Yes i am suprised they have ditched Google Wallet since they actually charge for using the service (percentage of the sale amount for every transaction) and they have also been encouraging people to link their google shopping accounts to checkout so they appear in the search ads to show the merchant accepts google checkout.

I guess this means more money for Paypal as the alternative of Braintree that google are recommending requires you to become PCI complient which is a major hastle for small businesses and the reason why they probably went with Googlecheckout and didn't get their own merchant account in the first place.

'Might the combination of better silicon, a decent development tool and just offering mobe-makers an alternative they can use to beat up their current CPU suppliers finally get Intel into a better mobile place?'

No: Well for any of the major players in the smart phone business (Samsung & Apple) and the smaller players need to cut costs as much as possible so unless Intel can compete on price with ARM then it will be a difficult sell

Exactly what evidence did the UK courts put forward to get convictions from the other Lulzsec members as none of the articles i have seen seem to say exactly what evidence the police found to charge them?

I suspect the 6th member now has probably wiped any evidence from his computer and only surfs using tor just in case.

Now Murdoch has got rid of crappy Myspace he just has his crappy newspaper business thats loosing market share to deal with now

Microsoft really don't learn from all the Android tablets that tired to come in at iPad prices and above and didn't sell. Are they hoping to sell so little that they become a cult item and increase in value or something?

Surely the prisons should be there to lock up people who are a danger to society such as violent criminals which i hardly see some DDOS script kiddies being. It will cost us tax payers 1000s to have them locked up while it would be better having them picking up litter in the parks on community service and paying a fine (perhaps by having to sell their computers to pay for it)

It sounds like knee jerk sentencing again like what we had after the riots where people with no previous convictions would get 2 years for looting a bottle of wine

For most home consumers and businesses a 4 or 5 year old PC or laptop will have just about enough RAM, CPU power and hard drive storage to do the mainstream office, internet, email and video playback tasks that they need them for.

I am personally running a 5 or 6 year old 2ghz dual core Dell laptop and apart from upping the RAM to 4GB its still stock configue as i don't do video editing or play games that require i have a quad cores and 16GB RAM it does everything i want it to do.

So i forsee lot of people like me not buying a new computer until something breaks or some new software comes out that requires more resources than their current computer has.

For some people no amount of bad press for Apple make a difference on whether they will continue to buy idevices.

My girlfriend is determined she wants to get an iPhone even though i have pointed out that all the apps she wants to use are available on Android and she can get a nexus for a fraction of the cost of the iphone but its like talking to a brick wall when it comes to Apple fans.

Apple may have not invented the smartphone but they are certainly the masters of getting cult like worship for their tech.

its good to see Microsoft have listen to critism about the shortcoming of Windows 8 on not touch screen devices and are going to return the start menu. The only worry i have with it being Microsoft is that because they want everyone to use the metro interface and buy apps from the Windows store they this may only be a temporary allowance that will get reversed at a later date once more people become accustomed to the metro interface

for 99 cents its worth buying them and rooting to remove the facebook home and then you would have a decent spec dual core Android phone

the disavantage to having additional hardware to authenticate is that you have to remember to have the harware with you at the time when you wish to login. I don't have that problem with a password as its always with me in my head.

I guess if it can be authenticated using your phone then this is something that people usually have to hand so that may work but having to carry a USB stick or fingerprint reader everywhere would be a pain

Makes me think now that the £20 i charged my neighbour from cleaning virus from his PC a few week ago was way under charging

I am using Outlook.com under FF on Linux mint 13 i always have the same problem that it never opens emails on the first click, it registers that i have clicked as the little timer wheel spins but it doesn't open until i click for a second time. Its only this site that i have this problem with an its been like that for several weeks on more than one version of FF.

Only really use outlook as my spam catcher email address so its not a big problem but still annoys me

I would have happily offered my services to clean 170 PCs for 130000 Euro, heck i for that money i wouldn't just cleaned the virus off the PCs i would scrub the toilets with a tooth brush after i had finished.

"Otoy's codec offers a different approach. Instead of DRM, the ORBX codec embeds a unique watermark in each video stream that's keyed to the individual viewer. But if a copy of their specific encode ever shows up on a BitTorrent server, the feds will know exactly where to come knocking."

Surely this unique key would therefore have to be based around their MAC address / IP which can easily be spoofed as if its just a software serial then running several VM would easily get around it

" The company also points out that Windows installs on Macs aren't straightforward and that Windows-on-Mac experience suffers from poor drivers and the lack of a Windows button on the keyboard."

