Microsoft Corp. released on Friday the final test version of its upcoming Windows operating system and said the launch for the highly-anticipated upgrade is running on schedule.

Incorporating feedback from earlier test releases, the world’s largest software maker said it distributed Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, or RC2, for its testers to try.

“Microsoft expects the RC2 build to be the last interim release before the product is released to manufacturing,” the company said.

Source: Yahoo

Microsoft’s new operating system Vista will not make it more difficult for anti-virus systems to work, Russian computer security group and potential IPO candidate Kaspersky Lab said on Friday, contradicting rivals.

In an open letter this week, U.S. anti-virus provider McAfee

accused Microsoft of weakening users’ protection by no longer co-operating with computer security groups and denying them access to the core of the Vista system.

“From what we have seen of Vista we cannot tell that Microsoft is blocking access to the core,” Kaspersky Lab Chief Executive and co-founder Natalya Kaspersky told Reuters in an interview in Paris.

“It would not make any sense for them (Microsoft) to stop working with other computer security companies because it would make their system more vulnerable to attacks,” Kaspersky added.

Source: Reuters

Virus writers have crafted a malware threat that serves up expensive Google AdSense web pages related to mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

Industry workers affected by the disease have launched a series of lawsuits, a factor that means “ambulance chasing” lawyers pay through the nose to get a mention when searches for the term “mesothelioma” are made. The cost-per-click for the term “mesothelioma” is among the highest in the online ads business ranging from $4 to $13 and higher on various keyword bidding networks.

Source: The Register

Internet search leader Google Inc. is in talks to acquire the popular online video site YouTube Inc. for about $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Mountain View-based Google and San Mateo-based YouTube are still at a sensitive stage in the discussion, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

Source: AP

A Russian Internet site selling Western pop music at knock-down prices says it will continue its methods even though the United States says it is obstructing Russian accession to the World Trade Organisation.

As the troubled WTO negotiations continue, US negotiators have repeatedly returned to one issue: the worldwide music sales of Russian website allofmp3.com, which defended its conduct in an interview with AFP .

Publishers are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.’s online program that lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial plan to digitally scan everything in print.

Google has been enlisting publishers to voluntarily submit their books so that Web searchers can more easily find titles related to their interests, but some fear the project could lead to piracy or exploitation of their copyrighted content.

“Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,” said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

Source: Reuters

The DVD Forum, the organisation which oversees the DVD and HD DVD formats, looks set to introduce a region-coding system for the next-generation optical disc technology next year.

The moves was signalled in May this year, when the Forum set up a working group to “develop a specification and enforcement plan for RPC [Region Protection Coding] on HD DVD Video, including region map and requirements in consultation with the studios”.

Source: Reg Hardware

Japan’s Hitachi Ltd. said Friday that it plans to recall about 16,000 laptop battery packs made by Sony Corp., a company spokesman said, the latest in a massive global recall of the batteries that can overheat and catch fire.

The battery packs were installed in the company’s Flora 210W and Flora Se210 laptop personal computers for the Japanese market, Hitachi spokesman Masahiro Takahashi said.

Hitachi has not received any reports of problems with the batteries, the company said in a statement. It said it is undertaking the recall “for its customers’ peace of mind.”

Source: AP

Google on Thursday launched a notification service that makes it easier for blogger or blog-hosting services to notify the search engine of new blogs or changes to existing ones.

The pinging service is for people or organizations that want to have blogs crawled by Google and then updated on its blog search engine. Although Google monitors other pinging services, notifying the service directly could make it faster to get an update in the company’s index.

Source: InformationWeek