(26.11.04) Music Sales are up, by that I mean physical as well as online purchases have increased despite the dire warnings of the music industry. They think that the increase is due to a heavy handed approach to file sharing but the stats don't really support this. What's really significant is the drop in price of the products they sell and the emergence of bands, such as The Darkness, The Libertines, Scissor Sisters and Franz Ferdinand, that are actually worth buying. The evidence suggests that, as with tape copying, people are downloading singles, either legally or otherwise, and then going out and buying the CD if they like it. This won't really change until hi-speed broadband becomes common in the UK. Wade through the statistics here.

(25.11.04) Dr.Zog mentioned the lengthy registration process in his email about Half-Life 2 but I didn't think to mention it, I wish I had now. 20 000 players have had their registrations refused because the makers suspect that they are useing illegal versions of the games, whether from copied discs or created from the code that was leaked on the Internet a few months ago.

This kind hard line approach to registration is being used by game manufacturers in a bid to beat the pirates. Increasingly tactics like post release patches which enable extra features or bonus levels are only available to players with registered games and it is impossible to play online if you don't have one. Sometimes the game will sease to function if it isn't registered. This is the highest number of refusals I've ever seen in the first weeks of the release of a game. Read more here.

(23.11.04)Half-Life 2 has finally arrived and the great news is that it runs on our NAIDC computers provided you've installed a graphics card. If Dr Zog's opinion is anything to go by, and he was a big fan of the first game, it's well worth considering getting someone for Christmas. In a review that I hope will be posted on the forum he described the scenery as "stunning" and the adventures sound incredible; "Hammering down canals and tunnels for miles, leaping it over obstacles like James Bond and then launching it over an impossibly high dam are all just parts of a massive adrenaline rush". He judges it better than the first game, which was one most successful of all time.
It's available online for £26 upwards.

Interestingly Dr. Zog playing the game on a NAIDC computer useing a Radeon graphics card. These have caused so many problems that we've given up recommending them and instead advice people to buy an nVidea because you just need to plug them in and they work. He got his working by following a tip on the forum, I still think it easier to by an nVidea but if you've already got a Radeon it might be worth checking out. Click here to see how to solve the problem.

Just thought you'd like to know that the toasted cheese sandwich with an image on the Virgin Mary on it has been bought by a casino for $28000. Which is appropriate as the owner claimed that it had helped him win $7000 in the casino down the road from his house. Come to think of it, he would have better off keeping it if that's the case. Right, that's all for today, I've got some sandwichs to toast.

(21.11.04) We all love a good computer joke so I'm grateful to James Westland for sending this link to a repository of some of the best gags and cartoons. Most of them were new to me and I thought I'd seen them all!

(19.11.04) The latest version of the MyDoom virus, MyDoom.AH, is being hailed as the fastest emerging virus so far. The vulnerability it exploits was only reported two days before it appears, giving antivirus writers very little time to respond. Consequently it has caught out a lot of people, fortunately Symantec issued an update almost immediately. This two day gap is in contrast with the 5.8 average in the first half of the year and the several weeks they took last. Symantec think that it hails the arrival of the "zero day" virus, which appears on or even before a vulnerability is spotted. Read more here.

(17.11.04) TNO, part of the Netherland Government's institute of applied physics, has produced the worlds largest digital photograph which clocks in at 2.5 billion pixels. It rather dwarfs the largest consumer Nikons with there 13 million and was created by stitching several images together. If printed out at 300dpi it would measure several square meters but I wonder why they chose such a dull subject? See for yourself by clicking here and then on the image itself.

Everything from a bucket of water to Geri Halliwell's dog's droppings have been auctioned on ebay but this is the first time I can recall a "miraculous" image of the Virgin Mary being sold. This one (there have several over the years) appeared on a toasted cheese sandwich made ten years ago and the seller claims it has brought him nothing but good luck since, including $70 000 in casino winnings (I'm surprised she approves of that sort of thing). He's very concerned about hoax bidders and goes has gone to some trouble to prevent them. Even so the sandwich has reached $69 000 and still has a few days to go. Unfortunately it's only for sale within the US and he emphasises that it is being sold as a collectors item and NOT for consumption, click here to see for yourself.

(16.11.04) Seems too good to be true but it's legit if the Internet reviews I've read are true; A Russian website is providing music downloads at $0.01 per megabyte, that's about 2p for the average single. Not only that but it offers 10mbs free when you first sign up and a monthly subscription for frequent users. Even though the reviews say it's OK I would still be wary of giving my credit card details to a Russian site so I'm glad to see they take paypal and various other online payments. The reason it's so cheap is that Russia has different copyright and royalty laws than the US and Europe. Make your own mind up by clicking here. Click on the flag in top left for the English version.

(15.11.04) I've posted in the past about the irony (I think that's the word) of the companies that are sueing file sharers being the same companies that sell the equipment used to copy music but this took me by surprise. Now the CEO of Wippit, a legal download service is complaining about the advertising that is carried by the free, illegal and far more popular e-donkey software. Who can blame him? What is a surprise is who the advertisers are, not small companies or games manufacturers but the likes of Nat West, Vodafone, O2 and First Direct. He wants the companies to be dropped by the music industry but that would cost them money so they won't be. Read more here. 

(12.11.04) Microsoft Photo Story 3 has been released and it might be the answer for people who want to tweak their photos without the trouble of a larger, more advanced program. Amongst other things it allows you to add a voice track to pictures, making it easy to make special greetings "cards". It does require you to have Windows Media Player 10 to run but it is a free download and only 5mb, which is pretty small for a grahics prog. Click here for details.

