Apple sued over iPods damaging hearing

A Louisiana man has filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging that his iPod damaged his hearing. John Kiel Patterson claims that iPods are 'inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss'. He is seeking damages and wants the court to force Apple to make changes to make iPods 'safer'. ...more

Zindos enters MyDoom backdoor to attack Microsoft

Within hours of MyDoom-O, a new virus that infects through a backdoor installed by MyDoom-O is seeking out compromised computers as a springboard to launch a denial of service attack against Microsoft's website. While MyDoom-O was carried via email and relied on the victim executing the attachment, this latest virus - Zindos-A - doesn't need such a vector to transmit itself. Instead it scans IP addresses for systems already infected with MyDoom-O. ...more

Microsoft to cut costs and reduce perks to increase profits and boost share price

In his annual email to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer outlined how the company is about to get tough on selling, saving and pulling the nose up on its stock price. He noted that although Redmond was outpacing its key competitors, the company stock price has changed little since 1998. With more threats and opportunities than ever facing the company it is time to ring the changes - starting with a $1bn cost-cutting exercise. ...more

BMG trials new CD copy protection

Music giant BMG, the US subsidiary of Bertelsmann, is testing a new form of DRM in the US. The technology will be trialled on a new CD called `Comin' From Where I'm From` by Anthony Hamilton (no we haven't heard of him either). The new CD will contain two copies of each song. ...more

Sharp shows off the Zaurus

The next-generation Zaurus handheld computer is a PDA with amazing multimedia capabilities. We first previewed the Zaurus a month ago, but now we have a few more details. Like so many other PDAs on the market, the Zaurus MI-E1 has a built-in MPEG4 video player that allows you to store up to two hours of video onto a 64Mb memory card - but don't get too excited, at the moment the Zaurus can only handle video footage at 10fps and the image size is quarter of that of a standard TV frame. ...more