Global News Update: Thursday, November 27, 2008

In today's podcast: Mumbai terrorist attacks don't deter tech multinationals; UK bans 'misleading' Apple ad for iPhone 3G; and used PCs in demand for Windows XP.

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Terrorist attacks late Wednesday in Mumbai are unlikely to make multinational technology companies change their strategies for India. The attack in Mumbai is the latest in a string of terrorist attacks across the country, including a number of attacks earlier in Mumbai. The attacks late Wednesday by terrorists using guns and grenades in Mumbai did however appear different than previous ones, because it targeted top five-star hotels in Mumbai's business district. About 100 are feared dead in the shootouts, which still continue as police battle the armed terrorists. Some foreign residents at the hotel are being held hostage by the terrorists. Vidya Natampally, director of strategy at Microsoft Research India, said the terrorist attacks will not change Microsoft Research's plans in India.

The U.K.'s advertising regulator banned a video advertisement for Apple's 3G iPhone, saying Wednesday that the ad exaggerates the phone's speed and is misleading. The Advertising Standards Authority received 17 complaints about the advertisement, which shows a person whizzing through tasks such as opening a news page in a browser, using Google Maps and downloading a file. All of the tasks "had waiting times of only a fraction of a second," the ASAsaid in a statement. A voice over says no less than five times that the 3G iPhone is "really fast." In response, Apple told the ASA that the claim is a comparison between the 3G and 2G iPhone models, and that users would understand that performance could vary.

Some used PCs are being purchased not for the hardware but because people want to get their hands on a copy of Windows XP. A lot of PCs have been disposed of because Microsoft's Windows Vista OS has created a demand for PCs with greater hardware capabilities, according to a study released by Gartner on Tuesday. In 2007, about 197 million PCs were discarded, of which 44 percent were put up for sale secondhand. Many consumers and businesses prefer used PCs with Windows XP because they still have older copies of software programs that often don't run properly on new PCs running Vista. Many businesses have been slow at adopting Windows Vista because of uncertainty surrounding whether it would work well with existing software. Notably, Intel said earlier this year that XP will be the dominant OS for most of its employees for the foreseeable future.

A Missouri woman accused of creating a fake MySpace account to torment a girl who later committed suicide has been convicted on three misdemeanor counts but acquitted of felony charges. A jury in the Los Angeles court convicted Lori Drew on three counts of illegally accessing a computer system by creating a MySpace account under an assumed name. She could be sentenced to as much as a year in prison and a US$100,000 fine for each of the three counts. After a trial of about a week and nearly a day of deliberations, the jury acquitted Drew on similar charges at a felony level, which could have brought sentences of five years each.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.