(11.11.04) As trailed earlier Microsoft has launched the beta version of its new search engine in a further bid for world domination, sorry I mean, extend customer service and awareness of the brand. The new engine looks good and produces noticeably different results from google, altavista and A9, which tend to come up with the same results. It doesn't find as many pages either and it has one slightly freaky aspect. On the main page is a button marked "near you", how on earth could they know that I wondered but they did have a vague idea. When I went to the preferences page they had me down as being in Edinburgh, information I presume they gleaned from checking the route my connection took. It's well worth a look but I think we'll still be useing Google this time next year unless they decide to pay us to change. Click here for the search engine and here for the Beeb version of the story, complete with messianic picture of Steve Bulmer.

This is a bit odd, BAA are testing new body scanning equipment that sees through clothing but not the human body. Affectively it produces black and white pictures of passengers in the nude and from three angles. The advantages are that it uses a lower dose of radiation and objects are easier to see while it ignore things like pins in legs. Passengers have been asked to volunteer to have their pictures so far but if the tests are successful it will only be a matter of time before it becomes universal in the name of security, we are at war after all. I wonder how long before a website called "stolen heathrow images" appears on the net? Read more here.

(10.11.04) Halo2, the xbox game that could outstrip Doom3 in pre-orders, is causing more than a ripple amongst freepers (freeper: right wing message board poster, originally referring to users of the "Free Republic" board). The script writer of Halo2 has said that the new game could be taken as a condemnation of the Bush administrations foreign policy. Nothing could be more guaranteed to spark the freepers, buoyed up as they are by the recent election victory. Read the fury here.

(05.12.04) It hasn't taken long for people to start questioning the US election result. The focus of attention is on the electronic voting machines used in some states that happen to be manufactured by leading supporters of Bush. People have noticed that in the counties that used the machines there was a big discrepency between exit poll and the actual result. Click here for more but believe me, this is just the start of a great Internet conspiracy theory that will run and run. Coincidently the classic quote of the day on the forum is Vince Lombardi's "we didn't lose the game, we just ran out of time". No, you lost the game.

(01.11.04) ITV are planning a new digital channel. At the moment it is only going to be broadcast via terrestial digital but they hope to get it on Sky soon. It looks much like the UKTV Gold, the BBC partnership that exploits their vast archive of Men Behaving Badly videos to me but whereas that is on a premium channel, ITV hopes the new channel will be on Sky freeview like ITV2 is. Click here for more.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is out and receiving rave reviews. One of the most controversial games of all time, it's actually been sued for inspiring shooting incidents in the US and is always sited on those phone-ins that want to blame teenage violence on something or other and the new version keeps up the tradition. Not quite GTA3, more a very good add-on pack, San Andreas gives new missions and environments along with the full throttle thrills the game is famous for. It's only on PS2 at the moment, PC versions are probably a few months away but a lot of people have decided that a Play Station is cheaper than upgrading their computer, so it's worth looking at for Christmas. Read more here.

(31.10.04) Industry analysts are expressing concern about a change in cashpoint software. Up until now cashpoints have run on the ancient but robust IBM OS/2, now providors are upgrading to a Microsoft system. Whereas the old cashpoints existed on an isolated network, the new ones are intergrated into a much wider network and it's making them vulnerable to viruses and crashes. Already the dreaded "blue screen of death" has seen in the US, where whole networks have also been disabled. Ah...progress. Read more here.

(25.10.04) Argonaut, London based makers of the Harry Potter game is going into administration following of other big projects such as the Cat Woman game. At the same time Scottish Enterprise minister Jim Wallace is meeting with Microsoft to sell them the idea of investing in Scotland. It's becoming increasingly clear that companies need big backers if they are going to produce succesful games. Argonaut failed partly because Cat Woman sucked but mostly because they tried to develop the game quickly by assemblying a big team of programmers. The result was a game with serious control problems and little originality. Read about their fate here and Jim's jaunt here.

(22.10.04) Every so often a new security system is hailed as a huge blow to fraudsters and yet the crime never stops. It's as if those developing the systems have no understanding of how crime works and evolves. ID cards a good example and so is the announcement that a method of identifying individual printers has been developed so that documents can be traced back to their origin. It won't catch any counterfeiters, who'll just buy their equipment somewhere for cash but it will identify printers used for leaking papers from companies and government offices, which is probably the purpose anyway. Read more here.

(20.10.04) The BBC has an article warning of potential phishing scams (emails that purport to come from legitimate sites and try to get you to divulge financial details). These may not be so far in the future as the writer seems to suggest, I can remember warning of fake websites which covered your address bar with a fake one and then seeing this becoming quite common within weeks. The articles best prediction was that winners of auctions will be sent fake confirmation emails leading to fake payment sites, I've already had crude versions of these. See for yourself by clicking here and be careful out there.

The British Library Online has added images of the original pages from books such as da Vinci's notebook and the Lindisfarne Gospels to it's website and they can can be accessed interactively. You can actually click on the pages and see the book turn to the next as well as search for particular items. They've optomised the site so you can get a reasonable download speed whether you are on broadband or dial-up and the range of material is wonderful. Click here for the da Vinci and other interactive books and here for the home page of the Library. I got this information via the British Council website here, another great Internet resource. By the by, the Library has the shortest UK address I've ever seen, I didn't know that domain even existed.

(17.10.04) Google's latest addition to its ever expanding list of services is being greeted with some suspicion by others in the search industry. "Desktop Toolbar" is a free download which enables people to search their own computer and home network and the Internet in one window. Snap shots of a computers files is sent to google so that they can target advertising more precisely. It is possible to disable this function to a degree but not to completely shut it off. If it wasn't for the legacy of goodwill the company enjoys this would be making a much bigger impact in the news because its essentially a very intrusive form of spyware. Read more here and don't install the new toolbar without carefull thought.

