Personal data and tutorials in hacking offered online
Founder of site traced to London internet cafe

To the casual observer, there was little to distinguish the Java Bean internet cafe in Wembley from the hundreds of others dotted around the capital. But to surveillance officers staking it out month after month, this unremarkable venue was the key to busting a remarkable and sophisticated network of cyber criminals.

From the bank of computers inside, a former pizza bar worker ran an international cyber "supermarket" selling stolen credit card and account details costing the banking industry tens of millions.

Renukanth Subramaniam, 33, was revealed today as the founder and a major "orchestrator" of the secret DarkMarket website, where elite fraudsters bought and sold personal data, after it was infiltrated by the FBI and the US Secret Service.

Membership was strictly by invitation. But once vetted, its 2,000 vendors and buyers traded everything from card details, obtained through hacking, phishing and ATM skimming devices, to viruses with which buyers could extort money by threatening company websites.

The top English language cybercrime site in the world, it offered online tutorials in account takeovers, credit card deception and money laundering. Equipment including false ATM and pin machines and everything needed to set up a credit card factory was available.

It even featured breaking-news-style updates on the latest compromised material available, while criminals could buy banner adverts to promote their wares.

So vast was its reach, with members in the UK, Canada, US, Russia, Turkey, Germany and France, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which helped bust it, said it was "impossible" to put a figure on how much it cost banks worldwide.

Subramaniam, who used the online soubriquet JiLsi, was remanded in custody at his own request at Blackfriars crown court today after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud and five counts of furnishing false information. Judge John Hillen warned it was "inevitable" he faced a "substantial custodial sentence".

A Sri Lankan-born British citizen, Subramaniam was a former member of ShadowCrew, DarkMarket's forerunner, which was uncovered by the US Secret Service in 2004. "JiLsi was one of the highest in cybercrime in this country with what he managed to achieve setting up a forum globally. No JiLsi, no DarkMarket," said one Soca investigator.

Its 2,000 members never met in real life. Quality, not quantity, was the key. DarkMarket was fastidious in banning "rippers" who would cheat other criminals. Honour among thieves was paramount.

It operated an "escrow" service, with payments and goods exchanged through a third party "like a PayPal for criminals", the judge observed, and an arbitration service resolved disputes. To keep off the radar, the rules were strict: no firearms, drugs or counterfeit currency.

Built on a pyramid structure, administrators decided who joined, moderators ran specific site sections, and reviewers vetted wannabes each demanding 5% or 250 per transaction as a fixer's fee.

To get on, criminals had to present details of 100 compromised cards free of charge - 50 to one reviewer, 50 to another. Reviewers would test the cards and write an online review of customer satisfaction just like eBay customers. "If the cards did what they were supposed to they would be recommended. If not they weren't allowed in," said the investigator.

Payment was via accounts on WebMoney, or E-Gold. "It was the QuickTime method of sending money anywhere."

Subramaniam was one of the top administrators. He kept his operating system on memory sticks. But when one was stolen, costing him 100,000 in losses and compromising the site's security, he was downgraded to reviewer. Surveillance officers caught him logging on to the website as JiLsi unaware the fellow criminal MasterSplyntr he was talking to was, in fact, an FBI agent called Keith Mularski.

Considerable money was exchanged, though actual transactions took place away from the site for security reasons. One buyer spent 250,000 on stolen personal information in just six weeks.

Described as "a very quiet man", Subramaniam worked at Pizza Hut and as a dispatch courier. "He owned three houses but was largely itinerant," said Sharon Lemon, Soca deputy director. "The key to investigations of this sort is finding the evidence to connect the online persona with a living, breathing person."

Harendra de Silva QC, defending Subramaniam, said the "evidence was unchallenged" but said the "question of interpretation does arise in certain areas" and there would be submissions on "nuance" of the fraud in so far as it applied to his client. He is charged alongside John McHugh, 66, known as Devilman, also a site reviewer who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and at whose Doncaster home officers found a credit card-making factory. The two will be sentenced later.

But the battle against cybercrime continues. "This was one of the top 10 sites in the world, but there are more than 100 we know of globally, and another 100 we don't yet know of," said the investigators.

In the DarkMarket

Trusted vendors on DarkMarket offered a smorgasbord of personal data, viruses, and card-cloning kits at knockdown prices. Going rates were:

Dumps Data from magnetic stripes on batches of 10 cards. Standard cards: $50. Gold/platinum: $80. Corporate: $180.

Card verification values Information needed for online transactions. $3-$10 depending on quality.

Full information/change of billing Information needed for opening or taking over account details. $150 for account with $10,000 balance. $300 for one with $20,000 balance.

Skimmer Device to read card data. Up to $7,000.

Bank logins 2% of available balance.

Hire of botnet Software robots used in spam attacks. $50 a day.

Credit card images Both sides of card. $30 each.

Embossed card blanks $50 each.

Holograms $5 per 100.

Kodak has launched lawsuits alleging that the iPhone and BlackBerry - two of the world's most popular mobile phones - infringe its patents.

The photographic pioneer said on Thursday that it had filed a case in the Western District of New York against Apple and Canadian handset manufacturer Research in Motion, as well as an extra one against Apple, amid claims that they that were unfairly using technology patented by Kodak Eastman.

"We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating our industry-leading patent portfolio," said Laura Quatela, the chief intellectual property officer of Eastman Kodak.

The dispute revolves around a system for displaying previews of images that have been taken with a digital camera, which Kodak says it has patented. The second Apple case, meanwhile, involves the interaction between a camera and the software on a computer.

Kodak said that it did not want to block sales of the iPhone or BlackBerry - which are among the most profitable and lucrative handsets in the mobile market - but instead sought "fair compensation".

"We've had discussions for years with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue amicably, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement," said Quatela. "In light of that, we are taking this action to ensure that we protect the interests of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology... Those devices use Kodak technology, and we are merely seeking compensation for the use of our technology in their products."

The company did not put a value on the damages it was seeking, but said it would enjoin the two companies - which could prevent in Apple and RIM

But the case - filed in Rochester, New York - is not the first time that Kodak has launched a legal action to protect its intellectual property. A long-running case against Sun Microsystems, first started in 2002, was finally settled in 2004. More recently, Kodak won a case against Samsung for infringements by the Korean manufacturer's mobile phones.

The Kodak case is just the latest in a series of patent disputes surrounding the iPhone, most notably a bitter tit-for-tat conflict between Apple and the world's largest mobile phone company, Nokia.

In October, Nokia launched a legal attack on the Californian technology company, alleging that the iPhone infringed 10 of its "fundamental" patents relating to wireless technologies.

Apple countered with its own lawsuit in December, accusing Nokia - which has lost significant market share in recent years - of copying its technology.

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," said Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and senior vice president, at the time.

Since then Nokia has launched further legal actions, including one that claims that "virtually all" of Apple's products infringe one or other of its rival's patents.

Kodak - which pioneered popular photography in the - has struggled in recent years as the rapid transition from film cameras to digital cameras to cameraphones has taken place. Five years ago it began a reinvention of its business - which started with 15,000 job losses - to try and remain relevant in the digital age, but a year ago it announced that 4,500 more jobs would go worldwide as losses mounted.

Mobile phones could soon have improve tracking facilities that will remember the places we frequent and use the data to build a profile of what kind of person we are

There are two great short-term challenges left for mobile phones: knowing where we are and knowing who we are.

It looks as though 2010 will be the year in which the first of these problems will be cracked because of the increasing accuracy of tracking devices thanks to location signals extracted from satellites, mobile transmitters and Wi-Fi hotspots.

If that happens then phones will already have gone a long way towards finding out who we are. If a phone knows what cafes, theatres and shops we frequent and whether we are on a plane or a train, it will know a lot about the kind of person we are.

It sounds like paradise for the advertising industry, but it is also useful for those of us who don't seem to mind information about ourselves being released to acquaintances as long as it is done with our permission.

As with CCTV cameras, the social benefits are deemed to outweigh the intrusive inconveniences. The mobile phone is rapidly becoming a kind of CCTV camera turned on ourselves for our friends to see where we are, what restaurants we like and what videos we have just taken. Location-based services have followed the usual syndrome of a new technology a slow year-by-year improvement until critical mass is reached as it becomes cheap and reliable enough to attract developers to exploit it for profit. That critical mass is happening this year.

A turning point for me came recently when one of my favourite mobile networks, qype.co.uk, found two restaurants within 0.2 miles of my home (in central London) that I hadn't realised existed. One was a French restaurant hidden inside a hotel and the other a cafe recently converted into a tapas bar.

I then downloaded the mobile version of the Michelin Guide (to my iPod Touch) to find several Michelin-mentioned restaurants within 0.4 miles that I had also been unaware of. Whether these location-based services will ever make anyone any serious money is a moot point but they are certainly a boon to consumers as long as the phone can find where you are speedily.

Having a location-based weather service, giving temperatures along the route you propose to travel plus access to motorway webcams (through the BBC's regional websites) is proving a boon during the cold snap. There are now hundreds of location- based services and new ones are popping up all the time, including Google's Near Me Now, Foursquare.com and blockchalk.com (mainly just in the US at present) which enable you to explore local areas or to leave location-based messages at the end of your road or in a cafe, as kind of green graffiti that doesn't despoil the streets. Twitter plans to expand its location-based aspects to encourage interactivity among users at the local level to compete with other services that have been developed independently.

Satnav in cars usually regarded as the cutting edge of location has also been slowly improving and, equally important, collapsing in price. Copilot Live GPS Navigation (available for 25.99 as an iPhone, Android or Windows application) claims 200,000 downloads in its first six months. That's an amazing bargain compared with the high cost of dedicated satnav devices but is, itself, being undermined by Google's turn-by-turn navigation application which will be free.

The underlying problem of satnav that they are brilliant when you don't need them (eg, in open country) but flaky in towns remains true despite recent improvements. A new one I tried over the Christmas break, Vexia's Econav, adds a green dimension claiming that it can save you up to 25% or more in fuel charges.

Apart from offering what have become standard services, such as speed camera warnings, Econav tells you on the screen what gear you should be in from data gleaned from a database of 9,000 modes of vehicle. This suffers from the same weakness as satnav itself in that it is not much use on the motorway when you know there is no alternative to, say, fifth gear but in towns it can get irritating as it switches from two to three and back again in lagged response to rapidly changing traffic conditions.

It is excellent in directing you along the greenest route to your destination preferring shorter cross country routes to motorways but impatient with deviants. We decided to go by a quicker, though longer, motorway route and it was 20 miles on before Econav accepted it was beaten and re-adjusted its route. For most of the time it gave good clear directions but more than once took me down a country lane that led nowhere.

In its favour it was easy to use as it picks up where you are quickly so you just need to type in a destination post code. It is also very compact, almost the size of a smartphone and there's the rub. Satellite navigation systems are shrinking to the size of mobiles while mobiles are acquiring the features of satnav and offering them for nothing. It is becoming the latest consumer device to be gobbled up by the mobile phone. The biggest manufacturer of satnav devices, as of cameras, calculators, music players and so forth is almost certainly yes, you've guessed it Nokia.

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Lauded as a contender to kill the iPhone at its US launch last year, this Motorola Android phone has already been slain itself by Google's Nexus One

For a phone that seemed to cause such a stir in the US when it launched last year, the Motorola Milestone (called the Droid in the US) has barely raised a ripple this side of the pond. No network has signed up for the device in fact, only Orange lists Motorola handsets at all in the UK and while enthusiasts snapped up the first batch from online retailer Expansys before Christmas, it has all gone very quiet since then.

It's easy to see why Motorola might now be feeling a little bit sheepish about its much vaunted iPhone killer. There is a new kid on the block: Google's Nexus One, which sports an updated version of the Android operating system that the Milestone contains, a better screen and a sexier look.

It's also easy to see why Google has got fed up with mobile phone manufacturers putting its increasingly elegant Android software into a bunch of ugly bricks and decided that it needed to be in complete control of its own handset in order to stop the iPhone stealing the smartphone show. From the uninspiring T-Mobile Pulse and the chunky Motorola Dext to the HTC Hero, with its weird "chin", and the temperamental Samsung Galaxy i7500, Android devices have hardly been trend setters.

