New Mozilla, iCab versions released

The Mozilla Organisation has released a minor update to Mozilla 1.4, despite the fact that two release candidate versions of 1.5 have already been made available. ...more

LaCie warns that XP SP2 brings compatibility problems

LaCie has warned that its FireWire 800 hard drives are not compatible with the updated FireWire (IEEE 1394) drivers included in XP SP 2. A firmware update - LaCie Update Tool for Windows (August 11 2004) - is available from www.lacie. ...more

SCO hits reversal in Unix licence case with DaimlerChrysler

US car giant DaimlerChrysler has all but won its case defending a suit from SCO surrounding its use of Unix. In a hearing yesterday in an Oakland County Circuit Court in Michigan, Judge Rae Lee Chabot upheld most of DaimlerChrysler's arguments to dismiss the case, with the exception that SCO remained free to pursue the company over why it had failed to meet a deadline for auditing whether its use of Unix complied with its licence. SCO said it 'is satisfied with the outcome of this litigation now that DaimlerChrysler has certified its compliance. ...more

Bloggers discover hole in Google's Chinese wall

Enterprising bloggers have already found workarounds to Google's attempts at censorship for its Chinese version. Paul Boutin says that he and Allan Schaffer discovered that while Google may have successfully filtered out any results that the Chinese authorities might deem controversial for certain keywords, it has been done on the understanding that the search terms were spelled correctly. However, it turns out that for incorrectly spelled searches, clever Google knows what you really meant and serves up the results without applying the filtering. ...more

Government drops ICT school exam

Government ministers have scrapped a compulsory computing exam for school kids in England. The statutory test in ICT (information and communication technology) was set to be made compulsory from 2008 for 14-year-olds (Key Stage 3 pupils), reports the BBC, but it will now be scrapped. The reason given is to lessen the testing burden on schools. ...more