(12.10.04) A seventeen yer old from Wales scammed over a hundred ebayers out of more then £45000 by auctioning non-existent items such as mobile phones. Rather than taking PayPal or some other online payment he insisted on bank tranfers so the purchasers were left completely unprotected. He further rubbed salt into the wound by sending them emails taunting them over how he had conned them and managed to trade for over a year before complaints led police to act. Read more here and check the forum's guide to ebay here.

(09.10.04) The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing a New Hampshire man behind many of the pop-up ads for anti-spyware programs. His was one of the more vicious operations, essentially the ads were just a symptom of a very aggressive piece of spyware that hijacked users computers via webpages that exploited a flaw in Internet Explorer. It is thought that this is the first a series of prosecutions of similar enterprises. Read more here.  

(07.10.04) The BMI (British Music Industry) has followed their American counterparts and is sueing 28 filesharers they claim are amongst the most prolific in the country. They say that they want to send a strong message to all file sharers that their activities are illegal and they will face penalities if they persist. I continue to wonder how file sharing differs from exchanging tapes and why the companies behinf the action are the same ones that supply the copying software. Read more here.

Dick Cheney, the US Vice President, became responsible for a huge boost in traffic on a website supporting rival John Kerry when he asked people to visit  factcheck.com rather than the Republican copy site factcheck.org. The opening page of the site he guided people too carrys the words  "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values." It has some interesting points to make about Cheney's performance in the debate too, click the link above to see for yourself.

(05.10.04) Microsoft is apparently planning to use data drawn from users computers to give their planned search engine an edge over Goggle and other big players. Their lawyers must be short of work and they must feel that they haven't annoyed enough people in my opinion. Read more here.

The Conservatives are very angry with the Labour party for registering michaelhowardmp in various domain names. They quite rightly accuse them of cyber squatting and the domains really are registered to the Labour Party. Quite extraordinary, read more here.

(28.09.04) Alicebot has won the Turring prize for the third year running, with the UK coming second again. The prize is named after Alan Turring who maintained that the ultimate test of an artificial intelligence was the ability to maintain a conversation with a human being and convince them that were talking with another human. Personally I, along with other devotees of Black and White, disagree with this but what do we know? You can chat with Alice yourself by clicking here, you'll find lots of other AI related news on the same site.

The Beatles (a popular pop group in the 60s) are hawking the online rights to their music catalogue around the download companies for a hefty $15 million for a six month license. This is thought to put it within the range of only Microsoft and Apple and even they would find it hard to recoup the outlay. Apple would be an interesting choice because they have been in dispute with the Beatles over the use of the name "Apple" for music related business. Read more here.

(27.09.09) An off the peg toolkit for writing malicious text into a .jpeg so that opening it will cause a buffer overflow has been found on the Internet. Similar toolkits have long been available for writing variants on common viruses but this is unusual in its sophistication and the speed it has folowed the discovery of the vulnerability. MS has released a patch to address the problem (see software updates above) and you can read more here.

(23.09.04) Users of older Microsoft operating systems, such as '98 and 2000, are being denied the security enhancements of XP SP2. MS is recommending that they upgrade to XP but they have no answer to the question why a program common to all OSs is not being treated the same way for all users. Read more here and feel annoyed.

(22.09.04) Seimens have produced a mobile phone with a chip that can smell it users breath and warn them of various dangerous states and will disable itself if the user, when sober, has told it to. It can even work with a car to imobilise it if the user has had to much to drink (phoning for a taxi would be a good addon) and even predict various medical states. There isn't much on the web about this yet, I just heard a spokesman talk about it on Radio5. The BBC is reporting that cheaper calls is top of user demands which hardly seems news at all, I wonder how much they paid for that survey?

(18.09.04) Sims 2, the sequel to the all time number one PC game, has been released to good but not great reviews. To be fair the criticisms seem to be very picky and given the origianal game has continued to sell well over the years, the new one will enthral fans just like the last version did. The new one won't run on NAIDC computers but it does mean the original, which will, will become a real bargain on ebay. It's now selling for £9.99 and if you know someone who like soap operas but doesn't understand why people play computer games this is the one to buy them. Click here for more on Sims 2. 

AMD's 3800+ is faster than the latest Prescott Intel P4 according to ZDnet despite having a core speed 1ghz slower. The AMD out performs its rival in all applications from office to games and is significantly cheaper. It's still expensive mind but it is worth bearing in mind when buying a new motherboard or computer because the slower AMDs that fit the same socket are available a quite reasonable prices and its nice to know you can upgrade when the price drops. Click here to read more on ZDnet.

EasyStory: Stelios, the guy behind easyjet etc, is to launch a music download service, called easyMusic, around Christmas and it'll be selling songs for 25p. This is a massive reduction on the UK average of 79p and he also plans to have a lot of even cheaper stuff in a copyright free area he call "copyleft) (he's such a card). The service will utilise the existing Wippit download catalogue and software even though it undercuts even that by 4p. Read more here.

(16.09.04) What a surprise once again UK consumers are paying more for exactly the same product than their continental cousins. This time its the cuddly Apple i-tunes people that are overcharging us by 17% on every track we download. No wonder people don't regard file sharing as theft, did they think we wouldn't find out? Click here to read more.

(15.09.04) Singapore has shut down a network of 10 000 zombie computers after a tip off from a Norwegian ISP. The zombies were personal computers infected with a trojan virus and were under the control of hackers. They were probably used in DOS attacks on major sites like Microsoft. Click here for more.

(10.09.04) The British Libary Online has made available scans of the original copies of Shakespear plays used in 1642 when the theatres were closed by Cromwell. Readers can see the scripts in the closest form to the one that the bard himself would have done and compare the various versions that were current at the time (the ones we know now were defined by Dr Johnson). Click here to indulge yourself.

