Multimedia October 31, 2005

Game maker Blizzard has been accused of spying on the four million players of World of Warcraft.

Net activists branded software used to spot cheats “spyware” because it gathers information about the other programs running on players’ PCs.
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Internet news

With cable providers and the Bell telephone companies dominating the market for residential high-speed Internet service, smaller Internet access providers are desperately trying to find a new way to connect with consumers.

They say they may have found it in wireless technology that avoids the need to build expensive underground networks.

The most prominent example is EarthLink, once a leader in dial-up Internet service. The company made a big leap into the wireless market this month when it won the right from Philadelphia to provide inexpensive Wi-Fi Internet connections citywide. Last week, the company also won an exclusive franchise to build a wireless network for the city of Anaheim, Calif. (more…)

Internet news

An additional 2.5 million U.S. shoppers will log on to the Net this holiday season to bring overall online sales revenue to more than $18 billion, according to a new prediction from Forrester Research. (more…)

Virus news October 30, 2005

A worm found spreading via America Online’s Instant Messenger is carrying a nastier punch than usual, a security company has warned. (more…)

Internet news

LG Electronics, South Korean maker of products from fridges to cell phones, said on Friday it had almost completely stopped selling tube TVs in the European market as it bets the future on thin televisions.

The firm is currently selling its remaining stock. In the future, it will restrict itself to the top end of the market for cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs, such as a new range of ultra-slim CRT TVs built with thinner glass tubes, LG Electronics’ European chief James Kim told Reuters in an interview. (more…)

Multimedia October 29, 2005

The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve more than double the number of calculations it can do a second. It reached 280.6 teraflops - that is 280.6 trillion calculations a second. (more…)

Internet news

Symantec on Monday plans to reintroduce @Stake’s services as Symantec Secure Application Services, just over a year after acquiring the security consulting and software company.

Key to the new launch is an effort to get customers to buy more than “penetration testing,” the testing of the security of software used by an organization. Penetration testing is the most commonly bought service offered by @Stake, Symantec said. (more…)

Internet news

Since its inception, Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” has gained more than 4 million subscribers, each of whom pay $15 a month for the privilege of running around slaying monsters and questing to find loot.

WoW, as it’s often called, is far from the only 3D online game with large numbers of players. Yet many such games struggle to succeed the way Wow has, and often end up repeating mistakes made by other game publishers. (more…)

Internet news

Robert Mason (not his real name) would love to spend a few minutes during lunch catching up on blog posts from around the web, but his company doesn’t allow it. The financial institution where Mason works as a vice president has security filters set up to block access to — among other things — any website that contains the phrase “blog” in the URL. (more…)

Security news October 28, 2005

The Anti-Spyware Coalition offered up standard guidelines on Thursday for detecting, rating and protecting against unwelcome programs that have plagued Internet users in recent years.

The group, composed of software companies and consumer advocates, also finalized its definition of spyware, veering little from the version it proposed in July. (more…)