PC World, Britain’s largest chain of computer superstores, will say goodbye to floppy disks once the current stash is gone.

The retailer said Wednesday it opted not to reorder any more disks because they do not hold enough data and better alternatives exist.

PC World has about 10,000 disks in stock. With 155 stores across Britain and nearly 50 more elsewhere in Europe, spokesman Hamish Thompson said the final stock of floppies will be gone “in weeks, if not days.”

“It’s had a good, long and productive life, but really, it’s just too small to hold any real data,” Thompson said of the disks. “It just doesn’t make sense any more.”

Source: AP

Google has failed to win the right to register the term “Gmail” as a wide-ranging European trademark.

The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), the body which is responsible for European community trademarks, rejected Google’s appeal after a stiff battle with German-born venture capitalist Daniel Giersch.
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Giersch, who has held his trademark for six years, has been fighting this battle since Google launched its email service in 2004. The German entrepreneur founded a same-day mail delivery service called GMail designed to offer a swifter alternative to the Deutsche Post.

Last year, a district court in Hamburg already handed Giersch victories at both the preliminary and final stages of the litigation and Google was ordered to remove all Gmail references from its German service.

Source: The Register

If you choose to purchase an upgrade version of Windows Vista to upgrade XP, you will no longer be able to use that version of XP. Either on another system, or as a dual-boot option. The key will be invalidated, preventing activation.

From Vista’s EULA (PDF) :
13. UPGRADES. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligiblefor the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from.

However you can still install a clean copy of Vista with this workaround posted by ActiveWin.com

The process is a bit tedious, but is not hard are all to complete. Users have to perform these simple steps to perform a clean install of Vista without a previous version of Windows installed with an upgrade DVD:

1. Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD and start the setup program.
2. When prompted to enter your product key, DO NOT enter it. Click “Next” and proceed with setup. This will install Windows Vista as a 30-day trial.
3. When prompted, select the edition of Vista which you have purchased and continue with setup.
4. Once setup has been completed and you have been brought to the desktop for the first time, run the install program from within Windows Vista.
5. This time, type in your product key when prompted.
6. When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) install, choose Custom (advanced) to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, this means that you will have to install Vista for a second time.
7. Once setup has completed for the second time, you should be able to activate Windows Vista normally. You can also delete the Windows.old directory which contains information from the first Vista install.

Phishing attacks have outnumbered e-mails infected with viruses and Trojan horse programs for the first time, according to security experts.

Security mail services vendor MessageLabs reported on Monday that in January 2007, one in 93.3 e-mails (1.07 percent) comprised some form of phishing attack. There were fewer e-mails–one in 119.9, or 0.83 percent–infected with viruses.

The difference in the ratio of phishing to virus attacks is partly due to virus attacks becoming more targeted and no longer occurring as one large outbreak. This includes the recent Storm Worm and Warezov attacks, according to MessageLabs.

Source: News.com

Open source database vendor MySQL AB is preparing itself for an initial public offering, and could even be ready to go public before the end of the year, according to its CEO Marten Mickos.

“We are planning to go public,” Mickos told Computer Business Review in an exclusive interview, adding that the Uppsala, Sweden-based database management vendor is in no hurry to go public after raising $18.5m in Series C funding this time last year and $39m in total.

“We have about half the VC money ever raised still unused,” he said. “We are talking to bankers now but we may take our time,” he added. “It’s more of a timing issue, but we are making sure we can do it this year if we want to.”

Source: Computer Business Review

A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

In papers responding to the record companies’ lawsuit, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it’s impossible to prove that he did.

Santangelo is the son of Patti Santangelo, the 42-year-old suburban mother of five who was sued by the record companies in 2005. She refused to settle, took her case public and became a heroine to supporters of Internet freedom.

The industry dropped its case against her in December but sued Robert and his sister Michelle, now 20, in federal court in White Plains. Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit.

Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, responded at length Tuesday, raising 32 defenses, demanding a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the companies that accuses them of damaging the boy’s reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees.

Source: AP

For the first time ever, football fans will be able to download video highlights of the Super Bowl, and they will be offered exclusively through Apple Inc.’s online iTunes Store.

The National Football League said Tuesday it will make highlights from Sunday’s game available for purchase online the following day. The download, in English or Spanish, will cost $1.99 and will be viewable on computers or iPods.

A 90-minute video of the NFL’s coverage of the Super Bowl will also be sold for $1.99.

Source: AP