Ray Ozzie, chief software architect of Microsoft and proponent of cloud computing, has resigned unexpectedly.
Mr Ozzie was a top member of the company's management, having taken over the software role from Bill Gates.
Chief executive Steve Ballmer announced his colleague's departure in an email to company staff.
He said Mr Ozzie would remain with Microsoft during a transitional period, and that the company was not looking for anyone to replace him.
Microsoft shares dropped 2.2% in after-hours trading on the news.
Unknown direction
"With our progress in services and the cloud now full speed ahead in all aspects of our business, Ray and I are announcing today Ray's intention to step down from his role as chief software architect," said Mr Ballmer in his email.
He added that Mr Ozzie would focus on "the broader area of entertainment, where Microsoft has many ongoing investments".
Nonetheless, his resignation may cast some doubt over the technological direction Microsoft will take next.
Mr Ozzie's decision to step down also follows a number of other senior departures at the company.
Business head Stephen Elop left in September to head up Nokia, while entertainment and devices head Robbie Bach is also planning to leave.
Cloud computing
Mr Ozzie joined the firm in 2005 as chief technology officer after his own company was bought out by Microsoft.
A year after his arrival, he successfully pushed the software leviathan towards tackling the challenge of the internet, by adopting "cloud computing" technology.
Microsoft traditionally focused on desktop computers, but Mr Ozzie convinced management that in the future, processing power and functionality would be provided remotely via the web.
Previously, he also designed the Lotus Notes system, which allows groups to share documents and emails.
Trading on the Nasdaq exchange closed just before the results were announced, with Apple's shares at $318.30, up more than 50% since March.
iPads flat
The after-hours selloff may also have been influenced by underwhelming sales of Apple's new tablet computer - the iPad, which came it at just 4.2 million.
That represents a rise of just 28% on the previous quarter, which was when the company first launched the new product.
However, Apple can take solace that iPhone sales were not hit by bad publicity over antenna problems with the newly-launched iPhone 4.
The firm sold 14.1 million of its smart phones in the quarter.
Total revenues for the quarter rose 67% to $20.3bn, topping already high expectations by $1bn, thanks largely to the strong iPhone sales.
Sales of its Macintosh computers were up 27% on a year ago, while those of its iPod were down 11% - partly because the latter has been superseded by the iPhone.
The company revised its revenues forecast for the current quarter up to $23bn.
Repeated viewing of violent scenes in films, television or video games could make teenagers behave more aggressively, US research suggests.
The National Institutes of Health study of 22 boys aged 14 to 17 found that showing dozens of violent clips appeared to blunt brain responses.
Dr Jordan Grafman said it might make aggression feel more "acceptable".
However, a UK expert said the reasons behind violence were too complex to be explained by laboratory research.
The effect of violent imagery on young people has been debated from the early days of television, and, more recently, that debate has expanded to include video games.
Various studies have suggested that exposure appears to have an effect on the way that the brain processes emotional responses, yet it is unclear whether this can have a direct impact on behaviour.
The US study, published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, involved 60 violent scenes from videos being collated, mostly involving street brawling and fist fights.
The suggestion is that, over a period of time, people can develop a kind of tolerance to these images - but another word for that is just boredom"
End QuoteProfessor David BuckinghamDirector of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media
The violence was ranked "low", "mild" or "moderate", and there were no "extreme" scenes.
The response of the boys as they watched the clips was measured in a number of ways.
They were asked to rate whether they thought each clip was more or less aggressive than the one which preceded it, and were brain scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows in real time which areas of the brain are active.
In addition, electrodes attached to the fingers detected increasing sweat - a sign of an emotional response.
The longer the boys watched videos, particularly the mild or moderate ones, the less they responded to the violence within them.
In particular, an area of the brain known as the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, thought to be involved in emotional processing, showed less activity to each clip as time went on.
'Social problem'
Dr Grafman said: "Exposure to the most violent videos inhibits emotional reactions to similar aggressive videos over time and implies that normal adolescents will feel fewer emotions over time as they are exposed to similar videos."
He said that this could actually produce more violent reactions from the teenager.
"The implications of this include the idea that continued exposure to violent videos will make an adolescent less sensitive to violence, more accepting of violence, and more likely to commit aggressive acts since the emotional component associated with aggression is reduced and normally acts as a brake on aggressive behaviour."
However, another academic said it was almost impossible to explain violence in these terms.
