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Symantec claims its 2009 Internet Security products will have “zero impact” on PC performance…

“Fundamentally, consumers don’t want to be bothered at all. We’ve set as our goal zero-impact security,” she said…

Symantec claims one of the ways the product will make less demand on system resources is by scaling back on the amount of scanning. “Our new technology allows us to scan less,” claimed Chaffin. “We know which files are good files and we can scan those less.”

“If software runs on millions of systems, it’s going to be good software,” Chaffin added. “If software only runs on a small number of machines, chances are it’s bad.”

Is there not a chance malware writers will quickly cotton on to which applications Norton is scanning less frequently and target those? “If they modify a file in any way, we can scan,” claimed Mallon.

Norton will also use the past history of the user to gauge how much scanning is necessary. “If someone’s not been infected before, the chances of them being infected are low.”

Norton Internet Security 2009 and Antivirus 2009 will be out this autumn.

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An anonymous reader recommends a Computerworld article on a new report from Australian security vendor PC Tools. The company released figures on malware detection by its ThreatFire product, and in its user base 27% of Vista machines were compromised by at least one instance of malware. From the article:

“In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system [that] is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.”

Microsoft hasn’t responded yet to this report.

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The BYKYC forums are now open and ready for your questions, comments, and discussions. Register and have a good time. We will do our best to answer your questions in a timely manner. As the community grows we hope that we’ll all be helping each other when we need the help. You can either click the button, below, or click the red “Visit The Forums” button that will remain in the sidebar.

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The full cast has been announced for the upcoming Live-Action Street Fighter movie. We’ve known for awhile that Kristen Kreuk will be playing Chun-Li.

The movie will actually revolve around the story line of Chun-Li but expect Balrog, M. Bison, Vega and Charlie Nash to all make an appearance. 20th Century Fox is planning on a worldwide 2009 release.

Here is the cast so far:

• Chun-Li: Kristin Kreuk. Plays the role of Lana Lang in the WB television series Smallville .
• Balrog: Michael Clarke Duncan. The Island (2005), Sin City (2005), Daredevil (2003), The Scorpion King (2002), Planet of the Apes (2001), See Spot Run (2001), The Whole Nine Yards (2000), The Green Mile (1999), Breakfast of Champions (1999), Armageddon (1998)
• M. Bison: Neal McDonough. The Hitcher (2007), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), The Guardian (2006), Timeline (2003), MinorityReport (2002), Band of Brothers (2001)
• Vega: Taboo. Member of popular R&B music group Black Eyed Peas and recipient of three Grammy Awards.
• Charlie Nash: Chris Klein. We Were Soldiers (2002), American Pie (1999)

I think Kristen and Michael Clarke Duncan are both great choices. I am unfamiliar with the others and think perhaps Chris Klein might be the weakest link, but the movie does have potential since they are going and getting pretty good actors instead of B list celebs.

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The European Commission has fined US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour.

Microsoft must now pay a record 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its position.

The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers.

EU regulators said the firm was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling.

The fines come on top of earlier fines of 280m euros imposed in July 2006, and of 497m euros in March 2004.

“Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

Future improvements?

An investigation concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in products such as media players, while unfairly linking its Explorer internet browser to its Windows operating system at the expense of rival servers.

The European Court of First Instance upheld this ruling last year, which ordered Microsoft to pay 497m euros for abusing its dominant market position. Last week, the firm announced that it would open up the technology of some of its leading software, including Windows, to make it easier to operate with rivals’ products.

“As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future,” Microsoft said.

Further cases

But the firm is still being pursued by Brussels.

Last month, the European Commission launched two new anti-competition investigations against Microsoft into similar issues.

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Changelog 3.6.5 -> 3.7.0 | (2008-01-23)

* Updated Media Player Classic to version 6.4.9.1 rev. 34
* Updated ffdshow to revision 1805
* Updated x264 VFW codec to revision 721bm
* Updated madFLAC to version 1.7
* Updated FLV splitter to version 1.0.0.4
* Added MONOGRAM AMR splitter (version 0.9.0.1)
* Removed RadLight Musepack filter
* Added MONOGRAM Musepack splitter (version 0.3.1.2)
* Added MONOGRAM Musepack decoder (version 0.9.1.2)
* Changed default MP3 audio audio decoder from Fraunhofer to ffdshow
* Changed default MP1/MP2 audio decoder to ffdshow
* Minor changes

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Time Warner Cable will try selling consumers broadband service based on how much bandwidth they use, a move that could turn the home broadband pricing model in the U.S. on its head.

In a trial planned for later this year in Beaumont, Texas, the service provider will offer four tiers of service at different prices. Customers who used more bandwidth would pay more.

The details of the tiered pricing plan haven’t yet been set, according to Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. The offer will only go out to new customers, he said.

Some service providers charge different rates based on the speed of a service, but in the U.S. they typically allow each customer to send and download as many bits as they like in a month. Under that model, some subscribers who exchanged large files through peer-to-peer services reportedly have been cut off. Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable operator, has said it sometimes slows peer-to-peer traffic during peak demand periods.

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