(07.09.04) Buying a graphics card is one the many nightmares that we go through when we're upgrading a computer. There's all those reviews, the endless pages of benchmarks, the searches for the best price and wondering what an antiscopic filter actually is. But basically it comes down to something quite basic, what is the best card in our budget? At long last TomsHardware, the worlds best benchmark site IMO, has addressed this question and produced charts that ranks cards by performance devided by cost. It's nice to see that the FX5200, the card I've recommended as good value for a NAIDC computer, is near the top. Click here to see for yourself.

(02.09.04) MS in their never ending quest for world domination, sorry, serve the consumer, has announced two new products. MS Zen is a mobile media center which offers up to 7 hours video play back or 22 hours of music on a single charge and the music download service that they are beta testing offers 1/2 million tracks at present, which will double when it goes fully live. Read more here and here.

(30.08.04) The latest iMac is expected to be announced soon, priced at between £1300 and $2200 depending on the screen size and the G5 processor version you want. The big change is that the computer itself will be housed behind a LCD flat screen making them extremely compact and continuing the iMac tradition of design innovation. That's if a bunch of photos taken in a lift can be relied on. Click here for more.

Have you read "The Third Policeman" by Flan O'Brien? This story reminds me of the episode that involved the tiny boxes that, contained within each other like Russian dolls, got smaller and smaller until they defied comprehension (much like the rest of the book really). Intel have crammed 500 million transitors onto a single chip using connections measuring  65 nanometers, 30% smaller than their current chip. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, you can't even imagine it, read more here. You can get The Third Policeman on Amazon from £2.75 by clicking here.

(29.08.04) Longhorn, the amusingly named next MS OS, is to be released in late 2006 after many delays. In order to hit the new deadline MS has dropped the much vaunted WinFS system which was supposed to make it easier for the user to find information. Personally I think releasing something that just worked first time round would be a huge leap for mankind but what do I know? Click here for more plus a slightly loopy interview with Bill Gates.

(26.08.04) Sophos has discovered a new worm, the snapily named Rbot-GR, that not only attempts to hijack your computer, use and abuse it the usual ways but actually takes control of your webcam and mic and then broadcasts the results to the world! Read more here. 

The FBI continue to fight the good fight against the evil that is file sharing and have raided the homes of five file sharers who they claim were running hubs for the "Underground Network" (it's like a bad made 4 TV film). It appears that the network specialised in films and such gems as Kill Bill were available for free download. Read more here.

(21.08.04) Scientists working at the South Pole found themselves victim of hackers who threatened to sell their work to "another" country and close down systems. The FBI tracked down the hackers to a cyber cafe in Romania and eventually to two suspects who they had been watching for some time. They've now been arrested. That's the FBIs version of events but the Register asks if that's what really happened, read more here.

(20.08.04) NVidia have announced a new chip which promises much improved preformance at around £100 a card. Rather than more frames per second, it aims at better lighting and image quality and is specifically aimed at handling the latest Doom3 type games. It also supports PCI express, not relavent to most of us but good news if you are thinking of upgrading as cards that support this have cost over £300 up until now. Now release date yet though. Read more here.

(17.08.04) Following the embarrassment of the code leak, it seems that developer Valve has managed to lose the entire script of Half-life 2 and it's now circulating on the Internet. Read more here, the article also claims that the game will be released in a few weeks but we've heard that before...

It's big, it's scary and it's back - Doom 3 has been released to almost universal acclaim, something rare in these days where even Lara can fall flat on her face (assuming her face would actually hit the ground if she fell forwards). Click here for the official site and here for the GamesSpot take on it. It's already available for under £25, too, not bad for a top line game.

(10.09.04) Following the bluetooth virus mobile phone users are at risk of an old PC trick, hiding a virus inside an illegal program. In this case people accessing warez versions of the Mosquito game will find their phones infected by a trojan that accesses premium rate numbers. Scary. Read more here.

(09.08.04) UbiSoft, the French company that for a long time was associated with bargain versions of last years games, is poised to take over Eidos, the UKs leading independent games maker. Eidos has been under pressure after the poor showing of the latest Lara Croft outing and the comparitive failure of Hitman2. They're trying to raise investment to stave off the takeover but things don't look good. Read more here.

(08.08.04) pfizer, makers of viagra, are taking legal action against spammers who use their name to flog their own dodgy drugs and not before time. "Viagra" spam makes up a significant proportion of the total and the more companies that stand firm the better. Read more here.

(04.08.04) MyDoom seems to have taken open source to a new level. The phenomenly successful game broke new ground when it made it source code available to players and allowed them to modify it as long as they distributed their work for free but now the ungrateful little sods are distributing the latest version before it has even been officialy released worldwide. This is probably due to a chain of west coast stores selling it before the rest of the US gets it. About 50K copies have been downloaded apparently, read more here.

(03.08.04) Real has developed an addin for its player that allows users to download and save to a variety of formats including i-pod and it's got Apple rather annoyed. I-tunes and i-pod are making huge profits for Apple because of its hither to incompatibilty with other formats, once you bought the player you were locked into their download service. They're accusing Real of hacker like tactics. Read more from Apple here and Reals response here, the Real addin download is here.

(30.07.04) AMD has cut prices on its XP and 64 processors by up to 30%, the change hasn't got through to retail market yet so if you're thinking of buying one it might be good idea to hold of for a while. Read more here.

(28.07.04) MyDoom.m which brought down 4 search engines contains a virus that uses infected machines to launch a denial of service attack (basically a flood of emails that overwhelm a server) on Microsoft.com. Infected machines start to send out the emails 3 minutes after they have been compromised. Meanwhile Symantec has made the threat the subject of its news alert emails and its website page now has a big link to the removal tool. Read more here.

(27.07.04) MS has released the first service pack for MS Office 2003, a roll of security and bug fixes plus some tweaks to the program. You can get the update via the program itself and read more details here.