The Motorola Milestone continues disappointingly in that vein. It is a similar size to the iPhone, though slightly heavier and when placed on its side so that the qwerty keyboard slides out in an admittedly reassuringly solid manner because the build quality is excellent it juts out past the screen on the right-hand side. This makes using the keyboard rather awkward as it is off-centre. The screen on the Milestone is inferior to the active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) touchscreen on the Nexus One, which certainly dazzled our reviewer Bobbie Johnson .

But the Milestone does include multitouch, unlike the Nexus One, Dext and its US variant the Droid. Like all Android devices, however, the Milestone is still waiting for developers to start creating the sort of applications not least games that really bring multitouch to life. For an example of what multitouch can become, look no further than the game Eliss being played on an iPhone.

The Milestone is far more responsive than the Motorola Dext which in my experience suffers from dreadful lag in part because Motorola's first stab at an Android handset was running version 1.5 of the software as opposed to the Milestone's Android 2.0. The Nexus One, meanwhile, is on Android 2.1. But the Milestone actually represents something of a step backwards for Motorola.

The Dext sold as the Cliq in the US included Motoblur, which brought social networking updates direct to the device's homescreen rather like Vodafone's 360 service. But Motoblur is conspicuously absent from the new device.

All the usual Android features are, however, present: email integration is easy, setting up contacts and downloading what applications there are from the Android marketplace is simple. The Milestone also has a better camera than the iPhone weighing in at 5 megapixels and including a similar variety of bells and whistles, such as flash and a digital zoom, to those included on the Nexus One but I found it incredibly slow to process images. The Milestone can take a 32GB MicroSD card, the same as the Nexus One. Both the Nexus One and Milestone, meanwhile, allow for multitasking, meaning you can flit between applications without having to close them down, which the iPhone has yet to achieve.

The ultimate question with the Milestone is why bother to buy it when the Nexus One is a better phone? Yes it has a keypad, but anyone who desperately needs a keyboard should just buy a BlackBerry RIM is the only handset manufacturer that can be trusted to produce one that will not end up inducing carpal tunnel syndrome in long-term users. The Milestone's off-centre keyboard will cripple you in a matter of weeks.

The big drawback with the Nexus One is it is currently only available direct from Google. This makes it expensive at about 425 as there is no network operator to subsidise it and leaves any customer who has problems with the device with no other option than emailing Google and waiting for a response. That, however, is going to change later this year as Vodafone, and possibly T-Mobile, will sell the Nexus One in the UK later this year. Anyone desperate for an Android phone would do well to wait; treating this latest Motorola attempt as a Milestone on the road to something better.

Pros: It's not an iPhone for those that cannot bear the thought of becoming "one of those people that has an iPhone".

Cons: It's not a Nexus One

motorola.com

Industry veteran lays into the giant publisher for its failures to foresee the digital distribution age - and more!

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere, Mitch Lasky, once VP of mobile and online at Electronic Arts, has posted a stinging criticism of the company and its CEO John Riccitiello on his personal blog. Commenting on the decision to lower profit projections once again, Lasky stated that, "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital."

He's in no doubt about the cause of the company's problems - an inability to react quickly enough to changes in the business from a retail model to digital distribution; plus a paucity of genuine Triple A titles. While the sports sims are doing well, profits have been strangled by higher licensing costs, and, man, don't even get Lasky started on the EA Games division:

"But by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to "grow their way through the transition" to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already "booked" (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."

Ouch. But there's more.

"It's equally amazing that the board continues to support the existing management team through this debacle. Since JR took over, the company has destroyed over $11 billion in market value. Certainly, some of that was the economy and the general erosion of value on NASDAQ, but Activision has experienced far milder effects from the recession."

Lasky, now a partner with venture firm Benchmark Capital, goes on to wonder why EA, in its weakened state, has not been subject to a takeover bid. "Certainly, Disney has been looking at them since I was at the house of the mouse back in the early 90's. And there are Chinese companies, like TenCent, that could easily swallow EA whole."

Lasky is certainly not alone in his criticisms. Reporting on EA's forecast-slashing hijinks, Reuters had a snaking line of industry pundits queuing to put the analytical boot in. "Anytime you underperform, you should be worried about your job," said Mike Hickey of Janco Partners, while regular industry chin-stroker Michael Pachter suggested that the EA management team had "zero credibility" with investors.

The publisher seems to be pinning hopes on its digital and iPhone titles this year, as well as console offerings such as Army of Two: 40th Day, Mass Effect 2, Dante's Inferno, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Medal of Honor. Will these titles be enough to keep Lasky and co at bay?

It's a household name in Britain, thanks to its popular digital radios. But can Pure Digital make inroads in the US, where the idea has never taken off? The company's Colin Crawford explains why it is time to take on America.

Plus, we delve further into the chances for UK technology firms to make an impact at CES by talking to the people trying to cheerlead the nation's entrepreneurs: the chaps from UK Trade and Investment are on hand to discuss the chances for British companies to make it big.

The subject is picked up by our guests, Michael Brook from T3 magazine and Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic, who also discuss their favourite moments from this year's show and ponder what it means to be green amid this orgy of gadgets.

Meanwhile Scott Cawley finishes up his tour of the halls, before we all head away, exhausted, from Las Vegas.

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Verisign's iDefense Labs says IP addresses of attack 'correspond to single foreign entity consisting either of agents of Chinese state or proxies thereof'

An American internet security firm says it has traced the sophisticated cyber-attack against Google and 30 other US companies back to the Chinese government "or its proxies". In its announcement that it might quit China, Google stopped short of accusing the Chinese government of responsibility for the attacks. However, the report from Verisign's iDefense Labs said the internet addresses "of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof".

Internet attacks are difficult to trace to their source as attackers often use several computers, sometimes in different countries, to cover their tracks. The researchers traced the attacks to the servers used to control software involved in the attack. Researchers at the security lab interviewed several sources from defence and intelligence contractors to back up their allegations against the Chinese government.

In Britain, Gordon Brown's spokesman said: "The Google statement contained serious allegations on privacy and freedom of information. We are not privy to their discussions with the Chinese authorities. But we will be watching closely. Clearly internet freedom is a fundamental right and an essential component of a modern economy. At the last bilateral human rights dialogue with China the government lobbied specifically on internet access."

Two years ago, MI5 warned 300 British companies that Chinese hackers were targeting corporate networks. In a briefing last year, the US defence contractor, Northup Grumman, warned that the Chinese army was training troops in internet warfare. In addition to Google, the Washington Post reported that Yahoo, Symantec, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical were also targets of the cyber-attack, which may have begun last summer.

China has stood firm against Google's challenge over censorship, reminding internet firms to abide by government controls. In its first direct response to hacking claims, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said: "China's internet is open, China welcomes international internet enterprises to conduct business in China according to law."

She added: "China administers the internet according to the law. We have an explicit stipulation of what information and content could be spread over the internet." Asked about claims the intrusion into Google originated from China, she replied: "Chinese laws prohibit any form of cyber-attacks including hacking."

Google cited a growing clampdown on the internet and a December attack by hackers, which it said targeted human rights advocates as well as stealing intellectual property, for its decision.

A source with direct knowledge of Google's senior management said the internet giant moved quickly to announce it would stop censoring its Chinese service after realising dissidents were at risk from attempts to use the company's technology for political surveillance. The source said the company's decision was influenced by the experiences of Sergey Brin's Russian refugee background.

"The notion that somebody would try to turn Google's tools into tools of political surveillance was something he found deeply offensive." When it became clear that the cyber attacks were about political surveillance, people at the very top of the company "decided they no longer wanted to participate in this kind of behaviour," said the source.

Authorities blamed for hacking into Gmail users
Phishing scams and malware used as weapons

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised.

They came forward after Google's announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China said they had repeatedly suffered from hacking and blamed the authorities .

Ai Weiwei, one of China's best-known contemporary artists, said he detected problems with email accounts two months ago.

Teng Biao, a law professor and human rights lawyer, and Zeng Jinyan, activist and wife of the jailed dissident Hu Jia, both said their email had been hacked as long ago as 2007. They realised the issue had recurred when they checked their accounts in light of Google's statement.

However, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, told a press conference in Beijing: "Chinese laws prohibit any form of cyber attacks including hacking."

On Tuesday, Google said hackers had gained limited access to two accounts in December's attack. It is understood the firm contacted the account holders.

Tenzin Seldon, 20, a US student whose parents are Tibetan exiles, said Google had checked her computer and confirmed an intrusion. "My email account was likely hacked because I am a Tibetan activist," she said.

Google said its investigation also showed that the accounts of dozens of Gmail users in the US, China and Europe who are advocates of human rights in China had been routinely accessed by third parties. This had not happened through an intrusion into its infrastructure, but probably through phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

Ai, who helped to design the Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympics, came under pressure from authorities after leading a volunteer attempt to list all the children who died when their schools collapsed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

"We realised two months ago that our Gmail account [for the Sichuan investigation] had been invaded by someone who was transferring our emails so whatever we got, they got," he said. "Of course we changed the password but we later had problems again."

Ai said he had checked the account after detecting other forms of monitoring, but was unsurprised to detect the problem because people involved in protecting rights in China had told him it was very common. Although it was impossible to know, he believed those responsible "must be the same kind of people" who recently visited his bank government security officers.

He added: "From my experience dealing with Sichuan I started to understand very clearly the character of local government. They will do anything they tap your phone You will never really wrongly accuse them of anything because they do everything."

Zeng said her account had been hacked repeatedly. "I checked it up yesterday and found all my emails have been copied to another email address which I did not know. I think it must be done by the authorities, because I am not interesting enough to attract other hackers," she said.

Teng, who has acted in many sensitive cases and often speaks out on rights issues, said he was not surprised he had been targeted.

"In September and October 2007, my Gmail was used by others to send out emails to people with attachments containing viruses. Later, the Gmail I had used for three years was no longer accessible. I had to abandon the account and registered a new one," he said.

"This time I found that all my emails have been forwarded to [another] address. Of course, I have no evidence to say who did this, but I think only the government's security department is interested in human rights lawyers."

Another well-known activist, Yao Yao, tweeted: "My Gmail was hacked five times. I changed to a stronger password, then my emails were forwarded to an email account I had never seen."

It is not clear how the accounts were compromised, but malware-laden emails sent to rights activists, foreign media and others in China have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years.

In October, assistants for several foreign media organisations in China were sent carefully tailored messages with attachments carrying malware.

Earlier last year researchers at the University of Toronto said they had discovered a vast electronic spy network which seemed to have targeted embassies, media groups, NGOs, international organisations, government foreign ministries and the offices of the Dalai Lama, the leader of the Tibetan exile movement.

Computers were infected when users clicked on links in emails or documents attached to them.

The team said the "GhostNet", which had infiltrated hundreds of computers and stolen documents, was apparently controlled from computers in China. But they added that they could not identify who was behind it.

Google says at least 20 other large companies have been targeted in cyber attacks, but none of them has come forward

Yahoo and Adobe appear to be among the companies that suffered the sort of cyberattack that led Google to threaten to withdraw from China. In its original announcement, Google said that "at least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses including the internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors have been similarly targeted".

However, Google did not name any names, and it did not actually say that the attacks were made by people acting on the behalf of the Chinese government.

Most large companies "face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis," as Google said, but so far none of them seem to have come forward.

Adobe said in a blog post that it was investigating a "coordinated attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe and other companies", and the timing suggests it could well be related to the attacks on Google.

Bloomberg reported that Yahoo "was targeted by a Chinese attack similar to the one that affected Google Inc, according to a person familiar with the matter", but this has not been confirmed. The company said: "Yahoo does not generally disclose that type of information, but we take security very seriously and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach."

The Washington Post, reporting a "vast espionage campaign", claimed that "at least 34 companies including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources."

The attacks seem to have been performed by "spear phishing" that is, targeting company employees with infected email attachments. According to a widely-reported statement by Eli Jellenc, head of international cyber intelligence at Verisign-owned iDefense: "The attack bears significant resemblance to a July 2009 attack in which attackers launched targeted email campaigns against approximately 100 IT-focused companies."

