platform pre-loaded. The operating systems and office applications will be bought from Japanese companies and the complete desktop will cost between ?220 and ?825, according to the report. ...more

International domains will not be rushed

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is refusing to rush the introduction of international domain names, despite political pressure to allow the use of non-Latin characters in website URLs. Speaking in Sydney, Australia, Paul Twomey, chief executive at the organisation which oversees the entire domain name structure, said that at the recent UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Greece ICANN had come under 'significant' pressure from the non-English speaking world. While accepting that 'we all want a multicultural Internet' he said nothing would be done before ICANN has completed its exhaustive testing. ...more

Media Player exploit found on the Internet

Barely two days after Microsoft's release of its February security patches, code has been found on the Internet that could be used to exploit one of the critical vulnerabilities patched. On Tuesday, Microsoft released code to patch a flaw in the way its Media Player and Windows and MSN Messenger services handled the PNG image format. An attacker could take advantage of the flaw in Media Player by persuading a victim to click on a link in a specially-built web page or email. ...more

Channel4 launches music service

Channel4 has joined the ever lengthening list of music download services, selling around 350,000 songs plus exclusive live sets from its T4 programmes. The Web-based service sells 192Kbps rights-managed WMA files at industry-average prices - generally 79p for a single track, ?7.99 for an album, though there is some variation. ...more