Zango claims that Edelman is "dead wrong", stating that he used outdated copies of the Zango software that will no longer function. The company also accuses the researcher of manipulating his research by running his tests on an "archaic computer with low or outdated screen resolution".

The discussion all goes back to a legal settlement last October, when Zango agreed with the FTC to stop questionable installations of its adware application.

The adware maker at the time sent out a boastful press release in which it claimed that it was already in compliance with the new rules. It took spyware researcher Ben Edelman only a few weeks to collect evidence that nothing was further from the truth, and today he claims that is still the case.

Edelman (pictured right) and Zango may have a history together, but you have to at least assume that the researcher has a point. If anything, Zango is the convicted party here, and the company has a track record of bad boy behavior that goes well beyond the FTC settlement.

Zango furthermore keeps playing the "customer choice" card, mentioning the millions of users of its software.

But if its software is so intensely popular, the firm would have no problem giving up its affiliate programmes that caused all its problems. For Zango always has argued that it were unscrupulous distributors who caused illegal installations of its software. It has cut of dozens of these botnet herders and greedy website operators, but you can't weed out crime altogether.

If drug addicts cause trouble, you ban drug. If distributors cause trouble, you stop providing your products to distributors. According to Zango, users are finding its software insanely useful. Then why rely on a network of malware traffickers and underground types to distribute the software?

• A video demonstration of botnet instaling multiple adware applications is available on the Security Watchdog blog.

But we also recommend that customers rely on their Microsoft representative and local Microsoft Certified Partner for ongoing, direct and accurate information. These are the people on the ground who are able to assess an individual customer’s business situation — their existing systems, their people, their budget, their business and technology needs — and crunch the real numbers while also making sure the customer gets on the right type of volume licensing agreement.

The number crunching that Matz is referring shouldn't be confused with the saleperson's quarterly sales target. Or the company's efforts to kickstart its flat stock price by growing revenues and profits.

We couldn't agree more with the paragraph preceding Matz' praise for Microsoft's internal sales force.

"Like any other third-party source, analysts draw their own conclusions about Microsoft’s programs — which they should. The market is better off with this additional perspective and feedback that they bring.

So what is it, Mr. Matz? Should I trust analyst firms that are paid to provide independent research? Or should I trust your sales people who are paid to sell as many boxes as possible?

The $450 application offers an amazingly simple user interface. In a few clicks, the spammer creates a new email address with a free provider, sets up keywords for bulletin boards that he/she wants to target and creates the actual spam message. Xrumer takes care of all the rest: it will decipher the captha codes. If registration is required, it will await the confirmation emails 'click' the activation link and post the spam.

Xrumer only targets bulletin boards running common scripting languages such as PHP, most likely because they are easy to find. But it will only be a short stretch to imagine a similar technology getting unleashed towards blogs, and we're in comment spam hell all over again.

• No link provided to Xrumer's website - as a policy we don't link to potentially harmful applications.

Cases like these are commonly settled to save the legal expenses and a potentially large monetary judgement and to prevent the case from distracting from everyday business. The terms of the settlement typically include a clause in which all parties waive the right to pursue any further claims.

In additional to claiming that the case was frivolous, Siebel charged that he should still be able to pursue legally the opposing lawyers – and the court agreed. Carol Middlestadt, currently a judge in San Mateo County, and Richard Buell violated ethical and legal rules in bringing the case to court, claims Siebel.

"This is a private effort at tort reform," Siebel said in a press release. "This ruling will make lawyers think twice before seeking to extort settlements from vulnerable targets by filing lawsuits they know are frivolous. Victims of frivolous litigation will now find it easier to have their day in court, bypassing what could potentially be years in the costly appeals process."

Siebel Systems pioneered customer relationship management (CRM) space after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dismissed the idea. After a brief period of success, the company found out that there was limited demand for a stand alone CRM product. The market instead moved to suites of integrated CRM, ERP and other enterprise applications. Oracle scooped up Siebel Systems for $5.85bn in 2005.

Once hailed as a business pundit, Tom Siebel was then quickly exposed for allowing a bloated cost structure that contributed to the company running into the ground. Oracle had to manoeuvre its way out of expensive real estate leases and Siebel seem to have retreated to his estate in the millionaire's town of Woodsite in Silicon Valley (Larry Ellison lives around the block).

Salesforce.com is campaigning outside Siebel System's corporate headquarters, shortly after the acquisition by Oracle

Intel had the computer industry in a choke hold, charged Richard. By withholding chip shipments, it could effectively cripple their businesses. The company also held its partners on a short leash by paying out discounts only at the end of the quarter and when vendors had met certain targets. Without the discount, profits were nearly impossible.

AMD however isn't as defenceless a victim as it claims to be. When confronted by the its slipping market share in the server space, Richard countered that Intel's lead would quickly dissolve one AMD shipped its own quad core processor. He then pointed to AMD's commanding market share lead in the four-way server space (systems with four CPUs).

That isn't a big surprise however, considering the fact that Intel doesn't offer any processors for the 4-way segment. And the sweet point is still in the the 2-way market.

