Criminal charges filed against Dunn, others in HP "Pretext" case
Sacramento: Criminal charges have been filed against HP chairwoman Dunn and four others in "Pretext Case." Late Wednesday afternoon California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office released a statement saying criminal charges were filed against Patricia Dunn and four other defendants, with the allegation that they committed criminal offenses related to the use of false pretenses to access individuals' phone records during the company's probe of boardroom leaks to the media.

Lockyer charged Dunn and the following individuals with crimes in connection with the Hewlett-Packard "pretexting" incident: Kevin T. Hunsaker, former in-house lawyer and ethics chief for Hewlett-Packard; Ronald R. DeLia, managing director of Security Outsourcing Solutions, an outside security contractor for Hewlett-Packard; Matthew Depante, manager of Florida-based information broker Action Research Group (ARG); and Bryan C. Wagner, a Colorado-based employee of ARG.

The felony complaint charges all five defendants with four felony counts: fraudulent wire communications; wrongful use of computer data; identity theft; and conspiracy to commit those three crimes.
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Micosoft hardens anti-piracy stand
Seattle: Microsoft Corp is hardening its stand against software piracy. Windows Vista contains some tough measures to curtail piracy than previous versions of its operating system. This includes crippling the usefulness of computers found to be running unlicensed copies of the new software.

Microsoft said that people running a version of Windows Vista that it believes is pirated will initially be denied access to some of the mot anticipated Vista featres including Windows Aero, an improved graphics technology.

If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time.

Under that scenario, a person could use the browser to surf the Web, access documents on the hard drive or log onto Web-based e-mail. But the user would not be able to directly open documents from the computer desktop or run other programs such as Outlook e-mail software. Microsoft said it will not stop a computer running pirated Vista software from working completely, and it will continue to deliver critical security updates.

The company also said it has added more sophisticated technology for monitoring whether a system is pirated. The system will also be able to perform some piracy checks internally, without contacting Microsoft.

Microsoft plans to take similar tough measures with the forthcoming version of its Windows server software, dubbed "Longhorn", and to incorporate it into other products in future.
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