Report claims Google has dumped Microsoft's Windows and is offering new staff the choice of Linux or Macintosh operating systems

Google is reported to be getting rid of desktop PCs running Microsoft Windows across the corporation to eliminate a security risk.

The Financial Times reports that the company, which has more than 20,000 staff worldwide, is now offering new recruits the choice of using computers running the free Linux operating system or Apple Macintosh computers.

The company refused to confirm or deny the reports, issuing a brief comment saying that it would not discuss "operational issues".

Microsoft, however, claimed that the move was simply part of Google's attempts to standardise on its new in-house operating system, called ChromeOS.

The shift away from Windows is claimed to have begun in January, after Google realised that the operating system had been part of a chain of weaknesses that allowed a damaging attack against some of its core systems by Chinese hackers in December.

"Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards MacOS, following the China hacking attacks," the FT quoted one unnamed Google employee as saying.

Another is quoted saying: "We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort."

Being pushed out of Google would be a major PR blow to Microsoft although the two companies have an intense rivalry in the search business, where Google dominates, and in the provision of online editing of documents, spreadsheets, email and calendars, where Google says that 1,000 small and medium businesses are taking up its Google Docs offering every day.

Though the revenue implications are tiny for Microsoft, the suggestion that one of the largest online businesses is unable to secure Windows could have serious implications for its public standing.

Microsoft's Windows, with at least 95% of the corporate computing market, is a constant target for attacks by criminals and hackers looking to gain access and control to machines. The intrusion into Google which compromised some of its most sensitive systems, and almost gave the hackers oversight of its Google Mail system before the attack was discovered is believed to have come via malware targeted at users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 browser running on Windows in its China offices last year.

However, Microsoft's head of PR, Frank Shaw, suggested that the FT had misinterpreted moves by Google to use its own new in-house PC operating system, Chrome. "Bad headline, wrong premise here. Google going google, okay, but free pass from FT on reason = bad reporting," he said on his Twitter account, before sarcastically adding: "News flash: Google bans Bing from its computers. Must credit FT. Picture on Bing home page is distracting to G[oogle] engineers."

A large number of businesses offer anti-malware protection including Google itself, through its Postini subsidiary. But with expert hackers targeting previously undiscovered security holes in Windows and Internet Explorer because it will be present by default on every computer running Windows it is impossible to protect against every attack.

By contrast, there is little malware focussed on Linux desktop operating systems or Apple's Mac OS X. Both are Unix-based systems, but despite its being nine years old there are no viruses targeting Mac OS X. There are fewer than 100 viruses targeting Linux OSs, but the variety of "flavours" of the operating system means that a virus effective against one will not work on another.

By contrast, there were more than 97,000 known viruses aimed at Windows, although modern malware targets individual applications such as Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer. Malware writers also target widely-used applications such as Adobe's Acrobat Reader, used to read PDF documents.

Some reports suggest that Google is allowing staff to run Windows on their laptops, but removing it from desktop machines. Keeping Windows reportedly requires clearance from "quite senior levels" by Ben Fried, a former Morgan-Stanley executive who is now the company's chief information officer, it is suggested.

But Google staff are also increasingly worried about the potential for their systems to be attacked if they use Windows, the FT says. "Particularly since the China scare, a lot of people here are using Macs for security," it quoted an unnamed employee as saying.

Google is also developing its own operating system, called ChromeOS, which is expected to preclude malware attacks by making it impossible to alter applications.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the company's moves, but did not deny any of the claims made. The spokesperson said: "We're always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we do not comment on specific operational matters."

Google has never confirmed the specific details of how its systems were hacked in China, but details have emerged through security companies which have followed up on parallel attacks made against a number of other non-Chinese companies.

Disconnecting downloaders will alienate the entertainment industry's most loyal customers

With the passage into law of the dread Digital Economy Act comes Ofcom's guidelines that are the first step toward rules for when and how rightsholders will be able to disconnect entire families from the internet because someone on or near their premises is accused of copyright infringement.

Consumer rights groups and privacy groups such as the Open Rights Group, the Citizens Advice Bureau, Which, and Consumer Focus participated in the process, making the Ofcom rules as good as possible (an exercise that, unfortunately, is a little like making the guillotine as comfortable as possible).

But this isn't the last word in the copyfight not even close. Because disconnection for downloaders will only serve to alienate entertainment industry customers (remember that the most avid downloaders are also the most avid buyers "most avid" being the operative word here the 20% of customers who account for 80% of sales, downloading, concert tickets, box-office revenue, DVDs, T-shirts, action figures, etc). And because those who download most avidly will simply change tactics.

The entertainment industry's capacity to gather evidence and make accusations against downloaders relies on the fact that, at present, most downloading systems don't bother to encrypt the traffic or disguise the user's identity. Neither of these things are very hard to do, though both are computationally more expensive than the alternative. But, in case you haven't noticed, computation is getting cheaper all the time.

Once non-anonymous, non-encrypted downloading bears a significant risk, downloaders will simple switch to anonymised, encrypted alternatives.

For example, SSL-based proxies like Sweden's IPREDator (use of which is also a tonic against identity thieves and other creeps who may be monitoring your network connection) provide a nigh-impenetrable layer of misdirection that confounds anyone hoping to trace a download session back to a user. And services like Easynews.com provide encrypted access to enormous libraries of material including infringing copies of popular shows, music and movies.

So why worry? If users won't be deterred from downloading and may even be driven to start taking care to protect their connections from snoops and creeps then how bad will the Digital Economy Act be?

Bad.

Because the naive user who only downloads occasionally will still be in harm's way, as will his family or housemates if his connection is disconnected by an entertainment bully.

And because once the state decides that it has a duty to police the internet to maximise the profits of a few entertainment companies (no matter what the public expense), it sets itself on a path of ever-more-restrictive measures. Once disconnection drives downloaders to make use of SSL-based proxies, watch for Big Content to inveigle their friends in parliament to enact laws prohibiting the use of virtual private networks never mind that these are the best practice of anyone trying to safeguard a corporate or organisational network.

Once the Act drives downloaders to use SSL-encrypted services that are harder to monitor, watch for the entertainment lobby to ask for great swaths of the internet to be blocked by the Great Firewall of Britain that the Act also provides for.

Once you swallow a spider to catch a fly, you're on a course to swallow a bird to catch the spider, a cat to catch the bird, and so on until you swallow a horse and every toddler knows that happens next.

Websites look great on it. As does video. But books? Here, I'm less convinced

The iPad: the world's most expensive rectangle. The Guardian wanted me to write a first-impressions review on launch day but how? I could borrow one from an early adopter, but that wouldn't be the same. I don't like poking round other people's computers. It's like snooping through their medicine cabinets: quite quickly you can stumble across something you wish you hadn't seen. I needed a new one, straight out of the packaging. A new one I could keep.

But this being launch day, iPads were bound to be scarcer than cats' eggs, right? Disappointingly, the Guardian picked one up from the Tottenham Court Road branch of PC World without having to kill anyone.

Typically for Apple, the packaging virtually places the device in your hands with the grace of a well-trained butler. The iPad itself is surprisingly heavy: about the same as a hardback book. It gave me mild arm ache almost immediately. Maybe there's an app that can tell you how many calories you're burning just by holding it. The best solution is to adopt a self-consciously casual crossed-legged sitting position, and prop it up with your thigh. Fanboys who wet themselves may cause a short circuit.

The display is extremely glossy, so the first thing you'll see on your screen is a reflection of your face from an unflattering angle. It also doubles as a fingerprint collector, which means you'll spend the first hour obsessively wiping it clean on your T-shirt before giving up and ordering an adhesive screen protector from Amazon (which, if the iPhone equivalents are anything to go by, will be impossible to apply without contemplating suicide at least twice). At this price, Apple nice, friendly Apply could at least include a couple of free screen protectors and some kind of carry-case, no? Of course not.

You're required to use iTunes during the setup process, which is like being forced to eat a handful of mud. iTunes is twice as awful as any software crime Microsoft ever inflicted on the world. Up popped a progress bar which turned out to be a work of satirical fiction lodging fast at 7/8ths complete while making random claims about how long it was going to take to finish. It was impossible to tell if it had crashed or was just being sarcastic. I was scared to pull the sync cable out and I'm a nerd. So much for Macs being easy to use. Eventually a nice man from MacFormat magazine saw me moaning about it on Twitter and gave me some personal assistance. Your experience may differ.

Eventually it was up and running. And yes, if you've used an iPhone, it's a bit of an anticlimax, although toying with it is undeniably pleasant. The display is supernaturally crisp; the seamless, intuitive interface becomes second nature almost immediately. Once you've got used to the weight, it's perfect for browsing websites while lounging on the sofa. I don't mean that dismissively: it's quite an achievement especially since "browsing websites while lounging on the sofa" is what the vast majority of laptops are currently used for.

So websites look great on it. As does video. The BBC iPlayer is particularly impressive. But books? Here, I'm less convinced. Kindle owners can download a free app which lets them access their books on the iPad; Apple also has its own rival iBook service. In both cases the screen looks superb, and swiping a finger across the screen to flip the page gives you an undeniable futuristic thrill. But the display, luminously gorgeous when replaying video, is simply not suited for reading articles at length.Yes, you can adjust the brightness, but it's still firing light into your pupils, unlike an ebook screen, with its poncey "electronic ink".

I doubt many readers will persevere to the final page of a novel, unless it's a book in which the lead character squints a lot, in which case you'll have a certain empathy.

Magazines and newspapers, with their shorter read times, may be a different matter. The Guardian's Eyewitness app, a free interactive gallery of recent photojournalism, looks and feels like the future. If print media really wants to make the transition to devices like these, thinking long and hard about the visual, it needs to think long and hard about the full visual potential.

So do you actually need one? Having used one for the past few hours, I can confidently state that you can safely wait until it's lighter and cheaper. At the very least, wait until they bring out an app that turns the iPad into a talking Lord Lucan mask which you can hold up in front of your own face and talk through. If there isn't one already.

