A U.K. teen pleaded guilty on Wednesday to breaking the Computer Misuse Act by crashing the email server of his former employer. David Lennon, 18, was then sentenced to a two-month curfew by a judge in the Wimbledon Magistrates court. On Wednesday, the judge ruled that Lennon should be subject to a curfew, which means he must stay at home between the hours of 12.30 a.m. and 7a.m. on weekdays, and between 12.30 a.m. and 10 a.m. on weekends. If he breaks this curfew, he risks a more serious sentence.

Brazilian prosecutors asked a federal judge for permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google, alleging it was withholding user information required for a separate criminal investigation. The prosecutors want Google to pay a $61 million fine and asked that if it refuses to comply with its information request, its Brazilian unit be dissolved. In its request, the federal prosecutor’s office in Sao Paulo alleges that several community pages on Google’s popular social network site, Orkut, have been used to organize criminal activity and promote child pornography.

A federal judge in Texas has delivered a setback to Microsoft and Autodesk in their patent infringement battle with product activation start-up Z4 Technologies. U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis turned down the software makers’ request for a new trial in a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Z4 Technologies and awarded enhanced damages, ordering Microsoft and Autodesk to pay a combined total of $158 million. The initial suit was filed nearly two years ago by David Colvin, owner of Michigan-based Z4, over two product activation technologies. One of those technologies is designed to prevent unauthorized use of software; the other is used to combat piracy.

Microsoft and Citrix Systems announced a new partnership through which the two vendors have agreed to build a network appliance meant to facilitate faster, more secure delivery of business applications services to customers’ distributed operations. The two companies signed a letter of intent to develop and market of a new multifunction appliance sold by Citrix that will be based on Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system and Internet Security and Acceleration Server software package. The product will also include Citrix’ recently-announced WANScaler technology, which was created via its acquisition of networking software and appliance maker Orbital Data.

Microsoft is considering discounts or other promotions during the holidays to entice consumers to upgrade their PCs with Windows Vista, even though the new operating system isn’t due to hit store shelves until January at the earliest. Any end-of-the-year effort to spur PC purchases would likely please many retailers and computer manufacturers, who fear disappointing sales during the crucial holiday as consumers wait for the highly anticipated and long-delayed software.

Extensis, a division of Celartem, officially launched its new online forums site for open discussion on all things related to Extensis and its product lines. Extensis Forums community members are encouraged to post tips, tricks, questions and general discussion on font and digital asset management markets. The new Forums site is an interactive environment where Extensis users and employees can communicate with, support, search for, and share industry knowledge with one another on topics ranging from font management in Mac OS X and Windows to Portfolio best practices. Extensis Forums is a neutral location for all font and digital asset management dialogue and strives to provide interesting discussion and topics for user to user conversation.

Microsoft will release new versions of its Windows operating system in South Korea on Thursday to comply with an antitrust ruling, a company source said Wednesday. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined Microsoft $34 million (32.5 billion won) in December, saying the world’s biggest software company breached antitrust laws by selling a version of Windows that incorporated its media player and instant messaging services. The commission ordered Microsoft to unbundle its media player and messaging service from Windows software or allow the embedding of rival products in its operating system.

The future enterprise technology career path will meander in and out of the IT department, according to research presented a Forrester teleconference on Aug. 22. "Enterprise IT is going through a metamorphosis. The career path is not as straightforward as it once might have been. You used to start as a programmer or operator and move up the ladder, and this is no longer the case," said Laurie Orlov, vice president Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, MA.

There’s more trouble with Microsoft’s latest Internet Explorer patch: It introduces a serious new security flaw on some Windows systems. The vulnerability could let miscreants hijack a Windows PC running IE 6 with Service Pack 1 and the MS06-042 update installed, Microsoft said in a security advisory published on Tuesday. The flaw lies in the way IE handles long Web addresses and could be exploited by luring users to specially crafted Web sites, according to the advisory.

Microsoft launched a new offensive against cybersquatters who allegedly gain illegal profits from thousands of Web sites, such as WindowsLiveTutorial.com and HaloChamp.com, that include the company’s trademarked names. Redmond filed three lawsuits in federal court this week claiming that some Web site operators have registered and operate hundreds of domain names with the sole purpose of reaping "bad faith" profits and in violation of federal and state laws. The litigation marks the first time Microsoft has filed suits stemming exclusively from a 1999 law called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, or ACPA, although it has raised cybersquatting allegations in past suits against alleged phishers and spammers, company attorney Aaron Kornblum said in a telephone interview. ACPA subjects anyone who "registers, traffics in or uses a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar or dilutive of" an existing trademark to up to $100,000 in damages.