Caspar Bowden, the bloke who had a key role in defining and defending digital privacy for the last 20 years has died from cancer.

In 1998, Bowden co-founded and became the first director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), one of the leading Internet policy think-tanks in the UK.

In 2000, he won a "Winston" award for his efforts to protect personal privacy—given alongside the Big Brother awards for those who had done most to threaten it. Bowden created an anti-RIP movement," a reference to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—better known as "RIPA"—passed that year.

RIPA is now seen as a joke but this was highlighted by Bowden 15 years ago.

Between 2002 and 2011, he worked for Microsoft, giving advice on privacy to Microsoft's national technology officers in 40 countries. Later he came to see Microsoft as a threat to privacy and told The Guardian in 2013, "I don't trust Microsoft now."

He shifted to entirely open-source software and stopped using a mobile phone, well before Snowden revealed they were vulnerable to surveillance. In 2012 he wrote a report showing how the NSA was permitted by US law to spy on everyone outside the US.

It was confirmed by Snowden in June 2013, and Bowden wrote another detailed report for the European Parliament in which he analysed the impact of NSA surveillance on European citizens' rights.

Bowden was on the board of directors of Tor, and he spoke frequently at conferences and before government committees warning of the gravity of the threat the newly-revealed bulk surveillance represented to fundamental liberties.

Todd Bradley who is executive vice president of HP’s printing and personal systems group, is quite emphatic that we are not living in a post-PC world. In an interview with PC World, Bradly said that it was “just wrong” to think that the PC has had its day.

He said that when a kid goes to college, they need a PC. Businesses who want their employees to be productive, need a PC. Bradley said that the size of the PC market was huge and even if there is a place for tablets, they will not be the big enchilada for a while.

He was also a little sniffy about HP moving to make Windows 8 Arm based tablets. Apparently the maker of expensive printer ink will be making tablets that run on the x86 platform.

It will use both Intel and AMD architecture because it was a lot more robust and established than things Armish. HP sees x86 chips delivering one of the best experiences in the short term and near future. While it will develop ideas with its partners in the ARM ecosystem, its first tablets will be based on the x86 architecture.

The news from THQ has not been good for the most part over the last several weeks. We don’t want to fuel the fire, but news arrives that THQ will be killing the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online MMO. Unfortunately, we are not very surprised by this news, given THQ’s current situation.

The game, however, isn’t all bad; THQ intends to retool the game to turn it into a single player title that will not be called Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium. As you can imagine, details are very sketchy at this point, but at least THQ will attempt to recoup some of the investment that they made in building the title. Of course, this isn’t going to be easy, and we have no idea what a retooled version of the title will be like.

We know that THQ has been looking for a partner for the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online MMO due to the fact that the game was still apparently going to need significant funding to get it to release as an MMO title. The change at least allows something good to come out of all of the development work that has been put into the project.

Speaking of Vigil Games: as part of the news of the move to a single player title (according to what we hear) 79 employees from Vigil Games were given their walking papers, as well as 39 more employees over at Relic Entertainment.

Whispers that we are hearing suggest that it is going to a serious struggle for THQ to hang on; but the moves by CEO Brian Farrell will at least give THQ a fighting chance to come out of this a leaner THQ. We hope that THQ continues to fight and is able to find a way out of this, rather than go the way of Midway.

Long running computer game magazine, Gamepro has been shut down. The outfit moved to become a quarterly publication and now the November quarterly issue will be the last one ever.

While the death of a print magazine is not really news, what is suprising is that the GamePro website will be shuttered too. An IDG spokesman told IndustryGamers that the ad dollars just weren't there and staff will be handed their p45s and pink slips.

GamePro started as a monthly magazine in May 1989 and first appeared online in May 1996. It was one of the top read magazines along with Electronic Gaming Monthly.

GamePro Media said that it will move into growing its custom publishing and solutions business. This would see GamePro will work on creating custom content for vendors and events, like last E3's daily publication.

There is some wild talk that HP is going to have a crack at licensing the WebOS operating system. The OS was used in Palm's range of phones, and the TouchPad tablet but was pulled in a surprise move as HP withdraw from the tablet and mobile phone business on Friday.

However what the pundits are failing to notice is that WebOS failed twice, firstly for Palm and then for HP. There was no reason that it was not given a fair chance either by Palm or HP.

While the TouchPad did have some lousy hardware, the biggest part of its problem was that it was not supported by developers. Consumers did not want it because they could not have the same apps that they would have got from their Apple or Android Stores. The operating system was not as well developed as Windows Mobile 7 and was not as good for corporates as either that or RIM stuff.

