According to InfoWorld, “

[o]ver the past two years virus writers have increasingly targeted their malicious programs to users in different regions of the globe, creating programs that are specially designed to infect users in countries like Japan, Brazil, China or Germany.  Take the taunting Trojan, which goes after users of the Winny file-sharing program. (Winny creator Isamu Kaneko was convicted of abetting copyright violations in late 2006) Winny is file-sharing software that is incredibly popular in Japan, but virtually unknown outside of the region. Still, it’s been the target of several malware programs, according to Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager for McAfee Avert Labs.  ‘Japan has some really unique factors that we just don’t see anywhere else,’ he said.  ‘There are a couple of malware writers in Japan who don’t like people who illegally share content.’  Previously, attackers would write programs that would affect the largest possible number of users, but that’s no longer necessarily the case, Marcus said.  ‘What we’ve noticed over the last couple of years is that a growing amount of malware is localized.’  McAfee believes that there are a few reasons behind this shift. For one thing, writers no longer want the worldwide attention and law enforcement action that was garnered by outbreaks such as Sasser and Netsky.  And with users becoming more wary, hackers have to be crafty with their attacks — creating more targeted malware that victims are unlikely to have seen before.”

PCWorld.com reports that “[a] high-profile figure in Sun Microsystems’ OpenSolaris community has quit, accusing Sun of retaining too much control over the open-source counterpart to its Solaris operating system.  Roy Fielding, co-founder of the Apache HTTP Server Project and a key contributor to the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), announced his resignation last week in a message on the community’s discussion forum.”

The Wall Street Journal points out that “Apple Inc. and longtime partner Adobe Systems Inc. are at a flash point over the iPhone.  Since its debut in June, the iPhone’s mobile Web browser has been off-limits to nearly all videos delivered over the Internet. That is because the browser isn’t compatible with Flash Player, an Adobe-made media player used to view Internet videos.  Videos for the iPhone have to be specially formatted to a file type that Apple endorses. Google Inc.’s YouTube is the only video provider now doing this, and only a handful of videos are available.  Adobe’s patience appears to be wearing thin.  ‘No one aside from [Apple Chief Executive] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming,’ Ryan Stewart, Adobe’s chief spokesman for its Internet-based applications, wrote on his blog last week.  ‘Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything.’  The iPhone’s history is already marked by Apple’s demands scaring off would-be partners, including Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, and China Mobile Ltd. Now it appears the same tactics are straining Apple’s relationship with Adobe.”

The Sidney Morning Herald writes that “[i]n a move that could shake up control of the $1.4 billion online advertising sector, Google’s acquisition target, DoubleClick, confirmed yesterday that it planned to launch an eBay-style auction system in Australia to sell online adverting space.  The commercial networks have periodically toyed with the idea of setting up their own auction platforms in the $3.7 billion TV sector but have considered the structural change too dramatic for the industry.  […]  In the US, DoubleClick has 70 publishers already on its trading system, including Dow Jones Online, Hearst, US News and World Wrestling Entertainment. Anecdotal evidence from North America suggests trading exchanges have raised yields for online publishers.”

The BBC has an interesting article today on the “so-called landrush for the latest domain name suffix – .asia.”