It seems that data protection and music festivals don't dance merrily off into the sunset together.

Symantec closed fiscal 2007 with fourth quarter profit plummeting 49 per cent from the period a year earlier, but beating analyst expectations with a five per cent increase in revenue.

The Consumer Complaints Board in Denmark claims to have evidence of a original design defect in the iBook G4 that has been hotly denied by Apple.

Pandora.com, the popular net radio station that helps users discover new music and build custom playlists, will block most people outside the US from accessing its service because of legal pressure being exerted by record labels.

A website launches today which aims to offer "an impartial, web-based right-to-reply service".

State databases, the way the European Data Protection Supervisor talks about them in its annual report quickly grow beyond their function and not always with benign consequences for the people they have numbered.

A group of transport experts and researchers has come out in favour of road-pricing using satellite tracking.

Intel is set to release in two months' time a version of its Core 2 Quad four-core processor that consumes less power than the chip available today.

Apple has pledged to be more open about the steps it's taking to become more environmentally responsible. But despite the company's claim to be greener than the likes of Dell, HP and Lenovo, its eco nemesis, Greenpeace, wasn't entirely satisfied with the move.

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker facing extradition over allegations he broke into US Military and NASA sites, will have to look elsewhere for salvation after the government of Sealand dismissed reports it was prepared to offer him asylum as "rumours".

Book reviewWhile it may appear that object oriented programming has achieved dominance in terms of programming language paradigms, there still exist outposts that refuse to submit to the benefits of polymorphism, encapsulation, and object inheritance.

You know things are bad when something's value is predicated by its standing in the Google search rankings, but that's exactly what's happening down at the Cornish town of Penryn - apparently consigned to oblivion by Intel's chip of the same name.

Research in Motion (RIM) has taken the wraps off the smallest, lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry yet: the Curve, a more stylish but less feature-filled alternative to the existing BlackBerry 8800.

It's time to wave farewell to AMD's Athlon brand and welcome in its place... er... Phenom. According to online reports, that's what AMD is going to start calling its high-end desktop chips.

Capgemini and Hewlett Packard have gained the most ground in the rankings of top suppliers to the public ICT market.

Google has said it will defend itself against a $1bn lawsuit filed by media conglomerate Viacom and has asked a judge to throw the case out without a full trial.

Creative is to cater for those "with an active lifestyle" with a new entry-level MP3 player range dubbed the Zen Stone - a compact gadget designed to take the fight to Apple's iPod Shuffle.

Computers, Freedom and PrivacySimon Davies, executive director of Privacy International, waved his hands in a general blessing before announcing global Big Brother awards for Choicepoint (most invasive company), Stewart Baker (worst public official), the UK (most heinous government), the International Civil Aeronautics Organisation (most appalling project), and the "Common Good" (lifetime menace).

Orange UK has followed the other major operators in simplifying its data charging tariffs, and opened up unmetered data access to non-panthers as well as those on pre-paid contracts.

The number of complaints to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) almost doubled in 2006, but only 20 per cent were valid complaints for the privacy watchdog of the EU institutions, its annual report has said.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to release its classified files regarding UFO sightings to the public.

Payroll software giant Northgate has bought yet another firm, acquiring management consultancy Kendric Ash in a deal that could be worth up to £14.2m.

Tesco has teamed up with global item registry MyThings to allow customers of its online Tesco Direct shop to keep track of their valuables online.

Nokia is all candybars and clamshells today after it launched seven handsets for developing-world markets - some designed to make it easy for them to be shared by families.

3 UK's CEO Bob Fuller is to step down at the end of June, the month of his sixtieth birthday.

This week was awash with silly stories - UFOs over Guernsey, dogs defecating on eBay, police charging a stripagram for wearing a police uniform in the street (maybe he should have whipped it off there and then), people being duped into buying sheep thinking they were poodles - you name it, it was there. No wonder there was so much sunshine about, it was like silly season three months early.

Australian boffins from the University of Queensland have teamed up with beer outfit Foster's to power up a "battery" by brewing waste, Associated Press reports.

A 68-year-old grandmother from Accrington, Lancashire, has rather agreeably secured runner-up spot and £350 in T-Mobile's "txt laureate" contest, Reuters reports.

CommentI wrote a column for Securityfocus some time ago that aired my concerns over GIAC dropping the practical portion of their certification process. That column resulted in a lot of feedback, with most agreeing about how GIAC bungled what was up till then, the best certification around.

Up to half the Martian surface could be covered with ice, according to the latest results released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The experimental Internet2 high-speed network was taken out on Wednesday by a fire started by a homeless man.

In the future, astronauts will travel to the moon and beyond in spacecraft painted with advertising slogans, if a California Congressman has his way.

US representatives moved swiftly into denial mode in the wake of Monday's New York Times claim that homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff had proposed excluding UK citizens "of Pakistani origin" from the US visa waiver programme. The visa waiver programme allows visa-free travel to the US for citizens from a select group of countries, and comes under regular fire from log-rolling US politicians.

A Natural History Museum expert has warned that global warming is giving invasive poisonous spiders the chance to thrive in Britain.

Swedish bank SEB has introduced 400 talking cashpoints, pitched at customers with sight problems, dyslexia, and other issues.

The Pentagon has moved a little closer to its eventual goal of a complete US missile-defence umbrella, carrying out a successful trial above the Pacific last week.

Google has apologised for continuing hiccups in the relaunch of its personalised homepage service, which has left some users unable to access their data for a week.

An unidentified eBay seller is using the online tat bazaar to mount a web publicity campaign against the Royal Marines.

Now you too can spank your plank just like legendary axeman Jimi Hendrix. Well, almost. New software, released today, can make you sound like Hendrix, but riffing like the great man will take a bucket-load of talent too.

Everyone's favourite shouty TV star, Sir Alan "you're fired!" Sugar unveiled a supercomputer at Queen Mary, University of London this morning.

It's a bit early to do much in the way of analysis yet, but Rupert Murdoch has made a bid through his News Corporation to buy Dow Jones, including the prestigious Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo! is offering its instant messaging service without the need to download and install a separate application.

Mobile phone call volumes have dropped for the first time in 10 years, according to the annual JD Power survey.

A train carrying the solid rocket boosters used on space shuttles has crashed in Alabama, injuring six people. The accident happened when a bridge collapsed over boggy ground, according to reports. One of the people is reported to have been critically hurt.

IBM's highly boffinated research division delivered today when the firm said it would be first to deploy self-assembly microchip nanotechnology on an industrial scale.

Microsoft released the final version of Forefront Client Security, its anti-malware software for enterprises, to manufacture on Wednesday.

Forgotten TechIt's the original UMPC: Epson's HX-20, announced in 1981 - 25 years before Intel and Microsoft formally launched the ultra-mobile PC category, in April 2006.

The caprine wife of a Sudanese goat molester has died suddenly after more than a year of marriage, the BBC reports.

Google and Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse have come to an agreement on a minor part of their dispute over copyright, but have not agreed on the major point of difference between them.

Half of the registries in England and Wales have been told to stop using a new computer system, following "performance difficulties", the Office of National Statistics (ONS) confirmed today.

Next week's Patch Tuesday from Microsoft will include updates fixing a host of critical vulnerabilities in products that include Windows, Office and Exchange.

A Texas high school that suspended and then expelled a student for creating a map of his school for the PC shooting game Counter-Strike has released new details of the incident.