Digital signatures to be given legal status

In a bid to push forward British e-commerce, the Cabinet Office has asked industry body E-Centre UK to look into legislation making documents signed digitally legally binding. Currently, the law requires documents to be physically signed or exchanged, but in July a European directive to give digital signatures the same legal status as written ones, gained Royal assent. E-Centre UK has been called in to sort out this conflict and change legislation concerning issues such as house buying, employment contracts and consumer credit. ...more

New video converter announced

A new analogue to digital video converter has been introduced in the UK, capable of inputting video from tape to a computer for digital editing and then outputting it back to tape. Datavideo's DAC-100 DV Converter can convert video from Digital-8, Video-8, Hi8, VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C and S-VHS-C. Video is transferred to a Mac or PC and back again via FireWire, without, it is claimed, any loss of quality. ...more

Virus Writers boost productivity

Virus hunter Sophos has said that it detected 3,855 new viruses in the first half of 2003 - up 17 per cent on the equivalent period last year. However, only a handful cause serious problems in the wild. The biggest nuisances in the last six months have been Bugbear in both its variants and SoBig with three variants. ...more

Red Hat in IPO recriminations

As high-tech stocks lose their lustre, the recriminations continue. This time it is Red Hat that is charged with misleading investors over the details of its original share issue. We have reported before on the search for scapegoats as investors count their losses, with lawsuits being brought against Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Larry Ellison of Oracle. ...more

AMD signs up NEC for new processors

AMD has signed up NEC and Fujitsu for its latest generation of mobile processors. NEC will use the latest mobile Athlon 4 and mobile Duron processors in its notebooks. According to AMD, a 1GHz mobile Athlon 4 processor will be used in NEC's "LaVie G" series. ...more