WorldCom to face fraud charges

The fallen giant WorldCom will face charges of securities fraud, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accusing the communications company of improper accounting. The official process is not imminent, however. The US District Judge Jed Rakoff has set March 31 as the start date for the World Com case, reports Reuters. ...more

PDAs the third way

Sharp has launched its new Zaurus SL-5500 PDA taking neither the Palm or PocketPC route, but preferring to wander down Linux lane. The SL-5500 uses Lineo's Linux 2.4 kernel, which supports a multitude of processor architectures, allowing Sharp to fit in a 206Mhz Intel StrongARM SA-1110 chip, the current favourite of the PocketPC pack. ...more

The higher the ghost rating, the deader the site

There are millions and millions of Web pages hosted on servers around the world, but what happens when someone just forgets to update them? One site is dedicated to hunting down the ghost ships that pass in the cyber night. If you pop over to Ghostsites, you can see what happens to the forlorn Web sites that have been abandoned and neglected. If they took canine form, they'd be shipped off to Battersea Dogs' Home until a new owner came along. ...more

Update: Microsoft responds to Japanese office raid

Microsoft has said it will remove the controversial clauses from Windows contracts with computer makers following raids by Japan's Federal Trade Commission on Microsoft offices in Japan yesterday. Officers seized documents following complaints that the contracts were unfair and demanded that computer and device makers using Windows did not sue Microsoft even if the operating system infringed their patents. Microsoft says the provisions in the contracts have previously passed scrutiny by the EU in 2001, the US Department of Justice in the mid-1990s and also during the procedure of assessing appropriate remedies during the more recent antitrust case - and survived. ...more

EU surveys citizens on patent law

The European Union is asking for its citizens' views on the future of copyright law among member states. The move follows the failure last year to agree a common patent law. Last July, the European Parliament rejected the Computer Implemented Inventions (CII) Directive on the grounds that it would stifle innovation in Europe by allowing the patenting of pure software. ...more