New-look Microsoft site to link up with social media, reduce download time and give higher profile to MSN Video Player

Microsoft is to unveil a new-look MSN UK homepage later today that includes tie-ups with Facebook and Twitter and a new high-profile slot for its online TV service.

A key element of the refresh, the first major overhaul since September 2007, is to simplify the design to reduce download time, which is considered a key factor in keeping users engaged for longer.

"The new homepage is much lighter, much whiter, much shorter [in overall length], much smaller," said Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN UK at Microsoft.

MSN UK's new-look website, which is scheduled to go live from 8.30pm today, will also include social media integration with Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live. The website will also offer more news and larger images.

Users will be able to access and update their social media accounts directly from the MSN homepage although not if they are members of the second largest network, News Corporation-owned MySpace.

"It is acknowledgment there are other services out there that people's lives also revolve around and it is important to making the MSN homepage indispensible," said Bale.

Microsoft has also given video-on-demand service MSN Video Player, which has 1,000 hours of shows including Peep Show, Shameless and Midsomer Murders, a high-profile slot.

Previously the service, which officially launched in March, was positioned below the "fold" in the lower half of the homepage; it is now near the top.

"We are meeting targets for streams, we are pretty happy about [MSN Video Player] at the moment," said Bale. "One of the difficulties was making it prominent enough for users. It is a very valuable product. We see video as front and centre of our revenue ambitions in the coming year."

A huge amount of web traffic to the MSN UK homepage comes from when users log off from Microsoft-owned email service Hotmail. As such the new redesign features a much more prominent Hotmail service.

"There will be a much cleaner, crisper look and feel," said Chris Maples, the commercial director for Microsoft UK. "This will create greater engagement for users and for advertisers. It feels a bit more nimble, adds some verve."

Intel has revisited last year's Classmate 2 convertible netbook and upgraded it to this year's Pinetrail platform, but some niggles remain

I criticised several aspects of Intel's Classmate 2 netbook when I looked at an early version in April 2009. The new model deals with many of my complaints, though the basic system has not changed.

If you missed it, Classmate 2 is a rugged convertible aimed at the schools market, particularly children aged 5-11. In normal use, it's a conventional Atom-powered netbook, but you can also swivel the screen around handy for some classroom uses and fold it over the keyboard, to form a tablet computer. You can then use a stylus to make notes, with the option of converting your handwriting into text.

The latest Classmate 2 (PDF) has had its 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor upgraded to a 1.66GHz N450, the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics have been slightly improved to GMA3150, and the 60GB hard drive has expanded to 150GB. The 8.9in screen has grown to 10.1in, and the old Microsoft Windows XP has been replaced by Windows 7 Starter. All of these are worthwhile improvements to what is not, after all, intended to be a cutting-edge system.

However, the screen still offers the same limited resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, and the keyboard remains a little unpleasant for adult touch-typing, though it's now spill-resistant. The main memory (shared with the integrated graphics) has stuck at 1GB, though there's an empty slot so it can easily be expanded to 2GB.

Netbook-watchers will recognise the specification as the Intel Pinetrail platform used in many of this year's netbooks, such as the Asus Eee 1005PE.

The new Classmate 2 scores 2.3 on the Windows Experience Index, the same as the Asus 1005PE which you'd expect, because they have the same processor. In other respects, the Classmate 2 is fractionally quicker, except for the 1005PE's better 250GB hard drive. But while you can measure the difference, it's not so large that any user could tell.

The system is available with either a 4-cell battery lasting up to 4.8 hours or a 6-cell battery claimed to last 8.5 hours. As well as having two USB ports, an SD slot, Ethernet and other ports, the new model optionally supports WiMax networking, 3G and GPS.

Another benefit for schools is the provision of a simple Blue Dolphin front end with a bundle of preloaded educational software. When you turn the Classmate 2 on, it tries to connect to your teacher's PC, so that you can receive assignments and hand them in (via a button that says Hand In). Programs such as Smart Notebook SE, MyScript Stylus and MyScript Studio look suitable for classroom use. There's also webcam and parental control software. However, the bundle includes some trialware that you would need to remove, and configuring Blue Dolphin for a specific school would take quite some time. You'd want Intel Education Administrator or a similar program to configure 30 or more.

The new Classmate 2 is bulky and somewhat heavy (1.52kg or 1.74kg) in comparison to consumer-oriented designs such as the Asus Seashell and Acer Aspire. It doesn't look anything like as stylish as a Seashell or the silver Toshiba NB305. But it should be more likely to survive rough handling, or even being dropped.

Classmate netbooks are developed and sold by manufacturers in many different countries. Previous versions have been sold in the UK by CMS under the Fizzbook Spin brand name, and the latest model will be distributed by Steljes in the UK and Ireland. It has been pilot tested at St Matthew Academy, Blackheath, London.

Pros: Rugged design and construction; converts to tablet; stylus-operated touch screen; Blue Dolphin front end; Windows 7 Starter.
Cons: Limited screen depth (600 pixels); keyboard; weight.
Classmatepc.com

Xbox 360 (tested)/PC/PS3; 39.99; cert 16+; Obsidian/Sega

James Bond meets Mass Effect 2? On paper, Alpha Protocol sounds like a classic. Sadly, on screen the potential of an espionage based RPG is rarely fulfilled.

It doesn't help that Alpha Protocol looks so dated. Yes, 2009's Dragon Age showed that excellent RPGs need not be pretty, but Alpha Protocol really is an ugly affair. Bland generic settings and 2006 vintage character graphics are all par for the course. Luckily then the story and general narrative do enough to get you at least semi-interested. Historically, most RPGs have been set in orc-filled fantasy lands; Alpha Protocol goes instead for government conspiracy and undercover espionage. The story is progressed by an excellent dialogue choice tool. Speak to a character and you can choose to be suave, professional or aggressive. Obviously what you choose influences how each character reacts to you be careful who you flirt with, for example and has a big impact on plot progression.

Sadly, the combat and action fail to match up to the story and socialising. The camera is a mess for a start, regularly hindering your view. The Gears of War-style cover system too is frustratingly erratic too. More casual gamers will be put off by some of the RPG mechanics such as woefully underpowered weaponry that only gradually improves as you "level up". Experienced gamers especially those who played the original Mass Effect will be used to this though and there is definitely a challenge here.

What will unite all players though is a hatred of the minigames that crop up whenever you want to disable an alarm or unlock a door. The most perverse sees you having to identify a code in a grid full of manically moving characters. Once found not easy you need to move a sluggish cursor over to it before time runs out and it gets moved to another part of the grid. Prepare to fling your controller across the room in anger at least 25 times.

The most frustrating thing about Alpha Protocol is that there clearly is a decent game hidden away here. Choosing a specialisation for your agent and customising him with individual skills and looks is as gnawingly compulsive as in most RPGs. Possibly even more so here, given the real-world setting. But a general lack of visual polish, coupled with clunky gameplay mechanics, means Alpha Protocol is a missed opportunity.

Rating: 2/5

Steve Jobs is building up quite a reputation for one-to-one customer support via the medium of email.

This morning he replied to UK developer Mark Ford confirming that iPhone OS 4.0 will include the ability to change font size in SMS - a detail for most, but essential for those with impaired vision.

There has been a steady trickle of these emails from the Apple chief, recently confirming the iPad would not support tethering, why an app was rejected because of its name and a rather snappy comment about a water-damaged MacBook Pro. There are even a few blogs dedicated to Jobs' emails, so Ford can now add to those.

"Well," said Ford, "I did try to get hold of @cliveflint earlier (I know he's got iPhone OS 4) then thought screw it, I'll ask Steve."

The email in full:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hi Steve,

my wife has very bad eye sight (she is registered blind). She's not completely in the dark but she struggles with small text.

She can with most of the text on an iPhone, but not the text in the SMS text bubble. As far as I know there's no way to change the font size of the SMS message, although you can change it for email.

I know she could use voiceover, but she thinks it would be embarrassing to have her messages read to her, she tried the zoom function but couldn't get on with it on the phone (it works fine on the iMac).

This is the one thing stopping he buying an iPhone,is it likely that future versions of the iPhone OS will allow the text size for SMS to be increased?

All the best,

Mark Ford

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yes, that exact feature is coming in iPhone OS 4 software this summer!

Sent from my iPad

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Andy Lintner on Beowulfe.com is doing his part for the Deepwater disaster with a map mashup that compares the size of the slick to anywhere in the world. Transposed to the UK, the results are horrifying.

Lintner created the map using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which collates data from high-resolution satellite images that are tracking the spread of the slick in the Gulf on changing currents.

The same site has the live video feed from the camera fixed on the leak 5,000 feet down, an estimate of the amount of crude spilt so far that you can adjust according to the best - and worst - assessments and links to volunteer, write to the government and donate to the clean-up effort.

Lintner also links to the US Environmental Protection Agency site, which is soliciting ideas and technological solutions that could help clean up. The Guardian's Environment site passed 186 readers' ideas to BP last week after a flood of responses to a similar call, and there's more on the Deepwater Horizon section.


Photo by pppspics on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The Facebook story is about how people present themselves to different audiences, and what societies should do about companies that dominate their markets

You might have written off the fuss about Facebook over the past few months as essentially technical: nerds fighting nerds, arguing over the default settings on a website. If only it were that trivial. Technology is certainly part of it, but fundamentally the Facebook story is about how people present themselves to different audiences, and what societies should do about companies that dominate their markets.

As anyone who hasn't just relocated from Mars knows, Facebook is the biggest social-network website in the world, used by more than 400 million people to share gossip, party invitations and drunken photos with their friends. And it was for friends' eyes only, according to the service's early, solemn promise. That changed down the years so that by the start of last week Facebook members had to go through a fiddly procedure to keep their details from being seen by strangers and businesses.

