Federal officials have put the PS3 to work breaking passwords on computer equipment confiscated from suspected child pornographers.

the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, known as C3, has replaced its ‘$8,000 Tableau/Dell server combination’ with more efficient and much cheaper $300 PS3s. Each PS3 is capable of 4 million passwords per second, and C3 currently has 20 PS3s with plans to buy 40 more.

The Boeing Company demonstrated the ability of mobile laser weapon systems to perform a unique mission: track and destroy small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

During the U.S. Air Force-sponsored tests at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX), which was developed by Boeing under contract to the Air Force Research Laboratory, used a single, high-brightness laser beam to shoot down five UAVs at various ranges. Laser Avenger, a Boeing-funded initiative, also shot down a UAV. Representatives of the Air Force and Army observed the tests.

“The Air Force and Boeing achieved a directed-energy breakthrough with these tests,” said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Missile Defense Systems’ Directed Energy Systems unit. “MATRIX’s performance is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated unprecedented, ultra-precise and lethal acquisition, pointing and tracking at long ranges using relatively low laser power.”

A Beijing court has ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling some versions of its Windows operating system in China in a licensing dispute with a local supplier.

The order Monday said Microsoft exceeded its rights under licensing agreements with Zhongyi Electronic Ltd., a Beijing company that developed Chinese character fonts used in the software.

Microsoft must stop selling versions of Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with Zhongyi’s fonts, the Beijing People’s No. 1 Intermediate Court said in its ruling, a copy of which was released by Zhongyi.

Microsoft said it would appeal.

A couple suspected of helping spread some of the Internet’s most aggressive computer viruses has been arrested in the English city of Manchester, police said Wednesday.

Scotland Yard’s electronic crimes unit said a man and a woman, both 20, were arrested Nov. 3 on suspicion of helping spread malicious Trojan computer programs sometimes known as “Zbot” or “ZeuS.”

Police said the viruses are thought to have infected tens of thousands of computers worldwide, and one technology consultant described them as the “most notorious pieces of malware of recent times.”

California regulators adopted the nation’s first energy-efficiency standards for televisions Wednesday in hopes of reducing electricity use at a time when millions of American households are switching to power-hungry, wide-view, flat-screen, high-definition sets.

The 5-0 vote by the California Energy Commission is just the latest effort by the state to secure its place in the forefront of the environmental movement.

California represents such a big consumer market that environmental groups hope the new standards will lead manufacturers to make energy-saving TVs for the rest of the nation, just as California’s stringent fuel standards for cars and trucks forced automakers to produce more efficient models for all of the U.S.

“Once again, California is leading the way, and we hope others will follow,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Two computer programmers designed codes to falsify thousands of fake trade blotters and phantom records for swindler Bernard Madoff and took hush money to help keep the massive fraud going, U.S. authorities said.

The FBI arrested Jerome O’Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, at their homes on Friday morning on criminal charges of conspiracy for falsifying books and records at both the broker-dealer and investment arms of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) in New York.

“The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff’s crimes,” said federal prosecutor Preet Bharara. “They have been charged for their roles in Madoff’s epic fraud, and the investigation remains ongoing.”

O’Hara’s attorney Gordon Mehler said “We intend to enter a plea of not guilty” after Manhattan federal court magistrate judge Ronald Ellis ordered the men released on $1 million bail each with travel restrictions.

Perez’s attorney Larry Krantz declined to comment.

Hackers have managed to find a way around one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7.

Ordinarily, the operating system requires users to activate their copy of Windows 7 within 30 days. However, a recently outlined method allows the normal notifications to be turned off.

The software doesn’t actually get confirmed as legitimate, but users are able to keep using the product indefinitely.

Microsoft confirmed on Friday it is aware of the technique, but said that it is working to shore up the activation procedure.

“We’re aware of this workaround and are already working to address it,” a Microsoft representative said in a statement, which also urged customers to only use genuine software, noting the fake stuff can contain malware and other bad things.

Microsoft on Friday said it is working on a fix for a vulnerability in the Server Message Block file-sharing protocol in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 Release 2 that could be used to remotely crash a computer.

The software giant had said on Wednesday that it was looking at the bug, discovered by researcher Laurent Gaffi?, who published proof-of-concept code on a blog.

“Microsoft is aware of public, detailed exploit code that would cause a system to stop functioning or become unreliable. If exploited, this [denial-of-service] vulnerability would not allow an attacker to take control of, or install malware on, the customer’s system but could cause the affected system to stop responding until manually restarted,” Dave Forstrom, group manager for public relations at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, said in a statement. “It is important to note that the default firewall settings on Windows 7 will help block attempts to exploit this issue.”

Windows Mobile lost 28 percent of its smartphone market share between last year’s third quarter and this year’s third quarter, according to market researcher Gartner.

Figures released Thursday by Gartner show that Microsoft’s mobile OS had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008. A year later, it had 7.9 percent. Meanwhile, the iPhone’s share rose from 12.9 percent to 17.1 percent, and Research In Motion’s share jumped from 16 percent to 20.8 percent.

Symbian’s share fell from 49.7 percent to 44.6 percent over the same period–a 10 percent drop. The open-source Android OS from Google had no market share in Q3 2008 because it had only recently been introduced. In Q3 2009, however, it had 3.9 percent share.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo may be tough competitors when it comes to Internet software and services, but they are putting their differences aside to build a developer community to tackle bigger picture problems like saving lives in emergencies.

The companies have joined with NASA, the World Bank, and PR agency SecondMuse to organize the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness event, which was held at a warehouse space-cum community center called Hacker Dojo this weekend. For two days, coders worked on ways to use technology to help solve real-world problems, such as how people can get information and find each other during disasters.

Intel Corp. will pay $1.25 billion to make peace with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., as the companies whose microprocessors run nearly all personal computers finally found common ground in a bitter and colorful dispute that caused international antitrust trouble for Intel.

The settlement announced Thursday sent AMD stock soaring and ended a 4-year-old lawsuit in which AMD accused Intel of abusing its dominance of the chip market to keep a lid on AMD’s share. Intel has about 80 percent of the microprocessor market, and AMD has about 20 percent.

According to the lawsuit, Intel penalized computer makers for using AMD’s chips or offered them financial incentives - payments that a Toshiba Corp. manager likened to “cocaine.” Executives from Gateway complained that Intel’s threats of retaliation for working with AMD beat them “into guacamole.”

YouTube says starting next week it will support the same high-resolution video that can now be seen on flat screen TVs.

The online video unit of Google Inc. said Thursday it will support video playback in the full high-definition format known as 1080p, upgrading from the current 720p.

After engineers tested its system, YouTube spokesman Chris Dale said the company is not worried about infrastructure problems or higher costs associated with supporting bulkier files.

Videos uploaded from regular users will still have a 10-minute limit, although the maximum file size will likely get a boost from 2 gigabytes.