How many people regularly use the windows button on the keyboard unless they have no mouse plugged in? Hardly a major stumbling block to having Windows on a Mac

Surely taping up Ethernet ports is going a bit far, they could still be given local network access for file and print sharing and just not have a default gateway to get out on the interwebs, thats got to be a better solution surely?

If i already have a Ninite installed downloaded with flash included will it still install flash when i run it or will it now error?

Was this another patent that BT developed while they were state owned or did they actually do something since the they went private other than sit around on their arses enjoying their monopoly?

I still don't understand why these chromebooks have an Intel x86 chip in them since they are designed to run only very limited local apps as everything runs in the cloud surely they would be better with a ARM SOC which should make them cheaper to produce.

Of course having an Intel chip makes them more attractive to the root and hack crowd who will want to install full fat linux on them but surely this is only a small percentage of the market

Microsoft have the problem that although Samsung do offer phones with Windows installed they are kind of treated like the red head stepchild and pushed to the back of their offering in favour of Android.

Maybe Samsung have reasons not to want to get too involved with MSFT after years of being a Windows OEM for their computers they fear that if Microsoft get too much of a share on phones they will start to bring in restrictions on what the OEMs can do (such as offering alternative OS's)

According to the article the nobrand oem Android tablets outsold Window 8/RT ones but the numbers weren't included?

I am fairly sure that the original FAT patent will be long expired since its been around since the 1980s. Microsoft were trying to get companies to license the FAT32 long file name patent but some prior art was found last year regarding this so not sure if this patent is even still valid now

www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/ms-patent/

Thankfully my Android phone is from a noname chinese oem so doubtful i have indirectly paid Microsoft any patent fees for my phone.

I am suprised that none of these patent license details have been leaked yet as it is an odd situation where Microsoft have all these wonderful patents but don't want anyone to know what they are.

"Our Denver 64-bit ARM core will be higher performance than anything you can buy from ARM Holdings. "

AFAIK ARM holdings don't sell any hardware, only licenses to produce ARM chips so not really sure what is meant by the above statement?

He does have a point in that ARM greatest strength is not its power efficiency but its open architechture, meaning you can build your own ARM SOC to the requirements you need for your particular device and costs needs which is why you wouldn't get Samsung or Apple using the Intel X86 for their phones or tablets because Intel won't design a custom SOC just for them. So until Intel change their policy on that the two largest mobile devices manufacturers are going to be sticking with ARM.

I had managed to unistalled Java from our office machines until about a week ago when we changed shipping companies to start using city-link, which to book and print the parcel labels require you have Java installed. Argh! its now back on our PCs until City link 'fix' their site to work without Java so we can get rid of it.

It is a shame you can set up java to only run on specific website you specifiy as we don't need Java for anything other than citylink

Anyone who thinks Microsoft is going to go bust is just crazy, they may have to eventually give up on Windows phone but they still make bucket loads of money from desktop and server Windows and office software and this isn't going to go away overnight just because people are buying iPads and iPhones.

It may force Microsoft to actually better support some other platform other than Windows such as the rumours of Office for iOS and Android and maybe IE ports to Android.

A less powerful Microsoft is a good thing though, they had too much influence over OEMs but i do feel they are still going down this route with the patent trolling against Android

the devices will more than likely talk back to your smart meter which will have its own connection to the cloud either over wired (as in the power grid itself) or cellular wireless as the amount of data will be very small they are transmitting as they aren't going to be streaming HD movies just sending/recieving a few kilobytes of data an hour.

I am just waiting to be able to root my fridge and install debian on it :)

If she draws out a wage from the business you don't pay tax on that anyway. you pay tax on the PROFIT the business makes.

Sounds like she needs to get a better accountant

Any large business that lets IE6 out on the internet at large needs to fire their IT staff, sure if you need IE for some legacy app then fine use IE6 for those apps only and for general browsing they should be using a modern browser, although they won't be able to use IE9 or 10 since MS won't back port it to anything older than Windows 7 so they are just handing these customers to Google chrome or firefox

60+ comment on this article and only 2 comments mention wanting to buy a Windows tablet. Kinda tells you the problem Microsoft have got selling the surface.

I am unsure on how US law works, Google/youtube have been found to be not to be infringing copyright twice by the courts but Viacom intends to appeal again! How many times can one appeal in a law suit is there a limit or is it just a matter of having enough money to keep paying the lawyers?

