Leopard outpaces Tiger

Apple`s Leopard operating system is flying off the shelves faster than its predecessor, according to data from the NPD Group, and its not just home users that are making the move, says CRN.com.

In its first month on the market, sales of Cupertino, Apple`s Leopard operating systems, or Mac OS 10.5, outpaced its Mac OS 10.4, dubbed Tiger, by 32.8% in dollar volume and 20.5% in unit volume, according to NPD`s US retail point of sale data, said Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis for the research firm.

The data includes sales of the operating system sold at retail, but not copies sold within new Mac desktop or notebook computers. The data does include family packs of five licences.

A federal judge has ruled against the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy.com, saying its hiding and destruction of evidence made a fair trial impossible, reports News.com.

A Los Angeles court agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America`s attorneys that the extraordinarily harsh sanction of terminating the case was necessary because TorrentSpy operators` actions impacted the ability for the movie studios to prove its case.

"The court finds that plaintiffs have suffered prejudice, to the extent that a rightful decision is not possible," the ruling said.

In the seemingly waning days of the US government`s antitrust review of the Google-DoubleClick union, consumer groups are lodging a last-minute plea: don`t forget about privacy, says News.com.

That was the message during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The directors of those groups, who predicted a decision by the Federal Trade Commission is "imminent", voiced concern that the FTC may overlook the potential privacy implications raised by the combined user massive data stores of the two prominent companies.

Sonic the Hedgehog has been released for the iPod, reports Arstechnica.

This implementation of Sonic allows users to use the traditional Sonic music in the background, or their own iPod music if they prefer.

The game is brought to users by Sega of America through the iTunes Store, and runs for the same price as the others: $4.99.