Reuters is reporting that Viacom, the parent company of MTV Networks, whose Comedy Central unit produces The Daily Show and South Park, among others, has retracted its agreement with Google's YouTube unit reached last October, and is asking Google to remove videos of programming it produces from public access.

Relations between the two organizations have been shaky since May 2005, when Viacom Corp. issued a subpoena to YouTube (which was then not owned by Google) asking it to remove extended clips of the movie Twin Towers, produced by Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures. Last October, Viacom, Inc. had appeared to reach an agreement with YouTube that would have enabled it to carry clips of MTV Networks-produced shows.

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A tremendous amount of confusion has arisen in recent days over whether security firm Symantec actually discovered a new vulnerability in Microsoft Word three days ago, or simply uncovered a new exploit of an existing problem that Microsoft already acknowledged. In what appears to be an effort at backtracking, Symantec today appears to be saying both simultaneously.

In a blog posting three days ago, a Symantec engineer stated the company had found new Word documents which its anti-virus program already detected as Trojan.Mdropper.X. "We believe this is a new vulnerability, making it the fifth currently unpatched Office file format vulnerability," the engineer wrote, even though the anti-virus program obviously reported this as an existing exploit.

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Since last July, when Intel introduced its Core 2 Duo processors and, perhaps more importantly, effectuated a complete U-turn in its microarchitecture, experts and enthusiasts in computing have judged Intel to have regained the performance lead from AMD in CPUs, which includes the lead in providing processor performance per dollar.

But in its multi-faceted campaign to wrest back the title of hero, if not yet leader, in consumers' minds, AMD is leveraging its fusion with ATI and ATI's cooperation with Microsoft to make a bold new case for itself: Now that the Windows Vista era is upon us, AMD's executives and managers believe the time has come to throw out the old XP-based benchmarks, and re-evaluate AMD's current line of processors using more updated metrics.

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For the first time since they entered the marketplace, sales of digital cameras have dropped, according to market research firm IDC. In the fourth quarter of 2006, shipments fell 3 percent to 12.1 million cameras; 12.4 million were shipped in 2005.

This wasn't necessarily bad news for Canon, though, which surpassed Kodak as the top supplier of digital cameras in the quarter. The company shipped 2.5 million cameras, while Kodak shipped 2.4 million. Sony rounded out the top three suppliers, shipping 2.2 million digital cameras, IDC said. Canon controls about 20% of the total market, with Sony and Kodak holding 17% and 16%, respectively.

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Now that Windows Vista has been unleashed onto an expecting public, a number of minor issues have cropped up in the new operating system. Microsoft has already posted a handful of hotfixes for those running into issues, although they aren't critical enough to be published on Microsoft Update.

Windows enthusiast Steven Bink has linked to the fixes, which include patches for Vista crashing when connected to a Firewire device, high definition audio devices not working after resuming Windows, and audio playback in a different language when using Media Center. Microsoft frequently releases non-priority hotfixes that usually make their way into service packs for its operating systems.

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The arrival of February has brought with it a new Community Technology Preview of WPF/E, which has frequently been referred to as a Flash competitor, but has more to do with blending Windows applications with the Web.

WPF/E is a subset of the Windows Presentation Foundation that utilizes cross-browser Web technologies and is designed to run on multiple operating systems and even mobile devices. Like Flash, WPF/E works as a browser plug-in and can display vector-based graphics, animation and video.

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Flickr owner Yahoo has decided to phase out the separate login for the popular photo sharing site, instead opting to use its own system. While the search engine says the change is intended to make it easier for Yahoo to integrate Flickr into other services, some diehard users just aren't having it.

Yahoo further justifies its decision by mentioning the fact that only one out of every 20 users still uses a non-Yahoo ID. The company originally intended to support both authentication options when it acquired Flickr in March 2005, but changed that policy later in the year.

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One of the executives responsible for the launch of Microsoft's answer to the ubiquitous iPod is leaving the company, it was announced Wednesday. Entertainment and Device corporate vice president Bryan Lee will leave to pursue personal interests. Replacing him will be J Allard, who was responsible with running the company's Xbox business. Microsoft gave no further details as to why Lee had made the decision to leave.

