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HP veep: 'Lenovo won't be No 1 in PCs... oh wait...'

Plus: 'Hackers used a spell they call Aura of God, I think'

Quotw This was the week when someone laid waste to the World of Warcraft, decimating city populations and leaving behind weeping masses of MMORPG-ers who no doubt dropped to their knees, shook their fists at the heavens and screamed, "Whyyyy?".

An "exploit" was duly exploited, resulting in the deaths of both in-game characters and players' avatars in several cities. WoW immediately copped to the problem and asked users to email any information on the hack:

Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities. This exploit has already been hotfixed, so it should not be repeatable. It's safe to continue playing and adventuring in major cities and elsewhere in Azeroth.

One user speculated that the hypothetical hackers used a mystical spell to commit the cyber mass-murders:

It was a hack, a hack that allowed blocked scripts to run (I think), which made them use a spell they call Aura of God (or Aura of Death) that kills everything within their custom range. Thank god for playing on a low pop server where such event would not even be fun :P

Over at Google, chairman Eric Schmidt was waxing lyrical about the epic struggle between The Chocolate Factory and once-friend-now-bitter-rival Apple. Schmidt reckons that their fight over mobile market share is the "defining fight" of the tech industry today.

He also talked about how upsetting he found the patent battles:

These patent wars are death. I think this is ultimately bad, bad for innovation. It eliminates choices.

Of course he also took the opportunity to have a dig at Apple's new Maps app (no one's going to let that go for a while):

Apple should have kept with our maps. I think Apple has learned that maps are hard. We invested hundreds of millions of dollars in satellite work, airplane work, drive-by work, and we think we have the best product in the industry.

Meanwhile, the brief moment of modest contrition at Apple, which sparked the admission that maybe its Maps app wasn't exactly the greatest in the world, is most definitely over. Users complaining that there's a purple halo around light sources in their pictures were unceremoniously told to hold their phones properly. (Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar?).

The fruity firm posted on a forum:

Most small cameras, including those in every generation of iPhone, may exhibit some form of flare at the edge of the frame when capturing an image with out-of-scene light sources. This can happen when a light source is positioned at an angle (usually just outside the field of view) so that it causes a reflection off the surfaces inside the camera module and onto the camera sensor.

Moving the camera slightly to change the position at which the bright light is entering the lens, or shielding the lens with your hand, should minimize or eliminate the effect.

HP had a Doh! moment this week when it said it wasn't the least bit worried about Lenovo getting to be the top PC-maker this year just a day before the rival firm did exactly that, at least according to Gartner.

Eric Cador, EMEA senior veep for printing and personal at HP told The Channel:

They won't become number one in Q3 or Q4.

They are growing for sure... Does it wake me up every night? No. Would I like it [if they became number one]? No. It is important to protect revenues and profitable growth.

We are not going after market share for the sake of market share but will defend our market position as hard as we can.

Unfortunately, Gartner's beancounters said Lenovo was number one the following evening, although analyst IDC ranked it ever-so-slightly behind.

In the US, a judge has decided that Kim Dotcom's attempts to get the whole US Megaupload case dismissed are a wee bit "extreme". Lawyers for Dotcom were trying to argue that there's no way he should be prosecuted in the US because Megaupload wasn't based in the country.

That, of course, is a bit like claiming that you couldn't possibly have robbed a bank in Britain because you are French. The judge agreed with the prosecutors, who said:

[That line of reasoning] leads to the incredible conclusion that foreign corporations can commit crimes in the United States without risk of being brought to justice here.

Dotcom also tried to get the case thrown out on the basis of Rule 4, which states that summons have to be posted to the business address in the district or the greater US, but Megaupload's was sent to Hong Kong. The judge was having none of that either, saying:

Rule 4 does not require a result so extreme as dismissal, and to this Court's knowledge, no court has ever dismissed an indictment for failure to meet Rule 4's secondary mailing requirement.

Meanwhile, in a court over in the UK, the powers that be told Julian Assange's bail money supporters that they'll have to cough up the cash they promised because they haven't done enough to pry him out of the Ecuadorian embassy. The nine supporters have to come up with over £93,000.

Judge Howard Riddle didn't seem too pleased about it since the bail-posters had acted "in good faith" but he pointed out that it wasn't exactly a shocker that Assange wouldn't obey the court and face Swedish authorities over allegations of sexual misconduct.

I accept that they trusted Mr Assange to surrender himself as required. I accept that they followed the proceedings and made necessary arrangements to remain in contact with him. However, they failed in their basic duty, to ensure his surrender.

They must have understood the risk and the concerns of the courts. Both this court and the High Court assessed that there were substantial grounds to believe the defendant would abscond, and that the risk could only be met by stringent conditions including the sureties.

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