Most people owning a PC are familiar with Microsoft's patching process - it's easy and it's there. For a lot of them, it also gives the impression that Microsoft's products are chock-full of flaws. But, according to Stefan Frei, Research Analyst Director with Secunia, it's not the vulnerabilities in Microsoft's products we should worry about, but those in third-party software. 55 percent of the end-point users have more than 66 programs from more than 22 vendors installed on their systems. Of the top 50 software used, 26 are developed by Microsoft, and the remaining 24 by 14 other vendors.

According to BBC News Microsoft is investigating a problem with Windows Phone 7 phones sending and receiving "phantom" data. "We are investigating this issue to determine the root cause and will update with information and guidance as it becomes available," said a Microsoft spokesperson.

InfoWorld has released its list of the top 20 IT tools of 2010, based on extensive testing from its Test Center analysts. From IDEs, to virtualized desktop infrastructure kits, to parallel-processing CPUs, to mobile platforms, and workstations, 2010's best hardware and software products belie a distinctive shift in IT, one in which conflicting pulls on computing platforms are "drawing them to the far ends of the spectrum: more applications and services being delivered from virtual servers and large clouds, while on the other end, ever-smaller client endpoints taking a larger role in business and in the daily lives of consumers. Systems near the midpoint - workstations, desktops, and laptops - are becoming page two news, whereas they used to represent the key cradles of innovation."

Well, it would appear that Sony isn't particularly pleased with the fact that their console has been hacked into oblivion. It has officially filed suit against the fail0verflow hacker group and Geohot, after filing a temporary restraining order yesterday to try and remove the jailbreak information from the web (how cute).

The WebM project - a VP8 video stream and a Vorbis audio stream wrapped in a Matroska container re-branded as a WebM container - launched by Google, openly supported by every major chip maker, is going to be the major codec for Google's Chrome web browser. Yes, Google is dropping H264 support from the Chrome web browser.

Remember that guy who got Meego to run on his HTC HD2 ? Well, he's at it again, now booting Meego on a Nexus S. He also ran Ubuntu on it shortly thereafter.

While everybody outside of the US has been able to mix and match iPhone and wireless operator, the iPhone was still tied to a single carrier in the US. Today, Verizon and Apple announced the much-hyped Verizon iPhone 4. While the rest of the world collectively yawns, this is good news for American consumers, since there will be more competition, and thus, more choice. Edit: Eh, the other way around. First choice, then competition.

"A sampling of only 22 brands revealed that websites offering pirated digital content and counterfeit goods generate more than 53 billion visits per year, according to a study released today by MarkMonitor. It is estimated that the annual worldwide economic impact of online piracy and counterfeiting reaches $200 billion. Among the study's findings were that 67 percent of sites suspected of hosting pirated content and 73 percent of sites categorized as 'counterfeit' were hosted in North America or Western Europe."

"Between slagging each other off with cartoons and taking each other to court over chipset licenses, there's been no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel over the past few years - but it looks like the war is over. The two companies just announced a new six-year cross-licensing deal that will see Intel paying NVIDIA a total of $1.5b over the next five years for access to NVIDIA's technology, while also giving NVIDIA a license to some of Intel's patents. The two companies have also agreed to drop all pending litigation, because you know, they're now friends who just exchanged a billion and half dollars."

From scent-replication devices to miniature candy, CES had its share of unexpected announcements. InfoWorld's Ted Samson wraps up the more offbeat innovations of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including keyless keyboards, Trojan's Vibrating Twister, dynamic credit cards, and the smallest Reese's peanut butter cups ever.

AMD CEO, president and director Dirk Meyer has resigned, effective immediately. Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert has been appointed as interim CEO. A search for a permanent replacement is underway. In other news, Microsoft's Bob Muglia, head of the Server and Tools business, is also leaving sometime over summer, and Microsoft is also trying to find a replacement.

Now that the Mac App Store has been snuck installed onto your machine alongside Mac OS X 10.6.6, you might be wondering - is there some way to remove that monstrosity of an application from my Mac? While it's not officially supported, it does seem like Apple has taken this scenario into account.

"The most active day for threat-related traffic worldwide is Tuesday, with Monday a close second, according to a report by SonicWALL. This pattern holds true for the U.S., China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, and several European countries. The most active time for threat-related traffic in the United States is between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., Pacific Time. China and Taiwan top the list as the most heavily hit countries for worldwide threat-related traffic. Taiwan, New Zealand and South Africa are the countries most heavily hit with malware."

"While the availability of power in certain regions of the world cannot be solved by the OLPC, it can improve upon the power use of the XO Laptop. And with v1.75 they have managed to half that power use. The reason this has been made possible is the move to use an ARM rather than an x86 processor. So now rather than drawing 4 watts of power, the XO-1.75 draws 2 watts. The new chip being used is a 1GHz Armada 610 from Marvell." Update : Here are some clarifications regarding the use of ARM chips and Linux at OLPC.