Chinese Internet users have expressed fury at Microsoft’s launch of an anti-piracy tool targeting Chinese computer users to ensure they buy genuine software.

The “Windows Genuine Advantage” program, which turns the user’s screen black if the installed software fails a validation test, is Microsoft’s latest weapon in its war on piracy in China, where the vast majority of 200 million computer users are believed to be using counterfeit software, unwittingly or not.

“Why is Microsoft automatically connected with my computer? The computer is mine!” one angry blogger wrote on popular Chinese web portal Sina.com. “Microsoft has no right to control my hardware without my agreement.”

Another blogger railed over the cost of authorized versions.

“If the price of genuine software was lower than the fake one, who would buy the fake one?” he wrote.

A visitor to a Beijing internet cafe said Microsoft was violating people’s rights.

“If, when I’m programing, the computer screen goes black, that will probably cause some important information to be lost,” he said. “Who will pay me for my loss then?”

Dong Zhengwei, 35, a Beijing lawyer, described Microsoft as the “biggest hacker in China with its intrusion into users’ computer systems without their agreement or any judicial authority,” the China Daily said.

A 19-year-old hacker who posted some racy photos of Disney starlet Miley Cyrus on the Internet said he was raided by the FBI this week after boasting that he would never be caught.

The hacker, Josh Holly, bragged openly about obtaining the photos from an email account of the 15-year-old star of “Hannah Montana,” the hit Disney Channel series about a schoolgirl with a secret life as a pop star.

He even gave interviews to bloggers and boasted that he moved so often that authorities would never catch him.

But Holly told Wired.com that the FBI found him on Monday, seizing three computers and a phone from his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. He was not arrested or charged.

“I was just kind of shaking. I was thrown way off guard,” he told Wired.com. “I guess somebody ended up ratting me out.”

The FBI in Tennessee did not respond to calls for comment, according to Wired.com and other media reports.

In its efforts to improve safety for everyone, especially vulnerable road users, Honda’s leading motorcycle to car communication system is being demonstrated for the first time in Europe at the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium event taking place at the Opel Test Track in Dudenhofen, Germany, from 22-23 October 2008.

The system generates warnings to riders and drivers of other vehicles by continuous exchange of positioning data from satellite GPS sources. This is particularly relevant as road users approach intersections, alerting them to other vehicles that are potentially on a collision course, allowing avoidance manoeuvres.

The demonstration will exhibit the interoperability of the Honda life-saving system which facilitates communication with vehicles from 8 other manufacturers. European research data shows that the majority of accidents involving a motorcycle are caused by perception failures and this system will reduce these failures.

On a personal note another great application for this technology is that if technology is deployed on all cars it can be one of the key technologies to an auto driver where cars can drive themselves without human intervention.

This is probably more useful than GMail’s last experimental new feature: Canned responses. You can now save a reply you’re writing as a “canned response” and then quickly select one of these responses when you’re replying to a future e-mail.

You can also have your GMail filters auto-reply to messages for you with these reponses.

Yahoo Inc.’s leaders still have jobs despite investor misgivings about their decision making, but at least 1,500 workers will be shown the door after the slumping Internet company’s profits tumbled yet again in the third quarter.

The 10 percent reduction in Yahoo’s payroll of 15,000 employees served as another stark reminder of the challenges facing a management team led by Jerry Yang as the deteriorating economy casts even more doubts about the Sunnyvale-based company’s turnaround plans.