Relax, despite numerous scare mongering reports to the contrary the Conficker worm has not triggered the predicted tech apocalypse on April 1st. But does that mean the Conficker threat has diminished?

April Fools’ Day, sometimes also called All Fools’ Day, is celebrated each April 1st in many countries around the World. Many practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks are directed to gullible or unexpected people. However, where did April Fools’ Day originate? Do you know?

In a shock announcement, Microsoft has today taken majority ownership of software house Novell. This immediately gives the Redmond giant control of Novell's intellectual property assets including the legal copyright over UNIX. Already Red Hat and Canonical (Ubuntu) have expressed their expectation Microsoft will aggressively seek to eradicate all distributions save for Microsoft Linux Vista, formerly SUSE. (APRIL FOOL JOKE!!)

Microsoft Corporation today quietly announced the end of internal development of Internet Explorer. A spokesman said that one of the senior managers saw a car-bumper sticker which said "The only good use for Internet Explorer is to download Firefox", which prompted some soul-searching within the company.

The dreaded Conficker worm is constantly in the news these days, with consumers and businesses worldwide now bracing themselves for another expected attack from the malicious worm predicted to sweep the Internet on April Fool’s Day tomorrow.

With April Fool’s Day looming, Trend Micro is offering free protection against a new variant of the malicious Conficker worm that infected an estimated 15 million computers last year and is expected to be launched by “cyberfools” on 1 April.