This type of attack has been part of the computer scene for several years, and Chinese involvement has often been suspected. It would be surprising if Google had not been attacked before. In this case, it's not the attack but the response that is unusual.

Intel's fourth quarter net profits increased by 875% even after its settlement with AMD as the PC market showed good growth in the Christmas quarter, compared with a depressed 2008

Intel has unveiled blockbuster results for the financial quarter to December 26, about a third ahead of Wall Street estimates. Net profits increased by 875% to $2.3bn on revenues that climbed 28% to $10.6 billion (PDF).

That looks like a return to normal: Intel made profits of $2.3bn in the same quarter in 2007, before a 90% plunge to $234m in 2008. However, the latest figures include a $1.25bn litigation settlement with chip rival AMD. Without that, operating income reached $3.75bn, a 45% increase on the year's third quarter.

Intel's chief financial officer Stacy Smith said in a statement: "We have seen a return of consumer demand and replenishment to normal inventory levels after the precipitous demand drop at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. Operationally, the fourth quarter of 2009 was one of our most profitable quarters ever." (PDF)

Revenues for the full year dipped by 7% to $35.1bn, with net income down by 17% to $4.4bn. The full year figures include a $1.45bn fine paid to the EU.

Intel's fourth-quarter results reflect a resurgence in the PC market following the economic recovery, and other factors, such as launch of Microsoft Windows 7. Research firm IDC said PC sales in the US increased by 24% to 20.7m units in the quarter, while worldwide PC sales grew by 15.2% to 85.8m units. Most PCs, including netbooks, use Intel microprocessors.

Intel's results may lead to increased optimism about the string of technology industry financial results that will follow.

Asperger's sufferer faces lengthy prison sentence in the US for breaching US military and Nasa computers

The home secretary may have acted unlawfully by pursuing the extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, a high court judge said yesterday.

Extraditing McKinnon, an Asperger's sufferer who is facing a lengthy prison sentence in the US for breaching US military and Nasa computers, raises "stark and simple issues", Mr Justice Mitting said.

In a letter, the judge described medical evidence that McKinnon would be at high risk of suicide in an American jail as "as yet unchallenged and unqualified".

That evidence may require the home secretary "to refuse to surrender [McKinnon] to the government of the USA" Mitting said, in a letter yesterday. "It is arguable that the [home secretary's] decision was unlawful", the letter added.

The decision is seen as a dramatic change from the approach of the high court in previous hearings on McKinnon.

His mother, Janis Sharp, said: "I can't believe it some common sense at last. This judge has made such an honourable and decent decision. Gary's health has badly declined it's been traumatic to see. I hope this brings him comfort that the right decision will be made, even if it requires the courts to impose it rather than our government to reach it."

Last July, the court rejected arguments that the extradition would violate McKinnon's rights, after lawyers argued the prospect of up to 60 years' imprisonment in an American "supermax" jail would cause mental harm because of his Asperger's syndrome and depressive illness.

The court was influenced by assurances sent to the home secretary by the US government, including a guarantee McKinnon would be assessed by doctors and psychologists in jail, and would get "appropriate medical care and treatment".

But yesterday's letter suggested that new evidence sent by McKinnon's team last October, including a report from consultant psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk, may have changed the legal position on extraditing McKinnon. Turk said the Briton was at "exceptionally high risk of self-harm and even suicide."

The Home Office rejected that evidence in November but yesterday's decision from the high court could make that position untenable, experts said.

"These remarks really highlight the very weak nature of the secretary of state's position if he continues to resist", an extradition expert who had seen the letter said. "I think he may now withdraw with some grace rather than fight a humiliating stance despite the problems he faces as highlighted by Mitting."

Lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg accused the Guatemalan president of ordering his murder, in a video released after his own funeral. But the real story, when it finally came to light, was even more incredible

Rodrigo Rosenberg lived alone in an apartment in Guatemala City's trendy Districto 14, a refuge for diplomats and heirs to 19th-century fortunes. Miserable and divorced, the balding 47-year-old lawyer was estranged from his children, who lived in Mexico with his ex-wife. Rosenberg's bodyguard was the closest thing to a roommate, his abandoned bicycle on the terrace the closest thing to exercise.

On 10 May last year, he left his home at 8am. Security cameras would later show him mounting a bicycle and riding away, alone, on a two-lane, tree-lined street. The morning traffic was minimal as the assassins moved in. More camera footage shows a souped-up Mazda shadowing Rosenberg. The killing is over in seconds. The Mazda speeds away, and Rosenberg bleeds to death on the street. The Harvard-educated lawyer had been shot three times in the head.

The killing was horribly typical of Guatemala City, rated the third most dangerous city in the world, where an estimated 98% of murders are never solved. According to a 2007 UN report by human rights scholar Philip Alston: "Guatemala is a good place to kill."

But at the end of Rosenberg's funeral the following day, Luis Mendiz bal, a close friend, handed out a video to mourners. It was a filmed statement by Rosenberg made just four days earlier. The video, a simple amateur recording, showed Rosenberg behind a desk in a plain blue blazer and tie. But his message sent reverberations through the country's political landscape.

"If you are listening to this," said the dead man, "it's because I was murdered by President Alvaro Colom, with the help of [the president's private secretary] Gustavo Alejos and [businessman] Gregorio Valdez."

Rosenberg's video also alleged corruption at the highest levels of BanRural, a government-run co-operative bank. "The last thing I wanted was to deliver this message, knowing that if you're watching it, it's because I'm dead, because this won't make my children any better. But I hope Guatemala will be better. I hope my death helps get the country started down a new path. Guatemalans, the time has come."

Within hours of the funeral, the 17-minute video had been uploaded to a Guatemalan newspaper website and YouTube. Within Guatemala it went viral, and crashed servers. Hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide watched the chillingly calm lawyer predicting his own death, and apparently naming his murderer.

As technicians struggled to amp up the available bandwith, politicians surged into action. With corruption endemic in Guatemala, the murder of Rosenberg became a rallying cry for conservative opponents of the progressive Colom administration. Frustration at widespread immunity for criminals boiled over into public demonstrations, where tens of thousands of upper-class, anti-government protesters donned white shirts in a symbolic statement against dirty politics as they clamoured for the president to resign.

Meanwhile supporters of President Colom, who came to power in 2007, immediately called the whole episode a sick rightwing plot to quash the president's call for raising business taxes and providing fairer treatment for the country's Mayan majority. "Nobody could figure out what was happening," said Fernando Barillas, then the president's spokesman and top aide, as he described the Colom administration's reaction to the video. "We were discusing the H1N1 [swine flu] virus and whether this was a national epidemic or not . . . Then you have this recording where someone before they die accuses the president of his death? It was like something out of a novel or a movie script."

But among the ruling elite, a consensus was boiling up: the president had organised the hit, so the president must go. Colom's bumbling interview with Patricia Janiot on CNN, and his refusal to immediately address the charges, added to the conclusion that the end of his reign was imminent.

For a tense two weeks, Colom's tenure was in serious doubt. Protests both for and against filled the plazas of Guatemala city. Had George Bush still been in power in the US, the leftist Colom might well have been dumped, but in a quiet victory for Obama-style diplomacy, a delegation from the US-dominated Organization of American States was sent to Guatemala to provide full US-backing for Colom's administration, which nonetheless was almost washed away by a Twitter and Facebook-led wave of criticism.

In the eight months since the killing, amid all the feverish speculation endemic to Guatemalan life, two favoured scenarios emerged: Rosenberg was murdered either because he got too close to dirty deals himself, or by rightwing activists in a plot to frame President Colom. The truth, however, which emerged only this week, is even more bizarre and shocking. Rosenberg planned his own suicide, then tried to pin it on the president.

"Nobody else but him is responsible for his own death," Carlos Castresana, leader of the UN's investigation into the killing, told a stunned press conference in Guatemala City on Tuesday. "He planned it all."

Rosenberg's entire script, said Castresana, was fiction a twisted plot hatched by the lawyer to upend Colom's presidency. It was apparently Rosenberg himself who asked distant relatives of his ex-wife for help. "These are very close friends, to whom he says: 'I have a swindler who is threatening me, and I want him dead.' They receive the mission and look for someone capable of doing it."

Rosenberg also negotiated the specifics of the hit, and even provided the mobile phones used to negotiate the fee, which was set at 300,000 Quetzal [ 22,000]. Once the execution was arranged, Rosenberg had one last detail to sort he told his driver to fix up his long-abandoned bicycle.

Until April last year, Rosenberg was a low-profile lawyer with a low-profile life. But that world was shattered when a pair of assassins on a red motorcycle unleashed a volley of bullets at 74-year-old industrialist Khalil Musa, one of Rosenberg's clients, as his daughter Marjorie drove him away from his Guatemala City office. Musa was hit six times, the bullets splintering his body. One passed through him and killed his daughter instantly.

The murders made few headlines, even though they were carried out in broad daylight and Musa was a well-known businessman. But to Rosenberg, the death of Marjorie Musa was devastating. As emails and text messages uncovered by the UN investigation would determine, Marjorie, who was married, and Rosenberg, a divorcee, were having an affair.

The distraught Rosenberg became obsessed with solving the Musa murders and linking them to what he believed was a corruption scam reaching to the highest level of government; all the way to President Colom and his wife Sandra, who regularly infuriated Guatemala's ruling class by appearing on TV handing out food and healthcare to the poor. The first lady adamantly refused to have her social programmes audited, leading to widespread rumours that millions were being skimmed off by corrupt officials.

As a top corporate lawyer in Guatemala, Rosenberg was well versed in the incestuous relationships that dominate the country's corporate-government relationships. And he had the means to investigate them friends in government and industry, his own law firm. He began telling close friends that he was now immersed in a Bond-like world where informants passed on secret documents and called him to clandestine, Deep Throat-style meetings. Death threats, he calmly explained, were now commonplace. He even provided his friends with the mobile numbers from which those threats originated.

"Rosenberg felt guilty about the assassination of [Marjorie] Musa," said Castresana at the press conference. "He began a desperate search all over to find Musa's killers . . . but he found no proof."

Instead, he began to fabricate evidence and incidents to bolster claims that he had uncovered a massive government corruption scandal. He sent his bodyguard to buy two mobiles one to make death threats to himelf, the other for the hitmen to broker the assassination of the imaginary "swindler". And then, after making the video, Rosenberg placed several calls to friends, took out his mended bike, and rode to the designated kill zone on 2da Avenue. Then he sat down, waiting for the killers to arrive.

But amid all the careful plotting, Rosenberg made one critical miscalculation. No other square block of Guatemala City has more security cameras than the murder site, on account of all its rich residents. Recording from various angles, these cameras captured the getaway Mazda, which in turn led to the assassins. And after months in jail, they finally began to collaborate, helping Castresana to unravel the truth of this extraordinary crime.

Instead of being toppled by the bogus video, Colom now appears to have emerged as a stoic leader who did not cave in to populist sentiment. Whereas Rosenberg, once widely regarded as a patriotic hero who died for his nation, leaves a legacy of betrayal that is likely to put some of his associates in prison for decades.

"The crimes that happen here are unthinkable in other parts of the world and rival any political thriller," concludes Simon Granovsky-Larsen, an author who is a leading expert on political violence in Guatemala. "In the first months, or even years, after a political crime like Rosenberg's, it is difficult to know what is a crazy conspiracy theory and then one of those crazy conspiracy theories turns out to be true. In other parts of the world, this could only be fiction."

It's easy to use and a snap to set up, but this webcam is pricier than most

While webcams are now built into many laptops, netbooks and even flat panel screens, many desktop computers and a fair few laptops still require a standalone webcam.

It's a crowded market with webcams from Creative, Logitech, Microsoft and Hercules. French company Guillemot makes gaming accessories under the Thrustmaster brand and Wi-Fi products, speakers and other computer accessories including webcams under the Hercules brand.

The Dualpix Emotion from Hercules boasts a 1.3-megapixel (MP) CMOS sensor. It can take 5MP interpolated stills pictures. Like many webcams, it has face-tracking so can keep your face framed as you move about in front of the camera.

To stand out from the crowd, the Dualpix Emotion offers a software suite that will add effects to your video, such as inverting the image or adding fiery trails.

