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Disproving the adage that 'no publicity is bad publicity', a company today disowned a flood of emails that was apparently crafted to boost its stock price. Pay88 Inc claimed that it was an innocent pawn in an apparent 'pump and dump' scheme' run by unknown spammers.

The unwanted emails began appearing in inboxes on July 14, the company complained in a statement to the media.

One month after tens of thousands of PCs in China were disabled by a bug in its Norton antivirus software, Symantec has offered to compensate the owners. However, the compensation – more copies of the software that caused the problem – has sparked outrage on some online forums.

Prices for PDA-style Windows SideShow devices will start from about $80, according to a developer that demonstrated prototypes to Texyt.com today. The touchscreen handheld gadgets share many of the features of PDAs, smartphones, and media players like Apple's iPod, but they connect wirelessly to a PC to send or receive data.

'Mission creep' in the Iraq conflict dropped US chances of success from 70 percent to 26 percent, says a University of Georgia researcher. The predictions were produced with a statistics-based approach that has proved accurate in 80 percent of former conflicts, claims assistant professor Patricia L. Sullivan of the UGA School of Public and International affairs.

Apple acknowledges that portable media players, a class of products which includes the iPod, can cause hearing damage, according to a newly published patent application filed by the company. The application describes a method of reducing the risk of hearing loss. The document, which does not mention the iPod by name, was originally filed one month before a class action lawsuit which alleges the iPod series' design may exacerbate hearing loss.