Didn’t want you to forget the big Friday night event. We’re all addicted to the incredible remake of Battlestar Galactica and all the fun’s back tonight, Friday, October 6. Be sure to tune in. It appears to be a two-hour run, so be sure to update your PVRs accordingly. And that ends our critical public service announcement.

Former Hewlett-Packard chairman Patricia Dunn was named in a criminal complaint filed by the California attorney general Wednesday, but chief executive Mark Hurd dodged legal action for now. Dunn, along with Kevin Hunsaker, HP’s former chief ethics officer and senior counsel, were named in a felony complaint filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Microsoft will most likely ship its upcoming Windows Vista operating system on time and meet its deadline for both corporate and retail consumers, a Wall Street analyst said on Wednesday. Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund sent a note to clients saying that Microsoft may be ready to send the final test version of its much-anticipated Windows upgrade later this week or next week, indicating that Vista will be available for business customers in November and retail PCs by late January.

Two spammers could go to jail after an investigation by EarthLink found they were sending thousands of unsolicited messages from PeoplePC accounts. Jared Cosgrave and Mohammed Haque pleaded guilty last week in a U.S. District Court in Southern Florida to charges of fraud and violation of the Can-Spam Act. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 16, and the two could get up to three years in jail and be given a fine of up to $250,000.

Officials at McAfee said that Microsoft has flatly rejected a series of proposals meant to help ease integration between third-party software applications and the company’s next-generation Windows Vista operating system. High-ranking officials with McAfee, a provider of security applications and longtime partner of Microsoft’s, said that the software giant refused its suggestions for altering the manner in which aftermarket security tools are allowed to interact with the Vista OS, which is expected to arrive on the market as early as November 2006.

Microsoft will unveil a new software protection platform and accompanying technologies that it plans to incorporate into a variety of products, starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn, in hopes of combating piracy. The new technologies will be included in all of Vista versions, and over time every Microsoft product will use the platform to some extent, Cori Hartje, director of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative, told eWEEK.

Fujitsu will offer owners of some of its laptop computers replacement batteries as part of Sony’s global battery exchange program. Sony announced the program in response to growing consumer concerns about its laptop PC batteries, which are used by many companies. Since mid-August, about 6.6 million laptop batteries containing Sony-made cells have been recalled by computer makers because of a potential fire hazard.

Acer is in talks with Sony over joining its voluntary laptop PC battery recall, but said Acer users haven’t reported any problems so far. Acer has not received any complaints from users over laptops overheating or catching fire. Sony’s battery woes started in August when Dell recalled 4.1 million laptop computer batteries due to a potential fire hazard caused by Sony-made lithium-ion battery cells damaged during production. Other companies soon followed Dell’s lead, including Apple Computer, Lenovo Group and Toshiba.

Microsoft said it had appealed a July European Commission ruling ordering it to pay $357 million (280.5 million euros) for its failure to comply with the conditions of a March 2004 antitrust ruling. Microsoft was fined by the commission some $600 million (497 million euros) in March 2004 and it was told to modify some of its business practices. In July, the commission handed down the $357 million fine because Microsoft did not comply with the March 2004 ruling.

Yahoo is letting web programmers get their hands on the core code for its email program. By opening up the code Yahoo hopes to help create a series of innovative ways to deal with email messages. Eventually it said there could be "tens of thousands" of add-ons and extras for the email reader.