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The Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Company of China has alleged the Apple iPad design that CEO Steve Jobs triumphantly unveiled last week is based on its own P88 tablet and is threatening Apple with an injunction.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo has reported that the Chinese company’s president, Xialong Wu, said that if Apple releases the iPad in March it will report the company and seek an injunction because of the effect the device will have on its sales.

Wu said the P88 is not based on the design of the smaller iPod touch and said the P88 has entirely different functions.

Apple has refused to comment on the allegations. But could such a legal action succeed?

Wu said he presented the P88 at the International Electronics Fair in Berlin six months ago.

The P88 uses a resistive touchscreen, not the multi-touch screen of the Apple iPad and uses a 250GB hard drive compared to the iPad’s flash memory.

Wu has admitted he would find it difficult to sue Apple in the United States but has threatened that if the iPad enters China he will go to town on Apple.

But will he take them down to Chinatown? We'll have to wait and see

Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console has been hacked by George Hotz, or 'Geohot', the guy who first hacked the iPhone 3Gs.

While Hotz actually spent five weeks cracking the PS3 with "very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not-so-simple software", he noted that it had never been done in the three years plus that the console had been on the market.

"3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system," he blogged.

However, the PS3 hack is not like the iPhone one, where Hotz provided a jail-breaking programme called Blackra1n, that unlocked the iPhone in less than 30 seconds. The information he will release on the hacked PS3 is for research purposes only, he says.

Hotz is not yet ready to divulge his secrets and for now has provided no information on how he plans to mod the hacked PS3: "As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet."

William Shatner is in consideration to return in the next Star Trek film as an aged James T. Kirk.

Although Shatner's Kirk met his end in Star Trek: Generations (1994), with the new alternate continuum created in the previous film the writers now see an good opportunity to resurrect Kirk.

According to J.J. Abrams, the time travel-alternate reality concept used in the previous film was a deliberate ploy to enable a reboot for new films: "The idea, now that we are in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the past - or come up with brand-new ones - to make potential stories."

The writers currently feel that the Borg are the most likely candidate to be the antagonists for this film, drawing parallels with the Star Wars theme of "man/machine" immortalized by Darth Vader; they feel it would be interesting to get the Borg, who mechanized their organic bodies but left them without any personality, to rediscover their spirit just as Vader did.

It is also chronological to bring in the Borg from The Next Generation after the Romulans from the original Star Trek.

Interestingly, the writers considered using the "Planet X" storyline, where the Enterprise crew encounter and team up with the X-Men to save the universe!

However, this was ultimately vetoed in view of rights issues, keeping the focus solely Trek-oriented, and the fact that casting Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier instead of Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard would be too much of an outrage among Trek fans

Ivan Reitman is rumoured to be working on Ghostbusters 3 in 3D.

The third Ghostbusters film is to arrive in theaters "with the added benefit of stereoscopic 3D". Stereoscopic cameras record an image to give it the illusion of depth, reports Marketsaw.

Reitman also said that the film's script has been completed and a second draft is currently in the works.

Filming is expected to begin in 2011.

Thanks to the German government's warning to IE users to dump the browser due to the recently discovered vulnerability, Firefox has seen a huge increase in downloads.

According to Ken Kovash, Mozilla’s manager of analytics, downloads of the browser have jumped some 300,000 since last Friday.

" …over the past few days there has been a huge increase in the number of Firefox downloads from IE users in Germany. The orange area is meant to represent the 'incremental' impact, i.e., the number of downloads beyond what we would have normally expected on those days. As the chart highlights, the orange area adds up to just over 300,000 downloads during the recent Friday-Monday period."


300,000 extra downloads over a few days, all with no advertising, and all thanks to the German government. I bet Mozilla are well pleased with that result. Given this IE security scare, I think it’ll be really interesting to see what effect all this has had on browser usage share for January.

Went to twitter to tweet about a twat tweeting away on Twitter and was thwarted by too many tweets. I kid you not - check it out (today, about 12:15 pm and still now, nearly 15 mins later)

Could there actually be a connection?

Peter Sarsgaard is rumoured to be joining the cast of the upcoming picture Green Lantern.

The 38-year-old is attached to play the villain in the Martin Campbell project, says The Hollywood Reporter.

If confirmed, Sarsgaard would portray Dr Hector Hammond, a pathologist who finds he has psychic powers after discovering a meteor.

Ryan Reynolds was previously cast as Hal Jordan, the test pilot who becomes superhero Green Lantern. Production on Green Lantern is to start in March in New Orleans.

Following from a previous report about games with native linux installers, I recently found a whole bunch of installers here.

Of note in this collection (to me anyway) is:

- Daikatana
- Fallout
- Farcry
- Soldier Of Fortune II

I've played all these games previously and would love to have them on my Ubuntu system, particularly John Romero's Daikatana, which actually sucked but was kinda cool too

In a shocking announcement, Google said that it may consider shutting down its operations in China.

Google reported that several of its gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists were compromised this week, leading company officials to reconsider its business model in China. Analysts believe that the attacks were made from within China's government, but no confirmation was given. Google officials did not disclose whether or not Google believed affected Gmail accounts were attacked by the China's government.

The search giant, along with many others, have long been under scrutiny by Beijing officials. In China, there is no such thing as freedom of search. China monitors and censors topics that it deems inappropriate for its citizens. Subject matter such as those that do not follow the Chinese government's political stance, or of pornographic nature, are blocked from access.

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," said Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China."

It remains to be seen whether or not Google will take such actions, but according to analysts, it could be possible.

Up until this point, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others, have all complied with China's demands. Censorship is a very hot topic for China, and while many companies and groups have spoken out against China's restrictions on its users, government officials remain firm that censoring is the best course of action for its people.

Google.cn currently generates roughly billion for Google.