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

Rambus wins Supreme Court battle with Infineon

I/O systems developer Rambus Inc has won the final legal battle in its long running dispute with Infineon. The United States Supreme Court has turned down Infineon's appeal against the ruling made in the Federal Courts confirming RAMBus's ownership of memory patents. The Supreme Court also turned down Infineon's claims that Rambus's patents infringe the open standards set by the electronics industry trade body the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). ...more

Googlewhacking wildfire

Some people have obviously got too much time on their hands - and those are the people indulging in the new 'sport' of Googlewhack. The aim of the game is to enter two words into the Google search engine and come up with just one result from Google's archive of more than three billion Web pages. Sadly the game even has rules and a scoring system, which makes 'epigone groundhog' the highest scoring combination yet. ...more

Dell delivers AMD-based Inspiron 1501

Hot on the heels of news that Dell has teamed up with AMD to deliver a business-oriented Latitude notebook, the computer giant has mirrored its actions for the consumer and small business arena. The Inspiron 1501, which comes in a silver and white coat, comes with up to 2GB of shared DDR2 memory and a hard drive with up to 80GB storage capacity. It is the first entry-level notebook to feature a standard three-in-one media card to enable users to more easily transfer their MP3 or photos digitally from their original location. ...more

AOL Broadband to sell on high street

People wishing to sign up to AOL's broadband offering can now get it through their local Carphone Warehouse or Comet. Available through all the Comet stores and selected Carphone Warehouse outlets, you can buy the ISP's "Easy-Install modem pack" for ?85 and save yourself the cost of the p&p which normally adds ?10. Customers will also need to sign a 12-month contract with AOL broadband at ?27. ...more