Sony's profits-drop beats expectations

Sony has announced its third-quarter results and has halved its profit estimate for the full year to $423m. Analysts predicted profits to fall by as much as 27 per cent, but the picture was a touch rosier, with a $1.24bn operating profit for the quarter ending 31 December, down 11 per cent. ...more

Government backs down over snooping order

'We believe we've got it wrong,' said Home Secretary David Blunkett. The controversial order that the Government sought to push through the Commons today has now been postponed indefinitely, although the Home Secretary said he would attempt to create some consensus on the order for the next session of Parliament in the winter. The order, which would add around 600 public bodies to those of the police, Inland Revenue and customs and excise that already have access to traffic data, included local authorities, councils, the Food Standards Agency and the Post Office. ...more

Analysis: Back on the broadband wagon

ADSL2+ might be making the headlines, but Britain isn't catching up with the leading broadband nations, reports Stephen Bruce Everyone from telephone companies and ISPs to early adopters and broadcasters are talking up the next generation of DSL broadband services. But how long will we have to wait for these services to arrive? Broadband uptake has spread across Britain (nearly doubling last year and now totalling some five million connections in the UK), but bandwidth-hungry users are already impatiently waiting for the next raft of services - such as television on demand - which could be carried over high-speed ADSL2+. These connections are already widely available in Europe, with France and Italy leading the way, but the first trials in the UK were launched only last month. ...more

Palm OS 6 ready for end of year release, says PalmSource

Palm's software division, PalmSource, says that it new generation operating system OS 6 will be ready for release by the end of the year, with products expected to begin shipping in 2004. PalmSource would not discuss the finer details of the new platform, but has made it clear that it will focus on enhanced wireless capability, improved security for data transfers and multimedia. The company has briefed developers on the advanced features of the software during a three-day conference earlier this month, but the details have not been made publicly available. ...more

Critical vulnerability found in Netscape browser

A highly critical vulnerability has been discovered in the Netscape Web browser, which could compromise a user's system. A boundary error in GIF image processing can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted image. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code. ...more