(26.07.04) Google has released its proposed stock flotation price of between $105 and  $135 per share, giving it a total valuation of up to $20 billion, the highest initial flotation price ever. To get an idea of how high this is, BA is valued at around $2 billion. It's like a return to the dotcom boom of the late 90's! Read more here.

(24.07.04) Google has added a facilty to its toolbar that allows IE users to search directly from the address bar. It appears to be a version of the "I'm feeling lucky" button, typing in "BBC" for instance will take you to the main BBC homepage. Of course Mozilla users have had this for a while.

(22.07.04) The Scottish Executive has started a news alert service that can be installed on any website and configured in various ways to display the desired news. The S.E. has a great deal of impact on our local affairs and yet its innitiatives can get lost in the UK news, this a very good move on their part. Click here for details.

(14.07.04) MS patch released last month failed to completely patch the hole that download.ject exploited according Symantec and a slightly modified version of the worm could still exploit it (read more here). Meanwhile security firm eEye say that they expect that one of the holes to be patched today to be exploited whithin a week, adding to the need to update, read more here.

(10.07.04) Gmail, the email service that will be offered by google has brought about major changes in its rivals offerings, a testiment of how seriously they take the threat despite the negative publicity Gmail has recieved, not to mention the set backs in the way they intended to pay for it. Google will no longer be able to sell user information but the massive 1gb storage has meant that hotmail has increased its storage space to 250mb and Yahoo 100mb. There will be more changes on they way, which can only be good news for online email, read more here.

(09.07.04) Aging, overwieght and touchy (no not me, the description doesn't include the word "anorak") according to contributors to his own website. Who? George Michael, once the acme of pop, has closed down the message board on his own website because he "doesn't want anything to do with negative comments". Shouldn't have started a website then (thankfully all our members are wonderful but some of the emailers - well you wouldn't believe). Read more here.

(05.07.04) A Report into content of BBC web services have led to the closure of five of it's websites and the demand that it gets at least 25% of its content from external services, which sounds like a money spinner for someone. The sites that have faced the chop are probably peripheral to most users and include things like "whats on" and "lifestyle" content. The BBC will not be venturing into dating, gambaling or services that replicate those available in the commercial sector. Read more here.

(03.07.04) US Presidential candidates Kerry & Bush have been criticised for having websites that both insecure and guilty of invading the privacy of visitors. To be fair the privacy issue probably amounts to a counter and tracking cookies in banners but the security holes leave the sites open to manipulation by hackers. It's a pity this has been publicised before anyone did anything really, the maunipulation of important websites is one of the entertaining sideshows of the Internet. Read more here.

(30.06.04) I wish they'd just stop developing stuff for a while, say six months or so, just so I can upgrade my motherboard without having to research something new every day. I don't want the latest processor or g-card but I do want a mothervoard that would support them should I win the lottery or something. I'd just about got it sorted when this came along, a revival of the long dead twin g-card arrangement. Do I really need a mobo with two PCI express slots? Read more here.

(29.06.04) The Register suspects that the latest Beatie Boys CD contains a virus/worm/trojan that is downloaded onto a computer if attempts are made to copy it. The BBs deny this, as do EMI but there does seem to be something odd going on. Could this be the first of a wave of virus protected CDs and could that in turn lead to AV companies having to produce definitions to disable anti-copying software. If that happens where would that leave MS and its attempts to break into the AV market and to be at the forefront of the fight against piracy? Read more here.

(28.06.04) Microsoft UK has joined the legions of companies that outsource their technical helplines to India, although maybe unintentionally. A friend who was having trouble downloading a MS beta patch noticed that there calls to the helpline were now being answered by people from the sub-continent and a little digging revealed that MS has subbed out the help desk work to Hewlett-Packard and they had then outsourced the work to India. I wonder if that is what they expected of their new partners.

The average computer has 28 instances of spyware on it. The commonest type are "tracking" cookies. These are similar to website cookies but they are placed in banners etc on many sites across the Net and record visits by individual computers. This allows to cookie owner to build up a picture of surfing habits and to tailor spam better. Read more here.

(25.06.04) Hewlett Packard announced on Friday that it had found a memory flaw in some notepads manufactured between March 2002 and July 2003, that could affect as many as 900 000. Defective memory modules in Intel notepads are causing those running Windows OSs to crash. Read more here

(24.06.04) Microsoft has been granted a patent on the concept (they don't seem to have any working examples) of useing the human body as a conduit and switching system for digital signals. They even think it will be possible to use areas of skin as a keypad by utilising its resistance/conductivity. If you can patent concepts in this form then science fiction writers can only be months away from sueing numerous people for putting into practice things they first thought up. Read more here.

An article reproduced on the Register claims that some spyware has crossed the line between being merely a suspect and annoying marketing tool and should now be classified as a form of virus or worm. It's a frightening tale of obscene pop-ups, reconfigured browsers and self updating intrusions and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it at present. Read more here. Thanks to Steve for the link.

(20.06.04) The outbreak of violence not only boosted Big Brother's viewing figures it also sent its official website into the Net charts top 20 of most visited websites this week. Which says a lot for the countrys tastes and rather than give it a further boost by linking to it here's The Register's alternative.

(18.06.04) British Technology Group has joined the ranks of companies claiming patents over fundamental aspects of the Internet that we have all taken for granted for years. In BTG's case they say that they invented the various ways of downloading updates from websites and that they are in negotiations with several major players. You can read more here. I wonder why it takes so long for IT companies to notice that one of their patents is being infringed?

(16.06.04) The worlds first mobile phone virus has been discovered but don't panic, experts think its historical note rather than a real threat to users. It only has a range of 30 feet, requires blue tooth to be enabled and the message will be flagged "unknown file" when it arrives, so you've got to be really unlucky and foolhardy to get it. One things for sure though, anti-virus products for phone are now a real possibility. Read more here.

