OSCONSometimes being the open source software leader means distancing yourself from open source claims.

MySpace yesterday announced it had "detected and deleted" 29,000 convicted sex offenders on the social networking site, Reuters reports.

A British millionaire who made his fortune supplying IT services to banks has died on the slopes of China's Mount Muztagata, the Telegraph reports.

An MP has attacked the government's biometrics advice to schools for failing to enshrine in law a parent's right to be consulted.

A proposed net content filtering trial which was supposed to begin protecting Tasmanian surfers from smut last year was canned after ISPs Telstra and Optus refused to play ball, The Australian reports.

Public sector spending on ICT and business process outsourcing (BPO) is ready for a surge in 2008, according to research from Kable.

The Mozilla Foundation acknowledged over the weekend that its own Firefox browser allows links that can send malicious code to external programs, a security issue that the group had previously argued should be fixed by the browser maker.

LogicaCMG's board continues to reshuffle its members with the announcement that executive director Didier Herrmann has been asked to step down with immediate effect.

An unnamed businessman and around 18 friends last Saturday set an "all-time record" in alcoholic extravagance by working their way through £105,805 worth of booze in London's Crystal nightclub, the Telegraph reports.

ROK Media, a company best known for giving away dubious video content for mobile phone viewing, has launched an online music shop - but you can't buy any music as yet.

Fast-growing social networking site Facebook goes to court today, facing allegations that its founder stole software code and his business plan from fellow students at Harvard University.

Serena Software is reaching outside its enterprise IT base with new Agile tooling and betting on a online market to challenge Borland Software and IBM.

"Service-orientation" often assumes the status of being something very grand and, well, expensive, but that is not always the case.

Dave Moore is a self-confessed Oracle geek. According to his blog, you are an Oracle geek if "instead of looking at the clock on your PC for the current time, you run a sysdate query because you believe it is more accurate".

Building mashups is all very well, but the bigger the organisation requiring them the more complicated it can get to create them, particularly if there is a strong need to maintain enterprise programming models.

Japanese firm Nikko has created an all-in-one multimedia device incorporating projector, DVD player, media card reader and oh, so much more. So what's new, you might say, well this particular product is shaped like R2-D2 from Star Wars.

Denis Kvasov, the former owner of Russian music site AllofMP3.com, has been charged with violating intellectual property laws in a Moscow court.

ExclusiveThe BBC Trust met with the Open Source Consortium (OSC) yesterday to discuss the controversy raised by the BBC's iPlayer, which will only work on Windows XP.

LogoWatchDesigners have reacted with somewhat less than enthusiasm to Qantas's revamped logo - rolled out this week with the usual fanfare of trumpets.

The airline which will operate the first passenger flight of the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet is to auction the seats online.

The UK government has rejected the idea of extending music copyright beyond 50 years, prompting protests from ageing rockers whose work will soon be in the public domain.

Samsung has raised the bar for LCD display resolutions giving square-eyed screen-addicts another reason to drool uncontrollably. It has unveiled the world’s first 30in LCD display, capable of providing a 2560 x 1600 resolution through the next-generation DisplayPort video interface.

Skype has been convicted of violating the open source GPL (General Public License) by a regional court in Munich.

Oki has been eyeballing the mobile phone market and witnessed an opportunity for increased security. As a result, it has developed an iris recognition software that may help ensure undesirables are prevented access from our most cherished communications devices.

China Mobile had a cracker month in June, adding 5.5 million subscribers and taking its total to 332.4 million.

Researchers investigating the health effects of mobile phone masts have found that sufferers report symptoms regardless of whether the equipment is actually on or off.

Motorola has teamed up with Microvision to put laser-projector technology into mobile phone handsets.

AMD is extolling the virtues of virtualisation for small businesses (SMBs).

Sage has hired David Clayton as its new group strategy and mergers and acquisitions director.

Part 2As we discussed in part one, terrorism in general, and al Qaeda in particular, are again dominating the news. It's now just about impossible to find a report of any terrorist act (or quasi-terrorist act, like the recent failed car bombings in London), without reference to Osama bin Laden or his famous franchise.

Storage junkies will sleep a little easier from now on, safe in the knowledge that their insatiable capacity requirements are to be met by Western Digital (WD) and its 2TB My Book hard drive range.

Yahoo is planning to use Novarra's mobile-optimising technology, as Vodafone did last month, though hopefully without causing so many problems for m-commerce sites.

I feel strangely sorry for Unisys, even though it has just won a race that is, arguably, well worth crowing about. But you see, it is the first company to run the new TPC-E benchmark that replaces the aged and venerable – and to be honest somewhat discredited – TPC-C benchmark.

US government researchers have highlighted serious problems with the Pentagon's controversial Airborne Laser (ABL) programme.

Toshiba said today it is considering a partnership with Fujitsu and NEC to develop and produce 32 nanometer chips, a way of competing with rival companies who've already formed similar pacts.

It seems that Google magic doesn't work quite as well in the rest of the world. At least, not yet. Earlier this month, internet research firm comScore released a new study that put Google a few steps behind the competition in Asia-Pacific, and now it says that Larry, Serg, and the gang are also trailing in Latin America.

OSCONHoping to inspire people to write code that can run on its multi-core processors, Intel has open sourced one of its development packages.

OSCONThe Open Source Initiative (OSI) shocked the world today by approving a "badgeware" style license.

Hewlett-Packard is expanding its IT operations services business, offering 3-D thermal mapping tools that detect and manage data center hotspots.

Security researchers have disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in the latest version of Firefox that gives miscreants complete control of Windows-based computers when the Mozilla browser visits a booby-trapped website.

OSCONSugarCRM has transformed from open source whipping boy to free software hero – in an instant.

June's headlines may have belonged to the iPhone but Apple's third-quarter results served as a handy reminder it's the record-breaking Mac and unstoppable iPod that are driving business.