Lee does not leave the Zune division without some success. 10.2 percent of players shipped in December with hard disk drives were Zunes, although overall the Zune was only able to grab a 2.5 percent share. Microsoft expects to sell about one million units by June.

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Verizon Wireless said Thursday that it had begun its rollout of its next generation wireless broadband technology, based on the CDMA EV-DO Revision A standard. The technology will give users a slight speed increase in areas equipped with the service. The network will first launch in Massachusetts, including the city of Boston, as well as Richmond and Hampton Roads, Va., Chicago, Ill. and its suburbs, Salt Lake City, Utah, and throughout the state of Florida.

Users will notice the biggest difference in file upload times, which will increase to 300-400 kbps. Download speeds will also increase, with up to 800kbps of downstream bandwidth available, Verizon said. No timetable has been given for the rollout of services to the rest of Verizon's coverage area.

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Incidents of identity theft are decreasing, and the average loss as a result of fraud has dropped, a new study suggests. The improvement may reflect a higher awareness of the problem by consumers and businesses, say experts.

A study released Thursday by Javelin Strategy & Research showed that Americans lost $49.3 billion during 2006 due to identity theft. While still a considerable amount of money, that is down 13 percent from $55.7 billion a year earlier.

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Inspired by an online discussion where the question was raised, could Microsoft's Windows Vista's new vocal command feature inadvertently respond to a word spoken by an audio file played remotely, perhaps through a Web site, ZDNet blogger George Ou discovered through his own tests that a well-recorded voice command could be played back through the speakers of a Vista-endowed computer, and that the computer would respond as if commanded by its own user.

Ou reported the details on his ZDNet blog on Tuesday. "I recorded a sound file that would engage speech command on Vista, then engaged the start button, and then I asked for the command prompt. When I played back the sound file with the speakers turned up loud, it actually engaged the speech command system and fired up the start menu."

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In a brief statement late Wednesday, Apple and Cisco said they had agreed to extend the time that Apple would have in which to respond to Cisco's lawsuit regarding the iPhone trademark.

"Apple and Cisco have agreed to extend the time for Apple to respond to the lawsuit to allow for discussions between the companies with the aim of reaching agreement on trademark rights and interoperability," the statement reads.

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As the San Jose Mercury News reported this morning, AMD Executive Vice President for Legal Affairs Tom McCoy, speaking yesterday before a gathering of technology executives at the University of California at Berkeley, told the moderator -- a lawyer with the US Federal Trade Commission -- that he believes the US Government has been lax in its antitrust enforcement in recent months. As an example, McCoy re-ignited an old quarrel with Intel, addressed in of its federal antitrust complaint that has not been dismissed by Judge Joseph Farnan, and which some observers say may still have legs.

McCoy reminded the gathering of two substantive parts of its complaint, one of which resulted in the type of enforcement response in Japan that McCoy says is lacking from US officials.

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You sometimes know the news isn’t all good about a company’s earnings when it casts a bright spotlight on its revenues; a company can make a lot of money without necessarily earning it. Google is the antithesis of such a company, earning an astonishing one-third of its revenues while still sharing nearly a billion dollars with its traffic generation partners.

Google closed out its fiscal year 2006 having reaped just over $3.2 billion in revenues for the final quarter, a gain of two thirds over the fourth quarter of 2005. Of that $3.2 billion, just over $1 billion of that is net earnings, an 86% annual gain – meaning Google is even more efficient now than it was last year.

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Dell CEO Kevin Rollins, who on Monday stood on stage in New York City to accept a commemorative Windows Vista plaque from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, resigned abruptly on Wednesday, and will be replaced by the computer maker's former CEO Michael Dell.

Rollins joined Dell in 1996 and was appointed CEO in July 2004. During his tenure, however, Dell was unable to retain its status as the leading PC manufacturer due to increased pressure from Hewlett-Packard. The company also warned Tuesday that its fiscal fourth quarter revenues would miss analyst expectations.

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