Harry Potter fans curse the VoleClock is ticking on good vs evil battleBy Nick Farrell: Tuesday 08 March 2005, 07:45HARRY POOTER fans are mightily miffed that the software giant Microsoft has spirited away an idea of their favourite author JK Rowling.For the numberless hordes of you who have not read a Harry Potter book [what's a book? Ed.] , there was a grandfather clock in the house of one of the main characters. Instead of numbers the hands pointed to locations, such as home, work and school, where a family member was.However at last week's so called Techfest, Microsoft's internal research fair, the mighty Vole seemed to be exhibiting a clock that did the same thing.At the Leaky Cauldron, here, which is a Harry Potter fan site, would be Harry Potters and Harry Potterettes called for Rowling to sue Microsoft for breach of copyright. [Shorely patent, Ed.]One poster sulked: \"I wonder how many \"security fixes\" you'll have to load or how many times you'll have to reboot it to keep it working correctly.\"A Microsoft researcher who was working on the project, Tim Regan bravely faced off the angry magicians and witches and admitted that the Vole was inspired by the Harry Potter clock.Regan told the Seattle Times that Vole wanted to see if it could create a working version of the clock for Muggles (non-magical people).He said that the clock is a research project and not headed for stores anytime soon. But then we believe that the same is true of the next version of Windows. And in any case Harry Pooter look-a-like Vole Gates launches a new watch every year at Comdex, and latterly the Consumer Electronics Show. µ