Why is this a big deal? Well, forget the internet for a second and imagine a 25-year-old graduate. Roy (as we'll call him) puts on a suit to the office, where he wants to impress his boss. With friends, though, he wears jeans and can get a bit rowdy. Then there's the girlfriend's parents: for them Roy puts on a jacket and his best manners. Different contexts, different behaviours. Facebook is where Roy hangs out with pals online. But with the erosion of control over his own information and with the website's surging and widening membership, Roy's page is now being looked up by his boss and even by his potential mother-in-law. Cue the inevitable strife.

Under pressure from real-life Roys, Facebook backed down last week. Users now have slightly more control over who sees their online biographies. Yet company CEO Mark Zuckerberg has done so only under duress; in essence, he thinks privacy is over: "The days of you having a different image for your co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity."

Customers who disagree can always quit. Except that Mr Zuckerberg's attitude is common among free web services which rely for revenue on advertisers, who want data about customers. But there is another problem. The world's No 1 social-networking site so dominates its market that it is a utility. True, the Great Server Farm in the Sky is full of firms once thought insuperable (hello, Lycos). Yet if we think of the internet as essential, and pay a tax for the installation of a broadband connection to every home, then it is time that we thought about regulating its gatekeepers like we would water and electricity suppliers.

Google wants to give your TV a 'cognitive transplant', but is this a good idea?

And now for something completely different: Google TV. Yes, you read that correctly: Google TV. Now I know what you're thinking. You already have enough TV channels, most of them running Friends, Desperate Housewives or reruns of Top Gear. Why on earth would you want to watch a channel in which a T-shirted nerd with an IQ in the low thousands explains how to code an algorithm for complex linear programming in seven lines of Perl while behind him one of his more subversive colleagues is gleefully demonstrating on a whiteboard how it can be done in four?

Relax. Google TV is not a channel, it's a platform, ie a base on which things can be built. In ordinary life, platforms are physical objects, such as the drilling rig that is causing BP such grief, but the Google guys don't do physical. They're geeks, so their idea of a platform is a large piece of software called an operating system. A while back, they created such a platform for mobile phones. It's called Android and handsets based on that platform have recently begun to outsell the Apple iPhone in what may or may not be a significant development.

But then the question arose: after mobile phones, what? The Googlers' gaze alighted on the humble domestic television. Now, the thing about a TV set is that it's an exceedingly stupid device. In computational terms, it has the IQ of a nematode worm and it shows. Take, for example, TV's idea of an EPG or "electronic programme guide": a crude grid plotting channels against times, through which one has to scroll endlessly like a lost zombie. In terms of user interface design, it predates the Pyramids.

This kind of stupidity offends the delicate sensibilities of the Googlers. It's, like, so uncool. Why can't you just type in what you want to watch and have the TV set tune to it instantly? And if what you want to watch isn't available via traditional broadcast channels, it's probably available on the web somewhere, so why can't the TV find it and start displaying it?

The answer is that the TV nematode can't do complicated things such as that because it is a Device of Very Little Brain. "No problem," say the Googlers, "we'll give it a cognitive transplant." So they signed deals with TV manufacturers such as Sony and set-top box makers such as Logitech to build TVs that will run the Android operating system. And so Google TV was born. In addition to receiving conventional television signals, the new TVs will have a web browser, will run Flash (nice snub for Steve Jobs, that) and connect to the web via your home wireless computer network. The first sets will be on the US market in the autumn.

Neat, eh? The web and TV united via Google software. But note that Google won't be making the hardware. That will be left to Sony and co. So the model is similar to the situation with mobile phones, where Google makes the Android platform but anyone can make a handset to run it. And anyone can write and publish apps to run on them. So there are dozens of different Android phones on the market and many thousands of Android apps available in an open, unregulated ecosystem that contrasts sharply with Apple's tightly closed shop.

All of which is fine and dandy, until something goes wrong. Remember that these new TVs will basically be computers with very large screens and a wireless connection to the net. And you know what happens with computers. So spool forward to the summer of 2012. You've just bought a 50-inch Sony GoogleBravia set to watch the Olympics. Family and friends have been invited to celebrate the occasion. Drinks and nibbles have been procured from M&S. Uncle Fred is in his favourite chair. You "boot up" your new TV and are greeted by a Google search box into which you type (using your Android mobile phone, naturally) "Olympic opening ceremony".

A browser window opens, inside which is a spinning beachball and nothing else. After a while, it dawns on you that Flash has crashed the browser. But when you try to kill the application, you find that the entire set has frozen. The only thing to do is unplug it from the wall and start again. But the same thing happens again.

So who do you call? John Lewis, which sold you the set? ("Sorry, sir, that's a Sony problem.") Sony? ("Sorry, sir, that's a software problem. We suggest you call Google.") Google? (Google doesn't do telephone support it only does online forums.) And, to cap it all, Uncle Fred is grinning from ear to ear. "Told you it wouldn't work," he chuckles.

The only consolation is that the guy two doors down is in even worse shape. He's bought a Microsoft TV and is coping with a stack overflow in Windows 9. Stay tuned if you can.

Mobile phone firms are competing to offer the best deals this summer, offering free TVs and computer games

A free LCD TV is the latest offering from mobile phone companies keen to lure customers into signing up for a contract of at least a year.

Mobiles.co.uk is offering those signing a new phone contract a free mobile handset and a 32" Samsung LE32C350 television.

The retailer is offering virtually every possible handset in combination with each of the mobile networks. To get the free TVs you generally have to agree to a two-year deal priced from 25 a month. But there is one 12-month contract with Vodafone at 35 a month which gives you the TV for free and it is worth at least 320.

If you don't want a new TV, there are similar deals on Nintendos or a range of laptops go to its website and click on free gifts for a full list.

The company says it has got the TVs in stock and adds that delivery will take a couple of days.

Several other mobile phone sellers such as Buymobilephones.net and OneStopPhoneShop are doing similar deals. Just make sure you do an internet search to check out what customers say about the firm before you hand over any money (try reviewcentre.com) and that they have the TV in stock when you order.

Matthew Wheeler, communications expert at uSwitch.com, who spotted the deals says: "With football set to dominate this summer, this really does score. With average savings of 81 to be made by getting a new mobile deal, plus a TV thrown in, this is a win-win for consumers."

On this week's Tech Weekly, Aleks Krotoski and Charles Arthur say a fond farewell to Jack Schofield, the Guardian's longest-serving technology writer, who's heading into freelance pastures at the end of the month. Jack takes us down memory lane, through his days with Mosaic, Oracle and IBM, and tells us who he wishes he could have interviewed in his 25 year with the newspaper. Here's a hint: it's not Apple's Steve Jobs.

In the news, Jemima Kiss gets answers from Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the recent privacy scandal surrounding the search company's collection of our personal data, and the studio team discuss what the company must do to protect the sanctity of our online identities.

Aleks, Charles and Jack also scrutinise the technology strategy that's emerged in the fortnight of the coalition government: the Digital Economy Act won't be repealed, educational technology body Becta is being scrapped to save 80m, and Tim Berners-Lee's semantic web project, earmarked for an influx of cash through Labour via the web science initiative, is canned. What signals does this send to the UK's digital tech industry?

US technology retailer Best Buy has set up shop in the UK, but is this really the right move when all indicators suggest that technology consumers have migrated online? Producer Scott Cawley reports from the shop floor.

And finally, what are Google's plans for TV? The team tackles the announcements made at the company's annual IO conference, held last week.

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Game review; 39.99; cert 3+; Nintendo

Consoles usually take a while to get into their stride, but the Wii, as befits its disruptive nature, seemed to have reversed that trend. The compelling games with which it was furnished when new dried up in recent months to a trickle of dross, and one suspects many Wiis began to gather dust in the back of toy-cupboards. The arrival, then, of Super Mario Galaxy 2 could not be more timely.

The problem isn't likely to resolve itself until medical technology allows us to clone several copies of Nintendo's in-house development genius, Shigeru Miyamoto. At least Miyamoto-san saves his best efforts for games featuring Mario, as Super Mario Galaxy 2 amply demonstrates.

Structurally, it is near-indistinguishable from its predecessor, with several worlds to navigate, each split into seven or so galaxies (the last of which presents you with a boss to be defeated before you're awarded a Grand Star). This time around, you can opt to play as Luigi as you enter each galaxy. As in the first Super Mario Galaxy, you have to reach stars to open new galaxies, by executing deft platform moves and solving all manner of puzzles, often involving delicious mischief with the laws of gravity. Those puzzles are invariably so good that they will make you chuckle and nod in appreciation of their sheer cleverness.

The key to reaching what often appear to be unreachable stars is Mario's array of power-ups and special abilities, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 has two new ones. The first is a drill attachment, which Mario carries above his head; shake the Wiimote, and he will burrow straight through the centre of whatever planet he is on. This clever mechanic can be used for puzzle-solving by, for instance, burrowing to the top of pillars too high for Mario's jumping abilities, or for boss-battles, in which you have to time and position your burrowing to hit creatures' vulnerable parts.

But the undoubted star of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is Mario's old mate, Yoshi. He appears in many galaxies, bringing a range of abilities when Mario jumps on his back. With his lizard-like tongue (the direction of which you can control with the Wiimote), he can gobble up and spit out enemies, and swing from designated points. Feed him Blimp Fruit and he will float for a while. And when he swallows a chilli pepper, he gains the ability to run like Forrest Gump (complete with boggle-eyed expression and siren sound effect), enabling him to temporarily escape the normal restrictions of gravity (although he becomes tricky to steer).

All of Mario's existing power-ups appear, too, including Bee Mario and Fire Mario (one clever ice world can be reshaped by Mario's fireballs and by rolling snowballs into melted areas). There are underwater worlds and a flying sequence in which Mario is suspended from a Fluzzard, and at one point, he can power-up into a rolling boulder. His ground-pound move also features heavily.

As the above suggests, the surreal nature that characterises Mario's games is to the fore. Mated with the game's irresistible sweetness, the outcome is a game-world which is truly universal in its appeal the youngest children and grizzliest hardcore gamers alike will be held equally rapt by its charms. A long-overdue reminder of what the Wii is all about.

