Gordon in the morning: Clash of limpbacks

Britney. Whitney. Their names rhyme, their careers have got a little lost recently, and now, according to Gordon Smart, they're going head-to-head:

The clash was set up because Brit has impressed label chiefs so much with her new material.

Gordon reckons that both artists' albums will be released at the same time, but his explanation makes little sense - let's assume that Arista and Zomba are acting in concert; what business sense would it make for them to say "Britney's new album is so good, we'll release it on the same day as Whitney's?"

The odd thing is, Gordon's so convinced this is going to happen, and yet his piece just talks vaguely of "at Christmas" - no mention of any exact release date for this battle of the titans.

Still, that this is all a bit vague doesn't stop Smart picking sides:

Christmas 2008 could be all about Brit though and I’m lumping on a full-scale Britney comeback...

The thought of Gordon lumping on anything is one we don't really want at breakfast. But if you're wondering why Smart favours Spears over Houston, it's apparently down to Whitney's terrible crime:

ageing

Gordon also has a bit of tech coverage today, too, with a report on the Girls Aloud trojan circulating:

Emails promising pictures of the girls are circulating widely, but actually contain software that scans your hard drive to get personal information that can be used for identity theft.

Except, of course, the email promises a Girls Aloud mp3, but since this is actually just a weak excuse to run pictures of Girls Aloud in what Smart claims are basques - but actually aren't - why bother about getting the facts straight? He also doesn't bother to mention that the same trojan is disguised as other files as well, which makes the piece of little value as a warning.

Oh, and it's being distributed through file-sharing networks and not through email, too.

Still, he does try to come over all GigaOm:

Boffins at anti-virus firm McAfee tell me the outbreak is the worst threat to PCs for three years.

Boffins? Good god, he really is like a thirteen year-old boy who is frightened of anyone with a degree of competency, isn't he? Maybe, come to think of it, Gordon has just got a thirteen year-old boy to write his stuff for him, waylaying him outside the bike sheds in the time-hnoured "you do my homework for me" style. Only instead of "Do the thirteen questions on page 127", it's "write me 60 words about Keeley Hazell's breasts by lunchtime."

Still, it's interesting that McAfee told "him" it was the "worst" threat to PCs in "three years" - you might have thought that had they actually spoken to him directly, rather than Gordon getting Zammo from Year 11 to read the story on BBC News for him, he'd have reported that it was the most-widespread distribution of a file for three years.

Also this morning, Gordon seems surprised at a young man having sex with various women prior to entering a relationship and settling down. It's Ashton Kutcher, in this case.

Girls Aloud will eat your hard-drive

We're not surprised fake Girls Aloud mp3s are at the heart of the current spike in trojan software criss-crossing the globe. In fact, we shouldn't be at all surprised if Nadine Coyle herself hasn't created the web nasty as part of some ploy to use botnet voting in next year's Brits best single category. Or maybe the FHM 100 sexiest women poll.

Look out! Your mp3 files are being deleted

NME reports a worrying development in the world of malicious computer software, a virus that will eat your music files:

The worm - called W32. Deletemusic - goes through an infected user's hard drive deleting all the MP3s it finds.

It also looks for any MP3s on any external drives and memory cards attached to the machine.

The memory card can then spread the worm to any other computer it is put into.

Frightening stuff. After all, you haven't gone to all that trouble pinching music off the peer-to-peer networks ("ripping your CDs to your hard-drive") in order to have your efforts wiped out, have you?

Only thing is, this virus isn't really any different to the thousands of others out in the wild - so, providing your virus protection is up to date, you should be fine. Also, amongst all the panic, NME fails to mention the somewhat less-frightening aspects of the virus which the Register covered when it reported the virus over a week ago:

The worm is spreading, albeit modestly, causing a small number of infections. Anti-virus vendors such as Symantec rate it as a low to no-risk threat.

Malware capable of zapping MP3 files is rare but far from unprecedented. The Klez-F worm, for example, which was widespread in 2002, overwrote MP3 files (and other file types) on certain days of the month. The Scrambler worm was programmed to scramble MP3 files to sound like a scratched record while the Mylife-G worm overwrote MP3 files with the words "my lIfE".

Hey - maybe she is some kind of rebel after all

You think viruses which wipe your harddrive or emails those pictures of you naked at random to everybody in the world are bad? Maybe they are, but at least they don't force you to visit Avril Lavigne's website.