Magazine gives away human blueprint

Are you sick of all the usual magazine covermounts and giveaway? Don't despair as one magazine is giving away a CD-ROM of the human genome on its front cover. The political and cultural magazine Prospect will be featuring the CD-ROM containing the human genome information – a complete genetic blueprint of a human body. The disc was prepared by experts at the Sanger Centre research laboratory. ...more

The top UK computer offers this Christmas

We've asked computer makers around the country to come up with what they consider their best offers for desktop and laptop PCs over the festive season. The list isn't exhaustive, as some vendors simply haven't been able to respond by our deadline, but you'll surely find something worth getting you wallet out for. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here they are. ...more

Sony bids to be the Apple of digital movie downloads

Sony is hoping to recast itself as the Apple of digital movie downloads, a senior executive has told a Hollywood conference. 'We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like [Steve] Jobs did for music, but for the film industry,' said Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures. Sony will kick off its 'iMovie' (sorry, Apple's taken that name) ambitions by releasing 500 films next year in various formats and not soley through the Movielink venture that it co-owns. ...more

Universal targets YouTube

Universal Music appears to be sharpening its lawyers for a possible legal battle with the social networking sites YouTube and MySpace. Universal, which is also the world's largest music publisher, is reportedly concerned about its promotional music videos appearing on the sites. 'We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,' Universal Music CEO Doug Morris is reported to have told investors Wednesday. ...more

Donk-D network worm begins its rounds

The network worm and backdoor Trojan, Donk-D, has been reported in the wild, warns anti-virus company Sophos. Copying itself to network shares with weak passwords, it also attempts to spread by exploiting the now-familiar vulnerabilities in Windows RPCSS service - see also today's story New RPC flaw in Windows. This allows the worm to execute its code on target computers with System level priviledges, which was the flaw first addressed by Microsoft security bulletin MS03-026. ...more