Good morning, I hope all is well on your end. We've entered into financial results season, and the "Who is up, then, and who is down?" watching. Plenty of numbers to keep you satisfied though, including Intel, who are down a 38 percent profit. Ouch.

Apple on the other hand is making plenty of profit - $410 million of it, in fact, which is up from $290 million last year. The company has upped its market share in the PMP business to 78 percent, up from 71 percent in December, iTunes, which has 2.9 million songs in its collection, now has 87 percent of the legal downloads business. Apple is down in the Mac business however, with users "pausing" in their buying of Mac's until all the new Intel-based systems roll out onto the market. The iBook and the PowerMac ranges still have to make the transition to Intel processors, but if the sales of MacBook Pro's are anything to go by once those Intel versions are released sales will pick up pretty quickly. To buy, or not to buy...

Microsoft meanwhile is continuing its parrying with Google, promising to introduce its own "Gdrive" virtual storage beater. Live Drive as it's to be known is a part of the Windows Live portfolio, and aims to offer users a virtual hard drive for storing personal data. Think safe backups and access on the road. "Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data," according to Fortune magazine. "With Live Drive, all your information - movies, music, tax information, a high-definition videoconference you had with your grandmother, whatever - could be accessible from anywhere, on any device." Now all Microsoft and Google have to do is teach my grandmother how a computer works... Neither company is being rather specific about rollout dates, however

The joint BBC and Climateprediction.net study of climate change models, using distributed computing to crunch through possible future scenarios for climate change, has suffered from a massive screw up, it has been revealed. Apparently an error was introduced into the software shortly before shipping which made the model predict climate change faster than it would actually happen. Therefore the experiment will have to be started again; leading to quips from some [Not us, surely? -Ed] that having to leave ones computer running on the program for another cycle will do more for helping global warming than the study itself will do for preventing it. Tough luck old chaps...

Feeling ripped off by 0871 numbers in the UK? Well never fear, for Ofcom has given a new body, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of the Telephone Information Services (or ICSTIS, if you're trendy). The body will monitor the realm of 0871 numbers to ensure that punters aren't ripped off, for example by signing up to receive pictures and then being charged a few pound per pleasure [What kind of images? Do I detect undertones of smut here? Surely not... -Ed] Of course the new body won't actually inherit any real powers for another two years, and isn't exactly bringing the thunder and fear of God down the mountain unto anyone breaking the rules, either. It was recently criticised by an MP for slapping a £40,000 fine on MBlox, the people who made £10 million profits off of the ubiquitous Crazy Frog. Frankly they should be lined up against a wall and shot for that alone

Let us gather around the campfire my friends and shriek "EVIL!!!" in the general direction of... umm, let me see here... to do list... contact book... ahh yes, corporate evil sheet... Livejournal. After introducing ads into the blogs they serve the company has put a clause into their TOS which bans users from "Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages." Ohh boo bloody hoo goes half the audience. At the moment the ads are only for users who sign up to receive them, though you can see it expanding in future. However one might point out that LiveJournal free accounts are... well, free. If they do decide to even arbitrarily stick ads onto them and ban blocking software and you don't like it, tough. Battlestar: Galactica." What are the bets that the author gets a Wikipedia profile now? Well crafted and all...

Right, coming up today we have a promised update to the memory stress tests, an slide show for gaming (new thing we're trying, you may enjoy it), and a server review. Do enjoy...