Microsoft claims the vulnerability stems from a flaw in Outlook Express, but security researchers say that since the bug can be exploited via IE7 it is really an IE7 vulnerability.

The flaw is said to stem from errors in the handling of redirections for URLs with the "mhtml:" URI handler. Secunia reports that the same bug was discovered six months ago in IE6 but remains unresolved. The flaw might be used to access documents served from another website, a trick that could be useful in various scam and phishing attacks.

"The issue concerned in these reports is not in Internet Explorer 7 (or any other version) at all. Rather, it is in a different Windows component, specifically a component in Outlook Express," writes Microsoft staffer Christopher Budd on MS's official security response weblog.

A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc. He is also respectful of copyrights. Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music.

"Working with the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles, we have a real opportunity to educate a new generation about how movies are made, why they are valuable, and hopefully change attitudes about intellectual property theft," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement Friday.

Scouts also must choose one activity from a list that includes visiting a movie studio to see how many people can be harmed by film piracy. They also can create public service announcements urging others not to steal movies or music.

Mediaservices, the owner of the controversial music download site AllofMP3, will pursue "every avenue" to overturn the decisions of Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments to the company.

In a statement today, the Russian company said the blacklisting was "arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory". Visa and Mastercard had no authority to judge the legality of AllofMP3's services, and their "determination that the company's activities were illegal is patently erroneous and without legal merit", it said. "AllofMP3 has not been found by any court in the world to be in violation of any law...To disqualify AllofMP3 based on a payment processing company’s whim is irresponsible and sets a bad precedence."

AllofMP3 claims Visa has "misinterpreted the new copyright laws because they do not require AllofMP3 to alter its business model. The new copyright laws do not prevent the online sale of music".

MANY readers asked us what happens with Vista 3D scores when we turn the Aero glass off.

Many suggested that you need to render this 3D desktop all the time, even when in a game. They were right. The 3D desktop will run even when you play Half Life 2 or any other game.

We tried it and we even forced the game back to desktop and learned that game + Vista eats 1.35GB of memory but Aero glass works perfectly. It does not swap from the hard drive, it just works.

We tried to turn off Aero glass 3D interface to see if we can get some better performance. Well, we didn't. We got the same performance as with Aero turned on.

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Spokane, Washington, also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, South Carolina, school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

A recording industry lobby group has launched 8,000 new cases alleging illegal file sharing all over the world but none of them is British because the UK lobby group is focusing on its negotiations with internet service providers.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has begun the thousands of new cases in locations as far apart as Argentina, Iceland and Singapore. Action is being taken for the first time in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.

Earlier this year US resident Tammie Marson made labels back down from their case against her because she said that evidence that illegal copies of songs appeared on her computer was not evidence that she had downloaded or shared them. No file sharing case in the US has gone to a full trial.

California teenager Julia Wilson has dedicated herself to organising student protests against the Iraq war in an act of retaliation against a firm visit from the Secret Service.

US investigators last week pulled the student out of her classroom for questioning about a MySpace page that showed President Bush being stabbed in the hand with the words "Kill Bush" scribbled above the photo. Both Wilson and her parents thought the Secret Service's tactics inappropriate.

According to reports, the Secret Service agents – apparently huge MySpace fans – first stopped by the 14-year-old's house (naturally, they would assume that she was a delinquent). The agents contacted Wilson's mother and then promised to return later when they could interview the lass along with her parents.

Instead, the agents stormed Wilson's school in Northern California and grilled her for 15 minutes.

"They yelled at me a lot," she told the newswire. "They were unnecessarily mean."

The agents also threatened to haul Wilson off to juvenile hall.

Mike went through the improved search function – including how the search is now part of the task bar and is contextual and will search the entire network. In what has become a Microsoft tradition, the demo did not go off without a hitch. A search for "desktop" and "wallpaper" returned no results under the control panel. Whoops.

One interesting feature that it is incorporating is that digital images are stored as a "digital negative". If, for example, you make an edit of a photo and save over the original, you can still access the image by "retrieving" the original which the OS keeps in some dark hidey hole.

Gaming in Vista has a dedicated "gaming area" where all games are stored in a specific area of the OS.

Windows Media 11 introduces "Urge" - pronounced urj - an online subscription service that allows you to scream audio to your system but also integrates a powerful search component that will also bring up a band's homepage, any available media, and suggest similar music to your selection.

The RIAA has dropped the Elektra v. Wilke case in Chicago. This is the case in which Mr. Wilke had moved for summary judgment, stating that: '1. He is not "Paule Wilke" which is the name he was sued under. 2. He has never possessed on his computer any of the songs listed in exhibit A [the list of songs the RIAA's investigator downloaded]. He only had a few of the songs from exhibit B [the screenshot] on his computer, and those were from legally purchased CDs owned by Mr. Wilke. 3. He has never used any "online media distribution system" to download, distribute, or make available for distribution, any of plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings.' The RIAA's initial response to the summary judgment motion, prior to dropping the case, had been to cross-move for discovery, indicating that it did not have enough evidence with which to defeat Mr. Wilke's summary judgment motion.

Afghanistan's fun-loving Taliban have deployed a hitherto unknown tactic in evading detection in their war against UN forces: take refuge in 10-foot high, fireproof marijuana forests.

Despite Canadian troops' best efforts to burn down the monster dope plantations, the weed continues to offer excellent cover for the insurgents, Reuters reports.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff, admitted yesterday: "We tried burning them with white phosphorous - it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel - it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now...that we simply couldn't burn them."

And when they did manage to get a fire going, the results were predictable. Hillier added: "A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those [forests] did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action."