Users of IBM Lotus Notes are being advised to delay upgrading to the latest version of McAfee's VirusScan, as the patch apparently causes Lotus Notes to lock people out of their mailboxes. McAfee is currently working on a fix.

The issue has been confirmed to occur on computers with VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i and Lotus Notes installed. According to those affected, the only way to fix the issue in some cases is to completely reinstall the program.

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World of Warcraft fans turned out in full force last week to purchase The Burning Crusade, the expansion for World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment said Tuesday. In the first 24 hours of availability, nearly 2.4 million copies were sold. This made the title the fastest selling PC game in history in both North America and Europe. Nearly 1.2 million copies were sold in North America, while more than 1.1 million were sold in Europe.

The title's success has even surprised Blizzard, which said sales have exceeded expectations. The company added that reports show demand continues to be steady, and advised prospective buyers to call ahead to ensure availability. Approximately 8 million individuals play World of Warcraft, making it the largest MMORPG in PC-gaming history.

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Late last week, Cisco acknowledged on its corporate blog that a contributor to the GNU Violations Project notified the company that its VoIP iPhone -- up until last November known as the WIP300 -- may violate terms of the GNU General Public License. Since it's a Linux phone, full source code for its implementation must be made public to comply with the license terms.

Armijn Hemel, who co-manages the GPL Violations Project with Harald Welte, notified journalists and bloggers, before notifying Cisco itself, the company said, that certain of its technologies in its Linux-enabled phone had not been made public. According to IDG News Service, Hemel told reporters he had reverse-engineered firmware for the phone, and then discovered certain features whose source code had apparently not appeared on existing public source code inventories.

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Still fighting a losing battle over file sharing, some major record labels seem ready to scrap digital rights management in order to lure consumers away from P2P. In fact, one could make the switch to MP3 very soon.

Rumors of an imminent embrace of MP3 were overheard by The International Herald Tribune at Midem, an annual global conference for the music industry held this weekend in Cannes, France. Those who talked to the paper say the change is coming as result of still sinking music sales.

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Google has joined up with the University of Texas at Austin to bring the school's library online through the Google Books Library Project. Over 1 million works will be digitized in the effort, including a world-renowned Latin American collection.

The University of Texas Libraries are the together the fifth largest academic library in the United States, Google says. The search company has already begun digitizing works from the Universities of California, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, and The New York Public Library. Books in the public domain are fully accessible, and for those still in copyright, Google will display a few lines of text related to the search.

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The Washington Post broke the news this morning that the US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Apple Inc.’s practice of options backdating is -now focusing on why the company’s accountants waited until very late -– though still within deadline – to report CEO Steve Jobs’ receipt of 7.5 million company stock options in 2001. That particular issue, the company admitted publicly last month, was backdated.

What this means is, if Jobs had exercised those options even immediately after receiving them, he would have received some $20.3 million, according to estimates published this morning by Bloomberg. In other words, by backdating the exercise date of the options, Jobs was given the right on December 18, 2001 to purchase as much as 7.5 million Apple shares valued at $21.01 per share, at the October 19 closing price of $18.30.

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The so-called 'Storm Worm' continues to spread, with several waves of attacks reported over the weekend. The virus writers have even included a way to update the Trojan, security firms say, in an effort to evade antivirus software.

Reports of the worm began surfacing on Friday in Europe, as unsuspecting Web users were tricked into downloading an executable file. The e-mail claimed to have breaking news on the stormy weather conditions that have rocked the region over the past week.

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Microsoft plans to release a new version of its Windows Live OneCare anti-malware and maintenance software on January 30. The new version will feature Windows Vista support, as well as unified virus and spyware scanning and more flexible backup options.

At that time, the software will also be launched in 16 other countries. Since OneCare's initial launch in May 2006, the service has only been available in the United States. Those with current memberships will be automatically upgraded to the new release.