Major websites, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Google, were affected by a web attack on their domain registers that lasted over four hours yesterday. The precise nature of the attack is unknown but is an interesting new tactic on the part of the hacking community. Read more here.

(15.06.04) i-tunes, the Apple music download service launched in Europe today, offering over 700 000 tracks at 79p each. This is the cheapest of the commercial download shops at the moment and they are offering complete albums for only £7.99 too. A lot of people seem sceptical about the prospects for these services but to me their development mirrors that of the Internet itself. Back in the day, when things first started to really get going in '98, a lot of users objected to any form of advertising or payed for service on what until then had been a basically free for all net, the same is true of music downloads. The increasing competition, in my opinion, will bring prices down and eventually lead to more choice and a better service. Just as it did with the Internet as whole. Read more on the launch here.

(14.06.03) Digital fabric: I don't really understand this but it appears that the development is set to become as ubiquitous as smart tags. A material has been developed by animators that is sensitive to pressure and movement but is less than a milimetre thick. All sorts of people have found uses for it and you can read more here.

(11.06.04) Your dog really can understand you! Researchers in Germany have studied a border collie which can recognise around 200 words. They tested its ability to retrieve specific objects and found it succeeded 37 times out of 40, which is somewhat higher than people achieve when shopping. Read more here and here. It's not mentioned in either article but I heard the interviewers interviewed on the radio this morning and they thought that domestic dogs had a much wider range of vocal skills comparred to their wild cousin, the wolf and this was due to them trying to immitate their owners speech patterns.

Nicked last October there's finally been some arrests for the theft of the core code of Half-Life 2. The lose has led to the games release being put back several months and that could be why the gamer online community has been moved to aid the authorities in tracking down the thieves despite their traditional antipathy. Read more here.

(08.06.04) MS has patented the double click in latest of the mad US patents. Called "the time based button application luanch" it can only be a precursor (ha!) the "inhaltion of oxeygon and related gases" patent which will surely be along shortly. Read more here.

(07.06.04) i-tunes is to launch in the UK next week according to industry "insiders". This follows the phenomenal success of the service in the US where over 70 million tracks have been downloaded. Meanwhile Napster has announced that they have expanded their download archive by 40%. Read more here.

Atlantis has been one of the favourite Internet topics ever since it first launched and its no abuzz with stories of an archeologist who claims to have located it from satellite pictures of southern Spain. Not quite the island in the Atlantic we were all hoping for but it does have the advantage of being on dry land. Unfortunately its in a national park. Read more here.

Loosing files on ones own computer is very annoying and the MS search isn't nearly as good as it should be. Google is to address this problem with an addition to its deskbar download that will quickly search a PC in the same way that it can now search the web. Click here for more.

(06.06.04) NoChex, the alternative to PayPal, which allows you to send money to anyone with a bank account and email address is to drop all its charges for uploading and downloading of money on the 16th. Although it isn't nearly as big an operation as PayPal, I've always preferred it because it works by you making a positive decision to upload and transfer money rather than PayPals system of withdrawing money directly from your account. Click here to learn more.

(03.06.04) MS has announced that it is to extend warranties, i.e. support on its products from 7 to 10 years, which is great news if you are still useing one of the onlder operating systems such Win95 or '98. The warranty runs from the shipment date as oppossed to the year of release. Click here for more. 

(01.06.04) The Cambridge Online Latin Project is to make learning the ancient language available to all by September. Aimed at reviving its study in school the system has been tested successfully on 2000 pupils and its innovative approach has made the language far more accessible than in the past. Read more here. Apologies if the front page headline mislead anyone to this story'e content.

(31.05.04) One of the main attractions of Intel over AMD processors is that they require a lot less cooling and hence have a quiter fan. My Athlon computer sounds like a fighter jet taxing on the runway when I start it up and I've often thought the extra cost an Intel would be worth it just for a quiter life. However pictures on the inquierer website, even though they are of a prototype, suggest the new Prescott chip needs a lot more cooling than it predessesors. Click here for the pictures and here for a review of the manufacturers current mobos.

(27.05.04) ZoneAlarm has added an antivirus component to its popular firewall by licensing technology from Computer Associates, who supply eTrust programs amongst others. ZA has offered anti-virus before but in the form of a program that detects virus like activity, the new license will add traditional definition based protection. The new AV will be added to the basic (not the free) for a total cost of $19 (£12?), significantly cheaper than the Symantec equivalent. Read more here.

MS has merged its own propsals with the anti-spam ideas of Meng Wong (who he?) to come up with a system that matches an emails apparent "from" address with information in the header. It's very difficult to explain but sounds a good idea as the vast majority of objectionable spam comes with false "from" lines. Read more here.

(26.05.04) Symantec has bought Brightmail, the highly successful anti-spam company. The move will mean that the combined company will be able to provide a single solution to virus, firewall and spam problems and be better placed to withstand Microsoft's plan to intergrate those services with Windows by default (can anyone spot a future lawsuit here?). It may also mean that Brightmail, which until now has concentrated on the corporate market, becomes available to home user, which can only be a good thing because Symantecs antispam components aren't that good at the moment IMO. Read more here. 

I've complained on more than one occasion that the proliferation of domains is an unnecessary expense to website owners which only helps to generate income for the registries. Despite writing several emails on the subject I've never managed to get anyone interested and so I'm grateful that web guru Tim Berners Lee has taken up the cause. For some reason his opinion carries more weight than mine and his views are receiving a lot of attention. Read more here.

(25.05.04) Spammers seem to be as unconcerned by the fear of prosecution as file sharers according to the BBC. Spam now accounts for 70% of all email and it only seems yesterday (it was about six months ago actually) that it passed the 50% mark. There has been a shift in content, slightly less porn but a lot more drugs though. Read more here.

The latest version of ZoneAlarm, 5.0.590.015, is available for download from BetaNews and can be downloaded by clicking here. 