The Cisco deal values VMWare at $9.4bn. That for a company that logged $703.9m in sales last year.

The real winner here is EMC, which paid $635m to acquire VMWare in 2003 at about three time its annual sales. The firm is now selling off a 10 per cent stake in the company on the stock market and directly to industry partners, while maintaining a firm hold on its strategic direction.

But at the AMD analyst day at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, the chip maker pointed out that an increasing number of advertisements has dropped the vendor branding.

AMD's executive vice president of sales and marketing Henri Richard (pictured) went as far as to claim the end of the "monopoly tax", an obvious jab at Intel.

But to those who don't run around paranoid seeking expansive conspiracies, is could also indicate the advent of the computer as a consumer appliance that goes beyond spreadsheets and raw performance. It doesn't matter what's under the hood, looks matter.

But his (personal) endorsement of McCain (who is trailing in the polls behind Rudi Giuliani) doesn't signal a planned relocation to Washington. Instead, Chambers said in an interview, he is using his political activism to motivate his employees to do the same.

Add the opportunity to lobby for patent reform and other legislation, and you understand why Chambers is happy to rub shoulders with politicians.

See what Chambers has to say on the topic on vnunet.com/tv.

Cisco's Web2.0 may have nothing to do with Web2.0 as the rest of the world knows it. Maybe that's why the networking giant is calling the plumbing that will enable its Web2.0 as Data Center 3.0.

Although the name is just as confusing, Data Center 3.0 refers to the era of virtualization. And particularly an era in which systems will automatically assign additional resources when a website is hit with heavy traffic, or to an application that is running a weekly data analysis.

Where middlware vendors such as BEA and IBM are looking to solve this problem through software, Cisco is looking at the network - obviously because that's where its it has its expertise. Each approach has its pros and cons, but nobody should be surprised that multiple vendors are offering multiple ways to reach the enterprise data center nirvana.

Microsoft has allegedly hidden Windows development plans behind a veil of secrecy. Perhaps the firm thinks that it can build more excitement about new product if the features stay more of a surprise. Or perhaps the firm is attempting to prevent any more embarrassing headlines when it pulls previously promised features: you can't delay what you haven't announced.

If Apple can turn its development plants into a Fort Knox to prevent information leaks, Microsoft should be able to follow suit. But hard- and software developers rely on this information to build their future product. Apple gets away with its tight-lippedness  because it controls its own hardware. But outside OEMs and peripheral makers are the main source of Microsoft's success.

Besides, the published list merely provided an overview of features that users would like to see. In no way does if reflect the feature that Microsoft is looking to implement.

If there is a grand educational vision behind Intel's design, the company has hidden it very well. OLPC seems to have done the same with any paying customers for OLPC, which has missed its original shipping deadline.

Intel no doubt wants to see its chips in the OLPC. But even without an Intel OLPC, the chipmaker should expect that it will gain its fair share of the developing world market when graduating OLPC students upgrade to real computers.

More importantly, OLPC needs Intel's relations with distributors and Intel needs OLPC's technical innovations. Everybody wins here. Well, maybe except Microsoft.

The individual owners will continue to operate shared brands. In addition to Vnunet, there include the European Gizmodo and the Inquirer websites (The Netherlands canned its Inq site earlier this month, but never seemed to put any effort behind it anyway).

In case you're wondering what all this will mean for Vnunet.com and our blogs? Very little. We've been working very hard with Incisive to continue our operations and embrace new media in any way that we deem useful.

For a company that hasn't been able to release a single product on time so far this year, Microsoft doesn't have a lot of credibility in arguing that this delay just that.

Inadvertently admitting that Dell's computers currently don't work, the company has cut bloatware from the computers. Also gone are unnecessary features such as TV tuners and Bluetooth.

Next, Vostro buyers get 30 days to send back any orders free or change, no questions asked. That might be a culture shock to people who have gone through Dell's past support hell, realized even chief Dell: Michael Dell himself.

"We're not going to make you jump through hoops. This is sort of a blast form the past for Dell," admitted Michael Dell, the company's chief executive who was brought back earlier this year to save the company.

It's amazing what great innovations you can come up with if you just listen to your customers.

If Google accumulated 100,000 businesses without those assurances, it business must further explode now that the software is in full compliance and therefore can get full executive approval.

I doubt that anybody is throwing out their Microsoft Office suites in favor of Google Apps, but it looks like Google is beating Microsoft in niche markets, be they email or the important growth market of application sharing. Why set up an expensive Exchange server  or a Sharepoint server to share information across departments and offices if Google Docs and Spreadsheets will let you do the same with a few mouse clicks? Setting up a shared document now is easier than putting the text into an email attachment.

Microsoft's competitive threat level just got elevated from orange to red.

Riccitiello is finally starting to hear the wake-up call that was sent out by the Nintendo's Wii. Despised by hardcore gamers, the console is outselling all its competitors and forced Sony to slash the price for its PS3 by $100.