Rating: 5/5

Alongside relentless action, they're promising deeper characterisation, a vast historical narrative and a revolutionary multiplayer mode. Here's the lowdown on Treyarch's latest response to the call of duty

In a rental studio complex on Shepherds Bush Road in London, a few dozen games journalists are having their senses pulverised by Treyarch operatives. With speakers cranked up to 11 and a gigantic screen, the developer is showing us Huey choppers strafing immense crowds of soldiers as buildings burn, gun fights rage and military installations explode.

This is Activision's pre-E3 event and it feels like good training for next month's massive industry get-together. Indeed, it feels like having your synapses sucked out of your eyeballs. Call of Duty is a lot of things, but what it is not, nor ever will be, is subtle.

Set during the Cold War, CoD: Black Ops follows several covert operations groups, the secret units set up by the CIA to engage in deniable actions all over the world. Steeped in conspiracy theory and no doubt paying close heed to declassified government files, the game takes in the agency's anticommunist activities in Eastern Europe, in Vietnam and in Cuba. Treyarch won't be drawn on specific dates, but I'm thinking things will focus on the sixties and seventies, from the Bay of Pigs invasion right through to 'Nam and maybe even Watergate. The missile crisis and Kennedy assassination must surely figure, too.

"We met Major John Plaster who's the world's foremost authority on SOG (studies and observations group) operations," explains studio head Mark Lamia. "He came to the studio and told us about everything about the training, the tactics, the weaponry, the missions. And he looked at what we were starting to create and gave us feedback. He'd say, 'yes, this is accurate, but this is taking a lot of creative liberties, is that what you want to do?' And sometimes the answer was yes, and sometimes we'd ask, 'okay, how should it be?'"

During the event, Treyarch plays through two levels, both set during 1968. In the first, named WMD, you begin the level in a Lockheed SR-71, flying over a covert Russian military base in some suitably frozen, mountainous wasteland. At first we're just watching a screen showing night vision footage of black ops soldiers approaching the compound. Then the PoV shifts and we're on the ground with the unit, preparing to attack. There's some lovely graphical detail here, with billows of snow wafting in the air, and great clumps of ice falling from trees.

After waiting for a convoy of trucks to drive by, the player character and three other troopers are moving in, edging down a frosty mountain slope toward multiple enemies, blasting the place up. The squad reaches some railings beside a sheer drop, lobs their ropes over and start rappelling down, with the trigger buttons controlling speed in the standard CoD style. Finally, the squad reaches the window of an observation room cut into the mountain side they swing out, shoot up the glass and smash their way in. As the camera shifts round, one of the squad is chucking an enemy over the ledge. Crude, but effective.

From here, it's all about picking off enemy solders from behind rocky cover as the descent of the mountain continues. One of the game's new weapons, a powerful, super-silent scoped crossbow, looks like enormous fun. Hits are contextual, and at several points, soldiers are caught in the legs with bolts and just stagger about the place waiting to be finished off. The player character grabs an AK-47, cutting down multiple enemies before reaching a satellite station that has to be knocked out. The character kicks the hinges off a door, while a computer-controlled comrade lobs in a knife to silently take out a lone enemy inside. Next, it's just a case of ripping out some wires to switch off a communications relay, then everyone is legging it down the mountain, just as an avalanche begins. In a nod to the climax of Modern Warfare's Crew Expendable mission, it's about charging down the icy ravine as quickly as possible, avoiding obstacles while destruction and disaster follow.

The next level we see, set in Hue City Vietnam, is enticingly named Slaughterhouse. It kicks off with a wonderfully apocalyptic twilight scene in which dozens of US choppers buzz like furious wasps over a burning mass of bombed-out buildings and incinerated palm trees. The player character is abseiling from one 'copter, when the craft is hit by anti-aircraft fire that sends it into a death spin. The character swings wildly onto an upper floor of a wrecked office block. Here we go.

Now, it's all about blasting Viet Cong soldiers while desperately locating an exit, through destroyed furniture and terrified civilians. This time, our Treyarch demo chap is using a SPAS-12 shotgun equipped with dragon's breath shells, which send out horribly pyrotechnic blasts of flame. It's completely nasty stuff, but this devilish ammo is accompanied by some stunningly evocative graphics effects as charred enemies fly across the room. Dragon's breath shells are going to absolutely rock in multiplayer.

Out on the street, and there are several mass battles with VC troops. In one sequence, the player calls in ordinance on a building where the enemy are locked down. Suddenly a shadowed chopper swoops in from above, like some awesome flying behemoth, and immediately spits thousands of rounds of .50 cal ammo into the building. Then the player is running through the street, dodging masses of enemy fire behind an armoured vehicle with 'bottom feeder' scrawled on its side a sort of hellish revisit of the Exodus level in MW2.

So, yes, this is Call of Duty alright. Intense, epic, mostly linear, intricately choreographed ... Lamia says the aim of Black Ops is to provide fans with a new and varied range of combat experiences but then, variety has always been the aim of this series, and although there is plenty of that, I didn't see anything spectacularly fresh in these admittedly brief excerpts. It appears to be what this series has always been hyper-polished FPS entertainment, jammed with breathless set-pieces and utterly, utterly relentless.

So what exactly is the high concept behind Treyarch's first CoD game to take place outside of WW2? They're not saying much. What they are promising is a far-reaching narrative that takes in multiple conflicts within the period. As Lamia explains: "We're working very hard to create an epic story. It's the Cold War, the world is on the brink, you're going to be trying to save it." But save it from what? "I'm not going to tell you what it is, because finding that out exactly " He pauses for a second before deciding on a different approach. "On the surface, it's that you don't want the Cuban Missile Crisis to happen, you don't want the nukes to go off. Well, there's more to it than that, and that's why the black operations are going on underneath the Cold War "

And, really, we're not even sure that the game plays out chronologically. Lamia is keen to hint that this might not be the case: "The time events, how it unravels, is actually part of what you're going to discover in the game. However, we've told you a great deal with the assets that are out there. If you look at those you'll get some idea of how we're doing our narrative, how we might unravel some of the events of the period."

Once again, there will be multiplayer player characters as well as a large cast of supporting roles. Lamia tells us that some of these will crop up throughout the story, changing drastically as the years go by. Interestingly, he mentions that there will be alternative versions of some characters, suggesting that, later in the game they'll look different, depending on actions and decisions you make en route. A branching story line in CoD? Stranger things have happened, possibly.

In a risky move, the team is giving the player character his own voice, a first for the series. They explain that this is because they want a rich, full story, and they need the lead character to take an active role in dialogue. To enhance plot scenes, they're also using full performance capture for the first time, simultaneously recording the movements, facial expressions and voices of actors to ensure more naturalistic, engaging performances. It all sounds intriguing, and lord help us, if there's one thing Modern Warfare 2 could have done with it is a cogent narrative. But I'm not sure how convinced I am that a good story requires a voiced lead character especially in the first-person shooter genre, where the player is uniquely immersed into the game world. Half Life managed just fine with an ever-silent Gordon Freeman at the helm.

Lamia also dropped some strong hints about a radical new weapons customisation system, and this is something inspired by Black Ops lore. As he explains: "What we found really inspirational was, when the operatives got their mission from the CIA sometimes it was reconnaissance, sometimes it was rescue, sometimes it was to capture someone alive whatever it was, they'd get the lay of the situation from reconnaissance photos or whatever intelligence they had, then they'd go to an armoury and they could outfit themselves however they saw fit. Literally. They'd go, 'we'll take one of these, two of these, two Hueys'

"There was conventional weaponry, unconventional weaponry, experimental weaponry that hadn't yet been mass produced these are the guys who'd try it first. They would modify weaponry, they would pack their own specialist ammo, they'd create their own weapons while out in the field. That sort of information couldn't be any better for us. It's ripe with gameplay possibilities. You can see how wonderfully that will tie in with what we can do in multiplayer. We're not talking about multiplayer yet, but I can tell you that customisation, allowing people to play the way they want to play those are important pillars for us in our design."

It seems then, that in the single-player campaign mode there will be a set range of weapons, but you'll be able to modify them perhaps in a similar way to Modern Warfare, with its multiple options for scopes, ammo clips, etc. In multiplayer, however, I get the feeling they're thinking of something much more radical, maybe more along the lines of Borderlands, with complete weapon construction. "Customisation and personalisation will be huge," adds Treyarch community manager Josh Olin. "Then there's socialisation, the way players interact with each other, play with their friends, play with their clans, the way they surround themselves with the Call of Duty world, even when they're not at their console or their PC that's another focal point for our multiplayer design "

Hmm, so does that mean interacting with the game or other players in social networking sites, or via your mobile? Who knows. One thing is certain, Treyarch is quietly hinting at some revolutionary new multiplayer features; they've confirmed co-op for up to four players (and split-screen two-player action), but you get the feeling this is the very least of what they're about to offer. Of course, generating hype is a key element of the E3 run-up, but these guys are confident and clearly, genuinely feel they have a significant announcement to make. We'll soon see.

Elsewhere, it sounds like squad AI will be heavily based on genuine black ops tactics and that's not just on the player's side. Treyarch also spoke with Sonny Puzikas, a former operative in Spetsnaz, the Russian equivalent of an SOG. "They were trained in how to be lethal without weapons," says Lamia.

"From day one they were being shot at by their supervisors to desensitise them. That's the sort of mindset they were in," interrupts Olin, gleefully. "Sonny came in to give us a presentation, and it started off as a briefing, but then it quickly became, 'how many ways can Sonny kill you?'. He showed us some crazy techniques; we just watched and thought, 'that's awesome, and we put them in the game!" Later on, Treyarch was able to mocap some of Sonny's moves. "His AI type will be very hard to play against in the game, it's very dynamic, very agile," says Lamia. Naturally, each force will have different combat styles then, the Spetnaz with their deadly melee techniques, the Viet Cong with their jungle-based guerrilla tactics. I wonder if these will be transposed into the multiplayer?

