Mathematics threat to ecommerce security

Mathematicians are on the verge of a breakthrough that could make every single Internet financial transaction insecure, according to The Guardian. The newspaper's science editor Tim Radford reports that if the Riemann hypothesis has been proved, and it is by no means certain that it has, then all cryptic codes - such as those that protect secure Internet transactions - will be breakable. Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician, hypothesised that the apparent random distribution of prime numbers (numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one) can in fact be mapped using a complex formula known as a zeta function. ...more

Microsoft preps Vista defences

As the launch of Vista approaches, Microsoft is gearing up to protect its new investment from the inevitable attention of the pirates. Under the banner of the Software Protection Platform (SP Platform), the company is introducing a battery of new safeguards to identify dodgy copies and encourage customers to buy the genuine article. Microsoft claims it has lost billions of dollars to software pirates over the years. ...more

CA draws a line under financial troubles

CA is hoping to draw a line under its financial troubles, finally filing its late 10k and appointing a new CFO. The management software company has seen a fifth of its market value wiped out this year as it underwent an internal investigation into financial irregularities that brought to light stock awards made several years after they were granted, as well as errors in accounting for its subscription revenues prior to 2006. Its 10k form filed today noted 'material weaknesses in its financial controls . ...more

W3C recommends DOM 2

The Internet standards body World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued another decree: DOM Level 2 HTML is a now an official W3C Recommendation. This specifies a standard programming interface (API) to manipulate HTML and XHTML 1.0 documents and through a programming language, such as Java. ...more

Apple antitrust suit gets green light

A US court has given the go-ahead for Apple to be sued over allegations that the iPod-iTunes axis breaches federal antitrust laws. eHomeUpgrade reports that Judge James Ware, of the District Court of Northern California rejected Apple's argument that the two products are not tied together - you can for example buy and play music from iTunes without owning an iPod - and found that plaintiff Thomas Slattery had 'met all the requirements for asserting the tying claim'. Tying two products together is (potentially) illegal under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act and is described as 'the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good)'. ...more