The other problem for anyone who would licence WebOS is that they would not get any support from HP. The only way that the maker of expensive printer ink would be interested in that sort of arrangement was if the licence fee was high enough. But if the price was that high, then OEMs might as well go for Windows 7 or RIM.

A man whose son died after playing computer games is campaigning for greater awareness of the risk posed by their excessive use.

Chris Staniforth, 20, who would played his Xbox for up to 12 hours, died in May from deep vein thrombosis (DVT). His dad David believes the condition may have been triggered by long gaming sessions and is caused during long periods of immobility.

The coroner said a clot formed in Chris' left calf before moving to his lungs. Once there, it caused a fatal blockage, known as a pulmonary embolism.

Staniforth said there was no difference between his son sitting at a desk on his Xbox and someone on a long-haul flight. He thinks that sitting still is literally the danger zone and millions of people worldwide are playing these games for hours, and there is a risk.

Analyst outfit Gartner has made the claim that PCs are dying and we will all be trying to write our novels on Apple tablets.

While such a prophecy is more terrifying that anything Daniel or St John could come up with, it is exactly the vision of St Steve Jobs. The market research firm said that tablets will not be "additive"but subtractive and instead of opting for that second PC and then maybe a tablet on top of that, consumers will opt for just the tablet.

George Shiffler, research director at Gartner said expects growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales. "We once thought that mobile PC growth would continue to be sustained by consumers buying second and third mobile PCs as personal devices. However, we now believe that consumers are not only likely to forgo additional mobile PC buys but are also likely to extend the lifetimes of the mobile PCs they retain as they adopt media tablets and other mobile PC alternatives as their primary mobile device." This means that instead of buying a PC they will use the cash to buy a tablet or other mobile device or smartphone.

Gartner expects home mobile PCs to average less than 10 percent annual growth in mature markets from 2011 through 2015." It is also lowering its PC unit forecast for 2011 and 2012. Mobile PCs are fast dropping out of date. They are too heavy and and do not offer the all-day battery life, to substantiate their promise of real mobility. While that might be true, we do not think it is time to write off anything yet.

Tablets and smartphones are no where near capable of doing the things that a PC can do within the consumer market. Tablets are not good for typing out long emails, documents or books. Plugging in a keyboard negates the purpose of a tablet, if there is one. Smartphones are too small to do much else other than casually browse and send messages. Netbooks are impossible to type more than a sentence on before becoming frustrated.

Perhaps the development of PC TV's might be the factor that kills off the large scale adoption of the PC, but the tablet? Please!

A South Korean mother has been charged with killing her three-year-old son while she was tired from marathon internet game-playing.

The case is another where Internet games addiction has been highlighted as the cause. The 27 year old woman, identified as “Kim”, 27, played online games for about 10 hours a day.

Coppers said her house was like a rubbish site because she was a gaming addict. She beat the three-year-old and strangled him after he disturbed her by having a Nintendo on the floor.

She was cross because she was about to sleep after playing online games for four hours in the morning. The woman left the boy's body in the house for three days and her in-laws reported the death to police.

She mostly played online card games and liked raising virtual pets, the coppers said.

A web expert has warned that the social notworking site, Facebook, will be mercifully dead and buried within five years. While many of us are concerned that it will take that long, digital consumer expert Jeffrey Cole told a digital marketing forum that in the end Facebook will be no more successful than MySpace and Bebo at hanging onto the fickle teenage audience.

Dr Cole predicted the decline of MySpace four years ago, said it would take longer for Facebook's dominance to be challenged because of its global scale. He said that the site will not be replaced by one big social networking community but it's going to fragment. He also predicted few newspapers in the US would be around in five years' time.

However he said one or two mastheads in each country would survive and become global news brands because, even among teens who did not read the printed product, there had been a flight to quality, reliable online news. Sadly he believes that the iPad will be the dominant tablet device because of the strength of the Apple brand.

He said that newspapers and magazines were never going to prosper on the PC because they're lean-back (media) but the iPad is the most exciting development in the last 100 years for newspapers. Sheesh tablets have been around for years.

Microsoft's UK Xbox Boss Stephen McGill is claiming that Blu-ray will be dead technology soonand will not make a difference to gaming. Asked if he felt that if Blu-ray would extend the 360's shelf life, McGill said that people now recognise what a smart decision it was to keep the pricing low.

“Blu-ray is going to be passed by as a format. People have moved through from DVDs to digital downloads and digital streaming, so we offer full HD 1080p Blu-ray quality streaming instantly, no download, no delay. So, who needs Blu-ray?” he said.

This is actually expected as it was one of the comments that was being bandied around during the Blu-Ray HD-DVD wars.

We wonder what he would be saying if Microsoft's standard had won that round?