(24.05.04) The fear of prosecution seems to be having little affect on european file sharers despite the 5% decline in the USA reveals an article on the BBC website. It also reports that over here we swap bigger files including movies and around 30% of broadband users are file sharers. Read more here.

The makers of Lindows, the Linux based alternative operating system, scored a major victory in their fight against Microsoft when a court denied MS the right to appeal a previous ruling. MS claims that Lindows sounds to much like WIndows (actually the claims are even more obtruse) and that no one had used the word in connection to computing before they registered it as a trademark. Read more here.

(22.05.04) The ID trial started in Glasgow yesterday in a scheme that will see 10 000 people selected by MORI will recieve cards to test the practicalities. Read more here.

(21.05.04) Napster, the daddy of all P2P websites, has reinvented itself as a pay service with a twist. For a monthly fee of £9.95 you can download unlimited tracks to your hard drive and two more PCs but you can't burn them to CD or to an mp3 device. However you can connect your PC to your stereo, in which case you could tape them. Tracks costs 99p each to burn, less if you download multiple tracks. Click here for details.

(19.05.04) Intel claims that the Prescott chip will prevent one of the prime targets of viruses and DoS attacks by stopping buffer overflows. Click here for more, the short article also explains what a buffer overflow actually is.

(13.05.04) Rome Total War was an unexpected hit for BBC2 last year. It pitted teams against a sophisticated AI in battles from the Roman era and was based on the hit PC game Medieval Total War. Now the PC version of RTW is nearing completion and it looks even better than MTW, click here for a mouthwatering review.

(11.05.04) Virus writers may not be the teenage geniuses that we thought according to this article on the BBC website. Several have been caught by putting their own names and in one case their complete CV in the virus they send out apparently.

(10.05.04) Video codecs are the mathmatical formulas that compress moving images so they are quicker to download. The most popular are mpeg and wmv from MS, Apple's Quicktime and Realplayer (can't remember what it's called. Now the BBC has joined the fray, releasing a new codec as open source so that other developers can contribute to its development. I can only conclude that they intend to eventually replace Realplayer on their websites. Read more here.

The Church of Fools is perhaps not the best choice for a sincere attempt to create a genuine virtual church on the Net but it's backed by many of the mainstream churches and sponsored by the methodists. Visitors who can join the congregation on Tuesday will be able to choose an avatar (a character to represent themselves) and enter the 3d church an take part in the half hour long services. Apparently they've lined up leading clerics and celebrities to read sermons over the coming weeks. Read more on the BBC here and visit the pre-launch church here.

Woody's Windows Watch (Woody writes the "for dummies" books) explains why Sasser has been so successful. The original patch for the vulnerabilty caused serious problems with various applications, Oracle for instance, and this led to many company not installing it, which in turn led them to be open to the worm. No doubt there are system admins up and down the country explaining this descion right now.

Longhorn will store all your comunications (email, messenger etc) in a central location, news that will warm David Blunketts heart no doubt. Not only that but Erikson says that it will intergrate with bluetooth mobile phones and enable people to screen calls and take notes on calls. Read more here.

(06.05.04) ATI may be about to retake the graphics card crown despite the new nVidea chipset thanks to some clever tweaking of its existing technology. Toms Hardware, probably the best review site on the Net reports some impressive figures from the test card and the screenshots look as good if not better (slightly better contrast I think) than the nVidea 6800s. Read more here. By the way, I just bought an nVidea FX5200 128mb for under £50 all in and was amazed at the improvement over the old MX440, if you play games it's well worth the money.

(02.05.04) Californian company BeepCard have developed a card that uses your own voice as an added layer of security and it is aimed at tackling the problem of absentee credit card fraud, that is that which is committed over the phone or on the Internet. The card has a tiny microphone and speaker, it records your password on a chip and then asks for it when you want to make a payment, only if it recognises your voice and password will it transmit the information via your phone or computer mike. Read more here.

(01.05.04) Tim Berners-Lee, the "father of the web", who once wrote me a very encouraging email, who has never really taken anything for his contribution to modern life has finally been rewarded by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation with a prize of £668 000. And not before time IMO, he'll probably spend it on something worthy though, he's a famously modest man. Read more here.

Google is floating shares on the NY stock exchange but unusually is auctioning them. It is expected to raise over 2 billion £s, which will value the company at around £20 billion. Read more here.

(29.04.04) XP SP2 release has been delayed to the end of the year leading to concerns amongst software manufacturers who have been told that they will have adapt to it. MS has no explanation and just says it will be ready when it's ready. Read more here.

Also on the Register news that the EU has prepared legistlation on data retention by ISPs who they want to keep our surfing and email history for a year. Read more here.

(22.04.04) Amazon, so long both the flagship for ecommerce and the prime example of how it couldn't make a profit, has reported profits of over $100 million for the first quarter of the year comparred to a loss of $10 million last year. Sales were a staggering $1.5 billion. This has been partly helped by the weak dollar but also because of a massive increase in the UK and the EU market in general. Read more here.

(08.04.04) File sharers should brace themselves for a Netsky attack on the 14th as the latest varient is time triggered to infect shared files. The attack will last for ten days apparently, read more here.

(04.04.04) Two British Universities are heading off to the European Robot Football championships in Germany. Unlike BBC2's Robot Wars, Plymouth and Warwick have created robots that compute their own moves rather than being controlled remotely. Read more here.

Japenese inventor Kohei Minato is to produce electro-magnet motors that work at 20% greater effeiciency than their existing equivalents. Not only that but the article in Geek news claims that if they are combined with a generator they run at 330% effeciency, which I always thought impossible, maybe they added a zero. So far the main application are fans which run more quietly than the traditional ones. Read more here.