Well, they've got me interested. While the brief single-player sections they showed us suggested lots more of the same (and if it ain't broke ...), but there are whispers of much more. Most telling perhaps was a sneaky little CGI sequence shown just before Mark Lamia began his presentation. It showed snippets of a prone soldier and a sinister voice-over saying, "let me give you something to assist ..." Is Treyarch referencing theories that the CIA experimented with narcotic augmentation during the Cold War and beyond? When I ask Lamia, he just smiles conspiratorially. As if Call of Duty couldn't get more insane, it may now have performance enhancing drugs. This didn't work for Haze, but it was always a neat idea. And neat ideas are what could lift this franchise in the post-Modern Warfare world.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is due to be released on 9 November

Tim Dowling imagines the problems for posters having to identify themselves

Today's topic: with both the Times and the Independent banning anonymous comments from their websites, the age of the unidentified poster may be at an end. Is this a good thing? If you think so, why not take this opportunity to introduce yourself?

My real name is Bruce Wayne.

Batman at 06:36 on 31 May 2010.

Hi all. I'm Nick, the moderator on the site, but I sometimes post mildly inflammatory comments under this pseudonym, just to keep the ball rolling. Otherwise it gets really boring. kronick68 at 07:02 on 31 May 2010.

I applaud the decision made by those newspapers. It's time to put an end to abusive anonymous posters. What possible harm could come from people taking responsibility for their online comments? I changed my username to my real name this morning and I hope others will do the same.

MaryFDolan_Acc407371sortcode81-60-21_answer_to_secret_question:"Fluffy" at 07:09 on 31 May 2010.

I'm Donald J and I get paid to come on sites like this to change the subject to internet poker. I don't even know anything about poker, I just paste in phrases from a list. A robot could do it, but I'm cheaper, apparently.

BonusBob at 07:27 on 31 May 2010.

What a cool idea! My real name is Mark Pearce, and I just told work I was ill when I'm really still in Spain! Here's a link to a pic on my Facebook page of me being sick all over a police horse! http://btx4Jk9. Friend me!

TheOfficeThief at 09:13 on 31 May 2010.

YOu FEAR OUR POWEr! YOU CaNOT SILENCE ThE POEPLE!!!

kronick68 at 09:54 on 31 May 2010.

Mark: you're fired.

IamyourBOSS at 10:17 on 31 May 2010.

Dudes! I just won 360 playing heads-up hold 'em! Check out this great site! http://gh7lkp9

BonusBob at 11:04 on 31 May 2010.

IE director Ryan Gavin says his aims are to reduce IE6's market share to zero and to achieve cross-browser standards compatibility with the forthcomng IE9

Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's senior director of Internet Explorer, is remarkably chirpy for a man whose product's market share has plunged from 90% to roughly 60%, but it seems things are not all bad.

"The future for IE is as bright as it's been any time over the past five years," he says. "IE8 is the fastest-growing browser in history: it's the number one browser on Windows, and the number one across all OSs. The simple truth comes down to: every single day, more users are choosing Internet Explorer 8 than any other modern browser out there."

Gavin is also showing a platform preview of next year's IE9 which, at least on his chosen demos, trounces Google Chrome for speed by making use of the PC's graphics processor.

What's more, he's just as keen to see the back of the nine-year-old IE6 as anybody else. "IE6 was built for a very different web at a very different time," says Gavin. "A modern web does require a modern browser. My aim is to get IE6's market share to zero as fast as humanly possible. That's good for the web, good for developers, and good for us."

IE6 is still around because companies standardised on it, and because it ships with Windows XP, which is still the most widely-used (and, arguably, most popular) operating system. The problem will shrink as Windows 7 takes off. However, IE9 won't run on XP: wouldn't it help kill IE6 if it did?

"XP is a fantastic operating system, it was simply built for a different time. The security profile from nine years ago is not the security profile needed today," he says. IE9 has a strong focus on security Gavin says it blocks far more malware than either Firefox or Google Chrome but "you need security all the way through the operating system". That's obviously not XP .

Gavin says the IE9 preview has been downloaded more than 1m times since 15 March, and developers are excited about it because it makes new kinds of web experience possible: experiences that are much more like applications than websites. This is using HTML5 and hardware acceleration, of course.

"We're all in on HTML5," he says. "We've been co-chairing the HTML5 working group, and we're actually leading the HTML5 testing group. With CSS 2.1, we've submitted 7,000 test cases to the W3C. We're actively participating with other browser vendors to get consistency across browsers. The goal is 'same markup'."

Microsoft's Test Drive site shows that IE9 is implementing important HTML5 standards better than rival browsers, but it still lags on Acid3 test. Gavin says Microsoft is implementing the features most commonly used by popular websites, rather than targeting Acid3. "We're using real-world customer data to inform our vision [for IE9], but as we focus on standards and markup, as a by-product, our Acid3 scores go up."

Gavin says Microsoft is taking a similar line with browser performance, testing against thousands of real-world sites rather than optimising for benchmark tests. "There are dozens of subsystems that make up the real-world performance of a browser which is not just speed and JavaScript can be as little as 5%," he says. "Rendering matters a ton. Layout matters a ton. It varies site by site. Looking at one specific test is a very narrow view of the web."

But, I suggest, Microsoft could save itself the effort if it just used the open source WebKit rendering engine as used by Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and most mobile browsers instead of developing its own.

"Trident is actually a much bigger engine with many more components than WebKit," he says, "and I'm not even sure what WebKit is. There are a lot of different versions that get different results on the same tests."

Of course, another factor is that Microsoft has to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of its browser that are still used by many corporate customers and government departments. I ask Gavin if Microsoft's focus on HTML5 means that ActiveX is on the way out.

"ActiveX continues to be a choice," he says, "along with HTML5 and various plug-ins. Choice is a good thing! Developers will continue to choose the right tools for the job.

"There's more choice in the browser space than ever in history. Choice is great for customers, it's great for developers, and it's great for Microsoft. I think we do some of our most innovative work in a healthy competitive environment, serving customers and partners."

Those are fine sentiments so we can only hope that IE9 actually delivers on them.

Upgrade to iPlayer video-on-demand service designed to link with social media, and drive traffic to other broadcasters

What do you think of the new iPlayer?

The BBC has unveiled the latest version of the iPlayer video-on-demand service, a customisable upgrade that includes deals with Facebook and Twitter allowing users to share content via the social media networks.

Broadcasters including ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five will also benefit from iPlayer's user traffic for the first time, with the service offering links through to the VoD players of commercial rivals.

The tie-up with Facebook and Twitter, which will allow iPlayer users to recommend programming to their friends as long as they log into the BBC website first, forms part of a strategy to make the service more social.

However, users will have to sign up to the BBC's own website ID service, already used for posting comments on the site, so that the corporation can maintain a "complete social eco-system" with iPlayer users. The corporation has more than one million users already signed up to BBC ID.

Huggers stressed that this was not the first step in turning the BBC iPlayer into a full social networking website.

"Does the BBC need to build its own social network? I think the answer is no. We want to integrate with other services," he said.

The new version of the iPlayer, which goes live in a beta testing version from today, will see the channel icons of rival broadcasters appear in the online electronic programming guide alongside the BBC's own TV services.

In addition, rivals' shows will appear if a non-BBC programme, such as "Coronation Street", is entered into the iPlayer's search engine and can be added to an constantly updated favourites list of content.

Deals have been struck with the ITV Player, Channel 4's 4oD, Five's Five on Demand, S4C's Clic and the VoD aggregation service SeeSaw.

The new links to commercial rivals will go live on the iPlayer service later this year. The deals with rival broadcasters will not see the sharing of content or technology.

Erik Huggers, the director of future, media and technology at the BBC, said that there was "no particular reason" that BSkyB's Sky Player was not one of the launch partners.

"It is an open programme, if Sky wants to be part of this it is no particular problem. They are considering it," Huggers added.

The partnerships form part of the BBC's pledge in the strategic review of online activities to be more of a "window on the web" and double the number of clickthroughs to rivals' websites from 10m to 20m per month.

Huggers said that one reason that director general Mark Thompson's original plan to form partnerships with commercial broadcasters using the iPlayer, which fell apart last year, failed was because it involved the sharing of BBC technology.

The BBC has also struck a deal with Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger chat service so that iPlayer users can message each other at the same time as watching shows.

Huggers said that the iPlayer, which was previously criticised for not launching products simultaneously on multiple technology platforms, was in "exploratory discussions" with operators of other chat services including Google and Facebook.

"The fact we chose Microsoft [first] was because they have the largest installed base [of users]," he added.

Huggers said that the "interlinking" service with rival broadcasters would apply to "premium, long-form video" and represented "just the start" of partnerships.

A spokesman for Five said it would consider providing links to online video content from other public service broadcasters on its own Demand Five service. "It makes sense if done in the right way. It is something we will actively consider," he added.

Huggers also said that a long-delayed international version of the iPlayer, which would be operated by the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, was still in the works.

"It is still very high on the agenda. We are working closely with BBC Worldwide on it. It is absolutely something we are looking into," he added.

Huggers also lent his support to Google TV, the service that will allow viewers to search the web and eventually download VoD content while watching their TV set, arguing that he does not see it as a competitor.

"I think Google TV is an interesting new product that shows the level of competition in the marketplace and that living room innovation is moving fast," he said. "I welcome it. I see GTV, if it is successful, as a fantastic receiver for BBC services... the iPlayer, news, sport, childrens whatever. We want to provide on a platform neutral basis."

The new-look iPlayer aims to remain both simple for users that just want to watch TV or radio while also allowing a massive amount of functionality so advanced web users can customise their iPlayer experience.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

Film director Brett Ratner believes the BlackBerry is vastly superior to Apple's popular device

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
I have to say there's a new gadget that's called a Dash [Personal Internet Viewer] it's made by Sony, and it's kind of interesting because it's by your bed basically it's like a futuristic clock radio. I can have everything from TMX to Twitter to Facebook right next to my bed, so I can wake up to my favourite music video. It's the coolest thing ever. I can see this thing being by my bed for the next 20 years. This has everything right at your fingertips.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
Every morning when I wake up I wake up differently every morning. I'm constantly being visually stimulated.

