US reviews tech business dealings with China

According to news site CNet, the US is to reassess the way its firms deal with dictatorial countries such as China. Human right groups within the US House of Representatives and Congress are to hold meetings next month to discuss the controversial ease with which US tech firms, keen to expand into China, quickly capitulate to the country's censorship laws and other demands. Last summer, for example, Microsoft agreed to ban the use of the words 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'human rights' on the Chinese version of its MSN service. ...more

Glastonbury plays with online registration

Michael Eavis and the organisers of the Glastonbury Festival have introduced new online ticket-management measures for the battle against ticket touting. Tickets for the summer music festival sell out quickly, with many subsequently turning up for sale online at much higher prices. The new system requires all would-be-festival goers to register online or by post (starting yesterday) in order to buy tickets when they are released in April. ...more

UK man convicted in first Web rage case

A man has been found guilty of the UK's first 'Web rage' attack, after tracking down and attacking a man who insulted him on the Internet. After an argument in chat room, including allegations of paedophilia, Paul Gibbons traced John Jones to his home in Essex where he turned up with a pickaxe handle and accompanied by another as-yet-unnamed man carrying a machete. Gibbons beat Jones, then cut him across his throat, narrowly missing his jugular vein. ...more

NVIDIA beefs up 64bit mobos with nForce3 chip

NVIDIA has launched new graphics chips to its nForce3 range, taking advantage of AMDs 64bit platform The nForce3 Pro 150, nForce3 150 and nForce3 Go 150 are the latest media and communications processors for the workstation, desktop and mobile markets respectively. As well as providing NVIDIA's graphics power and unified driver architecture, nForce3 also supports AMD's HyperTransport bus interface, designed to prevent data bottlenecks with data bandwidths of 800MB/sec on offer. Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA, said: 'Our new NVIDIA nForce3 MCP family extends our reach into untapped markets and demonstrates our technology prowess in a number of new areas, including high-speed networking, storage and connectivity. ...more

Roxio bundles photo and video apps in latest authoring suite

Roxio brings its all its multimedia burning and authoring applications - covering photos, videos and music - together into the Roxio Creator 7 suite. The Easy CD & DVD Creator software is packaged together with PhotoSuite 7 Platinum and VideoWave 7 Pro. It will also have integrated links to the Roxio-owned Napster when it finally emerges again in Europe. ...more