Professor David Buckingham, the director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, said that violence was a "social problem" with many contributing factors, not simply a matter of looking at how the brain worked.
"The suggestion is that, over a period of time, people can develop a kind of tolerance to these images - but another word for that is just boredom.
"This debate has been going on since before we were all born. In the 19th Century people were panicking about the effect of 'Penny Dreadfuls'.
"If we are truly interested in violence and aggression, rather than blaming the media for everything wrong in the world, we need to look at what motivates it in real life."
The UK is slowly climbing up the broadband world rankings, but is still not "ready for tomorrow," according to a global study of net services.
The annual report, commissioned by network giant Cisco, looks at how well countries are doing in terms of both quality and penetration of net services.
The UK is now ranked 18th out of 72 countries, up from 25th place last year.
Quality, for the purposes of the study, encompasses the speed of the connection and the latency - the amount of time it takes data to arrive at a machine.
It put 14countries in the elite category of being ready for the "applications of tomorrow", including the obvious; Korea, Japan and Sweden and the less obvious; Latvia, Bulgaria and Portugal.
In 2008, when the first study was commissioned, only one country - Japan - was judged ready for tomorrow.
The applications ascribed to tomorrow's internet include high definition internet TV and high-quality video communications.
The report found that such applications would require an average download speed of 11Mbps and an upload speed of 5Mbps.
The average global upload speed currently is just 1.7Mbps.
In this year's report the UK is categorised as "comfortably enjoying today's applications", alongside 19 others including the USA, France, Canada, Greece and Poland.
A further 19 countries - including Vietnam, Egypt, China and India, are characterised as being "below today's application threshold" while five countries - Algeria, Peru, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola - are viewed as having only the most basic of services.
The report finds that average broadband speeds in the UK now stand at 6.4Mbps (megabits per second), which is more than double that in 2008, when the first report was compiled.
It is also above the global average of 5.9Mbps.
"The UK is not on average ready for tomorrow but there has been significant improvements in the last two years," said Fernando Gil de Bernabe, a senior director at Cisco.
Mr de Bernabe said the UK was likely to experience a "step-change" in its broadband footprint over the next 12 months, because of increased fibre optic roll-outs from BT and extensions of Virgin Media's cable network.
"Where similar fibre roll-outs have happened the download speeds improved by 50 or 60% in just one year," he said.
Those countries which are categorised as ready for tomorrow in the report have one thing in common, according to Mr de Bernabe.
"There is a clear digital strategy. These countries have placed a bet on broadband and think it will have the same impact on their economies as the infrastructures of the past. They want a society that is based on knowledge," he said.
The UK government has ambitions to be the best broadband economy in Europe by 2015, although it has so far only committed to the rollout of basic 2Mbps broadband by that date.
That decision could mean the UK falls foul of European legislation. The European Union wants member states to provide citizens with a minimum of 30Mbps broadband by 2020, with all nations offering basic broadband - generally regarded as 2Mbps - for all by 2013.
Mr de Bernabe said the UK needed to put its pledge into practise.
"What I hear repeatedly is the question about who is going to pay for it. The leadership countries aren't asking those questions," he said.
Home Secretary Theresa May: International terrorism and cyber attacks are key threats
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Attacks on computer networks are among the biggest threats to the UK, Theresa May has said ahead of the publication of a new National Security Strategy.
Cyber terrorism was a "new and growing" danger, the home secretary said.
The BBC has learned there will be new money to bolster cyber security, focused on protecting critical infrastructure and defence assets.
The strategy will form the background for Tuesday's Strategic Defence Review, with defence cuts of 8% expected.
The National Security Council, set up by David Cameron in May, is publishing an updated approach to national security which identifies 16 threats to the UK.
The most serious - which they are calling "Tier 1" - comprises acts of international terrorism, hostile computer attacks on UK cyberspace, a major accident or natural hazard such as a flu pandemic, or an international military crisis between states that draws in the UK and its allies.
Intelligence priority
Speaking ahead of the strategy's launch in the Commons on Monday afternoon, Mrs May said she was not prepared to rank these in order of gravity but acknowledged they were of a "different nature" to other potential threats.
On terrorism, she said the threat level to the UK had been at severe - which means an attack is likely - for "some time".
"We are facing a very serious threat from international terrorism... we must all be vigilant," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Rather than focusing on different areas in isolation, she said the security strategy had looked at the overall picture "in the round" and as part of the exercise, officials had identified attacks on government and business IT systems as as a "new and growing threat".
