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Casting Harry Potter as our CEO? The nerve! A spat between the creators of Grand Theft Auto and the BBC has spilled over into a legal feud.…

Smoother and more stable, but Start menu and tablet issues remain Microsoft has released a new build of Windows 10, named 10122, which includes an effort to fix file association hijacking, where a newly installed application becomes the default for opening documents with a particular extension, such as PDF, docx, jpg or MP3.…

Surprise decision will likely see Fadi Chehade leave before critical transition ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has surprised the internet community by announcing he will step down from the job after just three years in the post.…

Swede streamer was once all about the music, man Streaming music pioneer Spotify wants to broaden its appeal beyond music buffs by incorporating podcasts, video, and Pandora-style personal “radio stations” into its music service.…

Managing things in the Internet of Things is a thing, y'know As humanity lumbers towards its techno-utopian future, Apple's clever-clogs have put together an iOS 9 app called "Home".…

On the move but not on the loose Mobile computing is great. No longer are we chained to our desks when using technology and doing proper work. Not only are laptops getting smaller, lighter and cheaper, it is also possible to do real, productive stuff even more freely using phones and tablets.…

Wake up and smell the declining revenues Customer resistance to complex Clustered ONTAP migrations caused a slowdown in hardware sales at NetApp, with revenues clearly shrinking.…

But no medical or payment info - it seems More than 1.1 million user records have been compromised following a hack against US health insurer CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.…

Not quite storage fishing in the Yemen, but still pretty good Storage service array startup Coho Data has nearly doubled its funding and got itself a new product to boot.…

Judge: Communications Decency Act trumps indecent ads A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against a classified ads site used by pimps to facilitate underage prostitution, arguing that the “internet freedom” of website operators trumped the rights of three girls who were trafficked and raped.…

Activist investor Clinton Group sets up camp at far end of boardroom table Imation's CEO has been provisionally voted off the company's board, as shareholders supported the activist investor Clinton Group in its view of Imation's alleged leadership failures.…

SAP saps soon to be slapped Software service slinger Salesforce.com banked its first operating profit in 18 quarters — yes, you read that correctly — but reassuringly confirmed it will be back in the red again in the next trading period.…

Shares in public toilet firms reportedly on the rise Proximus, the Belgian mobile operator, is about to complete the process of removing its last 300 phone boxes. The last will be ceremonially felled on June 1 in Antwerp.…

The move away from manufacturing base continues Beijing has announced a $182bn programme of network infrastructure spending, supplementing the development of China's service sector over the next two and half years.…

How to measure your storage performance It is pretty obvious that storage systems vary. You could reply, with some justification: “No shit, Sherlock!”…

The question is, does the Pi really need Windows? First Look Microsoft has released a preview of Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2, the £30 ARMv7 computer board produced by the Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Foundation.…

Cable company helped NSA spy on Vienna for a decade, says Austrian MP An Austrian newspaper has published what it claims is evidence that Deutsche Telekom spied on Vienna for German spooks for the miserly sum of just €6,500 a year.…

Employ a mighty army, locate a symbolic staff Antique Code Show So as Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt stakes its claim as RPG of the millennium, I figured it’s time to look back on a turn-based fantasy questing classic of yesteryear, which definitely doesn’t feature any stuffed unicorn sex.…

Turtle namesake recruited for smartphone assault Nintendo has announced it has hired Bowser as its new veep of North American sales.…

Widens range with new appliances and standby VMs Dell has added two new back-up appliances to its range, top-and-tailing its existing DL1000 product and adding neat features such as virtual standby VMs.…

Lots of small, cheap probes can tell us more than one big, expensive, probe NASA has revealed it is working on CubeSat Application for Planetary Entry Missions (CAPE), a plan to use small satellites to explore the solar system.…

Steady, breathe: The wrong click could turn servers to brick Security bod Jada Cyrus has compiled a ransomware rescue kit to help victims decrypt locked files and avoid paying off crooks.…

VT-x virtualisation extensions pressed into service improving container security Intel's taken its turn trying to advance containerisation technology by announcing a new approach to container security.…

