Week in review: Microsoft's memos

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highlighting concerns that remain over record labels' increasingly ambitious attempts to control the ways consumers can use purchased music.

Meanwhile, a Los Angeles court temporarily shut down an operation charged by the Federal Trade Commission with bundling spyware with downloads that allegedly hit 600 blog sites. The district court issued a temporary restraining order against Enternet Media and three of its officers. Federal regulators allege that Enternet distributed spyware through a wide net of affiliates, largely comprising Webmasters who would receive payments from Enternet.

The Webmasters would place installation boxes supplied by Enternet on their sites. These boxes purported to offer free downloads of music, cell phone ring tones or photographs, the agency alleged. When a visitor clicked on an installation box, Enternet's spyware would be loaded onto the PC alongside the download without the owner's knowledge, the FTC charged in its complaint.

In an unusual twist in the spyware debate, a maker of surveillance software is using a product download agreement to attempt to bar detection by anti-spyware tools, raising questions about the legal scope of such agreements. RetroCoder wants Sunbelt, maker of CounterSpy, to stop flagging its SpyMon software as spyware. RetroCoder charges that Sunbelt has violated the terms of the copyright agreement contained in its software, which specifically excludes anti-spyware research.

The matter poses yet another challenge for anti-spyware companies, which often face complaints from makers of software that is detected as a threat by their tools. This particular challenge, however, shouldn't be hard to overcome, legal experts said.

What exactly is "Inside" again?
Apple Computer, which is in the process of switching to computers based on omnipresent Intel processors, has filed a patent application describing a method for securely running Mac OS X on specific hardware. In its application for a patent to cover a "system and method for creating tamper-resistant code," Apple describes ways of ensuring that code can be limited to specific hardware, even in a world in which operating systems can be run simultaneously, in so-called virtual machines.

In its application, Apple describes a means of securing code using either a specific hardware address or read-only memory (ROM) serial number. Apple also talks about securing the code while interchanging information among multiple operating systems. Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are called out specifically in the filing.

Apple also applied for a trademark for Rosetta, the translation technology that will act as a bridge as Apple moves to Intel chips beginning next year. Apple is encouraging developers to create Intel-compatible versions of their products, but it has also announced plans to offer Rosetta, a built-in emulation software that will allow much of the software written for PowerPC-based Macs to run on the upcoming Intel machines.

Apple has not pinned an exact date on the arrival of the first Intel machines, saying only that they should be on the market by June. Some analysts have said that the first machines could come as early as January's Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Even with all the advance planning that companies do, sometimes costly problems arise after a product has shipped. For example, PC motherboards contain capacitors, an inexpensive little component that can be a costly headache for manufacturers when a whole bunch of them go bad.

At issue are faulty capacitors on motherboards that store power and regulate voltage. Defective capacitors have been found to bulge, pop, leak and crust over, often causing video failure and periodic system shutdowns.

Last week, Dell announced it was going to take a $300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations.

But Dell isn't the only manufacturer suffering. In fact, PCs from Hewlett-Packard, Apple and other PC makers using particular Intel motherboards have faced similar issues, according to the companies, contractors and several online bulletin boards.

The tunes they are a changin'
Technology is radically changing the landscape of the music world. Sometimes the changes happen right before our ears.

File-swapping company Grokster agreed to stop distributing its peer-to-peer software following a $50 million legal settlement with Hollywood studios and record labels. Along with co-defendant StreamCast Networks, Grokster had been accused