What additional features would you add if you could?
It's not a phone, so I would probably add that into it.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
All technology will be obsolete in 10 years it keeps changing and evolving, and makes life exciting.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
How fast it's changing how I buy a new computer from Apple and in six months it's old. That's the sort of thing that pisses me off.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
I hate the iPhone. I love the BlackBerry BlackBerry wins in my opinion. The iPhone is a toy.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Simplicity. Find the simplest thing to use.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I'm definitely not a nerd

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
When flatscreen TVs first came out, I paid $25,000 for one of them. And I recently bought a movie server called a Kaliedescape, and that cost $250,000. I store all my movies on it.

Mac or PC, and why?
PC if it's HP, and because of Windows Windows 7 is the best. And the touchscreen HP computer is unbelievable. But the iPad is the most ingenious piece of technology I have ever come across it's really the future.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I still by DVDs I love the box, I love the artwork. That's the part that technology is killing the design and packaging. When you download, you're miss that three-dimensionality. The last DVD I bought was a box set of The Ben Stiller Show.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
I would love a robot butler. The problem with most butlers is that they steal shit out of your house robots won't steal anything.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
I hear there's a way I can type somebody's phone number into my phone and find where they are anywhere in the world I can't wait for that to come out.

Brett Ratner's latest film, Kites: The Remix, is out now

Theresa May agrees adjournment of judicial review to consider whether Gary McKinnon is fit to be extradited to US

The extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon has been put on hold after the home secretary, Theresa May, agreed to an adjournment of a judicial review that was supposed to start within days.

The move will allow May to begin formal consideration of the medical evidence to see whether McKinnon is fit to be extradited. If it is established that he cannot be allowed to go, it paves the way for a prosecution in the UK.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary has considered the proposal from Gary McKinnon's legal team and has agreed an adjournment should be sought. An application to the court is being made today."

McKinnon's lawyer, Karen Todner, said she hoped May would make a decision on whether he was fit to be extradited in a matter of weeks.

Todner said: "The secretary of state, having recently taken office and having received further representations from the claimant's representatives, wishes to have appropriate time fully to consider the issues in the case." She said she hoped the decision was "a signal of a more compassionate and caring home secretary".

McKinnon's lawyers were granted permission for a judicial review last week having failed to win one last year into whether a decision by the former home secretary Alan Johnson to allow extradition and trial in the US breached McKinnon's human rights.

The judicial review was supposed to start next week and was virtually a last throw of the legal dice. Its adjournment allows May to cast a fresh eye on what has turned into a cause celebre, and to make a close examination of the extradition agreement between the US and the UK.

Legal experts said May's main difficulty would be to override her Home Office advisers.

"They will, perhaps, tell their minister that if she reverses the [Jacqui] Smith-Johnson decision, the Americans might take her to court for judicial review. But this is unreal: the Obama administration is unlikely to challenge, on behalf of a local state prosecutor, a decision of the new British government," Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote on the Guardian's Comment is free website, this week.

McKinnon's supporters believe the new coalition government is sympathetic to their cause as David Cameron and Nick Clegg have in the past publicly criticised plans to extradite McKinnon. Last year, Cameron said any trial should take place in the UK. He said there was "a clear argument to be made that he should answer [any questions] in a British court".

McKinnon admitted to hacking into 97 computers in the US defence department and Nasa from his London flat, and said he was looking for evidence of UFOs between 2001-2.

Despite a lengthy legal battle and strong public support for the Free Gary campaign, McKinnon has so far failed in his seven-year fight against extradition. His supporters argue that McKinnon has Asperger's syndrome and was driven only by an obsession with UFOs. The US government argues that his hacking attempts were a deliberate effort to breach American defence systems.

McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, called the development good news and said it was significant that the court process is now on hold.

"Overall I'm cautiously optimistic," she said. "It's a step in the right direction, but we really need to know that Gary will be staying here. Only then can we relax. In some ways this is almost the most difficult time. I've got hope for the first time and if that hope was dashed I don't know what I'd do.

"We've had this hanging over us for eight years. Some murderers get less than that. All he was doing was tapping away on a keyboard in Crouch End, being curious."

Sharp added that McKinnon was not in a good way: "He can't go out, watch anything about the case on TV. He's under the care of a psychiatrist."

The controversial case has crossed the desks of six home secretaries.

The Information Architects team have come up with a way of looking at Twitter that echoes maps of how the universe began

Back at the dawn of microblogging time, when Twitter had only just started, there were only three users who mattered: Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey - the three key people behind the service. Now there are more than a hundred million users - but the key influencers in this huge network can be quite easily identified.

Now the team at Information Architects have decided to come up with a neat Twitter visualisation, akin to The Independent's classic 1992 "How the universe began" graphic, of the top 140 Twitter influencers, "sorted by #name #handle #category #influence #activity" and by when they joined the service (which determines how close to the centre they are).

The size of the blob indicates how many followers; "influence" is measured by... actually, they don't explain, though possibly it's using something like the Twiinfluence algorithm.

Interesting to see who's in there: Stone and Williams, of course, but also latecomer Marissa Mayer (VP of search product and user experience at Google), who only joined in July 2009, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (December 2009) - and of course there's always Bill Gates, who didn't get on board until January 2010. And of course Stephen Fry and indeed Jonathan Ross.

You can get the PDF (1.1MB) or buy it from them for $99 because, as they remark, "we're convinced that our print is way superior to what you can do with your plotter". And you will need a plotter - the graphic is 84cm by 119cm.

We're happy to see that @guardiantech is in there, showing up in something like the place where Kappa Velorum would be in the Milky Way. (We've highlighted it below to help.)

Does this make any difference? Well.. it might do, if this list of the top 140 were made into a list. Anybody up for that, we wonder?

Google is attacked as a parasite on news sites, yet the true threat could be the social network giant Facebook. Is Rupert Murdoch directing his ire at the wrong target?

Here's a sentence that Robert Thomson, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, has not said: "Facebook argues they drive traffic to sites, but the whole Facebook sensibility is inimical to traditional brand loyalty Facebook encourages promiscuity [in viewing different news sites] and shamelessly so and therefore a significant proportion of their users don't necessarily associate that content with the creator."

And here's something Rupert Murdoch has never said: "We are going to stop people like Facebook or whoever from taking stories for nothing There is a law of copyright and they recognise it Some sites have tapped into a river of gold [by aggregating content] They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model."

But if you replace "Facebook" with "Google" or "Google News" in both quotes, they're absolutely what they said (Thomson to the Australian and Murdoch at a press event in the US).

Here's the strange thing, though: Facebook sends far more traffic to News International sites in the UK than Google News does, according to figures from Experian Hitwise, which monitors web browsers' (though not mobile users') surfing habits. Google's news aggregator service is the bete noire of Wapping and other traditional media outlets because it gives readers an instant hit without necessarily providing any traffic and hence advertising revenues.

In fact figures from the data collection service show that for all news and media sites, Google News UK generates just 0.67% of traffic while Facebook generates precisely 10 times as much at 6.7%. Having 450 million-odd users worldwide, with friends linked across continents, turns out to have its benefits. At least for Facebook.

So is this another demonstration of News International's chiefs not "getting it"? Should their web teams be showing them lists of referrers, and exploring a new Facebook-bashing strategy? After all, the row over privacy settings has put the site at bay. Should Thomson do a quick find-and-replace on those Google-bashing speeches, and capitalise on the antipathy towards Facebook?

Perhaps not yet. One caveat offered by Robin Goad, the research director at Experian Hitwise, is that the above figures fail to reflect the importance of Google search in driving traffic to news sites rather than Google News.

He says: "The thing is, are people coming to read news stories via Google News, or via search in Google? If people click on a news story in the main Google home page which can happen, because news is now included in the 'universal search' results you get when you do a search rather than from the Google News page, then we see that as a click from Google."

That does alter the picture: Google UK (the default for UK users) ranks much higher than Facebook on those measures: it is the "upstream" , or previous, site for 21.9% of clicks to news and media sites, compared to 6.72% for Facebook.

"I think that the majority does actually come from the Google home page," Goad says. But that doesn't mean we should overlook Facebook. "It is a big and growing source of traffic, though people don't talk about it. They talk about other things Twitter, for instance." So could Facebook soon find itself referred to as a parasite, as Thomson spoke of Google? "They don't yet," says Goad. "But maybe when they realise how much traffic it represents, they will." Where Google News has a sentence that tells you what the story is, Goad notes: "Facebook often has the first paragraph, so they're stealing if you want to use that word more of the content."

But Paul Bradshaw, a reader in online journalism at Birmingham City University, thinks the lack of vituperation about Facebook has different reasons. "Firstly, this isn't about content, or readers this is about advertising. Google utterly dominates the online advertising market, and is therefore easily Murdoch's biggest competitor, and therefore biggest target. Murdoch knows the message should be simple and endlessly repeated. If you start attacking Google, keep attacking Google don't muddy the message by changing tack.

"Secondly, Google is enormously wealthy much wealthier than Facebook. The gamble here is that Google might just throw Murdoch a bone to shut up. Or that a government or two might decide to tax those enormous revenues and even better prop up the established news organisations with the proceeds.

"But finally, there probably is a fundamental lack of understanding by Murdoch. He sees his content appearing on Google and thinks it's being stolen rather than referenced. The mooted move [of News International content] out of [the news archive database] LexisNexis suggests this is isn't just about Google."

In fact there's an era ahead in which news organisations will have to get to grips with social media and its implications for their traffic and readership, Bradshaw says.

He remarks: "I think social media traffic is underestimated because it's a relatively recent phenomenon it's taken years for people to realise how important Google was. SEO [search engine optimisation] is still only now entering mainstream journalistic processes and systems and it will take another five years before social media optimisation is also part of the furniture. Also, social media importance varies enormously from site to site, whereas Google's impact is relatively consistent."