The webcam also includes Hercules' Xtra Controller Ex software that allows you to add a slideshow of images to video chat, and the included software makes it easy to upload captured video to YouTube.

The bracket held the webcam securely to the top of my laptop screen and adjusted easily to fit to the top of the flat-panel screen on my desktop.

The webcam is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. I found installing the webcam on a Windows 7 computer was a snap. The included driver works well without an update. The software suite is stable, which isn't always the case with cheaper webcams.

The webcam isn't Skype certified, but it does work with Skype and work well.

The face-tracking is responsive, and the webcam has a feature to compensate for strongly backlit rooms, which worked very well. The still images are crisp and well balanced. I did find that at higher resolutions, the video suffered from some ghosting.

At 49.99, it's more expensive than many other webcams from Hercules and its competitors.

It's a stylish and capable webcam with a good software package. If you do video chatting often and want a higher spec camera with a comprehensive software suite, the Dualpix Emotion is a good choice.

Pros: Easy setup with a full software suite.
Cons: Pricier than many webcams and suffers from ghosting when recording higher resolution video.
Hercules.com

PS3/Xbox 360/Wii; 39.99; Cert 12+; Warner Bros

When Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's story came out late last year, many critics complained that the movie was pitched at too mature a level, appealing to adults far more than the children for whom the story was originally written.

Conversely, the biggest problem with the game of Where The Wild Things Are is that it's far too squarely aimed at children. There's a pretty good game lurking somewhere in here, but everything is so clearly signposted, as if players are going to be scared off by anything challenging, that what's left is simple to the point of being aggressively dull.

It's a standard 3D-platform affair with very little relationship to the plot of the film. Something mysterious is happening to the island inhabited by the Wild Things; big pools of malevolent black goo are appearing all over the place.

Playing as Max, the newly crowned king, it's up to you to get to the bottom of what's going on. This mostly involves exploring the island via linear levels, and battling various over-sized insects along the way with an extremely basic, one button fighting mechanic. On each level, you're accompanied by one or more of the Wild Things, who aid your progress and occasionally need rescuing.

While basically ignoring the original story, the developers have done a reasonably good job of capturing something of the tone and spirit of the film. One nice touch is allowing Max to, rather sweetly, hug the Wild Things in order to restore health. With Max's protective role over the Wild Things, coupled with a highly atmospheric soundtrack and setting, at points the game is vaguely reminiscent of Ico, although it's by no means as good as that.

While it all looks very pretty, and the Wild Things themselves are brilliantly brought to life, it's so unchallenging that it's hard to muster up the enthusiasm to progress through each and every level. As movie licences go, there's admittedly far worse out there, and perhaps this would make an OK present for the pre-teen gamer in your life. For the rest of us though, it's just not worth the time, money or effort.

Rating: 2/5

What will publishers really do with Microsoft's motion controller?

Predictably, the week of the vast Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has seen a whirlwind of hype gather around Microsoft's Natal motion control technology. It started at Microsoft's press briefing in which a late-2010 launch was announced, and it ended this weekend with Robbie Bach declaring in an interview with the Financial Post that, "We have something like 70% or 80% of the publishers in the world already doing Natal-based games. Our first party studios are [also] very focused on this."

The question is, what are they making?

It seems that what Microsoft wants is a huge range of entirely new gaming experiences developed exclusively for the Natal technology. Last week, Xbox director, Aaron Greenberg, told US gaming blog Joystiq that, "We're not looking at just adding little Natal components to games, we're looking at how do we actually bring an entirely new category of controller-free games and entertainment to the market so I think that's where we will continue to focus."

But is he truly speaking for the alleged 70% or 80% of publishers currently tinkering away with their Natal dev kits? I'm not so sure.

For a start, publishers are massively, obsessively risk averse. If there's any way of leveraging market pre-awareness into a new product they'll leap at it. So even if these companies are developing titles that work only on Natal - not just new games with vaguely specified Natal-support - it's unlikely that they'll do this without recourse to familiar brands and gameplay experiences. In other words, we may get a dedicated Natal version of, say, Mass Effect 3, but it'll still be Mass Effect, it's just that you'll act out those in-depth personal relationships with aliens rather than just talking and watching the cut-scenes.

But so far the only confirmed support is Fable III - an established brand that will include Natal elements. Elsewhere, Epic Games has mentioned that future titles will have 'some' Natal support. Just yesterday, in fact, G4TV posted snippets from an interview with Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development, Christian Svensson, who said, "I think you'll see again a brand focus on what we're doing there [on Natal], perhaps a brand we haven't seen in a while [...] We're gonna make a 'gamers game' for Natal using something amongst our brand history."

Mega Man on Natal? Strider on Natal? I'm not sure that's exactly what Greenberg was hoping for. But then, it's also interesting that Capcom is talking about retro licenses rather than modern day brands. During a demo of the technology at CES, lead developer, Alex Kipman, apparently told New Scientist that Natal consumes 'just' 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing resources. Opinion is split on whether that's actually a vast amount, fatally hobbling any modern day franchises that wanted some Natal action, or if it's a modest portion, and that precessing power is not the key bottle neck in a modern console system. This is the exciting part of dealing only in vague pre-release hype and fanboy conjecture.

Ultimately, I'm still not entirely sure I know what Natal - or of course, Sony's motion wand - really mean for the industry. We're being told that they will extend the lifecycle of the current consoles, and that makes sense as they potentially offer entirely new experiences. What concerns me, I suppose, is that the Xbox and PS3 business models depend on a majority of these experiences coming from third-party publishers. In this difficult economic climate, does anyone have the bravery to just run with it? To invent a new genre, or massively update an old one? Or will Natal be a glorified EyeToy Play, a breeding ground for casual gaming collections?

On thing's for sure, genuinely not knowing is fun - it's the excitement of a console refresh without the significant financial outlay for us gamers. Filled with uncertainty and worry and heavily guarded optimism, and dependent on the whims of massive corporations, Natal provides a very contemporary notion of expectation. This is the way life is now - even for gamers just looking for the next big thing to play.

Take a look at some of the gadgets being unveiled at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Despite the recession, this year's Consumer Electronics Show was still big: very, very big. More new exhibitors turned up than ever before, visitor numbers were good, and the taxi drivers in Las Vegas said it was busier than they expected. Just like every year, the showfloor went on forever - and after what seemed an eternity of walking the halls, I'm home - and extremely glad to be done.

Regardless of the gigantic displays and vast number of companies in attendance, though, it still felt a little underwhelming. Even with a bit of distance, I can't think of too many standout technologies on display, and I've already explained my thoughts about the expo's often laughable green push. Still, there were serious pushes for some technologies that might make be fixtures in our lives in coming years: 3DTV, ebooks, netbooks and so on.

But the lack of big winners doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot to learn: so here are the lessons I'm taking away with me.

You don't have to be at CES to be at CES

I've said it already, but the biggest success story at the show was the one company that never makes an appearance. Steve Jobs wasn't here, but he exerted an influence far beyond anything . Will it release an iPad device later this month? Probably. Do we know what it's going to be like? Not really. Did that stop dozens and dozens of companies trying to get in on the act? No. As Andy Inahtko, the author and journalist, suggests, the threat of Apple was enough to send companies like Microsoft (and therefore everyone who relies on Microsoft) into a panic.

Don't underestimate Android

Google's decision to launch its own branded phone the day before the conference might have set the show off on a strange note, but it wasn't just about the Nexus One. The halls were stuffed with Android devices, from a smartbook produced by HP to the slightly odd Alex e-reader. Not all the gadgets are there just yet, but it's clear that manufacturers like the idea. And with Google's Chrome operating system due later this year, the internet giant is really starting to stake out its territory.

There's still room for the little guy

The show is, unsurprisingly, dominated by the big companies. Microsoft opens proceedings. Sony gets plenty of coverage. The likes of Intel, Samsung, LG, Panasonic and others still get the lion's share of coverage and the majority of the crowds turn up at the show's central hall - where most of the big firms dwell. But that doesn't mean that the smaller companies can't make an impact. Parrot proved a surprise hit with their AR Drone, and among the herd of ereaders, the Plastic Logic Que really impressed me. Yes, it's a little tedious to look through row upon row of iPod cases - but there are genuinely interesting ideas needled away in the haystack.

Next year, I hear, the show plans to spread the big companies out around the halls, rather than have most of them concentrated in one place. Will that encourage more innovation? Almost certainly not, but it will at least get more eyeballs on the interesting smaller things. Still, I'm interested to find out how these trends pan out over the next year. Given the blisters on my feet and the general air of exhaustion, I can't believe I'm going to say this - but roll on CES 2011.

Can't read things? Photograph them with an Intel Reader and it will read them back to you. It could be a boon for people with limited vision or dyslexia

You probably don't own any Intel products, as distinct from products that contain Intel chips. But one of the devices that the company has designed and manufactures is the Intel Reader, which is a product of the Intel Health division. It's a fattish Atom-powered portable that converts print into large print and, if you want, reads it aloud. It's aimed at people who find reading difficult because of impaired eyesight or dyslexia, for example.

The Intel Reader needs to be portable so that you can carry it around. When you run into something you can't read, you use the Reader's built in camera to photograph it -- it might be a restaurant menu, a ticket, a notice, or the instructions on a bottle of pills. It's not simply an electronic book system, though it can be used to read ebooks including (hip hip hooray) books in the Daisy (Digital Accessible Information System) format used by the RNIB.

So why did a company that normally provides chips create a whole product? At CES 2010, I asked Intel's Tracy Counts, the Reader's marketing manager. She said the product's developer is dyslexic and knew how hard it was "to get printed text in a format he could listen to and understand. He went to the general manager of our group and pitched the idea, and Intel Heath got behind it because it fits with the whole idea of digital health, which is helping people to be independent."

The Intel Reader isn't so much a consumer electronics device as a health product with a limited market (people with poor vision, the blind, the dyslexic), and that's reflected in the 999 price at Amazon.co.uk. It could also find users in schools and libraries, and Intel is showing the Reader at this week's BETT educational technology exhibition at Olympia in London (13 - 16 January 2010).

The Intel Reader was one of the Top 10 devices in the Last Gadget Standing competition at CES, and Engadget put it through its paces in a hands-on video, below:

Bobbie Johnson takes a look at the big and small of North America's largest trade show

The XML patent case that has stopped Microsoft's sales of Word in the US turns out to have quite a history, as Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i Inc, explains (updated)

The chairman of the company that has won an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling Word 2007 because of patent infringement says he will not license the technology to the company and has not ruled out going after any other products that infringe its XML patent.

And in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Loudon Owen, chairman since 1996 of i4i Inc, a 30-strong company based in Toronto, Canada, said that his aim is for the company to "become the Oracle of unstructured data" and strongly rebuffed claims that the lawsuit against Microsoft was a case of "patent trolling".

i4i, set up in 1993 by Michel Vulpe, has provided systems for the US Patent Office ("ironic, in the circumstances" remarked Owen), US Air Force and a number of pharmaceutical companies including Novo Nordisk and Bayer. Basically it takes huge amounts of unstructured data and puts XML wrappers around it, making it useful and usable.

The injunction against Microsoft, first in a jury trial and then confirmed in an appeal before judges, means that the company cannot sell its Word 2007 product from its online store because it was found to have infringed i4i's patent on custom XML. i4i was granted a patent on the use of custom XML in 1998.

Some people have asserted that i4i was patent trolling suing and extracting large sums of money from companies that accidentally infringe its intellectual property because it filed the suit in the courts of Tyler, a city in Texas.

But Owen says that is not the case at all and points out that the judges found that Microsoft "wilfully" infringed the patent. It turns out that the two companies are not strangers.

Back in 2000 or so, says Owen, i4i was heading towards its largest-ever size, with about 150 staff. (None of them lawyers; then, as now, the company would hire outside legal help if needed.) Owen had in the 1990s been on the board of SatImage Softimage, a small company at the forefront of animation which Microsoft bought. Then in 2000-01, Microsoft and i4i began talking about XML, and custom XML. "We had extensive dealings with Microsoft over the course of several years about the possibility of working together," Owen told me.

