EU shelves MP3 player levy reforms

The European Commission has shelved plans to introduce new laws governing levies on digital music players just days before it was due to unveil its proposals. Denying allegations that it had bowed to pressure from the French government, the Commission said simply that it needed more time to consider the issues involved. The Copyright Levies Reform Alliance, which represents device makers and sections of the music industry, said that it was furious at the last minute postponement and published a letter sent last month by the French prime minister Dominique de Villepin which urged Commission president Jos? Manuel Barroso to delay reform. ...more

The PC gets wireless gaming

Logitech has launched the world's first wire-free vibration gamepad for the PC. Operating over radio frequencies in the 2.4Ghx spectrum (incidentally the same used for 802. ...more

The great and the good hacked

The great and the good gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. And they had their personal details hacked from the event's computer system, including credit card details. The breach was reported by the Swiss Sunday newspaper SonntagsZeitung, which received some of the data as evidence from the hackers, but it is still unclear whether the hacking was part of the anti-globalisation protests that surrounded the event. ...more

OpenXML opens for Java

Microsoft's Office OpenXML document formats are coming to Java, thanks to an open-source project on SourceFourge. Led by Julien Chable, the OpenXML4j project makes an API available for using OpenXML on Sun's Java platform. Previously, Java developers would have had to hook into Office OpenXML at a lower level using XML and ZIP libraries. ...more

XP SP2 passes security experiment

Service Pack 2 really does prevent hackers breaking in to XP systems, according to USA Today. The news service performed an experiment to place a number of computers online to see how long it would take before they were hijacked. Unprotected 'vanilla' installations of Windows XP lasted less than four minutes before being compromised. ...more