Listening to loud music with earphones on a digital music player for more than 90 minutes a day can damage your hearing, according to a new U.S. study.

The study of 100 doctoral students concluded that people who listened to music at 80 percent of volume capacity, at which point the sound is considered loud, should stick to under 90 minutes a day.

Source: Yahoo

Yahoo Inc. has begun shipping its previously delayed upgrade to the Web search advertising system that will help it compete with rival Google Inc and expects to begin selling ads on the system early next year, the company’s CEO said on Tuesday.

“Starting today, we’ve begun inviting advertisers in the U.S. to upgrade to the new campaign management application,” Terry Semel told investors on a conference call following the Internet media company’s third-quarter results.

Source: Reuters

Apple recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left the manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus.

This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far Apple have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free.

Source: Apple

Wired News editor and former hacker Kevin Poulsen wrote a 1,000-line Perl script that checked MySpace for registered sex offenders. Sifting through the results, he manually confirmed over 700 offenders, including a serial child molester in New York actively trying to hook up with underage boys on the site, and who has now been arrested as a result

Source: Slashdot

Microsoft has agreed to provide code so that software companies can provide their own security add-ons to its Vista operating system.

Rivals had previously complained they were locked out from the security system for Vista.

Experts warned the lack of access increased the risk of malicious hacks and viruses.

The u-turn has been welcomed although the timeline for the provision of data is still being hammered out.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said it would deliver it “today, Seattle time, not Rome time”.

Source: BBC

McAfee, the US security software firm, has stumped up $20m cash for Onigma, a developer of data theft monitoring software.

This will form the basis of McAfee Data Loss Prevention, a new host-based service helping enterprises to spy on staff and contractors in case they leak company info or indulge in some intellectual property theft jiggery-pokery.

Source: The Register

Microsoft is investigating a report of a new, yet-to-be-fixed security vulnerability in PowerPoint.

Sample attack code that exploits the vulnerability has already been released on the Internet, a Microsoft representative wrote on a corporate blog late last week. Use of the code in an attack could cause a complete system compromise, according to Microsoft.

“The reported proof of concept may allow an attacker to execute code on a user’s machine by convincing them to open a specially crafted PowerPoint file,” wrote Alexandra Huft, a Microsoft Security Response representative. “We are not aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability.”

The flaw affects PowerPoint 2003, according to Microsoft.

Source: News.com

The music industry has launched a fresh wave of 8,000 lawsuits against alleged file-sharers around the world, escalating its drive to stamp out online piracy and encourage the use of legal download services.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the world’s music companies, said on Tuesday the new cases were brought in 17 countries, including the first ones ever in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.

The trade group said more than 1 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded last year in Brazil, the largest market in Latin America. Record company revenue has nearly halved in Brazil since 2000, IFPI said.

IFPI has said some 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded worldwide last year.

Source: Reuters

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) isn’t known its leniency when it comes to the distribution of copyrighted material.

So it was no surprise on Thursday at the Digital Home Developers Conference that Brad Hunt, the executive vice president and chief technology officer for the MPAA, spent the majority of his time outlining some of the ways the MPAA is working to standardize content protection controls in the age of digital home networking. But he also acknowledged that piracy is the consumer’s answer to the content industry’s inability to provide a simple digital-rights-management solution.

During a question and answer session after the talk, however, Hunt conceded that many people already are frustrated at having to buy multiple copies of the same content to use on different commercial devices.

“I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content,” he said. “The issue we face today is that consumers are buying content that uses specific DRM and that, in turn, is gradually creating a world of separate DRM systems.”

Source: pcmag.com

Electronic Arts Inc.’s “Madden NFL 07″ in September captured the top spot on the U.S. video game sales chart for the second month in a row, market research firm NPD Group said on Monday.

The popular football game for Sony Corp’s PlayStation 2 console came in at No. 1, while the version for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 fell to fifth place from its second-place finish in August. The game for the original Xbox fell to eighth place from fourth last month.

THQ Inc.’s urban action game “Saints Row” for the Xbox 360 debut in the No. 2 spot.

“Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy” a PS2 title from LucasArts came in third, while the version for Nintendo’s GameCube console was the month’s seventh best-selling game.

Source: Yahoo

Sony Corp. said on Tuesday it may change its full-year earnings forecast because of costly recalls of its batteries and a price cut for its PlayStation 3 video game console.

Sony also said it would recall 90,000 of its Vaio brand laptop computer batteries in Japan and China, adding its name to the list of PC vendors recalling a total of about 8 million Sony batteries, which the company has said can on rare occasions overheat and catch fire.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft Corp. is preparing to release privacy guidelines based on its own internal practices in hopes of getting companies to adopt more cohesive standards for safeguarding people’s personal information.

Microsoft will issue the hefty document Thursday, urging commonsense practices such as clearly telling customers why a company collects personally identifiable information like e-mail addresses or phone numbers.

Source: AP