The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said ministers were likely to announce �500m of new money to bolster cyber security, amid evidence that hundreds of malicious e-mails were already being aimed at government computer networks each month.
This would combat concerns that terrorist groups might be able to hack into critical infrastructure such as air traffic control networks and over cases of "cyber espionage" where rogue groups or even foreign states seek to break into computer systems to obtain top secret information.
There would also be extra protection for online business transactions from fraud and theft.
Ahead of Wednesday's Spending Review, Mrs May said the Home Office had to "play its part" in cutting spending to deal with the deficit, stressing that the police could make savings without hitting officers on the beat by cutting bureaucracy and increased collaboration between forces.
While welcoming efforts to tackle cyber attacks, Labour - which developed the first national security strategy in 2008 - said the plan offered little new.
"The government seem to be producing a reheated security strategy to provide cover for a rushed defence review rather that producing a renewed and careful consideration of the UK's defence and security priorities," said shadow foreign secretary Yvette Cooper.
'Re-do' defence?
Two days away from the spending review, Defence Secretary Liam Fox has said personnel numbers in the armed forces will "fall a bit" in future but there would be no weakening of the UK's strategic position.
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Bill Gates: ''People depend on the reliability of the internet''
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The Treasury had wanted cuts of between 10% and 20% to the Ministry of Defence's budget, but it is understood that Mr Fox has negotiated this down to 8%.
The Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, who is chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee, said it was difficult to see how an effective National Security Strategy could be developed against the backdrop of cuts.
"We seem to be operating under the imperative of deficit reduction," he said.
"But, there's very little in what's being done now that reflects deep and sustained analysis about what sort of country we want to be in 10 or 20 years time."
In a new report, the cross-party committee said there was a lack of strategic thinking at the heart of government over security, defence and foreign policy and a tendency to "muddle through" rather than be forward thinking.
"And the SDSR [strategic defence and security review] is a case in point because the Ministry of Defence should have done the work, saying 'look, if we are going to have to live within a much smaller envelope, how do we completely re-do the way we do defence?'.
"Instead it's just been about 'what do we have to cut? What do we hang on to and what do we cut?'."
Payload participants are likely to include a novel instrument to measure the state of the sea, another to track ships from orbit, and even one to destroy TDS at the end of its life.
The latter is a "sail" that would be deployed from the satellite to force it out of the sky to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Efficient technologies to retire defunct spacecraft are expected to have big markets in the future.
Assuming that all goes well, a further �2,730,000 will be released to move the project into the build and test phase.
"One of our key philosophies is to help companies overcome barriers to market," said the TSB's Michael Lawrence.
"There are a number of British-based space companies out there that have great technology but they need to demonstrate it in orbit. Hopefully, this initiative will help them prove the technology works and that will open up commercial markets for them," he told BBC News.
Reflected GPS signals
TechDemoSat will have a challenging timetable. SSTL wants to be able to ship the satellite to the launch pad in 18 months' time.
All the companies and academic institutions hoping to fly payloads must pay their own costs.
The participants, while still under final selection, are expected to include Com Dev Europe, SSTL, Selex Galileo, Qinetiq, Aero Sekur, RAL Space, Oxford University, University of Surrey, Leicester University, MSSL and the Langton Star Centre (which will be providing a UK schools experiment).
One of the biggest proposed payloads at 7.5kg is SSTL's own - an Earth observation instrument designed to measure the state of the ocean.
"It makes use of the fact that there are a lot of GPS signals coming down from space and these get reflected off the ocean's surface. The instrument can intercept them to infer things about the sea state. So depending on whether the water is choppy or smooth, you get a different type of return signal," explained Doug Liddle, SSTL's head of science.
One of the smallest payloads, weighing just 750g, is being provided by Selex Galileo. This is a sugar-cube-sized gyroscope that can sense the orientation of the spacecraft.
Aero Sekur is behind the space sail. It takes the form of a deployable membrane. Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull TDS out of the sky much faster than would normally be the case - certainly, within the international 25-year-guideline recommended for redundant space hardware.
It is hoped the TechDemoSat project can emulate the Mosaic (Micro Satellite Applications in Collaboration) programme of a decade ago.
Then, �11m of public investment in spacecraft projects led by SSTL ultimately resulted in the company winning almost �300m in export business.
