Microsoft has told the Australian government that its focus on storing electronic health records within Australia’s borders “could have a detrimental effect” on security.

Australia’s Communications Alliance has released a discussion paper covering a proposed scheme for dealing with copyright infringement on the Internet.

ReviewYou might think it odd for a UK-based publication to review a product only available in the US, but such is Amazon's global reach that it's only a matter of time before the Kindle Fire is officially released over here.

In a move sure to delight aerospace fans everywhere, it has been announced that one of NASA's retired space shuttles will make a landing in the harbour of New York City next year – onto the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Surrey county council has launched a website which brings together a wide range of information on the area.

Our shock report earlier this week into the middle-aged Brit tourist who ended up dangling naked from the stairs of a Tenerife apartment block after a sex-based mishap prompted several readers to admit they were having trouble picturing just what a naked middle-aged Brit tourist dangling from the stairs of a Tenerife apartment block looks like.

iPhone owners are more loyal to their chosen handset than Android fans are to theirs.

Fire up the DeLorean and grab the almanac, time travel is here... or maybe not.

Sir Gus O'Donnell told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that FOI laws had a "very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions".

We're obliged to the many readers who offered to suggestions as to how to put together a home-made vacuum pump for our forthcoming Rocketry Experimental High Altitude Barosimulator (REHAB) test.

Sony's PS Vita will be able to play PS3 games remotely.

Accessory of the WeekI use a USB handset with Skype on my Mac, and I’ve been looking for something similar to use with my iPhone when I’m in the office. Bluetooth headsets just make me feel silly, so I’ve opted for the distinctly low-tech and unpretentious Desktop Phone from Thumbs Up instead.

Capita IT services biz is bowing to economic pressures by seeking voluntary redundancies just weeks before Christmas.

The woman behind the Mac icons that once decorated the desktop of every Apple computer around the world has published a book of her pixel art designs.

Coders are beginning to take advantage of the Siri proxy server released last week to hijack Apple's voice assistant for other apps. First out the gate: FastPdfKit developer MobFarm.

Plans to allow Blighty cops to "switch off" websites used by criminals have been delayed following pressure from internet firms and campaigners, who claimed such a move would hamper freedom of expression online.

T-Mobile officially unveiled a fresh self-branded blower this morning, putting Android smartphones in pockets for under £100.

A former NBA superstar was been tugged in by a bunch of hoop-shooting strippers as their head coach ahead of the launch of a basketball league comprised entirely of topless dancers.

It's Thanksgiving again, the time of year when denizens of our former American colonies - alas, still in a distressingly successful and prolonged state of rebellion against their rightful sovereign - like to assemble as families and fortify themselves for a punishing day of shopping by scoffing a mountain of tuck while watching men in protective equipment running into one another on TV.

German boffins have pulled off a successful attack on HDCP copy protection – using cheap hardware and a lot of clever coding.

The Europan Commission has issued a stern warning: some Angry Birds could kill a child.

Ofcom surveyOfcom's latest customer satisfaction report is out and it doesn't look good for Virgin Media, which languished at the bottom of two lists representing its core business.

A Texas man claims his ex-girlfriend stole his sperm to inseminate herself three months after they broke up.

Finnish boffins have developed a proxy to reduce the power required for mobile web access by up to 74 per cent, taking that consumption of power into the cloud instead.

ReviewThe Olympus PEN Mini is a no-fuss, interchangeable lens camera created for the casual photographer that wants the respectable image quality of a Micro Four Thirds system at the price and size of a compact.

When the Mars rover Curiosity takes off tomorrow, it'll be packing a plutonium battery to power its myriad scientific instruments, but it could be one of the last to do so if NASA's next budget doesn't get approved.

That's it for netbooks then - so far as Samsung is concerned.

Bone-bothering boffins have discovered that Man's taste for tuna sarnies may have developed a lot earlier than previously thought.

Dixons Retail has issued a grovelling apology after a demon fondleslab possessed with porn beamed smut directly into the eyes of children at a Currys store in Surrey.

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom have given the first signal that they might give up on the marriage proposal for T-Mobile USA after heavy opposition from the US government.

Many of you will take to the pad this weekend, bashing away at fantasies, wiggling the necromancer, whacking demons and enjoying all else that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has to offer.

