Google buys the Earth

Search engine Google is continuing its flurry of activity by announcing that it has bought the Silicon Valley digital mapping company, Keyhole Corp. No details of the deal have been released. The Keyhole software claims it offers a 3D digital model of the entire earth via the Internet. ...more

Anti piracy organisation wound up

One of the shadowy companies that engaged in the war against the illegal p2p networks has closed down. LoudEye Corporation has announced that it has closed down the Overpeer 'content protection' subsidiary in order to 'to focus its business and reduce its cost structure'. It has been well known for years that both the MPAA and the RIAA employed companies which engaged in 'dirty tricks' on peer to peer web sites such as flooding them with worthless MP3s or even, it has been rumoured, funnelling adware onto the networks. ...more

Apple releases iPod shuffle reset utility

Apple has released a reset utility that addresses four potential problems with first-generation 512MB and 1GB iPod shuffles. The software fixes the following: with the iPod shuffle switched on, pressing the Play button will cause amber and green LEDs to flash for a few seconds, and the unit will not play any music, nor can you sync music to it from iTunes; on a Windows PC, iPod shuffle will appear in My Computer as a 'Removable Disk', but the iPod shuffle volume will not mount correctly; on a Mac, the unit will only be recognised in Apple System Profiler under Hardware>USB and will not appear or mount in the Finder; when attempting to restore, the unit may not be recognised at all and if it is (possibly after several minutes), the restore may fail with an error dialog 'Firmware update failure. Disk write error' or another error - it may take three restore attempts before the error appears. ...more

InfoSec 2004: Virus problems fixed in 500KB

The anti-virus industry is due for a major shake-up, if the claims of one Nick Scales, CEO of Avecho are to be believed. In fact, so confident is he that his anti-virus products are bullet-proof, Avecho offers a full refund if a virus gets through. The secret sauce is contained within 500KB in silicon - the result of a Eureka moment in the shower, says Scales - called Glasswall. ...more

Microsoft faces anti-trust set-back

The nine US states seeking the imposition of tougher anti-trust penalties against Microsoft received a boost yesterday when the case's presiding judge ruled that they could present a modular version of Windows to the court. The states are arguing that Microsoft should be forced to develop a modular version of Windows that will allow other developers to substitute their own applications in place of Microsoft 'middleware' such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. Microsoft has argued that such a sanction would prove difficult if not impossible to implement, would confuse customers and would not work the same way, or as well as, the current all-in versions of Windows. ...more