There's another reason why the importance of social media traffic may be underestimated. Twitter is an interesting example of how social media is making it harder for news executives to know just where their traffic is coming from. For example, if you look at the data for pretty much any news website, incoming referrals from Twitter.com will likely figure in the top 10.

However, that number significantly underestimates the importance of Twitter to readership because 75% of Twitter traffic doesn't actually come via twitter.com; instead, it comes from people clicking in Twitter applications such as Tweetdeck, which use the site's API (application programming interface) to access its database. If you click on a link in a Twitter feed on Tweetdeck, it won't show up as a twitter.com referral.

Facebook, however, is the new elephant in the online newsroom. It's the fast-growing social network and attracts far less attention than its far smaller rivals such as Twitter. And it is the users, not the site, who grab chunks of content to link to. "The majority comes from people posting it around the site, rather like YouTube videos so it's driven by Facebook's users, not Facebook itself," says Goad.

By contrast, he points out: "Google only presents that data when you go through to search on something, so if you search for 'David Cameron' you'll see results which include those news stories." Facebook is thus more of an exercise in news serendipity, depending on your circle of friends, than Google's directed attempt to organise the world's information.

And if news executives are rubbing their hands, even as they mentally reclassify Facebook from being unimportant to being the next Google to being their new best friend because of its traffic-driving potential, there's some dispiriting news: social media sites tend to display much shorter attention spans over any story than news organisations do. Those findings, from the Pew Research Centre's report New Media, Old Media, show that consumers don't stick long on any site, and social media doesn't linger for any period on any story: a three-day lifespan is all that 53% of stories can expect.

Bradshaw thinks that we'll simply have to adjust to it. The introduction last month of Facebook's "Like" system, which any site can adopt with a couple of lines of code, so that signed-in users of Facebook will be able to recommend the page to their online friends, could have far-reaching consequences, he says. "It has enormous potential. This isn't just another Digg button. Firstly, there's the enormous difference in user base. But more importantly, it demonstrates a level of engagement that can be sold to advertisers.

"I've said previously that the next big battleground for media organisations will be identity and I can see the Like button being a site for that battle. Unlike the big spikes of 'window shoppers' that Digg generates, Facebook can attract a long tail of users with demonstrable value." Advertisers have long recognised the value of word of mouth recommendations for building brand loyalty. However, Bradshaw concedes there is scope for development on the Like button. "There's a whole infrastructure to be built around it to make it measurable and meaningful to advertisers."

Facebook, then, is likely to become more important in news organisations' plans. Unless, of course, something else comes along to overturn it. Best not to cling to that idea, though. No site has ever been as big as Facebook not even MySpace. And who owns that?

Users of the microblogging service complain at apparent censorship as discussion grows around deaths on convoy - but it isn't justified (updated)

The attack by Israel on a flotilla of ships approaching Gaza has, as you'd expect, generated a huge response on social media - and of course Twitter, with its real-time content, was quick to react.

Many users began the morning by tagging their comments about it with "#flotilla" - a "hashtag" which gives a structure to a discussion or emerging event, as you can filter searches in applications such as Tweetdeck so that you only see those with that tag.

But at around 11am, as #flotilla began "trending" - rising to the topmost-used hashtags on the service - it seemed to vanish.

Was this censorship by Twitter? Quite a few asked the question.

Certainly if you went to the standard URL for such a search - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23flotilla - you briefly got a result saying "Twitter error".

However if you used the advanced search, you get the results as you'd expect.

What also happened was that people started using a new hashtag: #freedomflotilla. That rapidly trended.

The error in #flotilla search results quickly fixed itself, though. Possibly the rapid rise in the hashtag's visibility tripped an anti-spam filter at Twitter headquarters (where it was 3am in the morning, so we might assume that it's the machines, rather than the people, who are on duty - though then again, knowing the nocturnal habits of programmers, perhaps not).

Update: Mike Butcher at Techcrunch points out that this surely was a case of anti-spam filtering: there had already been a "flotilla" story in the past week - the anniversary of Dunkirk (for non-Britons: a dramatic rescue during the second world war of British and French troops from the Dunkirk beaches by small craft). And Gaza is frequently topical. (Thanks @vensa in the comments.)

So Twitter's anti-spam algorithms - that is, the machines - likely decided that this was a spam attack trying to piggyback on old hashtags, and pushed the "#flotilla" hashtag out of the trending topics. Is it censorship if it's done by machines that think it's spam? Given that "#freedomflotilla" instead rapidly trended, clearly there's no human censorship against the story of the attack being made visible to other Twitter users.

That's why Trendsmap, which is independent of Twitter and from which the screenshot is taken, looks as it does: it reflects what's on Twitter.

Update 2:: Sean Garrett, who handles communications for Twitter, tweeted this morning to say that "We are investigating a technical issue that caused search errors for a short period of time this morning. Twitter facilitates the open exchange of info & opinions -- when that is hampered by a bug, we take it very seriously." The bug has now been fixed, Twitter says.

So: shock as Twitter not being used to censor news. But it does show the enormous sensitivity there now is about Twitter's impartiality that any suggestion that a world event might be pushed out of its "trending topics" (displayed on the right-hand column of every Twitter user's home page) can create such frustration.

It doesn't, of course, help anyone on the convoy that was attacked. But getting information into public hands is a public good. Twitter is coming closer and closer to being viewed as a utility - certainly by those who use it. Perhaps we'd all feel more comfortable if it had a business model that had real, declared profits - because (to answer @Strummer) that would mean you could be confident of unmediated messages from everywhere in the world.

In a commentable online site, the coalition government announces its main plans - which include plans to publish contracts with ICT suppliers and government data

The coalition government says that it will "create a level playing field" for open source software in government projects, and split large computing projects into smaller ones - which will give smaller companies a better chance to compete in tenders.

In details laid out in its Programme for Government, the coalition also outlines sweeping changes which will introduce a new "right to data" - and oblige government and councils to publish more data in standard forms so that they can be examined and analysed.

The programme's section on government transparency - which also allows, and has attracted, comments - sets out a number of key steps that will be implemented under plans outlined in the Queen's Speech to Parliament.

The coalition says it will:
• take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs;
• publish government ICT contracts online.
• create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.
• require full, online disclosure of all central government spending and contracts over 25,000.
• create a new 'right to data' so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis
• require all councils to publish meeting minutes and local service and performance data
• require all councils to publish items of spending above 500, and to publish contracts and tender documents in full
• ensure that all data published by public bodies is published in an open and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third parties.

Although the previous Labour administration had set out an aim to encourage the use of open source software and methods in government projects, it gained little traction. Its statement in February 2009 (now archived) said that open source should be on an "equal footing" with proprietary systems. That said that "Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements." It also added that the government "will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software".

The coalition does not specify which departments will be in charge of implementing each of the plans. However, the "right to data" would probably be most easily effected through the Office of Public Sector Information, which is part of the National Archives - which is in turn managed through the Ministry of Justice.

However data about contracts may be published through the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile the Department for Communities and Local Government may have to bring in the laws relating to local councils - and there is so far no clear agreement on the formats in which data should be published.

Web crackdown began last week when Facebook page invited users to post images of the prophet Muhammad

Pakistan will restore access to YouTube but will block videos offensive to Muslims posted on the website, the government said today.

A number of high-profile sites were blocked last week over offensive content, such as a Facebook page that urges users to post images of the prophet Muhammad. Many Pakistanis supported the crackdown, but some questioned why whole sites were blocked rather than specific pages or videos.

The government seemed to move in that direction today by deciding it would restore access to YouTube but continue to block videos "displaying profane or sacrilegious material", said NajibullahMalik, the secretary at Pakistan's information technology ministry.

Videos displaying "profane or sacrilegious" material would be blocked, said the information technology ministry. Most Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favourable ones, as blasphemous.

Large and sometimes violent protests erupted in Pakistan and other Muslim countries in 2006 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad and again in 2008 when the cartoons were reprinted.

The Streak is a big Android touch-screen tablet that you can take anywhere instead of your current mobile -- as long as you don't mind carrying a giant smartphone.

Early next month, Dell's Streak -- its first Android tablet -- will go on sale in the UK. The device formerly known as the Dell Mini 5 is what Intel calls a MID (mobile internet device). It has a 5 inch capacitative multi-touch screen and it works as a mobile phone, so it's not a direct competitor for the Apple iPad or iPod Touch, which are not phones. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, and turn-by-turn navigation using Google Maps.

The Streak does look big if you hold it up to your ear, but most buyers will probably use it via a Bluetooth earpiece.

It's also different from the iPad in other useful ways. It has a front-facing 5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash, multi-tasking with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a removable battery, and a MicroSD card slot that can handle 32GB.

Dell says the system will get an over-the-air update to Android 2.2 and Adobe Flash 10.1 later this year.

The Streak's 16:9 WVGA widescreen has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, which provides more of a letterbox view of web pages. Dell describes it as "a full screen browsing experience", which is pushing it a bit. It looks more comfortable than most mobile phones, but obviously doesn't compete with larger devices such as the iPad, netbooks and notebook PCs, which typically have 10 inch or larger screens.

"The Dell Streak hits the sweet spot between traditional smartphones and larger-screen tablets. Its unique size provides people new ways to enjoy, connect, and navigate their lives," says Ron Garriques, president, Dell Communication Solutions Group.

He could be right. What remains open to doubt is just how big this "sweet spot" might be.

Prices and 3G data plans will be announced at the UK launch, with a US launch to follow. That means it will appear after the Android-powered HTC Evo 4G superphone, which Sprint has announced for June 4.

Another year, another Alfa but is this one any good?

It was only a year ago that I drove the first generation Alfa Romeo Mito, which had not long been introduced to a generally approving but not wildly appreciative car world. The consensus was that it was a better Alfa than many, but still a tad disappointing in terms of performance and quality of drive.

