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Ars Tehnica reports that Romanian antivirus makers BitDefender, along with many others, may find themselves in a spot of hot water over Microsoft's recently granted patent no.7376970 which apparently describes the workings of a pro-active heuristic antivirus operating in a virtual environment.
The patent was filed in the name of one Adrian Marinescu, who came to Microsoft as a result of the deal by which Microsoft acquired the antivirus division of Gecad, another Romanian company. Only time will tell if Microoft intends to use this patent offensively or defensively.
Prior art, anyone?

The lander is a $420 million dart.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070201_phoenix_update.html

The dart was thrown at a dartboard which is unmarked. There may or may not be a bullseye on the dartboard -- we're not sure, hence why we're throwing darts at it -- but we're not exactly sure what would consitute a bullseye.

The dart throwers, in our funny dart game, do not declare certain scores for outcomes in advance and then evaluate the dart based on the outcome of throwing it. Rather, they will get the results back and then score them, based on criteria which are based on caprice and whimsy cloaked in a thin veneer of "its scientific, if you criticize us you must be against science".

I'll spoil it for you: the conclusion will be, inevitably, that this $420 million dart was "a learning experience" (a wonderful phrase, because it is true by definition and means the dart can literally never fail, because we'd learn something even if the dart crash-landed into the dartboard as darts are wont to do), but that we need to throw more and more expensive darts. Why are we throwing darts? Well, there might be a bullseye out there... and you DO support science, right?

Personally I hope they hit the FSM's Noodly Appendage one of these times. That would be kind of cool. Granted, it doesn't exist, but I've got as much reason to believe in it as I do to believe in any of the things that could plausibly be called a bullseye.

KrispyKofta writes "It's hard to believe no-one has thought of this before. Finnish firm Joikusoft has created software that turns your Nokia Series 60 phone into a WiFi router. This removes the need for finnicky laptop Bluetooth configurations or USB cables when using your mobile as a modem, and it also makes it easy to share the connection among friends/family. The rising speed of mobile data connections — through HSDPA or EV-DO — should make mobile phones ideal wireless routers (CPU power permitting!)"
http://apcmag.com/7978/turn_your_nokia_smartphone_into_a_wi_fi_hotspot

Apparently, Romanian console gamers are being punished for the deeds of Romanian card fraudsters by being denied access to the online stores and other for-pay online services of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft alike. This (unstated) policy has drawn the ire of the Romanian gaming community, which is looking to the EU for redress.

BSA gives its definition of 'success'

The BSA claims its month-long campaign to clamp down on software piracy in Glasgow is a “major success” – despite uncovering just 41 possible pirates after haranguing thousands of businesses by letter.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/02/07/bsa_claims_glasgow_piracy_success/

An anonymous reader writes "Among computer enthusiasts, there is no such thing as too much performance. With regard to the review sample that Intel sent us, we can honestly say that no other system that has passed through our lab has ever provided this much performance... The Skulltrail system consists of eight physical processor cores that can be (over)clocked at speeds up to 4 GHz... a quad-channel memory interface and four PCI-Express slots. Each of the PEG slots has a full 16 lanes at its disposal."
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/06/intel_skulltrail_part_1/

BD+ content is here now and causing headaches for customers, just as expected. The WSJ reports that older Blu-Ray Players made by Samsung and others can't play new Fox content which includes BD+ copy protection "features". It's nice to see the WSJ taking notice.

rpseguin writes "We are working on a mission where we will get 2-4 terabytes (TB) of data per day, and we'd like to have a "cache" (full archive will be 5+ petabytes) of at least 100TB(prefer 300 or more TB). We do not need to back up the data, as it will all be archived by another site with full redundancy for all stages and offsite backup as well. Our copy will simply be a streaming cache.
Client machines will be unixy machines (Linux, OS/X, Solaris, ...).

We already have some quotes for some setups, which we are prepared to purchase, but just throwing this out there to get suggestions. We prefer to get the most bang for our buck and avoid costly, complicated systems.

One idea that came to mind was to simply have a cluster of unix boxes, each with a RAID stripe or Xserve RAID on the order of 10TB or larger.

Suggestions?"

ceeam writes "AMD promised to open source their video drivers. More details here"

Low birth rates are causing alarm in many developed countries, but Denmark bucks the trend with its high use of artificial reproductive technologies

http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=af8c4eda6effdf00d96795d4cb38ba3b

According to the Register and Sunbelt Software, Microsoft's malware problems continue. Malware authors are manipulating Live Search results:

Here's one place where the software juggernaut's offering leads the pack: referrals for sites that actively try to infect end users' machines with some of the vilest malware known to man. ... Sunbelt blogged here about the sludge fest two weeks ago, but Live.com has continued to spew the noxious results unabated. Google and Yahoo long ago managed to filter most of the same sites from their returns. "I don't think it was very responsible to keep these malware sites up for so long," says Francesco Benedini, a spyware researcher at Sunbelt. "I'm not saying Google and Yahoo! don't have a problem, but it's much more invasive on Live.com."

As usual, Microsoft says everyone else has the same problems when they don't really. I probably don't have to worry because I use Debian, but prefer Google anyway.

mijkal writes "YouTube has told atheist member Nick Gisburne that he is now permanently banned from the site. This stems from his posting of a video slideshow of quotes from the Quran. Originally YouTube said it was because of 'inappropriate content', but now it has changed its story and is claiming copyright infringement because it has a soundtrack (nevermind that hundreds of lip-synch videos as well as official music videos readily available on YouTube). Had Nick known this was the reason to begin with (YouTube admits it made a mistake), he wouldn't have reposted the video (or encouraged others to do the same). YouTube has decide to evoke the DMCA and its '3 strikes' policy, and is trying to reassure us all that the content has nothing to do with the banning of a certain unnamed account, but rather because of recurring copyright infringement. YouTube is also covering its tracks by changing the reason the videos were removed. All of his videos from all of his accounts have been removed, and anyone who's spent some time on YouTube and seen Nick's videos should clearly see this policy is not routinely executed, so why is Gisburne being unfairly targeted here? Given the context, it seems Gisburne is being treated rather harshly by the YouTube censors. (And just to nip this in the bud, yes, YouTube has the right to censor; and we all have the right to call YouTube on it when we feel its unfair and YouTube can change its policy or we can move on; no one's equating this with government censorship.)"

Slinky Sausage writes "One for the "can't imagine Google ever doing this" files... Microsoft has admitted to and apologised for serving malware via its Windows Live Messenger software and MSN website network.

The Windows-only malware slipped under the radar disguised as a banner ad. Microsoft has now pledged to review its processes for accepting advertising to ensure other undesirables don't use Microsoft ad space for malware distribution.

APCMag.com has screenshots of the malware download in action."