Software giant Microsoft is reportedly facing the European Union's biggest ever anti-trust fine.

As well as fining Microsoft, EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti is expected to set limits on its practice of bundling software and services in with its Windows operating system, which is an important part of the software firm's commercial strategy.

Leaks circulating in Brussels after that meeting suggested the fine would be 497m euros, according to both the Reuters and Dow Jones news agencies.

The EU's investigation has found Microsoft to be an "abusive monopolist" which has skewed the market for audiovisual software to the detriment of its rivals.

Reports say Microsoft will be forced to share proprietary details of its Windows software with rivals, making it easier for them to tailor their products to run on it.

Phatbot is a variant of a Agobot, a big family of IRC bots. It can steal personal information such as email addresses, credit card numbers, PayPay details and software licensing codes. It forwards this information using a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, rather than IRC channels exploited by its predecessors. Earlier versions of the bug go by monikers such as Phat, Backdoor.Agobot.fo and Gaobot, according to F-Secure.

Phatbot inserts backdoors which can be used to perform distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks aimed at shutting down Web sites including those of German Internet hosting company Schlund, US telecoms firm XO and Stanford University. The bug also terminates processes belonging to competing malware such as MSBlast.

"Phatbot is causing quite a bit of stir over here," said Conor Flynn, technical director of US e-security company Rits. "The US Department of Homeland Security sent a number of companies an emergency release about the worm which was then leaked anonymously to The Washington Post," he told ElectricNews.Net. The potential impact of Phatbot on users is much bigger than with previous worms and viruses ,vecause it can harvest passwords, product registration codes and credit card numbers and then send this information back to the authors, he said.

A pair of coders nurturing a deep antipathy for software pirates set off a controversy Thursday when they went public with a months-old experiment to trick file sharers into running a Trojan horse program that chastises users and reports back to a central server.

The program does not permanently install itself, open a back door or harvest the user's name or other personal information. But it does "phone home" to a central server, sending the filename under which it was executed, and the amount of time the user spent staring in shock at the sermonizing text before closing the window-an average of about 12 seconds. The "Dust Bunny" revision launched last month also sends a unique I.D. number that' embedded in each copy of the program; the server logs the I.D., then sends back a new number that gets patched into the code, allowing the creators to track the program as it's re-distributed across the networks.

But Jason Schultz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is wary of the vigilante effort. "It's sort of an invasion of your computer, not much different from other malicious programs or spyware," says Schultz. "When you use file sharing to download an application, you're not giving the person who's sending you the file permission to run rampant on your computer. The fact that they're in some ways tricking you into running it may pose some real problems for them in court."

California Assembly Bill 2735 and Senate Bill 1506 - both of which have Hollywood's support - would require anyone who knowingly disseminates commercial recorded or audiovisual material over the Internet to mark it with his or her name and address or face a possible one-year prison sentence.

"These California anti-anonymity bills would force everyone - including children - to put their real names and addresses on all the files they trade, regardless of whether the files actually infringe copyrights," says EFF legal director Cindy Cohn.

"Because the bills require Internet users to post personally identifying information, they fly directly in the face of policy goals and laws that prevent identity theft and spam and protect children and domestic violence victims."

For example, the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) forbids collection of personally identifiable information from children online without parental consent, says the EFF.

Thailand's agriculture minister has stepped in to block a plan to embed monitoring microchips in fighting cocks.

According to www.Kstat.com, Sora-at Klinpratoom was worried that the silicon chips could hamper the ability of the cocks to impress other birds.

Thai authorities decided to start getting bird owners to register their cocks as part of an effort to prevent diseases after the recent bird flu outbreak.

The Cabinet has already given approval in principle to the plan. But the agriculture minister says according to his information the chips "tickle" the cocks. Apparently, a tickled cock slows down when it approaches its opponent and loses its spunk.

It's no longer merely an academic question. Since 1998, responsibility for overseeing domain names and addresses has rested with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit group based in Marina Del Ray, Calif.

ICANN has enjoyed notable successes in the last six years. It has created a way to resolve domain name disputes, formalized some ad hoc arrangements the U.S. government created and approved a handful of top-level domains like .aero and .museum. In between, ICANN has weathered outbreaks of congressional enmity and, occasionally, outright hostility from foreign governments.

But now, the governance structure of the Internet may have reached an inflection point. ICANN is being assailed domestically by VeriSign, which filed a federal lawsuit last month, complaining that it has been repeatedly thwarted in trying to make money off its government-granted right to run the master .com and .net database. Internationally, ICANN is fending off a power grab from the United Nations, which has wanted more involvement with the Internet, ever since one of its agencies in 1999 proposed a tax of 1 cent per every 100 e-mail messages.

Windows-XP has a "feature" (???) with which it is possible to manually crash a system by simply holding the right CTRL key and pressing the "Scroll Lock" key twice. This feature can be turned on by the following steps:

1. Start regedit. (If you are unfamiliar with regedit, please refer to this FAQ)
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll
4. Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify
5. Enter 1 in the Value data field and click on OK.
6. Close regedit and reboot your system.
7. Now you can blue screen (crash) your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice.

A draft letter purportedly circulated by Bill Lockyer to fellow state attorneys general characterizes P2P software as a "dangerous product" and describes the failure of technology makers to warn consumers of those dangers as a deceptive trade practice.

The draft document, dated Feb. 26, was obtained by Wired News on March 12. Distribution of a revised version to other attorneys general is said to coincide with the spring meeting in Washington, D.C., March 15 to 17 of the National Association of Attorneys General, of which Lockyer is president. The attorney general's office plans to release a final version publicly within the coming month, after obtaining additional signatories.

However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document's author or editor is "stevensonv." (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)

The document proposes an unprecedented legal theory with regard to peer-to-peer file-sharing services. If P2P software can be used to violate law, the argument goes, its makers should be obligated to incorporate a warning on the product or face liability for deceptive trade practices.

Microsoft has broken European Union antitrust law and must face sanctions, according to a draft decision expected to win endorsement on Monday from an advisory committee of the 15 EU states.

EU regulators have found that the world's biggest software company has refused to halt its violations. Since continuing settlement talks have produced no deal, the ruling sets out detailed plans to impose changes.

First, Microsoft tried to hurt rival makers of audiovisual software by bundling its own Windows Media Player with its ubiquitous operating system, the sources say.

Microsoft says Windows Media Player is an inherent part of the operating system and cannot be stripped out. RealNetworks used demonstrations at an EU hearing to argue it can be.

UK businesses should beware of people trying to extract money for renewal of domain names meaning you may end up paying more money than you need to people you don't need to pay.

This morning, the INQUIRER got three letters from a company calling itself EU Registry Services, based in Cambridge, reminding us that we needed to renew theinquirer.net and theinquirer.org.

The letters start off in a scary tone, saying: "The domain name shown above is due for renewal. Please renew this domain immediately to ensure service continues uninterrupted. If payment is not made to the registry before the expiry date the domain is subject to immediate suspension and deletion without further notice".

While there's no web page address for "EU Registry Services", an email address to "help@renewalpayments.com" is supplied. A whois database entry shows this belongs to Dot Biz Domain Renewal, living in a PO Box at 287 Regent Street, London W1.