QuotwThis was the week when Apple's plans for a Black Friday sale on pretty much everything except its iPhone were leaked to the web and speaking of iPhones, rumours were once more circulating about the elusive number 5 and how well-endowed it will be.

The Golden Age of Computer Sales surely must have been Christmas 1984. The Macintosh had just been released, Compaq and IBM offered powerful new CPUs, but the real action was a massive Christmas sales battle between the Apple//c and the IBM PCjr. I remember it well, I was working at ComputerLand in Los Angeles, and I was at the very center of the battle.

The London Fire Brigade is asking the public to be a bit more careful around letterboxes, shredders and tambourines as it issues a breakdown of 417 incidents where it was obliged to "release people, or body parts, which had become trapped in objects or machinery".

The Anonymous hacking collective's AntiSec group has launched a fresh assault on law enforcement agencies with the release of what they claim are personal emails stolen from a Californian cybercrime investigator.

Max Mosley is suing Google after it snubbed requests from the ex-Formula One boss to pull content about his sex life from the company's search engine results.

Fraudsters and hackers could soon get slapped with social media bans as the government plans to encourage judges to dish out online punishments for online crime. The online tagging system is one of several recommendations announced today in the 2011 Cyber Security Strategy.

NoSQL contender CouchDB's been dropped by Ubuntu's ambitious cloud synchronisation service.

ReviewReleasing a driving game into an already congested market is a risky endeavour for any developer. So it follows that releasing two within six months could be considered careless. But to release three within a year, as EA has now done, seems at best illogical and, at worst, pure cannibalistic folly.

The Mexican archaeology institute says that a second possible reference has been found to a date in December 2012 as the end of a 5,200-year Mayan calendar cycle after which "the cosmos is regenerated". Reportedly the glyph in question is carved into the back of a brick found in ancient temple ruins - suggesting that it was a hidden secret, not meant to be seen.

AnalysisI got some pushback from readers on the more skeptical side of the climate issue for describing Climategate as 'a tragedy'. There was clear evidence of cynicism and dishonesty, they argue - doesn't this let them off the hook? Not at all. But we need the bigger picture. Let's try this as a thought exercise.

Price comparison site Idealo.co.uk has revealed that disk drive prices were rising by more than 5 per cent a day in the aftermath of the crisis in Thailand that sent supply chains into a tailspin.

Netflix and Walmart did not conspire to dominate the DVD-by-post market, a US judge has ruled.

Last month Google made secure search the default option for logged in users – mostly to improve privacy protection. But there is a beneficial side-effect - it is harder for fraudsters to manipulate the search engine rankings of scam sites.

Penguin's e-books have been put back on the virtual shelves of America's libraries, a week after they were yanked for unexplained "security" reasons.

The UK space agency has warned that Russia and Kazakhstan will be responsible for any damage resulting from the probe Phobos-Grunt plummeting to Earth, and outlined in detail those locations at risk: that is, most of the inhabited world apart from remote northern and southern regions.

Microsoft will spin out its first test build of Office 15 in January next year.

While tales of UFOs and alien abductions are still being greeted with snorts of derision, NASA really is searching the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life, though it's not little green (or grey) men the agency is looking for, it's signs of life - most probably not above the microbial level - on Mars.

The global launch of a new smartphone brought a huge mob of thousands of desperate punters to the doors of a shopping centre on Thursday night - ahead of Friday's grand unveiling. By the time staff unlocked the doors there was a 3,000-strong crowd, a huge crush surged forward and several people fainted.

Facebook users in Thailand, who take to the site to grumble about the Thai monarchy, have been warned that tough lese majeste laws will be brought against them.

Punters could be tempted to buy a non-Apple fondleslabs, but only if prices tumble – and that could be about to happen, say analysts.

Open ... and ShutThe software risk silly season is upon us again. Every so often a big trend washes over the industry, and soon afterwards well-intentioned people start telling us why we should be afraid to dip our toes into the water. Or perhaps they are not so well-intentioned...

Brit thesp Ben Whishaw will play Q in forthcoming Bond outing Skyfall, the BBC reports.

Amazon cloud competitor Joyent is going to add an object storage service which will be a good testbed to see if the cloud could be an object storage launch ramp.