Reuters - Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for a decades-long career of peacemaking around the world from Namibia to Kosovo.

Microsoft has desperately turned to Simon Cowell to help sprinkle some X Factor dust on Windows Vista, giving the already has-been OS a last shot at stardom.…

As if you haven't got enough languages already, Microsoft is about to give you one more: M, part of its Oslo development and service-oriented strategy.…

Cash-strapped TV broadcaster Channel 4 has confirmed it will completely withdraw from the eponymous DAB radio consortium, Digital 4. The move will save £10m, executives said today.…

Software issues affecting the BlackBerry Bold appear to have spurred Orange to suspend all UK sales of the 3G handset.…

Reports are emerging that the US Justice Department is working on a hand-held version of existing microwave cannons intended for riot or crowd control. The portable raygun could also have applications as a scanner or detector system, apart from being a weapon; and a working prototype has already been built.…

The latest graphics cards have been used to break Wi-Fi encryption far quicker than was previously possible. Some security consultants are already suggesting the development blows Wi-Fi security out of the water and that corporations ought to apply tighter VPN controls, or abandon wireless networks altogether, in response.…

Startup AutoVirt is going to introduce a Windows file share virtualisation product to drive up disk utilisation and ease file storage consolidation. It's like an IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) for files.…

Spare a kinky kind thought for one Wicked Wanda this Friday - the Canadian sex shop owner has been robbed of vibrators to the tune of $2,000.…

Review Asus' Eee marque may be associated with laptops, but it's been applied to desktops too, specifically the Eee Box, a slimline unit designed to stay in one place.…

An aggressive newcomer is muscling in on everyone's favourite cattleprod-enforcement firm, Taser International. Stinger Systems says its "advanced electro sparc-pulsed" zap weaponry is much safer for the victim miscreant, and is offering American police forces a cheap "trade in your Taser" deal.…

Mandriva has released the latest version of its desktop Linux distribution, which comes loaded with new KDE, Gnome, Firefox and OpenOffice tools.…

Sun's share price has fallen so low it is about the same as before last year's reverse stock split. So is Sun turning into another Unisys?…

Here's top tip for those of you who like to have the odd firearm around the house: Don't put live rounds wrapped in newspaper in your cast iron stove and then throw a match in.…

ISPs have been worried to learn that BT's ongoing multibillion pound "21CN" network upgrade won't offer native support for IPv6, the networking protocol that it's planned will form the bedrock of a rapidly expanding 21st century internet.…

One of the longest-sought, most keenly anticipated high-tech weapons of the past century - namely, the dreaded circuitry-frying electromagnetic pulse bomb - seems to have had its schedule moved forward.…

First Acer, now Lenovo. The ThinkPad company has rolled out a laptop with WiMax on board to cater for wireless broadband buffs in Baltimore.…

The Health Protection Agency is warning that low-energy light bulbs could give enough ultraviolet radiation to cause damage to your skin.…

Opera has patched a brace of critical vulnerabilities with the release of the latest version of its web browser.…

FoTW It's a well-known fact that flames are like number 13 buses - you wait ages for one and then a whole load turn up and once.…

Analysis Symantec, traditionally one of the more conservative firms in the security market, is attempting to pull off a high-wire balancing act with its surprise $695m acquisition of security software-as-a-service pioneer MessageLabs. The firm is betting that increased revenues in the hottest segment of the security market will justify a high (especially for the current economic climate) acquisition price.…

The European Commission has again written to the government for an explanation of UK authorities' response to BT's allegedly illegal secret trials of Phorm's ISP adware system.…

US weaponry and aerospace giant Alliant Techsystems (ATK) - makers of rockets to NASA, among other things - are pleased to announce their latest gizmo: the Palletised Autonomous Weapons System (PAWS).…