Launch funds
It is just the sort of initiative recommended by the recent Space Innovation and Growth Strategy (Space-IGS) which set out a 20-year plan to maximise the potential of the UK's highly successful space sector.
There are more payload ideas in British industry and academia than can be accommodated on the demonstrator, and Michael Lawrence said it was possible the opportunity could be repeated in the future.
"We'll need to see how this one works - if it delivers to time, to budget," he said. "There will be many factors to consider, but if this goes the way we want it to then I would hope there will be a TechDemoSat-2."
One matter which still needs to be resolved is how TDS-1 gets into orbit.
With the TSB/SEEDA funding and the payload participants carrying their own costs, there is sufficient cash to get the satellite built - but not launched.
The cost of a ride to space for a 150kg spacecraft like TDS can be about �2.5m if the spacecraft shares the rocket with a group of other satellites. This is an issue the UK Space Agency will have to address in due course.
A major drive to get more people to use the internet has started, with the aim of persuading reluctant users that the web can save them money and time.
The BBC will be involved in the Get Online campaign, which will see some celebrities going online for the first time.
More than nine million Britons have never used the internet, and they tend to be more elderly and less well-off.
Events promoting web use will take place across the UK.
Web training
BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones says the campaign will hammer home a simple message, that the internet can save you money.
Research by UK Online Centres, which was set up by the government to provide public access to computers, found that a third of new internet users reckoned they had already saved more than �100 by being online.
Among the events, companies including Google and McDonalds will descend on Bridlington in Yorkshire to offer free web training in a town where one in four people are not online.
BBC programmes will also take part, with Sir Terry Wogan acting as a web ambassador and a character in Radio 4's The Archers having their first computer lesson.
15 October 2010Last updated at 06:37 ETBy Jason PalmerScience and technology reporter, BBC News
Technology may stretch the capacity of the fibre optic cables used to carry data sooner than has long been thought, according to a report in Science.
The capacity limit has until recently been in the preparation of the light signals that pass through the cables.
But the report reviews recent laboratory results showing data rates that are more than half the ultimate limit of fibre optic cables.
It calls for urgent research to develop higher-bandwidth cables.
A number of innovations have in the past massively increased the data capacity of optical fibres.
The first change improved the transmission of the fibres, so that optical signals did not simply get absorbed as they passed through.
This resulted in fibres with data rates hundreds of times higher and theoretical capacities thousands of times higher than that.
Those improved fibres have become standard and now lie underground and undersea all over the globe; the limitation since then has been in the lasers and electronics that prepare and then translate the optical signals on either side of these "light pipes".
Now, David Richardson of the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre says in the Science report that the best data rates measured in laboratory settings challenge the perceived notion that fibres are limitless conduits for data.
We may all increasingly need to get used to the idea that bandwidth - just like water and energy - is a valuable commodity to be used wisely"
End QuoteDavid RichardsonUniversity of Southampton
"The thought that the current fibre technology has infinite capacity is not true - we are beginning to hit the fundamental limits of the current technology," he told BBC News.
"We need to be looking at the next big breakthrough to allow us to continue to scale as we have traditionally done."
He said there are more increases to be had, for instance, in the way the light signals are encoded, but that "radical" gains will likely come from changes in the fibres themselves.
"If you gain a factor of two in bandwidth by developing a whole new amplifier technology, that's perhaps two or three years of capacity growth. To get radical changes - to get factors of 100 or 1000 - it's going to be extremely demanding.
"It's likely we're going to have to go right back to the fundamentals of the optics, the actual light pipes. And if you want to develop the next generation of cable, you want to be doing that 10 years in advance, not for tomorrow."
Market forces
Of course, the point at which the data rates required by internet users outstrip capacity depends only on how fast demand rises - a notoriously difficult figure to predict, as Geoff Bennett of telecoms firm Infinera points out.
"A small change in growth rate makes a big difference to the final numbers," he told BBC News.
"But whichever way it goes, it will be driven by market forces. Today, video is the only application we know that is stressing internet capacity. If people want YouTube or iPlayer video in 3D, '4k' high-definition, then maybe they'll have to pay more for it. And that will limit demand; that's how every other market works."
For his part, Dr Richardson feels that behavioural changes, as much as market forces, could easily push the limitations out later.
"Changes in the way we use the internet may well deal with it very straightforwardly," he said.
Or, as he wrote in the Science paper: "We may all increasingly need to get used to the idea that bandwidth - just like water and energy - is a valuable commodity to be used wisely."
