Had to check the date - nope - not April 1st. It seems the good folk from Redmond are going to open Microsoft-branded stores to create a "deeper engagement" with consumers and they've recruited David Porter as corporate vice president, who has previously worked at Dreamworks and Wal-Mart.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions. Such as - why? What will they sell? They presumably won't be selling PC hardware, given the number of manufacturers involved. Xboxes and Zunes perhaps? 

Full story in The Register - along with all the comments you might expect!

The Reg are also reporting on the $250,000 reward MS have stumped up for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the Conficker worm creators.

Interesting to see what OpenDNS are doing on this problem in assocation with Kapersky labs - tackling the problem by not resolving DNS requests for known Conficker addresses.

Windows malware gets ever more sophisticated - with Virut being able to infect  even HTML pages or ASP and PHP scripts. There's a lot you can do with a sneaky hidden IFrame. 

And now I must go and install the latest security updates for my laptop. There may be no Mac viruses but I'm not taking any chances.