According to Cnet, the company wants to carry on with its law suit against SCO and get a declaration from the beak that it isn't violating SCOs copyrights or trade secrets.

SCO is on the ropes at the moment after losing a large chunk of its legal fighting funds when its VC Baystar backed out of the company.

SCO sued Big Blue last March claiming that IBMs move to Linux had broken a contract between the pair. In February this year SCO added an allegation that IBM had infringed its copyright by using Linux, which it believes features code it owns.

However Red Hat's lawyers argued that the SCO and IBM case is all about a contractual relationship between IBM and SCO. Red Hat's action, it says, concerns the damage SCO has done and is continuing to do to Red Hat.

Its lawyers claim that Red Hat is suffering injustice as a result of the hold, because it leaves SCO open to pursue its campaign against Linux and force Red Hat customers "to sign licences to use open-source code that SCO did not even develop."

Analysts IDC reckons that spam represented 32 per cent of all email sent on an average day in North America in 2003, doubling from 2001. That figure is less than the 50 per cent or more junk mail statistic commonly cited by email-filtering firms like MessageLabs and Brightmail but it still represents a serious problem.

The effect of spam - measured in clogged inboxes, lost worker productivity and wasted IT resources - is measured in millions of dollars annually for larger organisations. Adding to this, three-quarters of the IT executives responding to an IDC survey feel the spam tsunami will only get worse over the next two years.

IDC surveyed 1,000 IT managers representing organizations of various sizes and industries in North America in developing its return on investment calculations. It also interviewed 30 senior IT executives representing a range of vertical industries in greater detail.

A paper disc that can hold up to five times more data than current DVDs has been developed by Sony and another Japanese company.

The disc is 51% paper and could offer foolproof security, said officials.

"Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc," said Hideaki Kawai of Toppan, which worked with Sony.

According to Sony, researchers were able to make a paper disc as Blu-ray technology does not require laser light to travel through a key layer of a disc called the substrate.

Both Sony and Toppan said they were looking at practical uses for the paper discs, but that no decision had been made on when they would be in the shops.

Amazon recently took the wraps off its initial public beta version of A9, and we got the first sneak peek. It's easy to see why the new engine might set Google and other search-driven companies on edge: A9 is a credible step toward making a search engine that knows you and acts as your agent online.

As to what is new, the most obvious feature is your personal search history -- which is integrated into your entire search experience. So your entire search history is available to you, and with the toolbar, that includes all your searches across any search site, as well as all your browsing on the Web.

The history server stores -- on our servers -- your history of interaction with us for the purpose of bringing that back to you in a very convenient way. Whenever you come to the site, we can show you what you searched for in the past in a very easy-to-organize fashion. If you want to hide some of that, you can opt out at any time. If you install the toolbar, then all your Web browsing, as well as all your searching, is stored as well. And we are working on many different ways to improve that.

At the end of March a Canadian judge ruled that use of the Kazaa P2P network did not constitute copyright infringement, in a case brought by the Canadian Recording Industry Association that was attempting to identify 29 Canadian people who had been downloading music.

More surprising is the action taken by a New Jersey mother, Michele Scimeca, who received an RIAA notice in December after her child used the Kazaa network for a school project. She has countersued labels Sony, Universal and Motown by claiming that the demands for reimbursement of $150,000 per infringement falls foul of the 1970 Organized Crime and Control Act.

Given that the film and computer games industries are not up in arms despite the large amount of downloading of their intellectual property, the recording industry may increasingly be seen as a spoilt brat throwing a tantrum. Although strong-arm tactics have filled the pockets of the world's biggest recording companies for the past 50 years, the estimated billions of file-sharers in the US, Europe and Asia may be a harder nut to crack.

The Internet service provider on Thursday said it found an average of nearly 28 spyware items on each PC it scanned during the first quarter. The company, in conjunction with Webroot Software, conducted a total of 1.06 million scans through its Spy Audit service. The majority of the items found were relatively harmless, EarthLink said, but some represented serious problems.

"While most spyware is adware-related and relatively benign, it's disturbing that over 300,000 of the more serious system monitors and (Trojan horses) were uncovered. This figure represents how real a threat identity theft or system corruption is for users," Matt Cobb, EarthLink's vice president of core applications, said in a statement.

The Spy Audit service is available to all Internet users, not just EarthLink subscribers.

"Los Angeles police arrested Ruben Centero Moreno, 34, after the projectionist used night vision goggles to spot his video camera in a showing of The Alamo. He has been charged under the new California anti-camcorder law, and could face up to 1 year in jail if convicted. The BBC reports that 'The MPAA has established a nationwide telephone hotline for cinema employees to report violations, and studios and cinemas are also investing in metal detectors and night-vision goggles'. Motion Picture Ass. Head Jack Valenti said he hoped it would 'send a clear signal such crimes will not be tolerated'. Clearly, the 'War on Copyright Violation' is following the successful strategy used for the War on Drugs, with significant resources of technology and police time mobilised to send violators to jail for a long time. Soon, copied films will be as rare as students lighting up a joint after their exams."

The lesson is clear: stay out of movie theaters and you won't get arrested.

Despite concerns about spam, retailers are still finding e-mail a profitable way to market to customers. But according to Doug Mack, CEO of online imaging technology provider Scene7, over the long term, e-mail in its current familiar format risks the same fate as banner ads. "Much like banner ads, after they first started, e-mail will atrophy in its performance because it starts to burn people out," he says. "So the next generation of e-mail will be dynamic."

Mack envisions e-mail in the future as a rich HTML message with images and graphics dynamically generated and customized by recipient, based on a shoppers’ online shopping and browsing behavior. Images, even video, could launch in an e-mail to grab the shopper’s attention. "People have the capability to delete an e-mail when it’s in preview, before they have actually read one word of it. But it’s almost impossible not to look at that image before you hit the delete button," he says.

Put the right image and right product in front of the right customers, overlay them graphically with, for example, a free shipping offer if the customer has been shown to respond to free shipping promotions, and you have what Mack calls "the double whammy. It’s just going to pull you in."

One of the biggest batches yet of software bugs in Microsoft's Windows software was revealed on Tuesday, prompting users to scramble to install patches to secure home and office computers against potential attack.

A total of 20 individual vulnerabilities were announced by Microsoft in four security bulletins. Three of the bulletins, containing all but one of the bugs, were classified as "critical", the most severe category. Software downloads to rectify all of the problems were released along with details of the flaws.

The 14 bugs described in the first of bulletins affect all Windows operating systems to some degree. The bugs reside in the peripheral programs that Windows calls upon to perform certain tasks, and many of these are switched on by default when Windows is installed.

During Tuesday's Good Morning America, a representative of Tyco Fire and Security displayed the amazing properties of the chemical that's called "Sapphire."

As part of a demonstration, Pelton submerged several items into a tank of Sapphire that was on the Good Morning America set. Books did not get wet. Electronics were not be destroyed. Items that were submerged in the liquid were dried in a matter of seconds, and showed no ill effects according to Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and other members of the Good Morning America staff who saw items plunged into it.

The Sapphire is intended to become part of fire suppression systems in buildings. It would automatically be sprayed out of a building's sprinkler system when a fire is detected.

There was a substance that had similar properties produced in the past, but that fire suppression liquid was damaging the ozone layer. The new substance by Tyco is supposed to be environmentally safe.