But that came to naught. Then in 2001 Microsoft began talking publicly about including XML schemas in forthcoming versions of Word. In 2002 betas of the Word 2003 program were released publicly. The next year, Word 2003 including custom XML schema systems came out. And i4i's business started to shrink.

"This isn't something that suddenly showed up on our screens," says Owen. "The first court found, and the court of appeal found, that the infringement was wilful."

(At this point long-time Microsoft watchers may be getting distant ringing bell sounds in their head. Microsoft including other companies' technologies in a patent-infringing manner? Sounds like Stac Electronics "Stac executives were outraged, as Microsoft had previously been in discussions with Stac to license its compression technology". Or the Excel-Access case: "He said he tried to sell this technology to Microsoft in 1992 but they turned him down. According to Amado, Microsoft started including his software in their releases between 1995 and 2002." Or maybe Eolas. Stories of Microsoft approaching companies, getting close and then mysteriously producing just the same thing are legion. I asked Owen whether he had read Charles Ferguson's 'High St@kes, No Prisoners', which relates life in a startup that is close to being acquired or will it just be steamrollered? by Microsoft. He hadn't, but it all sounded familiar to him.)

Although Microsoft is now considering appeals to the US Supreme Court, and to the federal circuit of appeals, the reality is that i4i has won every round so far. Which brings us to Texas: why Texas? And why Tyler? "We flew all over the US and the company of lawyers we settled on were based in Dallas. As to why file in Tyler, well, what people don't know about Tyler is that the judges there are excellent. They have a deep interest and commitment to patents."

Er but you would say that, wouldn't you, having just won a world-shaking case? "If anybody thinks it's easy to get a jury, then a judge, then court of appeals judges to agree unanimously that they're in favour of your claim it's not easy, not easy at all." And, he points out, Tyler isn't used for patent claims only by small companies such as his: Samsung, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have all filed patent lawsuits there.

"There's no single court in the US that has an absolute right to hear these cases. There's a limited number that have the expertise to hear them though. It was a surprise to me as well," Owen says.

Having now won victory, what does i4i want next? Will it license its patent to Microsoft, perhaps at a hefty fee? And will it go after Sun, distributors of OpenOffice, for the ODF file format, as eWeek suggested?

On licensing to Microsoft, Owen sounds on the edge of anger: "No. No. This is our property. We are going to build our business. There's no right for Microsoft to use it and go forward." But i4i could license it at some humungous, eye-watering price that Microsoft might have to pay, surely? No, says Owen.

"We want to sell it to the customers. We don't want Microsoft selling it to the customers. We're excited about building a tremendous company. We can license third parties if we want to. But our objective is to solve the conundrums of all this unstructured data that's out there."

What about ODF and OpenOffice? Owen declined to comment. (If he were to suggest that ODF infringes the patent and were wrong, Sun could sue for defamation; if he were to suggest it doesn't, that wouldn't help any case that i4i might file.) OpenOffice users, or more specifically Sun, will have to wait and see.

i4i is profitable, he says, though it's a private company which hasn't released its revenue figures. As to the whispers still on "patent trolling" questions about investments by two companies, McLean Watson Capital Inc and Northwater Intellectual Property Fund, Owen says that the first is his own company and has invested in i4i since 1996, after he met Vulpe in a coffee shop in Toronto and that the second is a company that has capital and "expertise in patent monetisation". The investment from Northwater was because the company had shrunk since 2001 from 150-odd to 30-odd staff, "and we needed some help." But, he says, "that doesn't make us patent trolls. Those are non-practising entities who just try to make a return on patents. It's a very, very different situation here."

(Bonus reading, just for fun: an article from the Guardian Observer from 2000, imagining where Microsoft would be in 2010. The interesting question to answer: why didn't it all turn out like that?)

Update: If you want a longer read, including all the personalities at i4i, have a read of the Toronoto Globe and Mail's interview from September 2009, which also explains neatly how i4i's system works:

"At issue is U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449 - "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other." That isn't a bad title. (The formal company name is pretty transparent too: Infrastructures for Information.) i4i's software allows users to customize the extensible markup language (XML) code embedded in documents - code that tags the information within, and which, with i4i's software, can be used to search through and alter a database without delving into each document."

There are moral and ethical issues concerning online privacy. But while we may be sharing more, we're gaining more too

People who share personal information online undermine everyone else's right to privacy, according to Dr Kieron O'Hara, senior research fellow at the department of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton. Those naughty internet users! They're to blame for invasions of privacy. Or are they?

Dr O'Hara states, "If you look at privacy in law, one important concept is a reasonable expectation of privacy. As more private lives are exported online, reasonable expectations are diminishing. When our reasonable expectations diminish, as they have, by necessity our legal protection diminishes."

No doubt O'Hara's first line of attack would be bloggers such as myself, but saying that those who share intimate details online are to blame for the erosion of privacy is like saying newspapers are to blame for etching their words onto people's eyeballs and causing blindness. Humans will always be interested in reading/learning about other humans' lives, whether via websites, or via printed papers: curiosity is the human condition.

Divulging personal information on the web does not make one accountable for privacy laws. As Marshall McLuhan once said, "the medium is the message". It's not the content that has moved the goalposts of our privacy, rather, the way in which we've come to use technology.

If O'Hara wants to attack the blurring of boundaries between public and private, why not criticise those who allow their every purchase of household goods to be known (Nectar, Tesco Clubcard holders); or who allow their spending habits (and credit scores) to be tracked (ATM and credit card users); or those who allow their information from the electoral register to be used by marketing firms? Hey, if they didn't opt out, they're to blame for all the junk mail that's sent to them, right? Just because one medium the internet appears to attract more headlines about its supposed effect on privacy, it doesn't mean that other areas in life are less responsible for any loss of privacy we might experience.

Of course, there are serious moral and ethical issues concerning the loss of online privacy. Facebook has frequently been accused of revealing, by default, personal information about its users; the company recently changed the privacy settings for all its members. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, claims that privacy is no longer a "social norm", and that people no longer have an expectation of privacy online; but maybe that's just as a result of 350 million people using the service: they've become indifferent to sacrificing their privacy in exchange for the gains they receive.

Perhaps, in our rush to embrace the digital era, we've voluntarily, albeit unwittingly, forfeited any privacy protection we had. Every social networking site we sign up to involves another profile, more uploading of information, further chipping away of the private block, shaping it into the public one that's on display. But is this such a bad thing? Is it not a fair price to be paid by the dramatic improvements in communication, connectivity and socialising, gained by embracing the online medium?

We may be sharing more, but we're gaining more too. No longer the forum (no pun intended) merely for chat, the web and social networking in particular offers people the chance to connect (Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace); share pictures and videos (Flickr, Qik); find out who's in town when you're passing through (Dopplr); get book recommendations (GoodReads); listen to great music (Last.fm); get motivated to run a particular path/distance (Daily Mile); cook a delicious recipe (Bake Space); find hints on keeping fit (Spark People); knit something nice (Ravelry); or find who is doing something local in your area (Smugly). We're social beings: social networking allows us to explore what comes naturally to us sharing and connecting with others.

As O'Hara says in a recent paper, Lifelogging: Privacy and Empowerment with Memories for Life: "The privacy argument is clearly real, but it must be offset against the empowerment of the individual." We may have lost some privacy in our embrace of advancing technology, but what we have gained from it, both personally, and in society as a whole, is worth much, much more.

Will Apple's iTablet lead media companies out of a wilderness of non-paying customers?

For the video content makers nervously biting their fingernails over how soon filesharing of films and TV is going to wipe out their revenues, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week offered wonderful news TV, like film, is going 3D. And you know what 3D means? Can't be filmed by a camcorder in a cinema and copied endlessly; can't just be grabbed from the set-top box and redistributed on torrent sites. Or if it is, it will look even worse than a fifth-generation VHS copy (remember those?).

And then there was the AR Drone, a mini-helicopter that can be controlled by an iPhone, which is sure to be banging into walls in advertising agencies around London hours after it goes on sale; and an unbreakable mobile phone (you can hammer nails with it).

But the hype, the noise, the lights CES is peculiarly named because although it calls itself a "consumer electronics" show, its keynote opening speech comes from Microsoft which has failed woefully year after year to come up with any consumer electronics people want to buy, apart from two- button mice and, OK, the Xbox (though it's lost pots and pots of money on it).

This year it was Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, who signally failed to set the event, or the world, on fire. Meanwhile, all over the place computer companies were showing off their wares, which will make barely any difference to anyone's lives except those of their desperate makers. Will a laptop with a transparent screen (so you can be distracted by people walking behind it as well as reflections) really transform our experience of work or leisure?

Instead, the susurrus behind CES was about tablet computers large screen, no keyboard, touch interface. Although Ballmer referred to them in his speech, and a number of companies (including Lenovo and HP) showed them off, and the Que e-reader (from a British company) wowed some, the focus was not on them but on Apple which never exhibits at CES. Until last year, Apple had its own show that conflicted directly, and its much-expected tablet is due this month. That expectation was all but confirmed by a story carefully leaked to the Wall Street Journal last Monday, detailing a possible price, and suggesting that "people briefed by Apple also say that the company believes it could redefine the way consumers interact with a variety of content".

It's the latter phrase that has media companies producers of books, newspapers, films, TV, music, and especially, for some reason, newspapers gasping like parched travellers in a desert. They look at the success of the iPhone (which, before its announcement, had mobile phone makers laughing: Apple? A computer company? Make a phone?) and gasp: let the iTablet lead us out of this wilderness of non-paying customers!

This ignores the question of how you'll have to redesign or repurpose your content to fit Apple's as yet unseen device (is it just a big iPhone? Is it also 3D?) a question that has troubled Ben Hammersley of Wired UK, who points out on his blog (http://bit.ly/wiredUK) that present workflows for most magazines simply don't countenance the idea of a hyperlinked, perhaps video- and audio-enabled end product; they're trying to produce something for print. The iTablet (or whatever) will mess that up badly.

So be careful what you wish for from CES. It has given you the DVD, which you've loved. It has given you Blu-ray, which has not quite taken over the world. It has given you high-definition TV, and now it's giving you 3D films and TV. But it never gave you the iPhone, and won't give you the iTablet. Shows are one thing. But the decisions that really change the game are made in the shops and homes.

Even so, one of those iPhone helicopters would be nice. Just saying.

Is Apple planning to show a 3D interface on its much-anticipated tablet later this month? A new patent suggests so

Apple has acquired the patent for a system that could create virtual 3D worlds on the tablet computer that the company is expected to unveil later this month.

The patent, originally filed under the names of three French inventors, is called "Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Manipulating Three-Dimensional Virtual Objects" and describes "a portable electronic device with a touch screen display" which displays what looks to the user like a 3D layout.

The key element here is that it's a multi-touch device - just like the Apple iPhone.

The Baltimore Sun's Gus Sentementes has also done some fabulous detective work to show that the ownership of the patent is entirely in Apple's hands:

"According to documents filed with the USPTO, Apple obtained the rights to this patent application from three French citizens: Fabrice Robinet, Thomas Goossens, and Alexandre Moha. The inventors assigned the patent to Apple on Sept. 29, 2008. It's not clear if those citizens are Apple employees, per se. (Update: Actually, Mr. Moha is a product and engineering manager at Apple, per his LinkedIn profile; Mr. Robinet is a software engineer at Apple, again, per LinkedIn, and Mr. Goossens is an Apple software engineer (thanks to Baltimore's Bill Mill for digging up Goossens!) Regardless, searches under Apple's name in the patents database doesn't retrieve this patent, because the names of the original French inventors are still on it. (I wonder why that is? Hmmm. :-) "

As Sentementes points out, the patent points out that the reason why we all need 3D touch interfaces now is that "...[T]here is a need for electronic devices with touch screen displays that provide more transparent and intuitive user interfaces for navigating in three dimensional virtual spaces and manipulating three dimensional objects in these virtual spaces."

Well, of course. Even if it does look a bit like that 1980s game Battlezone (see below). Two steps forward....

What would you want from a wine app? Or have you already found one which suits you?

