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British hospitals hit with malware attack
Computer systems at three London hospitals remained down on Wednesday morning after PCs were apparently infected with a virus. No patient data was at risk of disclosure, a spokesman said. As a precaution, computers were shut down at St Bartholomew’s, the Royal London Hospital and The London Chest Hospital.
When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals, since it was easier to admit patients using unaffected computer systems rather than revert to a paper-based admission systems. The hospitals are now taking emergency patients again. Officials are investigating how the infection occurred, although it did not appear to be malicious.
Microsoft drops OneCare antivirus product
Two years after trying to build a consumer antivirus business, Microsoft has decided to throw in the towel. The software vendor said Tuesday that it will discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare product at the end of June next year. Instead, it will offer Windows users free antivirus software, code-named Morro. Microsoft is phasing out OneCare in order to focus its efforts on getting Windows users to adopt antivirus (AV) technology, said a spokesman. Nearly half of Windows users don’t use AV and in emerging markets that percentage is even higher.
Judge dismisses Psystar antitrust lawsuit against Apple
Judge William Alsup dismissed a Psystar lawsuit against Apple that alleged the company violated federal and state antitrust laws. Psystar’s lawsuit accused Apple of tying Mac OS X to its own hardware. Psystar contends that because the Apple end user agrement bars users from installing the OS on non-Apple hardware, it’s an unlawful restraint of trade.
But the judge noted that Psystar acknoweldged that Mac OS is, by definition, an independent and unique market. Psystar filed its lawsuit as a countereclaim, in response to an Apple lawsuit. Apple said that Psystar violated its copyrights and licensing agreement when it sold a computer with Mac OS X installed on it. Apple’s end-user licensing agreement forbids Mac OS X from being installed on non-Apple hardware.
News Sun adds query analysis tool to MySQL Enterprise
Sun has added a new query analysis tool to its MySQL Enterprise service , it s subscription-based service for the open-source MySQL database Sun has addied access to a query analysis tool for tracking and fixing problematic code and performance issues.
The tool allows users to perform real-time analysis of “all queries across all servers,” as well as search and sort them according to metrics such as content, date/time and query type, according to Sun. The updated service is scheduled to be available within a month. Sun has been having financial troubles, and recently said it would lay off up to 8000 workers.
And those are the top headlines formthe IDG Global IT News Update brought to you by the IDG News Service. This is Marc Ferranti in the New York bureau.
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