New virus peddles infection via foot fetish

Sophos has issued an alert for a new virus that encourages victims to visit websites where they may be subjected to images of women laughing. W32/Feet arrives as an email with the subject line 'Tickling Tickle Torture' and a similarly styled message, along with the attachment ticklish.vbs. ...more

Ex-Samsung execs charged with price fixing

A federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted two executives from Samsung and one executive from Hynix America as part of a world wide conspiracy to fix DRAM prices, the US Department of Justice has announced. In total, four companies and 16 individuals have been charged with fines totalling more that $731 million resulting from the Department's ongoing antitrust investigation into the DRAM industry. The $731 million in criminal fines is the second highest total obtained by the Department of Justice in a criminal antitrust investigation into a specific industry. ...more

AOL above-expectation results and under investigation

AOL Time Warner yesterday announced its second-quarter results, marginally beating analysts' expectations, along with a sting in the tail in the form of a 'fact-finding' investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the quarterly results, net income of $394m (compared with a loss of $734m for the corresponding quarter of the previous year) was driven by the traditional media of Time Warner: strong box office returns for feature films added to good figures from television, music, publishing and cable divisions. AOL on the other hand fared less well, with ad revenues down some 40 per cent and, more worrying, adding just 492,000 subscribers for the quarter. ...more

Compaq served with a $60m lawsuit

PC market leader Compaq has been served with a $60 million lawsuit, alleging patent infringements, which could also threaten Dell, HP and Apple. Six companies and an American college, Columbia University, have filed two suits, one in the US District Court in Delaware, and one in Germany, demanding that Compaq stop selling PCs which they claim use unlicensed MPEG 2 compression technology. The disputed MPEG 2 technology is used to decompress digital video accessed from DVD drives that ship with some Compaq PCs. ...more

NEC shows world's smallest mobile phone

One to make western gadget lovers turn green. NEC has unveiled its slim, card-shaped N900 phone (pictured, top). Promoted by the electronics giant as one of its flagship models, the card-shaped phone measures just 85mm (w) x 54mm (h) X 8. ...more