John Lister

Motorola has won a court ruling that bans the distribution of most major Microsoft products in Germany. However, it's not yet clear if the landmark ban will actually be enforced. A German court granted Motorola an injunction covering distribution of ... Windows 7, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and the Xbox 360 video game console in that country. If the ban is ever enforced, it would prevent those software and hardware products from being sold in Germany -- presumably until the patent dispute between Microsoft and Motorola is finally settled. However, a U.S. court has issued a ruling ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has hired a high-profile lawyer to work on its antitrust investigation into Google's search activity. The hiring may signal FTC expectations the probe will result in a major court case. The FTC has its own in-house ... legal team, and rarely hires an outside lawyer for such work. It has reportedly happened just twice in the past decade. Ironically, one of the more memorable times the FTC hired outside legal help was in the late 1990s, when the agency took legal action against Microsoft over claims it exploited its dominance of the PC market. The new hire this ... (view more)

A recent report concerning Google's unauthorized collection of data from wireless networks has raised new questions about the company's behavior. Curiously, though, Google itself has released the report. Google had been accused of foul play after ... inadvertently collecting personal data from people's home WiFi networks. The problem stems from the company's vehicles which, busy taking photographs for its Street View maps system, also scanned for local networks. The networks were to be part of a database intended to aid Google's navigational offerings to consumers. A year-long investigation by ... (view more)

An international law enforcement effort has taken down 36 websites allegedly responsible for selling stolen credit card information. In Europe, three men were arrested over claims they bought and sold the personal data. The operation was led by the ... United Kingdom's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The two agencies oversaw raids in the UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine and Australia. Officials say they have been working on the case for two years. The three dozen disabled websites were allegedly offering packages ... (view more)

In a recent blog post, Google gives interested users a glimpse into some of the tools it uses to make sure ads for bogus products and services don't show up on its sites. The company is also trying to direct more attention toward genuine advertisers ... who have proven to be trustworthy and reliable. These revelations came after a company blog post was written by David Baker, who is in charge of the engineering side of Google's advertising business. Google: Three-Pronged Approach Highly Effective Baker's post explained that Google looks for signs of bad advertisements on three levels. (Source: ... (view more)

The good news: Philips has launched a brand new light bulb designed to last for 20 years or more and save hundreds of dollars in electricity charges before needing replacement. The bad news: The bulb carries a retail price tag of $60. The new ... Philips bulb is a prime example of alternative energy-saving technology that wallops the inefficiency of today's conventional but popular devices. The reason: Traditional light bulbs work by heating a thin metal filament inside a glass bulb. While this produces light from the glowing filament, it also wastes a lot of the energy. In fact, conservationists ... (view more)

More spam emails come from India than any other country, according to a pair of new reports from separate, reputable sources. SophosLabs has issued a report saying that 9.3 per cent of all spam messages transmitted in the first quarter of 2012 were ... relayed through India before arriving in people's inboxes. The firm lists the United States in second place with 8.3 per cent of spam, and South Korea in third at 5.7 per cent. (Source: sophos.com ) In a separate report on the same subject covering the same time period, security firm Trend Micro also put India in first place, but attributing 20 per ... (view more)

A new report indicates that Apple's next iPhone could be scratch-proof and resistant to damage inflicted from drops and other heavy-handed physical abuse. The damage-resistant technology is said to be exclusively licensed to Apple for use in ... consumer electronics, but so far the company hasn't used it widely. The material is known by the brand name 'Liquidmetal'. It's the result of pioneering work by researchers at the California Institute of Technology. (Source: liquidmetal.com ) Liquidmetal: Similar To Both Glass and Plastic Liquidmetal is a blend of several different metals thought to ... (view more)

The company that publishes "For Dummies" books is taking to court the people it accuses of pirating its titles and releasing the content via BitTorrent. This could be the first time an American jury has considered a case involving BitTorrent users. ... BitTorrent is a technology for sharing large files, legally and illegally. It involves breaking down a file into hundreds of small pieces and downloading the pieces from many different sources, all at once. The method allows a computer to obtain different pieces of the same file in any convenient sequence, making the transfer process much quicker ... (view more)

Environmental organization Greenpeace has issued a widespread warning about the technology used to host the Internet. According to Greenpeace, much of the online space is dependent on 'dirty' power. The group says that some of the largest web firms ... are intentionally moving their servers and other power-hungry facilities to geographical areas that can provide cheaper, although more environmentally harmful sources of electricity. The criticisms were recently published in a report titled: "How Clean Is Your Cloud?" The title is a reference to the current emphasis on cloud computing , ... (view more)