Microsoft has renewed its drive towards the elimination of illegal copies of Windows Vista by issuing another automatic update. The update will scan a user’s system for the presence of any activation hacks and issue an alert containing a link to the legal activation site of Windows Vista.

The world’s scammers and fraudsters have gravitated to the Internet, and it’s very easy to get caught out. To help protect consumers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has released a very informative little black book of scams to help identify scams and suggest tips on avoiding them. Here are the top ten online swindles, rorts and rip-offs and how you can avoid them.

The days of free online Nintendo DS games may soon be over. Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama announced during the Game Developers Conference last week, that some Nintendo games which were previously played for free over Nintendo’s global wi-fi connection service will soon be offered on a pay and play basis.

Judging from the recent events in the lead up to the much anticipated release of Windows Vista 1 SP update, it looks like Microsoft will have major problems come the official release in March. Right after a prerequisite servicing stack was halted from automatic distribution, followed by another problem where Microsoft released a list of programs that would pose a problem with Vista SP1, here comes another glitch which is even bigger than the two previous issues.

A well known hacker who has been the arch-enemy of the music and film industry ever since he developed software that broke the digital copy protection of Hollywood films has now turned his attention to iTunes. This time, hacker Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD John, has developed doubleTwist, software that enables iTunes users to copy music and video bought from iTunes playable to other media players.

Following recently reported problems with the Windows Vista SP1 prerequisite updates, Microsoft is now releasing a list of programs that would pose compatibility problems with Vista SP1.These programs would either be blocked from starting, would not run after the installation, or would have a loss of functionality after the installation.

Microsoft stopped the automatic distribution of the Vista SP1 update prerequisite KB937287 after receiving complaints from users who experienced problems during the update. The KB937287 servicing stack update is one of the prerequisites for the upcoming Vista SP1 upgrade which is due for official release by March.