Tuesday's Ting-A-Ling

Tech news time...

1. The new variants of the Sasser worm don't suck. Reports now of over one million machines being infected by the worm, discovered Friday. Sasser exploits a hole in Microsoft Windows that was patched April 13, but apparently many businesses and universities have not updated their systems,. American Express, Delta Airlines, and Boston College all suffered network slowdowns due to the worm. Experts think Sasser was written by the same folks who gave us Netsky. In fact a new Netsky variant which comes in a message that claims to fix Sasser actually contains infectious code. Removing Sasser is not enough. Use a firewall (the one built-into Windows XP will work, so will your broadband router), and run Windows update now!
2. Who needs Dell? More desktops with AMD processors were sold in the week ending April 24 than those with Intel inside. First time that's happened since record keeping began last year. When you factor in notebooks, Intel is still dominant, however. Sixty-one percent of all PCs sold during that week ran on Intel; including 81 percent of all notebooks sold. Intel is expected to regain the top spot in desktops when the Grantsdale chipset, featuring PCI Express, DDR2 memory, and integrated Wi-Fi support becomes available in the next quarter.
3. Bill Gates was personally fined $800,000 by the US Department of Justice over claims that his personal investments violated anti-trust regulations. In 2002 Gates bought stock in Icos, the company that makes Cialis, without reporting the investment first. Gates serves on the Icos board and is its largest investor. His lawyers said it was their fault - they missed the filing - and voluntarily notified the FTC. $800,000 represents less than half a day's interest on his personal fortune.