John Lister

Last week Google was fined $500 million for carrying illegal advertising for Canadian pharmaceutical exporters. Now, the lawyer who led the probe has made the shocking claim that Google chief Larry Page explicitly knew about and ignored the ... advertisements. Google's $500 million fine not only covered the profits it made from running the ads, but also the money the advertisers are estimated to have made from selling the drugs to US customers. Those sales are illegal because of Food ... (view more)

There are reports that Microsoft is about to hand out an ultra-portable computer running Windows 8 and containing a quad-core processor. If true, it could serve as a very effective way of promoting the new system on portable devices. The rumors ... center on BUILD, a Microsoft event that takes place in California in September designed to help both hardware and software developers work better with Windows. The event also serves as a source of feedback for Microsoft about how it could improve the operating system (OS), including those still in development. This year's event is going to be built ... (view more)

Google has agreed to pay a penalty of $500 million for carrying advertising from Canadian pharmacies that illegally offer drugs to US customers. The fine will allow the company to avoid criminal charges over the issue. It is illegal to ship drugs ... into the US from outside the country as such medicines -- even when they are prescription drugs -- are not verified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the case of Canadian distributors, drugs shipped overseas also evade local regulation. In some cases such drugs may have been made outside of North America and have had no quality controls. ... (view more)

A Pennsylvania lawyer has been suspended after blaming a video game addiction for sloppy work. His actions, or lack of them, led to seventeen separate complaints from clients. Matthew Eshelman of Carlisle, Pennsylvania was disciplined by the state's ... Supreme Court Disciplinary Board, which regulates lawyers. It voted to suspend his license for three years; this was reduced from an initial recommendation for a five-year ban because board members felt Eshelman had originally been a skilled lawyer and should be able to return to this level of performance once he dealt with personal problems. ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 8 will include support for a smartphone-like "app store". But it's not yet clear what the implications will be for app developers. The app store is simply a central marketplace through which users can purchase ... software and then have it automatically installed on a device like a PC. The term app store was made popular on smartphones, most notably the Apple iPhone. (Source: sfgate.com ) Although leaked screenshots of Windows 8 suggested such a feature was on the way, Microsoft has now all but made that certain. It's published a list of the teams it has ... (view more)

There have been numerous reports of children being bullied by classmates through online services. But now it appears that teachers are suffering similar treatment. New research by Professor Andy Phippen of Plymouth University in the United Kingdom ... found that 35 per cent of those questioned had suffered online abuse -- most notably in the form of online verbal attacks (also known as "cyber bullying"). Though the research noted that 60 per cent of the victims were female, around 70 per cent of all teachers are women, meaning the figures show men were slightly more likely to be ... (view more)

Microsoft is offering a huge reward to encourage tech savvy users to come up with new security ideas for its operating system. The company is running a contest for users to create "a novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the ... exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities." Put in simple terms, that means the winning entries have to halt malware that takes advantage of exploits in computer memory. An exploit of this nature is an extremely common source of security breach. It works by taking advantage of the fact that computer memory is used to serve multiple programs, often ... (view more)

Cable TV network Cinemax has launched a streaming video app on the iPad that has raised questions about whether the company's more risque content violates Apple's strict rules about mature subject matter. The app is an iPad version of the Cinemax ... "Max Go" website that allows subscribers to the TV channels to watch movies on the Apple device. It includes a special section known as "After Dark" that includes content normally restricted to late-night viewing on the channels that, although not explicit, is certainly suggestive and contains images. Two of the prominent movies available ... (view more)

The PC is 30 years old this month. But IBM, the company that established the system, believes the PC will soon be outdated. Until 1981, the "personal computer" was simply another term, like microcomputer, for any machine that was small enough and ... cheap enough that consumers could own one at home rather than it being a purely business tool. At the time, there were many different architectures for computers, meaning rival models weren't just different in design, but were largely incompatible. IBM's 5150 machine, however, changed all that. Also known as the IBM Personal Computer, the ... (view more)

Hackers calling themselves members of the Anonymous group claim they intend to take down Facebook on November 5th, 2011. The threat was originally made in a video posted on YouTube several weeks ago, which now has more than a million viewers. Those ... who posted the video have since attempted to get other members of Anonymous to back the attack. The video clip complains about Facebook's handling of personal data and its lack of privacy controls. It also attacks the site for allegedly handing over information to governments in the Middle East and North Africa. (Source: youtube.com ) It's ... (view more)