Google releases Chrome to open source

Google has released the Chrome operating system (OS), an alternative to Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X, to open source for developers, but said end-users would not be able to use the Web operating system until late 2010, reports eWeek.

During a demo, Google's Sundar Pichai showed how Chrome OS booted up on an Asus Eee PC netbook in seven seconds, with three more seconds to log onto an application.

Chrome OS has the look and feel of the Chrome Web browser, which has 40 million regular users. Chrome OS was designed with speed, simplicity and security in mind.

Rogue anti-virus slingers are getting even sneakier. Instead of offering to clean up non-existent malware threats as per the traditional approach, one rogue scanner offers to clean up images of porn it claims to have found on a prospective mark's PC, writes The Register.

In reality, these images get downloaded by the purported clean-up package itself. Victims were exposed to the pitch on behalf of a scareware package called Win Spy Protect simply by visiting a hacked Web site.

Roger Thompson, chief of research at security firm AVG, ran across the threat months ago but held back on publishing details until Thursday.

According to officials, the Chinese military defence Web site was subjected to 2.3 million hacking attempts in its first month online, says the BBC.

"When there were major events taking place related to the military and national defence, the number of [cyber] attacks rose," said editor Ji Guilin.

The Web site, unveiled in August, has so far attracted 1.25 billion visitors from around the world.

Dell's third-quarter earnings results show a small improvement over the last quarter, but revenue was down 15% over the last year, and profit fell 54%, reports CNet.

The company reported revenue of $12.9 billion, within analysts' expectations of between $12.8 billion and $13.5 billion. Earnings were 17c per share, when excluding 6c of pre-tax expenses and amortisation. That's 54% off the 37c Dell recorded a year ago.

Besides its acquisition of Perot Systems last month, there weren't too many positive signs in the recently completed quarter. Shipments were also down 5% across its businesses.