BT highlights the digital divide

BT has highlighted a new study that considers the extent of the digital divide and how it could affect the UK in 20 years time if current policies remain unchanged. According to the latest figures, 51 per cent of the UK adult population (24.2 million) are digitally excluded in the most basic sense of having no access to a home computer or the Internet. ...more

IBM's Blue Gene wears the supercomputing trousers

IBM has claimed the top spot for the third time in a row in the global supercomputing chart with its Blue Gene/L system. The TOP500 Organisation put in a sustained performance of 280.6 Teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second. ...more

China issue changes Microsoft's blogging stance

If you were ever unsure quite how important the 'China thing' is right now, look no further than Microsoft's latest announcement, stating it has changed its policy on blogging. In a speech to government officials and community leaders in Lisbon, Portugal, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Brad Smith, said that blogs on MSN Spaces would no longer be removed outright if they contravened local law, but rather access to them would be restricted from the territory in question. Either way, users in that country won't have access to the content in breach of that country's law, and maybe on another day this slight a change wouldn't make the news. ...more

Microsoft allows Office to be bundled with new PCs

Microsoft is making the first heave on the Office 2007 bandwagon due at the beginning of next year with a series of new initiatives to recruit new retailers and tempting customers to upgrade. At the Worldwide Partner Conference 2006 in Boston, the company has announced new initiatives that will allow OEMs to bundle Office Home and the Education version with a new PC. Until now they have been restricted to bundling the woefully underpowered Microsoft Works with new machines. ...more

Indonesia agrees software piracy amnesty with Microsoft

The government of Indonesia has struck a deal with Microsoft to pay one dollar for each government computer running pirated Microsoft software according to the BBC. With one of the worst records for software piracy in the world, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Indonesian official computers run some form of illegal Microsoft code. The BBC quotes figures which suggest that 87 per cent of the software in Indonesia is pirated. ...more