UK games chart: Mini revival for Halo 2

It's very much 'as you were' for this week's ELSPA UK games chart - we are still in the shadow of Christmas. For the top five there is little movement, except that Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 4 inches in at number five, swapping places with Ubi Soft's Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas continue to top of the pile The major mover and shaker is Microsoft's Xbox console game Halo 2 (pictured), which jumps back in to the top twenty. ...more

Apple's main music player rival stumbles

One of Apple's main rivals in the portable music market has seen its quarterly profits fall despite a 50 per cent revenue rise. Creative, which makes the MuVo and Zen players, put the profit drop down to heavy marketing spending as the company tried to weaken Apple's dominant position in the hard drive-based player market. According to some estimates, nine out of every ten such players sold in the US is an iPod. ...more

Open-source rivals isolate Novell

Novell is becoming increasingly isolated as its open-source rivals speak out to distance themselves from the pact it made with Microsoft. In an open letter, the company's CEO Ron Hovsepian outlined Novell's insistence that the patent covenant between it and Microsoft was in no way an admission that Linux infringes Microsoft's IP, and pointed out its continuing efforts in the open-source community. Hovsepian said that its help in founding the Open Innovation Network (OIN), a body tasked with acquiring patents for the good for the open-source community was a case in point. ...more

Cisco targets small businesses security

Network giant Cisco is attacking the SMB sector with its latest dedicated product line. Aimed at companies with between 20 to 250 staff, the Cisco Business Communications Solution will allow SMBs to deploy secure and manageable network and communications services. The system is based around the Cisco Catalyst Express 500 switch and the IP Communications Express Solution, which includes Cisco CallManager Express and Cisco Unity Express within the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR). ...more

Exploit revealed for MS vulnerability

Security firm Immunity says it has discovered a way to exploit a vulnerability exposed in last Tuesday's Microsoft security update. The 'proof of concept' exploit means that it is much more likely that a potential hacker will write malicious code that could wreak havoc with unpatched systems. The exploit relates to the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MDTC), which is mostly used in database transactions, and principally affects users of Windows 2000. ...more