Back to Visual Basics for appeals court judges

The judges in the appeals court that will consider the break-up of Microsoft have signalled their need to get to grips with computing basics first. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has said that it is considering inviting a technical expert to brief the judges on computer technology. This will be in preparation for the February showdown of the antitrust case. ...more

Germans join Japanese in WAP charging

German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, following the lead given by Japan's NTT DoCoMo, has announced that it will be charging users to access certain Web sites on mobile phones from November, with plans to do the same in the UK in conjunction with One 2 One. The company's mobile Internet portal is set to charge the equivalent of about ?6 for a package of services including sports, financial and music news and a food guide. A similar service is then planned for the UK and Austria. ...more

Police failing to prioritise cybercrime, peer warns

According to an independent peer, Lord Erroll, not enough is being done to prevent low-level cyber-crime as it is not a priority to the police or Home Office. Speaking at Microsoft's Architectural Insight Conference being held at the Celtic Manor resort in Wales, the peer said that cybercrime has been a contentious issue for some time and is not going away. 'E-Crime is climbing steadily, but it's not a Home Office or police priority,' said Erroll. ...more

AOL co-opts PC makers in battle with Microsoft

AOL is out to get its icons on as many Windows desktops as possible, following Microsoft's decision to give PC manufacturers flexibility in deciding which icons will be displayed on new machines. Such flexibility is currently commonplace, with Dell, for instance, carrying an AOL promotion on the desktop of all new computers. Microsoft had planned to put an end to such promotions, by restricting the number of desktop icons on machines shipped with the forthcoming Windows XP operating system, acting on feedback from customers who felt that the desktop had become too cluttered. ...more

Mozilla fault declared non-critical

The open source Mozilla organisation has issued a security advisory regarding the Firefox browser and the Mozilla Internet Suite. It relates to 'a temporary startup unresponsiveness caused by web pages in browser history with extremely long titles', declares mozillaZine. Initially reported as a critical vulnerability, Secunia has issued a security advisory, , which has a non-critical rating (reported by ZIPLOCK ) and makes no mention of an exploitable crash. ...more