Tech Brief
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Today on Tech Brief: Payback time for the Facebook spammer, Internet Explorer loses friends and how to keep a bunch of Italian councillors amused during meetings.
• Microsoft's flagship product, its Internet Explorer browser, appears to be teetering on the brink of losing its dominant position in the market, according to the latest number crunching.
Internet measurement firm StatCounter puts IE below the magic half-way point (49.87%) for the first time. Its closest rival is Firefox with 31.5%, while Google's Chrome is also creeping up at 11.5% of market share.
"This is certainly a milestone in the internet browser wars."
The death knell of IE might not be sounded just yet though as other measurement companies still give Microsoft a more healthy share of the market.The statisticians it seems may also be at war to be the first to press with the bad news.
• The so-called Facebook spammer, who posted ads for erectile dysfunction medication on people's Facebook walls, has been ordered by a Canadian court to pay the social network giant more than $200 for each of the 4,366, 386 messages allegedly posted. This translated to over 1bn Canadian dollars.
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• The battle against illegal file-sharers shows no signs of abating as more law firms jump on the suing bandwagon despite the hacking campaign which exposed that some did not look after the data of alleged file-sharers quite as well as they should.
Gene Simmons, of the legendary rock band KISS, remains particularly defiant.
in Cannes on the issue.
"Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line."
KISS fans, you have been warned.
• Doodling used to be the way to pass the hours during boring meetings but now there is a more hi-tech way to pass the time.
The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, has issued laptops to city officials with computer games on them.
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"Each councillor can amuse himself and defeat stress during our long, hard meetings."
It sounds like a potentially good way of pushing through unpopular legislation. Tech Brief wonders whether a similar approach will be adopted in the House of Commons.
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