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Microsoft has setup a special version of Live.com with the intention of making a donation to ninemillion.org for every search query run by visitors. Ninemillion.org is a UN-backed effort to provide education and sports programs for the nine million refugee youth around the world.

The site, located at Click4TheCause.Live.com, will be active through March 31. The company did not say how much it would donate for each search, but it's likely the amount will be dependent on the advertising revenue that accompanies the results. Microsoft has additionally established a Web site on Windows Live Spaces to spread the word about ninemillion.org.

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The top four server providers globally - HP, Dell, IBM, and Sun - all now have Intel-based as well as AMD-based options, thanks to Sun's agreement this morning with Xeon manufacturer Intel. The move is very interesting since Sun, like IBM but unlike the others, manufactures its own CPUs and competes with its own partners. But today's move could signal the rise of Sun as an equal player in the server space, says Insight64 principal analyst Nathan Brookwood.

"For the first time in my memory, you can go to any of the top four server companies - IBM, HP, Dell, and Sun - and buy boxes with AMD chips or boxes comparably configured with Intel chips," Brookwood commented to BetaNews. "So if you, the end user, have a reason for wanting one or the other, you don't have to compromise any more. And that's huge, that's just huge."

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In an effort to continue its growth, VoIP provider Vonage is offering a new service that would allow anyone in seven countries to contact its customers worldwide for the price of a local call. In addition, the service would allow overseas customers to place calls to U.S. 1-800 numbers.

Vonage is the nation's largest VoIP provider, currently serving over two million subscribers. However, even in the face of success, the company continues to struggle financially. Vonage faced a disastrous IPO in May, and continues to lose money.

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UPDATE January 22, 2007 4:00 pm ET: A spokesperson with close ties to Microsoft’s interest on the DVD Forum – which steers the direction of the HD DVD format and marketing – told BetaNews this afternoon that the reasons behind LG’s BH100 hybrid disc player not being approved to bear the official HD DVD logo alongside the official Blu-ray logo, may run much deeper than the player’s lack of support for the HDi interactive layer.

For a device to bear the HD DVD logo, the spokesperson told us, it must also feature a network connection for so-called “networked community scenarios;” support for persistent storage features such as saving bookmarked scenes from a video, or downloading a trailer; and a secondary decoder for picture-in-picture support of concurrent commentary tracks and other features. “HD DVD discs take advantages of these guaranteed hardware features,” he said, “[which] are required if a player wants an HD DVD logo.”

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With his usual candor, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz this afternoon revealed, in a joint press conference with Intel CEO Paul Otellini, that 70% of Solaris licenses are for x86 processor-based installations. While Sun's 2004 agreement with AMD may have been one catalyst for that, Sun announced this morning it will now be building Intel Xeon-based 1P, 2P, and 4P servers for the first time.

"Nearly 70%, seven out of ten downloads of Solaris, were not running on Sun hardware," pronounced Schwartz, the astonishing part really being that he finally admitted it. "They were running on Intel innovations, on systems built by HP and Dell and IBM; and clearly, if there was going to be an indication of opportunity for us to work together, it looked an awful lot like, here's a great motivation."

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Microsoft disclosed Monday that over one in five Windows installations were deemed non-genuine through the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program, which requires users to validate their operating system before downloading updates from the company.

Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent. 56,000 reports have been made by customers of counterfeit software, which grants that user a free replacement copy of Windows.

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Microsoft has announced plans to resurrect its Train Simulator game, utilizing the recently launched Flight Simulator X technology to build a realistic experience for railroad enthusiasts. Details are slim at this point, but Microsoft is expected to make further announcements later this year.

Train Simulator is being developed by the Redmond company's Aces Studio division, which was behind Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator. "I've been constantly amazed at the loyalty and passion people have around this title, and being a railroad enthusiast myself, I understand what it is that makes it so compelling," explained lead developer Rick Selby on his blog. "This is the sort of passion I want to build into the product this time around."

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