Ed Oswald

Microsoft acknowledged late Wednesday the existence of a zero-day exploit for Windows Metafile images, and said it was looking into ways to better protect its customers. Even worse, by the end of the day nearly 50 variants of the exploit had already appeared.

One security company said the possibilities were endless on how the flaw could be exploited. "This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers," said Luis Corrons of Panda Software.

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It what is believed to be the first successful suit to seek damages against a spammer for sending junk mail, a British man has won monetary compensation for his troubles. The suits are allowed under new European laws that allow junk e-mailers to be sued for sending unwanted e-mails.

Nigel Roberts of the Channel Islands, a group of British-controlled isles off the north coast of France, sued Media Logistics UK, which is based in Stirlingshire, England. The company has agreed to pay Roberts 270 pounds (USD $465) to settle the case.

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For the second year, MSN Video will provide exclusive non-stop streaming coverage of the New Year's Eve festivities in New York City, Microsoft announced Thursday. The coverage will last for six hours, and include views of performances and celebrations around New York City.

The broadcast will have three live hosts, including Romeo, host of "Romeo on the Radio" on New York's Z100 who also hosted last year's broadcast; Angela LaGreca of "The View"; and Brandi Williams, entertainment reporter and host of "Ultimate Poker Challenge."

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For the folks at Google, 2005 will be remembered as the year which it transformed itself from a tech darling into an Internet powerhouse. Its moves were watched closely by the media and customers began to develop distrust in the search company. But will Google become the next Microsoft?

The year started out rocky for Google as researchers discovered a flaw in its popular Gmail service that could expose user data to attackers, including passwords. The search giant quickly responded, however, and the problem was fixed within days.

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XM announced plans to broadcast two of its channels in high-definition surround sound in 2006, and extend the feature to select shows and live performances from the XM studios during the year. The technology that made the new feature possible comes from work done by digital sound processing company Neural Audio Corporation.

Beginning in March, XM's free form music channel Fine Tuning and classical pops channel XM Pops will broadcast in "XM HD Surround" 24 hours a day. Six discrete audio channels will be provided in the signal.

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The EU has launched the first of several dozen satellites aimed at providing navigational services to Europe, and an answer to the U.S.-controlled GPS system. The first satellite, "Giove A," launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday.

Eventually, the Galileo system will be comprised of about 30 satellites, costing about 3.4 billion euros. Several non-EU nations have joined the project, including China, India, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, and discussions are underway with others.

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It will cost the U.S. Government $936 million to move the wireless communications of twelve government agencies to other frequencies in order to allow the FCC to auction them off to companies. The auctions are expected to take place as early as June of next year.

Revenue from the spectrum could bring in twice the moving costs, Reuters reported. In February, an auction of wireless spectrum raised nearly $2.3 billion.

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AOL on Wednesday released its annual top ten most commonly sent junk e-mails, revealing that spammers are becoming increasingly more sophisticated to dupe users into falling for their schemes. It also included an increase in SOS, or special order spam.

Special order spam differs from traditional unsolicited e-mail in the way that it attempts to trick a user by pretending to be from a friend, or as part of a legitimate transaction. In fact, six of the top 10 spam messages fall into this category. This compares to two last year, and none in 2003.

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Peter Quinn, the man responsible for bringing OpenDocument to the state of Massachusetts as CIO will resign on January 9, citing the controversy around the decision as well as personal attacks aimed at him as reasons for his departue.

No announcement has been made as to a replacement. However, Quinn did stress to employees of the state's Information Technology Division (ITD) that just because he was leaving, it did not mean that Massachusetts' progress towards ODF was ending.

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HD DVD's latest delay in reching the market may prove costly, as Pioneer announced Tuesday that it planned to unveil a Blu-ray enabled optical disc drive for PCs at CES 2006 in early January, with a launch in Japan scheduled for later in the month.

In order for the company to make its late January launch target, issues related to the AACS content management system -- the same feature delaying HD DVD drives -- as well as a completion of the Blu-ray logo need to occur, Pioneer says.

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The RIAA last week applauded the U.S. Senate's passage of legislation that would put more pressure on the Russian government to curb widespread piracy within the country. A similar measure passed the U.S. House in mid-November.

Furthermore, Russia risks losing acceptance into the World Trade Organization and to receive trade benefits from the United States if it does not comply, the legislation reads.

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Antivirus firm Panda Software warned Tuesday of a new trojan that has begun to spread worldwide through MSN Messenger and attempts to obtain passwords of Spanish-speaking online banking users. Called Nabload.U, the trojan actually downloads another, Banker.bsx, which is currently the most detected piece of malware by Panda's ActiveScan service.

Nabload is different, however, in how it obtains the information. No keylogger is used, which means banks that have attempted to thwart trojans by using virtual keyboards are not protected from this attack, Panda says.

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Beginning next week, Nielsen will begin tracking viewing of programming through digital videos recorders like TiVo. The new rating system would be split into three categories, including traditional live programming, live with same-day playback on a DVR, and live with playback up to 7 days after airing.

According to Nielsen, the first Live/Same Day ratings set would be available Wednesday, and the first Live+7 Day ratings charts would be available two weeks after the completion of next week's Monday-to-Sunday ratings cycle.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with the assistance of fax company Xpedite Systems, won an injunction on Wednesday in California that would prevent the state's tough "junk fax" law from taking effect until at least January 31, 2006.

The new rules were originally to start at the beginning of the year, however several groups took issue with how strict the California law was to be. While federal laws passed last summer allow people or businesses to send bulk faxes to those parties that they have had business with in the past, the California law doesn't.

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Microsoft continued to quietly back away from its partnership with NBC Universal for MSNBC Friday. The two companies announced that NBC had acquired a controlling interest in the cable channel, and has the ability to exercise an option that would allow it to buy the entire channel in 2007.

Steve Capus, president of NBC News, said the deal would allow the company to further integrate the cable channel into the news business. However, he did not elaborate on what exactly that would entail.

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