Microsoft has announced that it is ending support for the Windows XP operating system on April 8, 2014. Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) advises XP users to update to a newer version of Windows or an alternative like Linux by that date at the latest. After that, there won't be any more security updates, so an attacker could easily exploit vulnerabilities in the operating system.
The system came on the market in 2001. Surveys have put the number of businesses world-wide still using XP at between 28 percent and 38.7 per cent. Updating to Windows 8 on all of a company's computers is likely to be costly in terms of time and money.
Richard Edwards, an analyst at UK research firm Ovum, advises firms to consider instead "more innovative projects" such as tablets, Google's Chrome OS or virtualisation.
Small children think computer game characters are real =
Children of pre-school or elementary school age consider computer game characters to be living beings who can feel pain and suffering, so what adults regard as harmless may be disturbing for children, advises the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK), the organisation responsible for computer game ratings in Germany.
Children experience difficult content like violence in a different way to adults, and may not be able to understand it appropriately.