Instant messaging and Candy Crush Saga in class creates learning not-spots Restricting smart watch and mobile phone use can be a low-cost policy to reduce educational inequalities. This is the conclusion of a report by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy working at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance (pdf) and Louisiana State University.…

Acquisition protects customer info from dev teams Data virtualisation outfit Delphix is looking to the acquisition of Axis Technology Software to let enterprise developers work with real data, while protecting the personal information that data represents.…

Virtuozzo to get native support for Docker Junior virtualiser Parallels has split into two companies.…

Along with World+Dog, Meraki founders reckon IoT is next big thing The founders of Cisco-acquired Meraki have resurfaced with their next venture, an Internet of Things sensor outfit called Samsara.…

Tsinghua Unigroup to scoop remnants of once-mighty Ethernet pioneer H3C, a networking business that started life as a joint venture between 3Com and Huawei but is now owned by HP, is to become a majority-owned subsidiary of the state-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup.…

Global workforce to be cut by 18 per cent in search of savings The indifferent revenue growth and ongoing losses announced earlier this month are having the usual effect on vendor Extreme Networks: it's announced a restructure.…

I don't like your Tone, Google, try something I can hear Google has released an experimental plug-in for Chrome that does something odd: sending URLs around the room using sound.…

LiteOS will be made open source Huawei has offered up a good look at its Internet of Things strategy, using its Network Congress 2015 to show off a microkernel that will be the bedrock of its future efforts in the field.…

Z-Wave thinks it's VHS to oponent's Betamax There is an "internet of things" standards war coming and Z-Wave will emerge triumphant, at least according to two of its leading advocates.…

Bipartisan effort to kill Section 215 LIVE Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is currently four hours into a filibuster on the Senate floor over plans to renew sections of the Patriot Act that allow mass surveillance of American citizens.…

ASTROSAT won't trouble Hubble, will excite boffins at University of Leicester The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) says it is ready to launch its first “ mission aimed at studying distant celestial objects.”…

Tichelman pleads guilty in heroin overdose killing A former call girl has plead guilty to felony charges in the death of a senior Google executive from a heroin overdose.…

Companies slammed for violating FTC laws A pair of US companies have been fined $1.7m by the FTC for violating federal laws on robocalling.…

Texting on the road the equivalent of four beers, says experts Over two-thirds of drivers are dangerously distracted by their smartphones.…

But what changes did Twitter have to make to get there? Google will start displaying real-time tweets on its search pages after a deal was struck with Twitter.…

X-37B up and in orbit. Let a thousand solar sails bloom The US Air Force's not-so-secret space plane, the X37-B, has been successfully launched into low-Earth orbit along with an array of interesting test products.…

Barely takes time to sleep it off before it starts sizing up Time Warner Cable Patrick Drahi's telecommunications firm Altice is set to make its first foray into the American telecommunications market after acquiring a controlling stake in Suddenlink for over $9bn.…

Is your iPhone fuelling African atrocities? Not any more, say MEPs European electronics manufacturers will have to double check where the minerals in their products come from in future, according to a draft EU law approved by MEPs on Wednesday.…

Maybe it's time to make those user edit bans permanent Google is once again scrambling to clean up bad behavior by Maps users after a couple of mortifying pieces of online graffiti were found.…

ZFS alternative hits the streets Nexenta's hypercale block and object storage software has hit the streets, pitting Nexenta competitively against all the other object storage suppliers.…

Some men just want to watch the world burn In an interview on Sunday's episode of Wall Street Week, Mike Novogratz, principal and director of investment firm Fortress Investments, who was speaking about corporate greed and income inequality, explained his thoughts with an anecdote about former Uber CFO Brent Callinicos.…

Set the controls for the hole in the dam Comment Hyper-converged systems are set to pour through the breach established by Nutanix in the networked storage dam.…

Gov looking to break record for collection of most comments ending in 'off' in 60-days US proposals for export controls for zero-day vulnerabilities and malware have finally been pushed forward, re-opening the fault lines of a long-running argument among security experts in the process.…

What do you mean our firewall has foundations made of cheese? As many as 575 cloud-based services have been left at risk to the newly discovered LogJam crypto vulnerability, according to cloud security specialists Skyhigh Networks.…