A deafening silence for the iPod in France

iPod goes all the way up to 11 on the volume settings, it seems. Apple Computers has had to take its iPod portable music player off the shelves of French shops while it finds a way of bringing its top volume below that of the 100dB limit set by the French government. Apple reckons the two week hiatus should be long enough for it to make the player safe for the French to use. ...more

Nokia phones struck by Skulls virus

Finnish security company F-Secure says it has received reports of Nokia phone users being infected with the Skulls virus - an attack that replaces all of the icons for the operating system with images of skulls that, if clicked on, lead nowhere. Indeed the Skulls virus is a Trojan that will render the Symbian operating system, used on Nokia's high-end smartphones, useless. It is billed as a Trojan as it purports to be a theme manager for the Nokia 7610, and so might tempt victims into installing it believing they are giving their phone a new look. ...more

Toshiba spins 100GB 1.8in hard disk drive

Toshiba has donned the laurels, proclaiming itself the first to bring out a 100GB 1.8in hard disk drive. Brandishing the snappy appellation MK1011GAH, the disk uses two platters and has seek times rated around 15ms. ...more

CeBIT 2007: Samsung hails exclusive six screen technology

Samsung has announced its first ever multi-monitor hardware at CeBIT 2007. While manufacturers such as Matrox produce products like the TripleHead2Go, which appears to a PC as simply one, very large resolution screen, Samsung's solution uses USB to daisy-chain up to six monitors together. The final monitor in the chain connects to the PC's USB socket, as opposed to the traditional D-SUB or DVI interface. ...more

Microsoft to fix .wmf Windows flaw

Microsoft says it has come up with a fix for the vulnerability exposed in the graphics rendering engine between Christmas and the New Year. As we reported yesterday a new strain of virus has appeared which means that a specially designed Windows Metafile (wmf) could be used to gain access to a machine and take control. The situation is worsened by the fact that source code for the exploit has been published on the Internet and that the virus changes itself when it replicates, making it harder for it to be detected by traditional signature-based security software. ...more