A disappointment, of course, because the words "Alfa Romeo" exert a sense of romantic expectation beyond all reason, and certainly far beyond the capability of, say, the Alfa Romeo Arna (a joint Alfa/Nissan project in the 80s that managed to combine Italian unreliability with Japanese mass-production) to satisfy. In fact, there have been so many Alfa disappointments down the years cars that looked good but were about as trustworthy as a crack-addict estate agent that an objective observer might question why the Alfa myth has survived so prolonged a history of misfiring machines.

The problem is that objectivity is in short supply with Alfas. Their fans are slightly reminiscent of those women who have the misfortune to be devoted to charming scoundrels this time, they tell themselves, it will be different. And those who are not can't see what the fuss is about. Its licence plate is on one side and it's got a cool Italian name: so what?

I happened to like the Mito, but it seems, incredibly, that even my recommendation was not enough to stop Alfa adding a new engine only 18 months after the launch. Its "multiair" system appears to be a genuine engineering innovation in the ceaseless and noble search for greater efficiency. Basically, the replacement of a mechanical cam by an electronic-hydraulic gizmo means that the control of the valves is now more sensitive. Which means the valves are open for less time and so less fuel is wasted. What's more, there is very little loss of oomph.

Think of this development as like moving from an old gas cooker with which you had to turn the gas on for about a minute while you tried to ignite it to one that sets aflame at the push of a button. The key difference being, of course, that you can't cook anything on a Mito. But it is nippy enough to cook many of your fellow drivers' geese, just so long as you remember to put the DNA switch which offers a selection of "Dynamic", "Normal" and "All-Weather" power settings into the "Dynamic" position. The acceleration and top speed is slightly down on the earlier Mito, but the small drop is felt most noticeably in "Normal" mode, which feels a bit as if the "N" really stands for "Neutral".

All in all, it's a tasty supermini that looks sharp without quite boasting a bella figura, and delivers on speed and efficiency. For an Alfa, I'd say that's a beta plus.

Alfa Mito 1.4 MultiAir TB

Price 16,135
Top speed 129mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 8.4 seconds
Average consumption 50.4mpg
CO2 emissions 129g/km
Eco rating 7.5/10
Bound for Portmeirion
In a word Cooking

paidContent:UK Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt says the new government will not repeal the controversial Digital Economy Act

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had his passport confiscated when he returned to his native Australia last week, according to The Age.

Arriving at Melbourne, immigration staff told Assange his passport was looking worn and would be cancelled. Thirty minutes after his passport was returned to him, a police officer then searched his bags and questioned him about his computer hacking offences he committed in 1991 when he was a teenager.


Julian Assange, left, speaking at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress in January this year. Photo by andygee1 on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Despite the search, Assange was then told his passport is still classified as 'normal' on the immigration database and could therefore travel freely.

Speaking on Australia's Dateline show, Assange said he is wary of travelling in Australia, where he was born, because of information that has been published on Wikileaks.

Assange had been told that the publication of a proposed blacklist of banned sites has been referred to the Australian Federal Police, who were investigating how it was leaked and then published on Wikileaks, though AFP told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that the case had been dropped.

Looking at the site, it's hard to believe there are many countries where travel is not a problem. Some light reading from the front page:

CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe
US Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks
Cryptome.org takedown: Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook

Next attack could come down fibre optic cable, warn experts
Russia seen as potential partner in missile defence against Iran

The world's most powerful military alliance is increasingly vulnerable to attack by unconventional weapons and cyberwarfare in particular, Nato governments were warned today.

"The next significant attack on the alliance may well come down a fibre optic cable", according to a draft new Nato "strategic concept". There are unacceptable "serious gaps" in Nato's cyber defences, it warns.

The warnings are contained in a report by a group of high-level experts chaired by Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state. They will provide the basis for an agreement due to be signed by Nato leaders at a summit in Lisbon in November.

Senior Nato military officials and diplomats say they are concerned about the lack of co-ordinated planning against cyber attacks. They are wrestling with the prospect of member states asking for help under article five of the Nato treaty, originally designed to provide mutual assistance to an ally faced with a conventional military attack.

Asked whether a cyber attack or the cutting off of energy supplies also cited in the report would in future be considered a military attack, the paper dodges the issue by stating that whether Nato's article five would be triggered would depend on "the nature, source, scope, and other aspects of the particular security challenge". Article five was invoked for the first, and so far only, time after the September 2001 attacks on the US. Three years ago, Estonia appealed to its Nato and EU partners for help against cyber attacks it linked to Russia.

"Already, cyber attacks against Nato systems occur frequently, but most often below the threshold of political concern," says the Albright report. "However, the risk of a large-scale attack on Nato's command and control systems or energy grids could readily warrant consultations ... and could possibly lead to collective defence measures under article 5."

Effective cyber defence, it continues, "requires the means to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from attacks".

The most probable threats to Nato allies in the coming decade were unconventional, more volatile, and less predictable, according to the report. Three stand out, it says an attack by ballistic missiles from a rogue state, strikes by international terrorist groups, and cyber assaults of varying degrees of severity.

Other threats that pose a risk include disruptions to energy and maritime supply lines, the harmful consequences of global climate change, and financial crisis.

The report also recommended that Nato's new strategic concept should endorse "constructive re-engagement" with Russia, which should be embraced as a potential partner in a missile defence system directed principally at Iran. Nato must also win the war in Afghanistan and assure the security of its 28 members.

The report distances itself from some countries, notably those from eastern Europe, which enthusiastically backed Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia, a prospect strongly opposed by Russia. Although the report reiterates Nato's "open door" policy, it says only that the allies "should make regular use of the Nato-Ukraine and Nato-Georgia commissions to discuss mutual security concerns and to foster practical co-operation".

It also states that "as long as nuclear weapons remain a reality in international relations, the alliance should retain a nuclear component to its deterrent strategy at the minimum level required by the prevailing security environment".

In a reference to US tactical nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, it says: "Under current security conditions, the retention of some US forward-deployed systems on European soil reinforces the principle of extended nuclear deterrence and collective defence."

Oracle chief Larry Ellison says he is already turning around Sun, but can a software maker figure out the hardware world?

In the movie Iron Man 2, Larry Ellison makes a cameo appearance as a billionaire, playboy software magnate. It is a role he knows well. He is playing himself chief executive of Oracle, one of Silicon Valley's most enduring, successful and flamboyant figures.

At the age of 65, he is undertaking one of the biggest challenges of his career, and it's not playing Hamlet on Broadway. Oracle, the company Ellison founded three decades ago and built into dominant force in the software industry, is making a go at hardware with the acquisition of money-losing Sun Microsystems.

This is not entirely unlike MIT deciding to field a competitive football team, but Ellison being Ellison, he could not be less worried. "We have a wealth of technology to package into systems," said Ellison, who won the America's Cup in February. "I see no reason why we can't get this to where Sun under Oracle should be larger than Sun ever was."

In a rare interview he discussed his turnaround efforts at Sun so far, revealed plans to buy additional hardware companies and detailed new products that will launch in the near future. And he did so with his usual in-your-face style heaping all manner of abuse, for example, on Sun's previous managers.

During the 1990s, Sun prospered by selling high-end computers at top dollar to large corporations and dotcom startups. Its business peaked in 2001, then slid with the collapse of the internet boom and never recovered, though the company is still widely respected for its technological prowess and the brain power of its engineering staff.

Sun came into play in November 2008 after IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano made an overture to buy it. Oracle, which had been strictly a software maker, unexpectedly jumped in to outbid IBM by just 10c a share, paying a total of $5.6bn ( 3.8bn)in cash.

Now Ellison says he is going to rebuild Sun's hardware business by using a strategy that helped IBM prosper in the 1960s selling computer systems built with standardised bundles of hardware and software.

Plenty of skeptics doubt Ellison can pull it off. Sun lost $2.2bn in its last fiscal year as an independent company. Conventional wisdom holds that he will end up divesting the company's hardware business.

Ellison has a pretty good track record when it comes to predicting where the industry is headed. Besides innovating the wildly lucrative relational database that bears Oracle's name, Ellison was quicker than most in creating software that works with both internet technology and the widely used Linux operating system.

He also started buying up smaller software makers in 2003 when critics said his consolidation strategy was doomed to fail. It hasn't. "People have lost a lot of money second guessing Larry about IT strategy," said Dave Roux, co-founder of Silver Lake, the world's biggest private equity firm focused on technology, in which Ellison was an original investor.

"He's a very thoughtful and reasoned observer of the big tectonic forces that kind of go rippling through the industry," said Roux, who worked for Oracle before setting up Silver Lake.

Ellison has maintained his status as the leader of a powerhouse in the topsy-turvy, protean technology world. IBM, which pioneered business computers, nearly collapsed in the 1990s, but then recovered as it aggressively expanded in services and software. Ellison's close friend Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, only to return a decade later to resurrect his company with the iPod. Meanwhile, Google has replaced Microsoft as the "ubertech company" and occasional villain.

Although his products are used by businesses only and not nearly as recognisable as Apple's Macs or Google's search engine, they've made Ellison the world's sixth-richest man, worth an estimated $28bn, according to Forbes. Oracle counts the bulk of the world's major corporations as customers, and the company's market value now tops that of Hewlett-Packard, the world's top maker of personal computers.

Ellison says he has already stopped the carnage at Sun, less than four months after the sale closed in January.

"Their management made some very bad decisions that damaged their business and allowed us to buy them for a bargain price," he told Reuters. He added that he expects profit from Sun's operations to boost Oracle's earnings in the current quarter, which ends May 31.

The integration has proceeded swiftly, says Ellison, because a protracted antitrust review in Europe gave Oracle time to draw up an exhaustive plan for resuscitating Sun. In typical Ellison fashion, he took a hands-on approach to the integration, choosing to meet directly with technical managers at Sun as often as four days a week to diagnose its problems, rather than delegating the work to underlings.

Mark Barrenechea, a former Oracle executive who used to sit in on weekly engineering meetings with Ellison and is now CEO of specialty computer maker Silicon Graphics, says this is what Ellison does best.

"He doesn't write the code. He doesn't solder resisters onto motherboards. But he understands how all the pieces fit together and how he wants the building to look," Barrenechea said.