Peter Calveley is an actor who went through the motions to provide animation for the computer-generated orcs and elves in the “Lord of the Rings” film series. Last year, he generated a motion to have the Amazon one-click patent re-examined, and last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) agreed to have another look at the patentability of the controversial technology.

Source: newsforge

Tokyo Electric Power Company said that training data of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture has been leaked onto the Internet from its employee’s personal computer through Winny file-sharing software.

The employee took the data home on his personal computer, which was infected by a virus that caused the data to be leaked.

According to TEPCO the leaked information does not include key data on nuclear material or manuals on how to operate nuclear plants.

Security software maker Symantec Corp. accused Microsoft Corp. in a federal lawsuit Thursday of misappropriating its intellectual property and breach of contract.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop Microsoft from selling the next version of its Windows operating system.

The dispute is over a technology that allows operating systems to handle large amounts of data, which Symantec acquired the technology through its acquisition of Veritas Software Corp. last year.

Source: AP

Dell has done what many thought impossible and broken its Intel-only stance. The company today will announce that it will pick up AMD’s Opteron processor for use in servers, The Register has learned.

Imagine a Windows laptop that could boot up as much as 25 seconds more quickly than usual, last up to 30 minutes longer on battery power, and be as much as five times more reliable than existing PCs. That is Samsung’s vision for the value of its new Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), a next-generation drive that combines flash memory with traditional rotating magnetic storage.

The company announced the drive on Wednesday and will be showing it at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, Washington, next week.

Source: Yahoo

Viewers have watched ABC television shows available online about 3 million times since the Walt Disney Co. network launched the free service just over two weeks ago, Disney’s chief executive said on Thursday.

The figure provides an early sign of demand for television programs available on the Internet as broadcasters experiment with new ways of reaching viewers.

Source: Reuters

The problem comes when you type in “serverscheck.” The first suggested result is “serverscheck crack” and the following results contain phrases like “pro crack” and “keygen.” ServersCheck is a small Leuven-based company that is not pleased with the new feature; they argue that Google is contributing to the piracy of their products, and they want the company to strip out suggestions that might lead to such hacks. When Google refused to do so, ServersCheck filed suit against them in a Belgian court.

Google has apparently told the smaller company that the Suggest algorithm is not adaptable, and that it lacks the capacity to filter out particular terms. ServersCheck isn’t buying it, claiming that Google already does filter out some sexual keywords and other information.

Source: arstechnica

Sharman Networks - the big daddy behind the Kazaa P2P software - and its CEO have filed a lawsuit against the pro P2P news site P2Pnet.

“Sharman Networks Limited and Nikki Hemming have filed a libel lawsuit in the Supreme Court of British Columbia against Jon Newton of www.p2pnet.net,” the company said. “The Writ of Summons charges that Mr. Newton has published false and injurious statements which are calculated to damage Ms. Hemming and Sharman Networks.

Source: TheRegister

Microsoft also launched on Thursday a “Get Ready” Web site, which includes an Upgrade Advisor tool to help people determine just how Vista-ready an existing PC is.

To be classified as Vista-capable, a computer needs an 800MHz processor, 512MB of memory and a DirectX 9-capable graphics card. Premium Ready machines need a 1GHz processor, 128MB of graphics memory, 1GB of system memory, a 40GB hard drive and an internal or external DVD-ROM drive.

Source: News.com

AOL LLC, signaling the importance online video will play in drawing visitors to its ad-supported Web sites, has purchased a small company that specializes in inserting advertising into video clips.

With the technology from Lightningcast Inc., AOL would be able to run targeted ads within video and even change ads from time to time without replacing the entire video file. Lightningcast’s technology also can insert ads into audio clips.

Source: AP

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Whale Communications Ltd., a leading provider of secure access products, including secure sockets layer (SSL) virtual private networks (VPN) and Web application firewalls. Whale’s solutions provide remote access, deep content inspection and granular access control, enabling businesses to protect corporate applications and data when accessed remotely by mobile workers, partners and customers. The acquisition will give Microsoft’s customers a broader range of choices for providing secure access from more locations and devices.

Apple today released Final Cut Express HD 3.5, a significant upgrade to its video editing software.

New in Final Cut Express HD 3.5 is Dynamic RT for real-time playback of multi-stream effects, Soundtrack 1.5 with a complete suite of professional level audio production tools and LiveType 2.1 with even more exciting animated text and titles.