Although I enjoy chatting to sommeliers (once I've laid my cards on the table regarding my meagre budget) and will always pick staff brains in a proper wine merchants, the fact is that sometimes you find yourself on your own when it comes to choosing wine. Disappointingly few supermarkets or chain off-licences employ anyone on the shop floor with a real passion for wine, so the idea of applications which can help you pick out a good bottle on the hoof, or identify an unknown grape on a restaurant wine list, is potentially a very exciting one.

Although the wine writers I contacted for recommendations all claimed to be technophobes (it must go with the territory), I found a fan in amateur wine buff and professional expert on mobile apps, Tim Harrison. He's tested most of what's out there and, he says, "came to the conclusion that there was a gap in the market since most of the apps I had tried failed either in the area of catalogue, functionality and relevance (and usually all three!)".

The problem, in his opinion, that many apps are targeted at what he calls 'vinoraks', who have large cellars to manage, and the dedication to input detailed tasting notes for every glass, and the majority are aimed at US consumers, which makes price and stockist details irrelevant to the British user. However, there are a few which are worth their modest price-tags.

Wine Enthusiast Guide, 2.99 (MobileAge)

This is useful tool for anyone who'd like to pretend they know more about wine than they actually do (that's everyone then). Puzzled by a word on the label, or unsure whether 1995 or 1996 was better for Alsatian whites? This app puts the information at your fingertips. It also features reviews from its namesake American magazine and allows you to create a list of your favourite wines, although annoyingly you can't add your own comments. Search is by price, rating, style, varietal and region, so you can get quite specific and this one seems to have more of a world view than Drync (although still no English wine, sadly).

Wine Chap, 2.99 (Wine Chap)

A good-looking app that claims to be the first to evaluate restaurant wine lists, rather than individual bottles so should you find yourself, say, at The Box Tree at Ilkley, you can mug up on their selection in the loo, and then breeze out and say authoritatively, after a mere glance at the wine list, "oh, the 2006 Cristom Vineyards Pinot Gris is terribly good value, we must order that!" There are also 'first date wines', 'old school classics' and 'treat yourself' options, specifically tailored to the menu, so, for example, a red from the Luberon at Edinburgh's The Kitchin is recommended as 'a sound pick for [chef] Tom's game specialities'. This is an app which will become increasingly useful as their selection of reviews expands at the moment, the list is very London-centric (although, for the frequent traveller, Hong Kong and New York are also well served).

Drync Wine Pro, 2.99 (Drync)

If you're looking for information on a particular wine, then this is almost certainly the app for you as it searches 10 online databases, including Snooth, to bring you ratings on over 80,000 wines and reviews from the likes of Robert Parker. You can also build your own virtual cellar, add your own ratings, and see what's top of other users' wish lists. It's rather US-centric, both in terms of featured bottles (strong on France and the Americas, not so hot on Australia or Eastern Europe, for example) and reviews (you won't find anything from UK critics here), but it's easy to use, and if you get lucky, there's a few wines that can even be bought online from British stockists although not many.

Wine Quiz, 1.19 (Berry Bros & Rudd)

This is an ideal app to have on your phone, being utterly frivolous and guaranteed to leave you feeling cross and worthless. It's nothing fancy just endless rounds of questions on the world of wine, with enough easy ones to keep you motivated and sufficient brain teasers to stop you throwing the phone away with a contemptuous curl of the lip; I'd like to think I'm not alone in failing to name the grapes used to produce 'the Hungarian wine Egri Bikav r'.

Pair It!, 1.79 (Pair It)

This app is, as the name suggests, a tool that helps you match food with wine, and vice versa, and contains over 20,000 different suggestions, from the standard (Stilton and port) to the extremely niche (spicy citrus bourbon ribs with Asti Spumante, anyone?). Some of the dishes featured are so specific that a link to a recipe would be helpful, and a few of the suggestions are rather general it suggests nearly 40 styles to go with a beef lasagne but it's not a bad tool to have with you in the supermarket, even if you'll never need to know what to drink with a Sloppy Joe (white zinfandel, apparently which frankly sounds even worse than the thing itself).

There are of course mobile devices other than the iPhone available. We asked Neil Davey how those apps which run on the BlackBerry match up, and this is what he told us.

Wine of the Day, 2.79 (Enigma Games)

Does what it says, suggesting a new and interesting wine each day, but it doesn't tell you what food to match with, where to buy, what the grape is (well, not all the time), or the price. The descriptions are pretty good though.

Cellar Rat, 2.09 (Telltale Social Media)

A wine rating app that uses emoticons rather than numerical ratings. Rates over 60 regions worldwide, and two decades of vintages. Designed for everyone from the novice to the expert. Generally favourably reviewed, it can help steer you to something on a wine list or a supermarket shelf - but it's very general, not specific: hence Napa Valley is apparently good for 2005. Er ... OK, but is that ALL wine in Napa?!

R-Vintage Lookup, 2.79 (REGARD Solutions Corporation)

Again, rates vintages - numerically - and also suggests "drink" or "hold". A few reviews on the BlackBerry, mostly of the 4, 5 star variety. Not comprehensive by any stretch but would appear to be the best of its kind on the BlackBerry. Nice interface, simple to use.

Useful as these are in their own ways, none tap into what either Tim or I really want from a mobile wine guide which is to have a trustworthy sommelier in our pockets, ready for all eventualities. We both agree that a regularly updated app which collated the recommendations of British critics would be helpful, so we could see at a glance what Jancis or Victoria or Jonathan were recommending that week, as would one which noted our favourite styles, and then alerted us when, say, our beloved Sicilian reds were on offer locally.

Tim, who has big ideas, even dreams of a programme which uses the barcode scanner tool already available on the iPhone to give you information about bottles on the shelf "Wouldn't it be great to scan something in Sainsbury's," he says wistfully, "read a few views from the press and your mates and then go and buy it more cheaply at Majestic?"

So, what would you want from a wine app? Or have you already found one which suits you?

Proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill exempts search engines from copyright infringement claims from third parties Rupert Murdoch presumably included

Time for Rupert Murdoch to mobilise the lobbyists? Search engines would be exempted in UK law from any liability for copyright infringement, under a remarkable amendment (292) proposed to the Digital Economy Bill.

Conservative Lord Lucas is proposing a specific new clause so that

"Every provider of a publicly accessible website shall be presumed to give a standing and non-exclusive license to providers of search engine services to make a copy of some or all of the content of that website, for the purpose only of providing said search engine services ...

"A provider of search engine services who acts in accordance with this section shall not be liable for any breach of copyright..."

Lucas' amendment, Protection of search engines from liability for copyright infringement", would rewrite the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This could throw the cat amongst the pigeons on practices like aggregating MP3 deep links (for which Yahoo has been penalised even in China) - but would have the most profound impact on the ongoing issue of search engines' ability to crawl news publishers articles...

Indeed, it would, for example, give Google legal immunity with which to index News Corp content, settling that thorny topic once and for all. But all would not be lost for publishers who want to retain control. Lucas's amendment does make provision

The presumption (of having an automatic license) may be rebutted by explicit evidence that such a licence was not granted. Such explicit evidence shall be found only in the form of statements in a machine-readable file to be placed on the website and accessible to providers of search engine services.

In other words, Google would be free to copy everything - but a publisher blocking search spiders with a robots.txt file would be taken as withholding that right. An explicit "fair use" provision, which Google often cites against copyright-abuse claims, does not exist in UK law.

The wide-ranging Digital Economy Bill, whose glitziest clauses ask ISPs to warn subscribers accused of illegal downloading before throttling their bandwidth or kicking them offline, is currently going through House Of Lords committee stage.

During its passage, individual representatives are trying to pin their specific interests on to the bill. But there are opportunities for Lucas' amendment to fail. If it fails to win peers' backing, Lucas may yet withdraw it before the Lords decide on a version to pass to House Of Commons MPs, who may themselves remove it if Lucas does not.

It's one of 299 proposed amendments which are being heard in the Lords, with the next such session on Tuesday.

Netbooks taking off, 2 million people with dongles, an iPhone upgrade in autumn and the demise of Vonage where was I right and wrong about the year just gone?

Now we can get 2009 into perspective, and the hangovers have worn off (less so the credit card bills, perhaps), let's see how my tech predictions for 2009 went. Time to tot up

Prediction 1: At least three companies will withdraw from the PC manufacturing business.

They didn't. Did they? That's 0/1

Matthew Wheeler points out that MPC did. MPC? "Edge PC owned by Micron Tech, then MicronPC, sold to Gores Tech, changed to MPC, sold to Hyperspace of Utah, then Chap.11," he explained. And of course there's Psystar, which thought it could put Mac OS X onto generic boxes, and got told by a judge it couldn't. (These are hardly the big names I was originally thinking of, though.) And Psystar is still offering T-shirts, according to The Register.

In fact, companies didn't withraw from the PC-making business; instead, seeing how desktops and even standard laptops weren't making money, they shifted to netbooks, which saw explosive growth. Lesson: manufacturers like making things. The shift to making netbooks was a sort of evolutionary episode in the punctuated equilibrium of the computer business.

Prediction 2: There will be more "netbooks" aka ultraportables, aka liliputers, like the Asus Eee PC than ever, and their sales growth will far outpace that of the PC market.

Bullseye. PC market growth: 1.3% (or -7%, depending whose numbers you like). Netbook market growth: almost 100% (by revenue). 1/2

Prediction 3: Sun Microsystems won't have a near-death experience, but it's going to keep shrinking.

True. Being the subject of a (wished-for) takeover by Oracle hasn't made it grow. 2/3

Prediction 4: Vonage will die. I'm sorry, guys, but your income statement shows you have debts of $276m, cash of $112m, and are paying "interest" (on the debt) of $5m per quarter, which means losses of $7m per quarter. That's just not sustainable, and debt isn't going to get cheaper to service, either.

Completely wrong. Vonage is still going. I have no idea how. 2/4

Prediction 5: Palm will come close to death, but advance sales of its Pre webphone, plus a little more money from its venture capitalist backers, will save it.

Its latest figures show that it didn't do well, and the Pre hasn't actually been fabulous. But the money from the venture capitalists has certainly helped. 3/5

Prediction 6: Twitter will find a way to charge for its service, from at least some users, and so move towards at least revenue, if not yet profit. Its growth will become explosive.

Tricky, this. Twitter's growth did become explosive, helped along by Oprah, and Iranian election, and so on. Is it charging you or me to use it? No. Is it, however, charging Microsoft and Google to use its database for their "real-time" search engines, putting it squarely into revenue and, arguably, profit? Yes. Can we call Microsoft and Google "Twitter users"? I don't see why not I've previously argued that it should charge for use of its API, and charging those two giants for that is good enough.
So, 4/6

Prediction 7: Many as in thousands of IT jobs will be lost. Lots will go in finance as that industry shrinks; but there's a general trend now where small companies are beginning to rely on cloud services from companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Those don't need a lot of people. (Ever seen a job advert to work on a cloud service?).

(The point about this was that the jobs were being lost in developed countries, of course, rather than in total all over the world.) Has there been a dramatic uptick in the number of IT jobs? Not thinking so. 5/7

Prediction 8: IT will more and more resemble the building business. Either you specialise, or you're coordinating the project, or you're doing simple, low-paid work that someone from another country can and will do for less.

This ties in with the one above. Cloud-based services mean that setting up a business that relies on downloads, for example, is simple. (Twitter caches your pictures on Amazon's S3 service, for example.) Are IT people becoming multi-specialists? Or finding it harder to get general work? We're still hearing that there's a skills shortage in IT but the shortage is at the top end, in the project coordination side, or in getting the services set up. There's less demand for bodies. These days, you either specialise, or get out. Though I realise that this could be described as my biased view, without data. So let's call it a half. (Data either way to prove or disprove very welcome.)
5.5/8

And now we come to that ever-popular subject, Microsoft.
Prediction 9: Windows 7 will be pushed out of the door in time for the end of the year, and particularly for Christmas sales. It won't be perfect, but it will get corporates interested in an upgrade from XP, which Vista didn't.

It certainly was pushed out for the end of the year; October 22 is good enough. While you could argue that it's not perfect, it's considered by lots of people to be very, very good. And it certainly has corporate customers very interested in an upgrade. Come on, that's solid.
6.5/9

Prediction 10: Microsoft will buy chunks of Yahoo (after being forced to overbid by challenges from Google), which will raise yowls of pain from all over the web. And then in six months people will have forgotten all about it.

