Microsoft witness sees both sides

The nine US states urging tougher penalties on Microsoft for its anti-trust violations received a bonus yesterday, when one of the company's final defence witnesses admitted that the states' proposals could increase consumer choice. Professor Kenneth G Elzinga, a University of Virginia economist and anti-trust law expert, agreed under cross-examination that if computer manufacturers are allowed to remove 'middleware' components - such as Internet Explorer - from Windows and replace them with software from other developers this might benefit consumers. Elzinga was not so concessionary about the effect of forcing Microsoft to disclose technical information about Windows. ...more

Firefox opens wallets to fund newspaper ads

Donations from Firefox users have already paid for a full-page advert in the New York Times, with 10 days left to hand over your cash. Spread Firefox, a website dedicated to evangelising the Web browser, set a target of 2,500 donations of $30 each ($10 for students) and within hours that was reached, after the site was slashdotted. As an incentive to give, donors' names will be listed in the ad. ...more

UPDATED: Playfair cracks iTunes DRM protection

The digital rights management technology that Apple uses to restrict the copying of songs bought from its iTunes Music Store has been cracked. An anonymous programmer has released software called Playfair that takes one of the iTMS AAC files, decodes it using a key obtained from an iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File. It can also, if required, copy the metadata tags that describe the song, including the cover art, to the new file. ...more

Orange Micro debuts USB 2

Orange Micro has released what it claims to be the first USB 2.0 PCI card. USB 2, which is backward compatible with USB 1 devices, is up to 40 times faster than its predecessor at its top speed of 480Mb/sec and faster than FireWire, which has a top speed of 400Mb/sec. ...more

Yahoo's paid for strategy pays off

Yahoo, still best known for its directory listings, has bounced back with a 33 per cent increase in revenues in 2002, mostly due to the success of its paid for services. Net revenues for Q4 2002 were $285.8 million, a 51 percent increase over the $188. ...more