Apple v Apple ruling on the way

The judge in the Apple v Apple trademark dispute will give his ruling next week. iPod-owning Mr Justice Anthony Mann has to decide whether Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store breaches an agreement with The Beatles' Apple Corps over the use of the apple brand for music-related activities. Should Apple Corps win it can expect a substantial damages payment from Apple Computer, which has sold more than one billion songs through the iTunes service. ...more

US Govt says info request 'would crash computers'

The Bush administration is refusing to agree to a request to hand over information recording activities of foreign lobbyists to a journalist. A somewhat red-faced Department of Justice wrote back to say that copying the database would crash the system. In a letter to the Centre for Public Integrity, which made the request, Thomas McIntyre of the Justice Department which handles such requests wrote that because the department had 'experienced substantial problems with the current system, implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating. ...more

There's life in the old Atari

You can be sure that you'll find computers in some odd places, but it comes as an even bigger surprise when you find an odd computer in a regular place. A modern hospital is a place where you'd expect to find loads of computer equipment, but prepare to set your faces to stunned after a visit to the Web site here. It details how one Czech Republic hospital is using an old Atari 800XL in the children's cardiocenter. ...more

Palmsource sells ebook business

PalmOS developer, PalmSource, is to sell its 'Palm Digital Media' division to Palm retailer PalmGear. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the deal PalmGear gets some 10,000 e-book titles from 75, mostly US, publishers such as Harper Collins, Time Warner Books and Penguin US. ...more

Legal music downloads triple in popularity

Legal music downloads tripled in the first half of 2005, while the level of unauthorised file sharing remains flat, despite extensive efforts to suppress it. The latest figures from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) show that 180 million downloads were sold in the first six months of this year, more than three times the 57 million figure for the first half of 2004. The total number of downloads, so far, for 2005 is already in excess of the total for the whole of last year, 157 million. ...more