Hewlett-Packard offered about $2.3 billion, ending an 18-day bidding war. The price reflects a growing urgency to use acquisitions to fuel growth.

TV shows are emerging as a new front in the war over digital media between Amazon.com and Apple amid their ongoing battles over electronic books and online music.

The publisher of the Grand Theft Auto video games raised its outlook on the strength of its newest release, Red Dead Redemption.

Japan is pioneering the use of cameras and sensors to glean more information about who is looking at signs and electronic public displays, and is incorporating cellphone technology to make them more interactive.

Lower pricing is one of the most noticeable features of Apple's latest gadget for delivering Internet video to TVs. Some of the savings appear to come at the expense of Intel.

Three venture-capital firms stand to get about $800 million from H-P's purchase of 3PAR, while the storage firm's CEO could collect nearly $100 million.

Apple's entry into social media has created bumps in its relationship with Facebook.

People are increasingly watching YouTube videos on cellphone screens, which could lead to new kinds of videos and advertising.

Some copyright holders are allowing YouTube to sell ads on videos that are uploaded without permission, generating revenue that is expected to make the site profitable this year.

The end to the 3PAR bidding war appears to have left some speculative options traders one volley short.

A Dutch company known as the Frame4 Group has created what's almost the computing equivalent of a Center for Disease Control lab. The Malware Distribution Project is, according to its own site, the "world's biggest private malware archive."

Enormous Malware Archive Creates Stir Don't jump to the conclusion that the project's run by a bunch of supervillains; the malware samples are supposed to be "offered for the purposes of analysis, testing and malware research."

Also, customers are screened, and a monthly access fee of about $1,235 should act to keep out some of the riffraff.

It actually seems possible that the Malware Distribution Project could be of great help to the security community. When you consider that medical researchers don't have to wander from house to house, asking people if they have cancer, every time they want to start a new experiment, certain practices start to seem a little outdated.

There is a potential for problems, though. One nightmare scenario relates to the Malware Distribution Project's figurative walls failing and everything getting out. Having all of that malware run amuck at once - particularly if security researchers' computers were the first things it'd come across - would be bad.

Then there's the possibility that some unpleasant person would gain access to the Malware Distribution Project's archive and just sort of go on a shopping spree. This way, some relatively stupid hacker might be able to get his (or her) hands on the most sophisticated viruses in existence.

As you might imagine, the Malware Distribution Project is definitely proving divisive.

Anyway, at last count, the repository contained a whopping 3,336,503 files.

UPDATE (10-13-09): Anthony Aykut, the Managing Director of Frame4 Security Services, got in touch with SecurityProNews this morning to pass along some information. In an email, he wrote, "[T]he malware is neither downloadable via the web site or accessible in any other way via the www; in fact, the (secure) servers where the malware is stored (or analyzed/processed) is not even connected to the outside world."

Aykut also stressed that nothing is sold to the public, and added, "Largely due to the security measure(s) mentioned above, and also based on to the fact that the storage media are protected by biometric devices, getting access to the MD:Pro archive is, well, pretty impossible."

Perhaps people who like to spend their spare time in the cockpits of imaginary F-16s should be left alone. The man in charge of a flight simulator site that was attacked claims to have identified the hacker and forwarded information to the authorities.

Avsim Hacker (Maybe) Brought Before Cops Avsim is one of the best-known flight sim communities in existence. It's been around for a long time, too. Unfortunately, a hacker managed to wipe about a decade's worth of modification info and forum posts from the site's servers back in May.

Now, though, Tom Allensworth, the publisher and CEO of Avsim, has told the BBC, "We . . . have incontrovertible evidence of the individual that performed the hack. We have protected the forensic evidence and provided that evidence to the London police. We are committed to bringing justice to bear on this case."

Allensworth is confident in the outcome, too, adding, "We fully expect that the criminal complaint . . . will result in the perpetrator spending some time behind bars - under UK law." (Since Avsim's located in the US, this means he's not pushing for extradition or anything of that sort.)

Neither London's Metropolitan Police Service nor the accused individual (who hasn't been publicly named) has made any comment yet.

The next time you have something really important to tell someone, consider whether a drive over to his or her house wouldn't be a nice way of spending a few minutes. One reporter has found that it's quite easy (and perhaps all too common) for people to buy email accounts' passwords from hackers.

Email Password Hackers Present Real Threat Tom Jackman wrote in an article for the Washington Post, "[S]ervices as YourHackerz.com are still active and plentiful, with clever names like 'piratecrackers.com' and 'hackmail.net.' They boast of having little trouble hacking into such Web-based e-mail systems as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail, and they advertise openly."

Jackman found that prices for passwords range from around $30 to $100, which means that even the average ten-year-old can probably afford these hackers' services.

Plus, unless someone important is involved or things get rather serious, law enforcement isn't terribly likely to look into (or at least resolve) the matter, because accessing a computer without authorization is just a misdemeanor in most areas and tracking down a perpetrator can be difficult.

And it doesn't help, of course, that all of these facts have now been publicized in a widely-read newspaper.

So if you've got some nasty business rivals or psycho exes, at least try to play it safe by changing your password often for as long as you're in the person's sights. Then there's always the option of putting a few more miles on the odometer, too.

Small and medium businesses are constantly at risk of being targeted by cybercriminals, simply because they are smaller than large corporations. The bigger a company is, the more money they have to invest in higher-tech security systems and larger, more involved IT departments. For smaller companies, it is easy to focus on trying to expand business and let security sit on the back-burner. This is where the partnership between Dell and Trend Micro comes in. They have come up with an easy way for small and medium sized businesses to manage their security needs without breaking the bank.

Dell Collaborates with Trend Micro
Trend Micro's Business Security Services include several desirable features to make the security portion of running a business much easier. First and foremost, is a set of web-based tools which make administration extremely easy. There is no need for a dedicated in-office server (or any company owned server at all), and the administration panel can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. There is also a remarkably low system performance impact, thanks to the fact that once a scan is complete, the results are processed in the "Smart Protection Network" run by Trend Micro. For companies with little or no IT staff on hand, the system comes pre-configured security parameters and runs automatically, so there is less worry about having something set up improperly. Both desktops and laptops are secured with this software, even if they are used outside the office. Anytime the computer is connected to the internet, it is being actively protected. This has the biggest impact on users who travel with their work, as many do.

This is a big step forward for one of the top PC suppliers in the world. The fact that this software can come pre-installed on systems shipped to its commercial clients means that they can offer security and piece of mind to a large group of people.

A consumer watchdog group began an advertising campaign aimed at Google and its chief executive that hopes to create a "Do Not Track Me" list for Web users.

When Samsung debuted its Galaxy Tab on Thursday, it made a bold claim: the device is at least as good as today's dominant tablet, Apple's iPad.

Olympus will add two new zoom lenses for its handsome Pen Micro Four Thirds cameras, as well as an all-black E-P2 camera kit.

Ideos from Huawei marks the first time a Chinese company has designed and marketed a smartphone specifically for the global market.

A new Windows PC comes covered with advertising stickers even though computer companies are trying to make their laptops beautiful. David Pogue thinks they ought to stop.

Baidu unveiled a platform that lets users run applications through the company's website, a step that could help shape China's fledgling apps-store sector.