It's not like the gaming industry couldn't have seen this coming before. It not like they haven't undergone a game crash before when the complacency of game designer lead to the release of a series of sequels and titles based on major movies.

It's not like Sony has unsuccessfully attempted to position the PS2 as a mainstream consumer device. Riccitiello is marketing last year's news and taking credit for seeing it last.

If that only encouraged you more, you better prepare for:

knitting: 0.5 hours
buttons: 3 hours
sewing, stuffing, edging: 1 hour-plus
Total: 4-5 hours

AMD countered that the slides in question were simply outdated, and vowed to post an accurate comparison within the next few weeks.

But that doesn’t free the chipmaker from all blame. The company failed to include a publication date on the marketing page that could have indicated the fact that the information was outdated.

Secondly, it failed to pull the information even though it knew – or should have known – that the advertised performance in no way reflected the actual performance of the chips that AMD will ship.

At stake it the possibility that Microsoft could potentially be seen as a distributor of GPLv3 software as a result of last year's Novell-Microsoft partnership. If that is actually the case, Microsoft will be forced to provide everybody with a royalty free patent licence, undermining Microsoft's strategy to coerce patent licensing fees from the entire world.

Microsoft makes sure to stress out that the licensing changes are a cautionary measure against a non-existent threat. Because the company doesn't want to be perceived as being cornered by the Open Source communists.

You can dismiss most of that as futile public relations speak, but Microsoft actually has a point. The legal merits of some of the GPLv3 provisions will have to be proven in court. Most notably, the legal community is debating the enforceability of attempts to pull Microsoft into an agreement between the customer and Novell. But Microsoft itself may not be in the clear either, as the company can't simply change the terms of the Novell coupons.

Microsoft's was just another move in its open source chess game and it is now upon the latter to make a move. We were told that the Software Freedom Law Center is preparing its next move on Monday.

The site currently offers 4 exploits with prices ranging from 500 to 2,000 Euro.

Paying for exploits isn't new. There are underground market places that continue to be well hidden from everybody, including most security researchers. Then you have bounty programmes from security vendors such as TippingPoint and software developers such as Mozilla.

An open market place has the obvious risk of attracting criminals. WSLabi may verify the identification of its buyers and sellers, but in the world of online fraud, fake identities are easy to come by.

Secondly, the security sector still believes overwhelmingly that researchers shouldn't be paid for exploit information. Instead they are credited, establishing them as capable pundits. Their reputation will then providing them jobs with firms that hope to prevent painful security disclosures.

Thirdly, the public doesn't benefit from this service. A small scale open source project is unlikely to pay up, and big firms such as Microsoft has so far refused to do so on principle. That means that security providers will likely end up with the information, which they can then use to build and independent patch or provide protection in their security software.

Independent patches are a bad idea because typically they are poorly tested. And having to rely on third party security software comes awfully close to paying the mafia for protection.

WSLabi aims to solve a problem of security researchers not getting paid, or not getting paid enough. This is largely a perceived problem, and that it seems to create a slew of new issues.

How could we reward this man that has a clear message to any terrorist who can make sense of his Scottish accent? Internet users from around the world figured 1,000 pints would be a good start. The £3.00 ($6) Paypal donations soon started streaming in, with a little help from Digg.

But could that just be another terrorist plot. With Smeaton stuck in the bar for the next few years, he won't be able to stop many future terrorist attacks.

SAP denies most wrongdoings, but does admit that it has downloaded materials for products without a license.

But SAP won't go down without a fight. Instead the firm is responding to each charge with the fervor of a two bickering divorcees.

When Oracle charges that: "This storehouse of stolen Oracle intellectual property enables SAP to offer cut rate support services to customers who use Oracle software, and to attempt to lure them to SAP’s applications software platform and away from Oracle’s."

SAP quips: "Oracle professes surprise and confusion about how TN can provide services more cost-effectively than Oracle. The answer is simple – TN does not force its service customers to pay artificially inflated prices for service to fund Oracle’s future acquisition and integration of products that customers do not want or need. TN provides service, and charges only for that service."

SAP dismisses Oracle's list of stolen materials as "typical of the rhetoric and hyperbole throughout Oracle's complaint."

When Oracle complains that SAP's downloading displayed a "pattern of 'sweeping'" and "the indiscriminate, wholesale copying" of support materials, SAP responds that the process was just "conducted speedily and efficiently".

But after all the petty bickering, Oracle is left with SAP admitting that it downloaded materials without a license. That should account for something before a jury.

But to the initiated, it must have looked like an awkward exercise. Minutes before the iPhone went on sale, a person walking by asked me what all the fuss was about. He obviously hadn't heard about the iPhone. "Is it free then?" he asked in an attempt to understand why people would line up for more than 24 hours. He was speechless when he learnt that in addition to waiting, the people in line would have to shelve out $500 to $600.

But again, nobody complained. It was all about the experience. Many iPhone buyers had to part with their new line-friends after they paid for their devices. It was just like a really cool 2-day rock concert. Nobody wanted it to end, but it did nonetheless.

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