French people aged 12-25 are to be encouraged to buy music via a state-subsidised scheme.
The plan attempts to get young people into the habit of buying music rather than stealing it by file-sharing.
The scheme will revolve around pre-paid cards that have a face value of 50 euros (�43) but which will only cost 25 euros when bought.
The French government will pay the other half of the cost when a card is used to buy music on a download site.
The French government estimates that the two-year scheme will cost it about 25 million euros (�22m) if it reaches its target of selling one million cards. Consumers will be limited to one card each per year.
Restrictions will also apply to music download sites that sign up to accept the cards. They will be asked to cut the price of downloads, extend subscription periods and contribute towards the marketing campaign for the cards.
Individual sites will only be allowed to receive a maximum of 5m euros from the scheme.
The European Commission has approved the French plan saying it would not be anti-competitive.
"The scheme will contribute to preserving pluralism and cultural diversity in the online music industry," said EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia in a statement.
France has been among the nations taking the most extreme actions against those suspected of sharing music illegally.
It has enacted the so-called Hadopi law which will result in suspension of net access for those who ignore three warnings about illegally sharing copyrighted material.
Not every French ISP is complying with the law. Free has said it will not be sending out letters that tell people they have been spotted illegally sharing files.
14 October 2010Last updated at 19:00 ETBy Daniel EmeryTechnology reporter, BBC News
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Medal of Honor's prequel book author Chris Ryan on the game's realism
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The video game Medal of Honor (MoH) has gone on sale despite calls by the UK defence secretary to ban it.
The game follows the exploits of Special Forces troops battling insurgents in Afghanistan in 2002.
In August, Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox called for the game to be banned after it emerged that users could fight as The Taliban.
Its developer EA said the game was meant to be realistic, but eventually renamed The Taliban "The Opposition".
This edition, the latest in EA's long running series of games bearing the MoH title, has dispensed with its World War II theme and opted to recreate modern combat in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.
But with 150,000 American, British and Allied troops fighting in Afghanistan, many felt taking on the role of the Taliban was a step too far.
Dr Fox described the game as "un-British" and said it was "shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers".
The Canadian and Danish Defence Ministers also criticised the game.
EA weathered the storm for a few weeks, but in early October the firm bowed to pressure and took the term "Taliban" out of the multiplayer option.
Despite the change, the game is still banned from sale on military bases, although troops can purchase it elsewhere and play it on station.
'Ploy'
Johnny Minkley, a journalist with video gaming website Eurogamer, told BBC News that he thought EA's decision to allow users to play as the Taliban was a marketing ploy.
"I don't think EA was that naive," he said.
"They knew that this would be controversial, but they needed to do everything to get attention, especially when they are going up against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - the biggest brand in the world."
The game itself has received mostly positive reviews, scoring an average of 75% according to the review aggregator site Metacritic. Computer and Video Games Magazine described it as "an accomplished, confident online shooter".
Mr Minkley agreed, saying the developers had done "a really good job" but added that the product was some way from being perfect.
"The campaign stands up well and it is a competent and exciting first person shooter.
"But I do have a problem with it, and that is that the single player mode is very short.
"A competent gamer could get through the entire game in under five hours."
Logging on
In the 1990s, single player games usually lasted for days, if not weeks. However, that changed with the 2001 release of Max Payne, which could be completed in under 12 hours.
"This is an ever growing trend - we saw it with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - of having an exciting, but short, single player game," said Mr Minkley.
"Developers claim that the multi-player aspect - where players compete on line - extends the life of the game, but the fact remains many people cannot or do not want to play online," he added.
US developer Activision's last modern combat shooter - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - grossed over $1bn in sales, and the follow on title Call of Duty: Black Ops, due for release on 9 November this year, is expected to do as well, if not better.
EA's decision to switch the Medal of Honor theme from the Second World War to a modern day conflict has prompted some critics to accuse the US firm of imitation.
Mr Minkley agreed, but said the decision was a financial one and Medal of Honor was not a pale imitation.
"What they've tried to do is focus on the confusion and uncertainty of western forces in Afghanistan and it feels different from a Hollywood style shooter like Call of Duty.
"You also have to bear in mind there is a degree of WWII fatigue and, ultimately, games developers are there to make money," he said.
"This is a commercial decision to follow the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but - other than The Taliban issue - is far less deliberately proactive than Call of Duty."
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