Microsoft did buy chunks of Yahoo well, sort of. Specifically, it bought the right to put its ads against search, which it would do. Google didn't challenge it at all. Though this one sounds right, when you examine the detail, it's wrong.
6.5/10

Prediction 11: XP will finally be declared dead once Windows 7 is released, because a version of Windows 7 will be made to run on netbooks.

Yes, Windows 7 is made to run on netbooks. XP hasn't formally been declared dead (apart from the fact that it's been declared dead ages ago) but it's vanishing.
7.5/11

Prediction 12: Internet Explorer will continue to lose share to Firefox, Apple's Safari and especially Google's Chrome.

Oh, yes, that did keep happening. Firefox has reached historical highs. And Internet Explorer (all versions, cumulative) keeps slipping.
8.5/12

Prediction 13: No Zune phone, and no Zune in Europe either.

Can I claim two? No? Damn. There was a moment in November where I worried er, hoped no, worried that there might be a Zune in Europe. But it turned out that Microsoft was just using the name, a bit, for its online video marketplace in Europe. Microsoft hasn't launched a Zune Phone (it's doing badly enough with Windows Mobile without trying to make its struggling music player mimic the iPod's transition into the iPhone) and the Zune remains an idea that has yet to make sense in the US, let alone Europe.
9.5/13

Ubiquity

Prediction 14: Dongles will fall in price, and data charges will too as the phone networks realise that it's a great way to tie people to lucrative contracts without having to subsidise them with mobile phones. So they'll become pervasive. Let's put a number on it: 3 million users, PAYG or contract, by the end of the year.

Result: true, and data charges have as well. There are actually about 13 million mobile data users in the UK. How many dongles? At least 3m of them, surely.
10.5/14

Prediction 15: Being able to transfer sound and, increasingly, video around your home between different devices will become more important, and more and more products will appear built around the DLNA standard to assist it.

It's an enduring mystery why this hasn't been more visible. But in fact more and more people are moving video around the home. What do you think the iPlayer is all about? Except, of course, they don't tend to link it to their TV. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii though are changing this, by offering iPlayer (PS3, Wii) and film (PS3, Xbox) streams. That's not, though, what I'd imagined, which is people actually storing data centrally in their home and shifting it. Though "more" DLNA products have appeared (I loved the LaCie 1TB NAS drive, for example, which has DLNA compatibility). My feeling though is that this hasn't happened.
10.5/15

Prediction 16: Femtocells which improve mobile reception inside homes and businesses by providing a mini-cell, and pushing the data over your broadband connection will struggle because the mobile companies will price them wrong, thinking they should be a niche, and hence expensive, product.

I also said during the year that femtocells weren't going to make it, which brought lots of plangent cries from femtocell companies saying that no, really, 2010 was the year they were aiming at. I was sent a femtocell to try. (Thank you, Vodafone. Afraid I made little progress.) Have you seen a femtocell anywhere? Anywhere at all? (Mobile phone company employees and femtocell manufacturers excluded.) I think this can't be anything but correct.
11.5/16

Prediction 17: Mobile networks will tout phones on the basis that they let you contact your friends on Twitter rather than last year's favourite, Facebook via the data connection. (SMS will remain too expensive for Twitter to use outside the US.)

Facebook remained the powerful force and the reason people wanted to connect: plenty of phones were marketed on the basis that you'd be able to check Facebook; none that I saw on the basis on twittering. (A classic case of early adopter over-optimism about Twitter's penetration on my part though it has completely entered the language, having been used in a scene in Gavin and Stacey.) And Twitter re-introduced SMS updates outside the US. So wrong on both counts.
11.5/17

Linux

Prediction 18: Advocates will declare that 2010 is going to be "the year of desktop Linux" while the bugs are ironed out this year.

This was bound to fail. Linux advocates always say that this year is the one when desktop Linux is going to take off. Ubuntu got plenty of fans, especially for version 9.04 in April.
11.5/18

Prediction 19: But in fact the sales of netbooks running Linux will mean that it's best-selling year for desktop Linux ever.

Then again, this one was bound to succeed. Desktop Linux has had so few avenues for sale that it wasn't going to fail to have its best-ever year once a few machines with it were sold. Of course, I overlooked the popularity of Android, Google's mobile phone operating system, which is Linux. Had I forecast that mobile Linux would have a standout year, that would have been a really worthwhile prediction. Still:
12.5/19

Apple

Prediction 20: Let's start with a banker. No self-replicating worm for Mac OSX or the iPhone's OSX by the end of the year.

Correct. It always is, year after year.
13.5/20

Prediction 21: Snow Leopard will be released for sale in May 2009 this date means it will have been slightly more than the average delay for OSX releases since Leopard's release in October 2007 which leaves time for an announcement and release schedule.

Wrong. Wrongy, wrongy, wrongy wrong wrong. Snow Leopard was released in August 2009.
13.5/21

Prediction 22: Snow Leopard squashes down application sizes, and uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) to help processing. But why would you want to do that? It feels oddly as though Apple is imagining a Flash drive-based machine able to run Snow Leopard, with a comparatively weak processor that uses the GPU to hide the fact. Plus it owns a chip design company. Even so, I don't think it will offer a tablet computer. Or a netbook. Neither fits with its strategy which is all about the iPhone, and pricey computers.

Apple turned up its nose at the idea of a netbook. (Even if I did suggest that it should. Yes, accuse me of wanting it all ways.) It also didn't announce a tablet computer in 2009. (2010, ah, perhaps different.)
14.5/22

Prediction 23: Apple will charge for the Snow Leopard upgrade just as much as it has for previous upgrades.

Yes, it did charge but not as much as for previous upgrades. That's a miss.
14.5/23

Prediction 24: ZFS won't be built into the kernel for Snow Leopard; it'll be an optional install, for server honchos.

In fact, ZFS has disappeared from Apple builds. The cause seems to be intellectual property problems. Ah well. It would have been a nightmare.
15.5/24

Prediction 25: Steve Jobs will remain chief executive through the year. That might sound like an obvious prediction. It isn't.

Hmm technically, he was the chief executive, but he stepped aside to have a liver transplant and recuperate for six months. This prediction was made amid all the rumours of Jobs's illness at the tail-end of 2008. The rumours were that he would have to step down because of the condition (at that time, still a secret). My feeling was that it wasn't such a big thing. Turns out it was a Big Thing. I think this is half-right - no more.
16/25

Prediction 26: The iPhone hardware won't be updated before the autumn.

The iPhone 3GS was released in June, and Stephen Fry reviewed it in the same month. June is not autumn, not even in the southern hemisphere.
16/26

Prediction 27: The iPhone software will be updated to 3.x, which will bring copy-and-paste and photo messaging. About time.

It was, and it did. Finally.
17/27

Environment

Prediction 28: Oil prices are diving, but electricity is still not getting cheaper. Expect more companies even quite big ones to reduce their in-house server usage in favour of outsourced pay-per-process services offered by Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

This is the move to cloud computing, and it's one-way traffic at present. Do you know of anyone who has brought their computing back in-house from the cloud?
18/28

Free Our Data

Prediction 29: The government will take a deep breath and acknowledge that it must make a significant part of Ordnance Survey's data available for free unfettered reuse and will do it.

I was there at 10 Downing Street when Gordon Brown, flanked by Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the web, you know) and Martha Lane-Fox, announced precisely that. Actually, I'd have traded all the other predictions for this one but this one is a great one, a huge year-end bonus to the Free Our Data campaign and to everyone who is going to benefit from it.
19/29

Processing

Prediction 30: In 1992 I wrote a feature based on some analysts' predictions about how in five years we'd all be using speech-to-text input for our computers. We didn't. [but] by the end of the year, we should see programs able to turn the ad-hoc spoken to the written almost faultlessly.

Er, we didn't. From the revelation of the people behind the curtain at Spinvox, to the nearly-good-enough-but-not-perfectness of Dragon Dictate on the iPhone, we're still some way off perfect trasncription. (Believe me, we're always looking for one so we can turn our Tech Weekly podcast back into words for the hard-of-listening.)
19/30

So that's 19/30, or 63%. For comparison, in 2008, my predictions hit 20.5/30, or 68%. Look, what's a mark and a half between friends? Certainly not statistically significant. Basically, what I think we're seeing is that you can rely on me to be wrong about one-third of the time. You can decide whether that's better or worse than a weather forecaster. (The Met Office suggested there was a 1-in-7 chance this would be a cold winter in its long-range forecast.)

And what about the things I missed? The biggest was Google the rise of Android, and the announcement of its Chrome OS for netbooks. That's going to be huge this year, I think so come back for my predictions for 2010 next week. Oh, and tell me what other important events of 2009 I missed.

Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer browser was the weak link used by hackers to attack Google's systems in China.

The world's biggest software company today issued a security advisory and warned of a loophole that was used by Chinese hackers to attack dozens of US companies - the same attack that led Google on Tuesday to announce its plan to drop the censorship of its search engine in China.

"In a specially-crafted attack... Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution," said Microsoft in its security alert.

The company added that it had not yet fixed the vulnerability in the world's most popular web browser, which is used by around two thirds of internet users.

The attacks, which apparently attempted to steal personal information on Chinese dissidents and the code that runs some of Google's critical services, also hit a number of other companies, said to include Yahoo and US defence contractor Northrop Grumman.

Microsoft confirmed the existence of the loophole after an investigation by internet security firm McAfee and information from Google and Adobe.

"As with most targeted attacks, the intruders gained access to an organisation by sending a tailored attack to one or a few targeted individuals," said George Kurtz, McAfee's chief technology officer, adding that the hackers would then use the Internet Explorer bug to infect the victim's computer.

"Once the malware is downloaded and installed, it opens a back door that allows the attacker to perform reconnaissance and gain complete control over the compromised system. The attacker can now identify high value targets and start to siphon off valuable data from the company."

The company's admission is at odds with earlier consensus - largely based on a report from security firm iDefense - that it was Adobe's own software that had been used for the attacks.

Earlier this week experts had suggested that a "zero-day vulnerability" - jargon for a previously unknown software loophole - had been used to exploit a "major document type", thought to be Adobe's PDF format. By sending an infected document to target users, iDefense suggested, the hackers had been able to compromise victim's computers and launch further attacks.

Now, however, it appears that the strike - which analysts are now calling "Operation Aurora" - was carefully orchestrated using the hidden bug in Microsoft's systems.

The Chinese government yesterday issued its first response to the claims by Google, saying that it was opposed to computer crime and had been the victim of cyberattacks itself in the past. However, the statement, issued by the country's foreign ministry, also contained a veiled threat to other companies who may be considering following Google's stand.

"China has tried creating a favorable environment for internet," said a spokeswoman. "China welcomes international internet companies to conduct business within the country according to law. China's law prohibits cyber crimes, including hacker attacks."

Swapping of music and video on hard drives and memory sticks could be just as big a threat as online firesharing, says report

Policymakers urgently need better information on people's attitudes to copyright law, according to a report out today warning that friends swapping hard drives and memory sticks could pose as great a piracy threat to media companies as online filesharers.

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (Sabip), a body set up to advise the government, has been looking into "offline" copyright infringement after its research last year into online piracy threw up questions about how consumers get films, music and games for free.

"There's a whole big question here around what is happening offline digitally, the swapping of discs and data in that world. There's a lot of it going on," said Sabip board member Dame Lynne Brindley.

Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, said existing research did not give a clear picture of consumer behaviour. While there was some data on the proportion of people buying counterfeit CDs, DVDs and video games estimated at between 7% and 16% of the population Sabip was concerned that more needed to be known about other copyright breaches, such as hard-drive swapping and files being shared by wireless Bluetooth connections.

David Lammy, minister for intellectual property, said such offline copying had to be addressed. He said the Sabip research moved the focus from "geeky teenagers" and on to adults as well.

He said: "The need for research into this area is hugely important so we can understand consumer behaviour, to understand how to enforce copyright and to understand the scale of the problems we are experiencing."

