Microsoft sues spammers

Microsoft and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have put together a set of lawsuits aimed at bankrupting spammer Scott Richter, president of OptinRealBig.com.

PCWorld.com reports Spitzer is filing lawsuits in New York`s Supreme Court against Richter`s company and several other companies that allegedly send up to 250 million unsolicited commercial e-mail messages a day.

The lawsuits are based on evidence gathered through Microsoft`s Hotmail service. In one month, Microsoft intercepted more than 8700 messages sent to Hotmail accounts set up as spam traps. The messages contained more than 40 000 fraudulent statements such as faked sender identifications and deceptive subject lines. The state will seek penalties for each fraudulent act that could result in a fine of $20 million.

AMD quietly introduced a low cost version of its Athlon 64 chip this week, says CNet, The chip provides a little less performance than earlier versions, but costs only about half as much.

The new Athlon 64 3000+ runs at the same speed as the Atholon 64 3200+, but has only a 512KB cache as opposed to the 1MB cache of the earlier and more expensive version.

Apple has released a new version of its QuickTime multimedia software, adding support for the creation, delivery and playback of video over wireless networks.

ZDNet says QuickTime 6.5 extends Apple`s support for high-speed 3G wireless networks and includes native support for the 3G Partnership Project 2, the media standard used in wireless networks that use CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) 2000. The CDMA standard is one of two major technologies used to create high-speed wireless networks.

In July, Apple introduced similar support for the other major high-speed wireless media standard, the 3G Partnership Project, which is used in GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications, networks.

Video delivery relies on high-speed networks, but these are available only in Japan and other parts of Asia and although 3G trials are underway in Europe and the United States, it`s unclear when the technology will be available.