Good morning readers, I hope we've all had a good weekend? Today is going to be hard for most of us now that we're missing an hour's sleep, but look on the bright side - we'll have a longer evening. Now if only those clouds would clear...

I hope you've eaten an Apple with your breakfast at any rate, as they seem to be in the news a bit this morning. First up their Battle with the French and their State Sponsored Piracy appears to be opening up on a new front, with the mighty forces of Denmark riding to the aid of the encircled Parisians. It would appear that the Danes too are sick and tired of the lack of cross-platform compatibility with iTunes songs and want to legally open things up. DRM Go Home

If Apple (Computer, that is - this story may get confusing otherwise) doesn't pull out of Europe in the next year or two, they might be ridden senseless by The Beatles, and their own brand of Apple, the Apple Corps. Back in the good old days when everyone was stoned and nobody wore clothes (or something like that - I'm young and innocent to such things) The Beatles distributed their music through the Apple Corp, and they're now claiming that the introduction of iTunes broke a $26 million settlement under which Apple Computer agreed to steer clear of the music business, for which the Beatles' company retains the trademark. Yes I lifted that straight from the source, because legal battles make my head hurt, especially when both the plaintiff and the defendant have the same bloody name. Some people just have no consideration

Remaining with Apple for one last hurrah this morning, this time it's their good old fashioned Mac business which is under scrutiny. Can anyone else remember a time when all Apple was famous for was the Mac? Those were simpler days, when men were men and umm, so on. Well now Apple is famous for the iPod and simultaneously battling France, Denmark and The Beatles whilst Intel chips run their expensive machines. What could they possibly do now to complicate things further? Stick AMD chips in their... Ohh bloody hell

On to Microsoft, who are no doubt stocking the bunker as we speak. Everyone is gushing over this Steven Sinofsky fellow, who used to run Microsoft's Office division but has now been put in charge of cracking the whip over at the all-conquering Windows office. Apparently he's quite good at getting products out on time, having overseen regular releases of Office on time over the past couple of years, versus the Windows team who are dragged out of bed for a crunch period once every five years or so. So everyone is gushing over the new boy and how wonderful he is. Of course he's going to have to crack skulls in the immediate future, and I don't know exactly how important he'll be for Vista considering we're less than a year from release (we hope, and if his reputation is to remain intact.) He'll probably come into his own when the next version of Windows goes into production, about a week before Vista is released knowing Microsoft's long-term thinking. Rather you than me mate

Yahoo! meanwhile has announced that it is focusing on the "core to its future growth" by axing the Yahoo! Plus! Service! (End of my Register joke.) Apparently Yahoo! users just don't care enough for extra storage, premium video, commercial free Internet radio, security features, and a broadband portal sniffed one Yahoo! executive as he poured petrol around the office. Insurance purposes he said, citing petrol fumes rather than low interest among users for the tears rolling down his face. There there

Probably for the best that all that high-bandwidth guzzling service is gone if you're a BT user anyways, as they say that they're getting tough on those who regularly and grossly go over their allotted download and upload caps - sometimes to the tune of 100 to 200 gigabytes. Those b[Snip! -Ed] Apparently BT has guidelines not to go after those who break their cap, between 4 and 40GB for most commercial services, irregularly, but they say that they have to pay by the bandwidth and those who rack up huge, regular overdrafts are causing the costs to be spread around their law-abiding users. And they may be law-abiding in more ways than simple cap management, as some out there (and I included) would suppose that a lot of the large bandwidth bills are being drawn up through uploading and downloading on P2P networks. Bastions of copyright enforcement that they are

And finally, the number of students penalized for cheating in school exams and coursework in England rose by over a quarter last summer, apparently. The kicker is that 25 percent of offences that pupils were caught out for involved having (though not necessarily cheating with, but what are the odds...) their mobile phone on them in exams. The b[I'll chop your bloody fingers off -Ed] The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority who oversee such matters say that another third were those good old fashioned copiers, and others were the miscellaneous messers who did such grown up things as writing profanities on their exam papers and refusing to follow instructions. 19" LCD screen roundup and more from the Game Developers Conference (Including sex. Yes, that'll drive up the hits. Sex, sex, sex). In the meantime, I'm going to find a percolator and plug myself in.