HP puts speed bumps on viruses

Developers working in HP's research labs think they have come up with a way to slow down the spread of viruses, by detecting the speed at which they spread. Tony Redmond, HP's CTO, speaking at a security briefing said, 'Any worm of virus that depends on its ability to spread itself will be hurt by this technology.' Explaining how the system, tentatively named Virus Throttler, detects a virus type attack, Redmond said, 'A rogue process such as a worm or virus tends to be making the same type of connection at a much more frequent pace. ...more

EU reaches compromise on mobile roaming charges

Telecoms operators may get a summer reprieve, worth hundreds of millions of euros in revenue this year, under a compromise proposal on mobile phone roaming charges put forward by EU lawmakers on Thursday. The final compromise, backed by all factions in the European Parliament, would give the telecoms industry three months' grace before EU-wide caps on charges for cross-border mobile calls are automatically put in place, lawmakers said. The European Union legislature has been working out details of regulation with the executive European Commission and member states, but they failed to reach agreement in two days of talks and a vote scheduled for next week has been delayed. ...more

iTunes Bleeped out in Digital Music Awards

Lily Allen, Muse, Lemar and Radiohead's Thom Yorke were among the winners at the fifth BT Digital Music Awards 2006 in London last night. But iTunes was outgunned by a much smaller rival. Muse and Yorke each picked up two awards, though they missed out on the Best Official Website gong, which went to McFly. ...more

NEC transcends traditional PC processors

NEC has exhibited a laptop PC containing a 600MHz Crusoe processor, Transmeta's much-hyped mobile chip. The slimline (1in) LaVie MX mini notebook has a claimed battery life of 11 hours, as well as features including a 10.4in screen, 20Gb hard disk and 128Mb RAM. ...more

Advertising watchdog tells Microsoft to drop anti-Linux ad and seek help

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has turned its attention to Microsoft and its use of a graph that purported to show that running Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows. Under the heading 'Weighing the cost of Linux vs. Windows? Let's review the facts', a magazine advert compared the cost of 'One Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs' with 'One Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900MHz Intel Xeon CPUs'. ...more