A batch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium was found to have been infected with a 13-year-old boot sector virus.

Those of you with a long memory will vividly recall the year 1994: Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain died, South Africa held its first multi-racial elections, and Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party. Oh, and Microsoft’s operating system was the quaint, pre-NT Windows for Workgroups.

But it was a year that also saw the arrival of a boot sector computer virus known as Stoned.Angelina which moved the original master boot record to cylinder 0, head 0, sector 9.

It would appear that this teenage virus has not yet been consigned to the history books.

According to Virus Bulletin, the consignment of infected Medion laptops – which could number anything up to 100,000 shipments – had been sold in Danish and German branches of retail giant Aldi.

The computers had been loaded with Microsoft’s latest operating system Vista and Bullguard’s anti-virus software, which failed to detect and remove the malware.

Although the infection itself is harmless, Stoned.Angelina will undoubtedly have left Microsoft and Bullguard execs blushing with embarrassment about the apparent flaws in their software which allowed an ancient virus to slip through the back door.

Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service as part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive, the Mehr news agency reported on Monday.

“I can confirm these sites have been filtered,” said Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran’s National Council of Information.

He did not explain why the sites were being blocked. Google, Gmail and several other foreign sites appeared to be inaccessible to Iranian users from Monday morning.

Digital music download service eMusic said on Monday it will offer audiobooks for download starting on Tuesday.

The company, which describes itself as the world’s second-largest digital music service after Apple’s iTunes, said it will offer more than a thousand audiobooks, with hundreds more to be added each week.

EMusic said its customers can sign up for monthly subscriptions priced at $9.99 for one book or $19.99 for two books, and get one book free as part of an introductory offer.

A Chinese man dropped dead after playing Internet games for three consecutive days, state media said on Monday as China seeks to wean Internet addicts offline.

The man from the southern boomtown of Guangzhou, aged about 30, died on Saturday after being rushed to the hospital from the Internet cafe, local authorities were quoted by the Beijing News as saying.

“Police have ruled out the possibility of suicide,” the newspaper said, adding that exhaustion was the most likely cause of death. It did not say what game he was playing.

A few days ago, WinAmp iPod plugin developer Will Fisher wrote a blog entry about the changes Apple made to the iPod music database format that break compatibility with third-party software. Although the iPod has never officially supported open music management, the database format used by the device was previously relatively straightforward. The new database format uses a checksum value that locks the database to a specific device and prevents third-party database modification. If the device’s internal database is modified by a third-party program in any way, it will refuse to play any of the content and report that the device contains 0 songs, even if the database is still completely intact in every other respect.

Fortunately, community members have alerted us that a GtkPod developer has cracked the checksum and successfully tested the new database format support on two devices. Those who are already locked into Apple’s ecosystem will now be able to continue using the software of their choice with their iPods.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) poisoning company MediaDefender suffered an embarrassing leak this weekend, when almost 700MB of internal company e-mail was distributed on the Internet via BitTorrent. The e-mails reveal many aspects of MediaDefender’s elaborate P2P disruption strategies, illuminate previously undisclosed details about the MiiVi scandal, and bring to light details regarding MediaDefender’s collaboration with the New York Attorney General’s office on a secret law enforcement project. We have been reviewing the data for days and will have multiple reports on the topic.

MediaDefender specializes in file-sharing mitigation—practices that disrupt and deter infringing uses of P2P file-sharing networks. Music labels and movie studios pay the company millions of dollars to temporarily impede the propagation of new releases in order to compel consumers to pursue legitimate commercial distribution channels. MediaDefender accomplishes this task by using its array of 2,000 servers and a 9GBps dedicated connection to propagate fake files and launch denial of service attacks against distributors.

Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage woes aren’t likely to end any time soon. Soon after a global WGA failure caused by human error comes word that a privacy suit has been brought against the company in China over alleged WGA behavior. This joins similar suits in the US that have described WGA as “spyware.”

Lu Feng, a student at Beijing University, is asking for compensation and a reversal of practices from the Redmond giant, saying that WGA’s analytical methods are akin to snooping technologies. The First Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing has accepted the case for review, but this is not a sign of its technical merits. Nevertheless, Feng will get his day in court.

According to scattered reports, some of which are contradictory, Lu Feng first installed WGA on his Windows XP computer before realizing what it was. Feng believes that Microsoft failed to provide him with proper notice of WGA’s capabilities or how it would affect his use of his computer. Furthermore, Feng objects to the click-through software EULA, to which he had to agree before even installing the software.

A German operator of a Tor server used to anonymously route traffic over the net said he was arrested in a midnight raid on his residence that stemmed from an investigation into bomb threats said to have passed through an internet protocol address under his control.

Alexander Janssen said he had just returned from a night of drinking when someone knocked “very hard” on his door. Police then entered his Dusseldorf apartment, cuffed him and said he was suspected of posting bomb threats in a German forum related to law enforcement. He told police he operated a Tor server, which typically funneled 40 GB of data per day, but the officers proceeded to search his attic, office, car - even through the undergarments of his terrified wife. He was later taken to a police station and interrogated.
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Janssen says he was ultimately released by a federal German official who acknowledged police had made a mistake. But the experience has weighed so heavily on Janssen, who says he works as an engineer for a big IT company, that he has decided to abandon his Tor activities.

Sun is announcing Monday the release of the GlassFish version 2 open-source application server, which features enterprise-level capabilities for running large-scale applications.

The company also will offer a beta release of the upcoming open-source NetBeans 6.0 IDE, which accommodates scripting languages.

While the first version of GlassFish was intended for developers, the follow-up release due Monday is intended to place GlassFish in the vein of an enterprise-level application server. Highlighted capabilities include clustering, data replication, and centralized administration of server clusters.

Improved interoperability between Web services hosted on Java and Microsoft also is featured as part of a Web services stack dubbed “Project Metro.”