Sabip's review of available national and international research concluded: "Policymakers urgently need a better understanding of how consumers behave in both the online and offline digital environment."

The review, conducted by BOP Consulting, also sought to show that consumers were "more interested in factors such as price, quality, and availability of material, rather than its legal status". It said: "Consumer behaviour online and offline in the digital world needs to be looked at from a new perspective one that encompasses consumer choice rather than just from the viewpoint of criminal behaviour."

Lammy said that highlighted the need for "public education and for the right pricing and business models to adapt to this environment".

The review also concluded that "evidence" was mixed as to whether illegally consuming content complemented legal consumption a point of much contention among music industry figures. Some artists claim filesharing can lead people to buy more legal products.

Duncan Calow, a media lawyer at DLA Piper, said the prevalence of offline copyright infringement whether wilful or unwitting underlines the need for media companies to better explain to consumers what they could and could not do with the products they bought.

As technology improves and film companies and publishers become more affected by piracy, he expects to see more copyright guidance from rights holders but not necessarily finger-wagging and a list of "don'ts". No one wanted a repeat of the bad press sparked by record labels' pursuit of individual filesharers in the courts.

"Hollywood has learned from looking at the music industry. Those same concerns are also in the publishing industry with the rise of the ebook. They are all desperate to avoid that kind of stand-off," he said.

"So they are starting to try in a fairer way to explain to their consumers what it is they are selling to them ... what is being offered in terms of how you can enjoy content."

You haven't seen Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale? Then you haven't dipped a toe into the motliest crew on record

The other day I finally got a chance to see Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale, a documentary I'd been meaning to get to for some time. Chronicling the adventures of assorted young Iranians who sell their kidneys to buy a taxi, or finance their education, or pay off debts, Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale is not the kind of movie that is readily available at most local video stores. But it is available free in the movie section at YouTube. So is a lot of other stuff.

Mostly when I visit YouTube it is to watch cats falling off chairs, parodies of Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker or sportscasters being tormented by stalking sock puppets. But it was recently pointed out to me that YouTube also has a section that is not of the domain of rank amateurs you can watch actual films there, by reasonably professional film-makers. It seemed to be a good idea to work my way through this cutting-edge movie melting pot, and that's where I found Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale, a serious documentary that is anything but amateurish.

The movies in the YouTube collection are a motley crew. There are a handful of classic old films such as His Girl Friday and One-Eyed Jacks, where Marlon Brando gets whupped by Karl Malden, the man with the largest proboscis in motion picture history. There are also old films that are not classics such as Texas to Bataan, With the Marines at Tarawa and Pardon My Pups. There are a few dozen direct-to-video comedies of recent vintage. And then there are riveting documentaries such as Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale and Sex and Lies On Videotape, a documentary about east European women ensnared in the South African sex trade.

Taking a somewhat less explicitly feminist view is Extreme Chickfighting, a cheesy handheld film about women who slug it out with one another in the ring. And then there are tons of schlock, cult films, trash, direct-to-video overstock, and tongue-in-cheek vanity projects. The cult films often star Christopher Lee. So do the schlock films. There are also a couple of obscure Italian westerns directed by obscure Italians, and obscure monster films also directed by obscure Italians. A lot of the really bad monster films feature movie stars before they were famous, or after. In some cases Stacy Keach it's hard to decide which.

The very nature of YouTube encourages visitors to flit from one film to the next. The films are frequently interrupted by promos for upcoming movies or television shows, which is often the cue to try another feature, as the ads are annoying, repetitive and cannot be skipped. There is no theme to the site's pudding; the whole thing is like an online jumble sale, where the contents of various attics were lumped together, and the person in charge of sorting things was drunk.

There is no rhyme or reason to any of it that I can see. Some might call it a hodgepodge. Others might call it a dustbin. Or maybe it's more like this: an apartment house that burned to the ground, and all the occupants died, and the landlord has just thrown all of the tenants' video collections into the trash but doesn't mind if you sort through them. The tenants included a disturbed loner, several unemployed boys in their 20s, a few tots, some folks from out of town, an ageing spinster and a film-studies major whose sex has not yet been determined. There also might be a closet sadist in the mix. As a result, the section showcasing the most popular films includes Phat Beach, The Secret Life of Adolf Hitler, Bad Girls from Mars, The Best of the Three Stooges, The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, Sex Slaves, Guatemala's Gangland, Meer Baap Pehle Aap, Satan's School for Girls, Hot Boyz, at least one Charlie Sheen movie, North Korean Camps, and The Hunt for Gollum, a non-official prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy made by JRR Tolkein/Peter Jackson buffs. Verily, a banquet fit for a king!

Despite their impeccably sleazy credentials, many of the trashier films fall into the category of motion pictures whose titles have written a cheque the cast cannot cash. On the surface, Sisters of Death, The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism, Escape from Gilligan's Island, Slave of the Cannibal God and Cheerleader Ninja all sound great. But they are not great. Not, not, not. Actually, it might be a bit of a stretch to suggest that a film called Escape from Gilligan's Island could ever have been rewarding. But at least one might expect it to be fun. This is not the case here. Most of the full-length features available on YouTube are precisely the kinds of motion pictures you would leave off your Desert Island list. Gilligan himself might refrain.

All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent cruising YouTube. For one, it immediately induced a very peaceful state I like to think of as retroactive consumer schadenfreude, which is the wonderfully reassuring feeling you get when you watch something for free that less fortunate people had to pay for. This was certainly true when I stumbled upon a short documentary called Everybody Loves the Tinklers. This is an earnest little number about a Baltimore musical duo, founded in 1979, who had built a cult following of sorts, despite the fact no, because of the fact that they had no discernible talent. The Tinklers were ruthlessly non-harmonious, practising something insiders call "outsider art". This deliberately avoids elegance or sophistication or competence, either because the artist is mentally ill, or in the case of the Tinklers, because they suck. The documentary had the faux-ironic look and feel that is de rigueur for this genre: lots of interviews with middle-aged fans who love the Tinklers, because the Tinklers pride themselves on not being any more gifted than the people in their audiences. This is what separates them from, say, Beyonc who, in all fairness, does charge more for her tickets. Actually, this cultural levelling process was also evident in Extreme Chickfights, where the klutzy amateurs were even less talented than the people filming their bouts, practising something best described as Outsider Pugilism or Fisticuffs of the Inept.

The endearing notion of interactive cultural democracy has always been a major selling-point of the internet: what I say is as valid as what you say, even if you can spell the word "pajama" better than me. Indeed, my favourite thing about the documentary section on YouTube is that it encourages interaction between viewers and moviemakers by leaving comments about the film and even goes beyond that to encouraging contact between the ordinary people visiting YouTube and the ordinary people who are in the documentary. For example, in Everybody Loves the Tinklers, one of their fans offers $100 to anyone who can listen to the Tinklers, "honestly listen to the Tinklers", and still say that he does not like them. I will be in Baltimore sometime this spring to pick up my hundred smackers.

Much like my local video store, which occasionally files films such as The Passion of the Christ in the Action section, the YouTube website has a loose, informal categorising system. Everybody Loves the Tinklers, for example, is listed in the Mysteries & Suspense category.

Still, it pays to remember that just as different generations use the same highways but have very different attitudes toward the speed limits, all sorts of age groups are using the same internet but organise it in different ways. YouTube was not made for me or for people like me. But The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism and Teenage Zombies were. They are indeed the cultural touchstones of my youth.

People today will look at these things through the prism of irony. When I was a kid, we didn't have irony. Philadelphia is working class, and in working-class communities, irony is neither countenanced nor understood. And it is certainly not subsidised. We also didn't have that many movies. So whatever got released that week was what we went to see. It didn't bother us that the films were terrible; they made for cheap outings. The only thing that would have bothered us was if the films stopped coming or if they stopped being cheap. So seeing trash like this after so many years provided me with a lovely pretext to take a jaunt down memory lane. Provided I didn't have to pay for it.

My daughter, who is 26, once told me that the difference between her generation and mine is that people past the age of 50 expect protocols and hierarchies and portals and rankings, whereas young people look at the world and say: "Here's something cool. And here's another thing that's cool." The connective tissue between genres is neither required nor expected; it is enough that they exist. This, I believe, is the driving principle behind the YouTube movie collection: it's here because it's not there. What the YouTube site says, more than anything, is that the world is filled with interesting things, but most of them will not remain interesting for more than three minutes and none of them are worth paying for.

Almost everything on the site except the classic movies falls into the broad general category of Things You Get the General Idea about Pretty Quick. But this casual juxtaposition of the immortal with the ignoble has the unintended effect of reminding you that there is no substitute for talent. None of the recent comedies are funny or clever or well shot in the way His Girl Friday is. And the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, made in 1923, is more visually interesting than anything else on the site. Including Extreme Chickfights.

Luckily, somebody was smart enough to stick a lot of classy documentaries and short films on to YouTube. That's because people who make shorts and documentaries aren't terribly finicky about who watches their films: any portal in a storm. Particularly memorable is Mozart of the Pickpockets, a wry French comedy about two dud con men who befriend a mute north-African tyke, who then morphs into an expert pickpocket. It won the Academy award for best live action short film in 2007. Also of note was A Working Mom, a heartbreaking Israeli documentary about a Bolivian cleaning lady who returns home to see her children, having spent 15 years in Tel Aviv earning the money that will enable them to have a better life.

Stumbling upon a jewel such as A Working Mom amid so much flotsam and jetsam drove home the point that the internet's most enticing feature may be its randomness. Stupidity comes at you from every direction. Vulgarity, too. And fascism. But every so often, without your actually looking for it, something true and beautiful can arrive on your doorstep. A Working Mom was just such a film. There was one other. In the lineup for the most popular current offerings was a 10-minute documentary called Happy Nazis. It was about the mysterious album filled with photographs of exuberant Auschwitz personnel that surfaced in Washington DC a few years ago. Here are throngs of Nazi officers including the murderous Dr Mengele jubilantly belting out some of those trusty old brauhaus favorites. There are carefree secretaries and bookkeepers carousing and mugging for the cameras just a few hundred yards from the infamous death camp where hundreds of thousands of Jewish children were going up in flames. Directly to the right of the promo for Happy Nazis were the jewel box covers from Cheerleader Ninjas and Bad Girls from Mars. Underneath, amid the usual prescient You Tube user comments were the words, "hitler come back please!!!"

That's the internet for you.

The must-see films tucked away in YouTube's movie section

Home

This Koyaanisqatsi-style eco-documentary by French aerial photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand is a celebrated standard-bearer for the global green movement; it's been shown on TV practically everywhere except the UK. So YouTube has scored a coup.

Animal Farm

Orwell's anti-Soviet parable was memorably translated into Britain's first internationally successful full length cartoon by husband and wife team Halas and Batchelor in 1954. It's still great, even if it's now generally suspected that the CIA funded it, and influenced the new ending.

Reefer Madness

The stoner generation's object of kitsch worship an anti-drug "warning" film shot in 1936 and subsequently unearthed in the 1970s, where it was screened to audiences hooting with laughter.

Slacker

One of the legendary micro-budget efforts of the early 90s, and the place where it all began for Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Me and Orson Welles). It's a scrappy, rambling affair, painfully hip for its time, and nailing the concept of the excitable but unengaged time-waster.

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble

John Travolta no doubt would rather you didn't watch this 1976 TV movie, in which he hammed it up as a kid with no immune system who falls in love with the girl next door. But it's rather moving in its shamelessly idiotic way. (The director was Randal Kleiser, who would pilot Travolta to bigger things in Grease.)

Dementia 13

Back in the day, the Movie Brat generation cut their teeth working for the exploitation market, and Francis Ford Coppola got his chance via this Roger Corman production in 1963. Intended as a Psycho ripoff, this bizarre horror film was set in Ireland (where Coppola had been working for Corman on The Young Racers). It began Coppola's long tradition of arguing with producers, after Corman demanded more violence.

DOA

Forget the lame Dennis Quaid remake; this is one of the greats of film noir, which fell out of copyright in the late 70s. Edmond O'Brien is the man who has a few days to find out who poisoned him before he dies; director Rudolph Mat stitches it together in style.

Andrew Pulver