Most likely the patents will be something you have been able to do on computer since the Apple Lisa or Amiga UI so the patents would be expired for desktop pcs but Microsoft will have a patent for 'on a mobile or touch screen device' which will have been granted later

Microsoft don't want the general public to know what they are because they know that people will then hunt vigourously for prior art like they did with the long file name patent for which prior art was found.

I used to be a Motorola fan before i got a Orange Sanfran and started to play around with Android, i recently upgraded to an no name £100 cheap dual core chinese Android phone running jelly bean which looks like a samsung s3 clone.

Have to say for the price i am mighty impressed, it has stock Android 4.1 so no operator bloat, its really responsive and has dual sim slots and an SD card slot. it even came with 2 batteries which i thought at first would mean that it wouldn't get through the day without needing charging but it easily lasts a couple of days on standby even with the wifi turned on.

I would happily buy one of these cheap chinese androids again after trying this one. At £100 each if it breaks i will probably just buy another

Microsoft stop trying to be Apple and come up with something original. Microsoft obviously felt a 'smart watch' would go no where and dropped the idea but as soon as Apple are rumoured to be releasing one Microsoft suddenly resurrect it.

Note to Microsoft, people aren't particularly taking to the Surface and Windows phone, what in gods name do you think they will want windows on a watch!!!

What is the difference between these accused names being released and the names of several high profile celebs who were arrested but not yet charged after the Jimmy Savile scandal in the UK. I know its different countries legal systems but still supposedly free countries.

My friend in the UK has the same problem of acussed of getting the phone wet and Apple refusing to honour the warranty. Thankfully for him he complained to Orange who his contract was with an they agreed to replace his phone as he was a good customer spending over £100 a month on his and his wifes phones

Even if the next Xbox does require an always on connection, give it a couple of months and the Chinese hackers will have found a way around it with a mod chip to play the games offline.

DRM may stop your casual pirates but if your determined to hack a system it will happen, and Microsoft are not renouned for producing secure software.

I am wary of Bitcoins after i had money with another virtual e-currency, e-gold which the US government decided was laundering money and so shutdown the service. Ok it was only a few hundred dollars lost but how many other users also lost this amount?

They will release a 7 inch tablet but still be pricing it to close to compete with the iPad mini rather than the Nexus 7 or Amazon kindle fire so ultimately sales will be slow.

If people have the choice between paying about £270 for an ipad mini or a 7 inch surface i think most people will choose the iPad because of its assumed coolness factor.

Maybe Microsoft should think about giving Windows RT licenses for free to OEMs for 6 or 12 months to encourage them to drop the prices of the devices and build up the Windows ecosystem, but of course this will never wash with the shareholders

My guess is they probably have office running on iOS and Android already but they are holding off releasing to try and leverage the advantage of having Office on the Surface to try and make some traction on sale.

I don't see office being a huge seller on Android and iOS though as these are mainly consumer devices where a lightweight office suite for < £10 would be more than enough for most users and there is no way Microsoft would put out an office version for that sort of price.

Given that Microsoft say that unless you have the ORGINAL install media or recovery partition that you can't even sell a second hand PC with Windows installed on it even if it has the COA still attached then i take their figures of piracy with a pinch of salt.

Nothing to stop Microsoft or anyone else forking Android and removing all the Google stuff and replacing it with their own. Oh wait they already have, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and countless other small Chinese phone suppliers already done this since Android is open source unlike Microsoft software where the OEMs have only a very limited number of things they can change to make their handsets stand out from the rest.

Are Windows phone sellers allowed to remove all the Microsoft apps and service and replace them with alternatives such as google?

How long before the AV and firewall vendor stop providing support for XP though after next April. I am assuming support of Microsoft security essentials on XP stops when the general support stops as well?

i fail to see how storing 1000s of internet shopping website on UK domains in the library is going to be benificial to the public in 50 or 100 years time. Take ebay for example just indexing the UK site once would fill up gigs of data which a week later would all be out of date as new products would be added.

"By actively opposing Secure Boot, Hispalinux joins such organizations as the Free Software Foundation, which has lobbied OEMs to turn off the system by default and has urged consumers to boycott Windows 8 PCs."

It hardly needs these groups to be boycotting Window 8 from the result of the sale of the Surface they are doing that already

Since Google now owns Motorola aren't they now an owner of some IP that relates to H264?, since Motorola were suing Microsoft over its use in the Xbox

But we know know why Microsoft is so interested in Nokia, while Microsoft are proping up Nokia with payments for putting Windows phones out they will play nicely with not licensing IP to anything Google related