(31.03.04) AMD is to make their new 64 bit processor available to the consumer trade at a lower price than the current top of the range AMD chips. This will inevitably mean that their will soon be a spate of new top of range computers on sale and a sharp drop in the price of the current top of the range. Read more here.

Oftel is to "urgently" examine BT's tariff structure after claims that it is exploiting it dominant market position (who'd have thought?). Read more here.

(30.03.04) Over 200 persistent file sharers across the EU are to be taken to court by our equivalent to the RIAA, the IFPI. Although none come from the UK, where a policy of education is being used, it can only be a matter of time before it happens here too. In the US they have found that prosecutions have had a dramatic affect on the number of tracks downloaded but curiously there has been no rise in CD sales so far. Read more here.

(29.03.04) The price of an Xbox dropped dramatically in the US as Microsoft slashed it by $30, bringing it down to around £82. This is significantly below that of a mid-range graphics card and is sure to bring in buyers in the short term. It could also be a sign of desperation as sales fail to live up to projections. Read more here.

(26.04.03) Digital "paper" has finally become a reality with Sony, Philips and digital paper pioneer E-Ink announcing the first devices capable of useing the technology. As with a computer the information is stored digitally but the display, with similar definition to a newspaper, is not iridescent and therefore much easier on the eye. Read morehere.

(24.04.03) Intel is to stop classifying its processors by clock speed in a move that mimics AMDs policy since the arrival of its XP chips. They have recognised that speed isn't the only measure of value, possible as the result of its mobile chips having lower clock speeds but still having high productivity. Read more here.

(23.03.04) MS has been fined a hundreds of millions of pounds by the EU for abusing its dominant position in the software market. The Regisiter thinks it's a mere pin prick to the comapany's profits, read why here.

The Register also reports that New Zealand is to legalise the copying of CDs for personal use. The recording industry has hailed this as the first crack in the defence against piracy, it looks like NZ is the first to recognise that CD copying is much the same as cassete or video reproduction in the home. Read more here.

(22.03.04) Vigilantes are stalking the stalkers across the chatrooms looking for paedophiles, a development that seems inevitable in the light of the police's very similar tactics. Unlike the police, who concentrate on gathering information that stays confidential until a prosecution ensues, the vigilantes find a suspect and publicises their name to their family, friends, work colleagues and employers. Coordinated through a website, they have targeted dozens of individuals. I couldn't find a link to this story that wasn't itself quite disturbing in content but thought it worth reporting as part of the social history of the Internet anyway.

(19.03.04) MS SP2 has been beta testing for a few weeks now and is getting good reviews. sgegreen (the only person that I know who has it) tells me that it seems to work OK, no conflicts with other programs, on the other hand Woody's Office Watch reports problems with Office SP3, mainly with spam filter programs intergrating with it. Hmmm...seemed more interesting when I read Woody's email...

(17.03.04) PCI Express is the coming version of PCI and promises huge improvements in clock speeds. Not only is it faster in itself but each slot will have its own dedicated bandwidth rather than competeing with the other slots as they do now. In the near future this promises much faster graphics cards for example. Read more here.

(16.03.04) Remember the cold war? Ah...the good old days when to implacable enemies armed to the teeth kept us in fear of instant death for decades and instant death was the good option. So much better than today's "war on terrorism" where on one side we have a bunch of religious fanatics driven by impulses we can't understand and on the other fanatics led by lunatic living in a cave...Read a story about how, even back then, computers and viruses were playing their part against the forces of evil here.

(12.03.04) The EU has announced a £30 million 4 year plan to make the Internet safer for children and cut down on illegal content. Following research that shows that despite all the warning most parents have no idea what their children are doing and that their children are ignorant of the dangers, the plan aims to raise awareness as well as encourage ISPs and providers to do more to stop illegal content. The trouble with the proposals is that they rely on self regulation and so little of what we wouldn't want children to see is actually illegal. Read more here.

(10.03.04) nVidea is to incorporate the new GDDR3 memory from Samsung into its cards which will bring us "cinema quality" games graphics according to them. All the main manufacturers are promising cards soon, starting with the 128mb FX 5700. So it should be within the budgets of the sane by the end of the year. Read more on computer shopper here .

Also in computershopper the news that AMD is to bring forward the release of its 64bit chip, probably in responce to Intels announcements. This is just one of the developments that will make this years models look very old by next and help to force the price of cheap to mid-range machines over the next 12 months (IMO). Read more here.

HAL 9000, the star of Kubrik's 2001 has seemed ever futher away as people have got used to the sheer dumbness of real computers but according to a story on the excellent Culture Lab website here (click on the digital link) they could be with us in the near future. And Scotland is leading the research apparently.

(08.03.04) Kazaa has lost an application to an Australian court to overturn information seizure orders granted to music industry anti-piracy investigators. Although this is in on the other side of the world there seems to be an unusual amount of interest by courts in what is happening in P2P cases in other jurisdictions as is shown in the article here, so it may eventually affect us.

(07.03.04) XP SP2's release later this year will herald a further round of updates for many applications, particularly those with a web capability, which is practically everything these days. This is because SP2 is more than a collection of patches, it also makes major changes to the security of the operating system and if other programs aren't adapted they are very likely to cease to function properly. An article here goes into this in more detail but a slightly more alarmist perspective.

(06.03.04) The US patent office has nullified the patent that saw a small California company, Eolas, be granted damages of over $500 million from MS. The patent gave rights over the principle technology of "plugins", the small programs that once installed allow things like realplayer run in a browser. Thanks to a campaign that featured amongst others, Tim Berners-Lee, there won't need to be a wholesale reworking of websites and browsers. Click here for more, thanks to Steve for the tip.

(02.03.04) Hampton Court is the home to many ghosts, some dating back to it's very early years and now one of them has been caught on camera! The security guards, who found the image on a security tape after hearing a door bang shut for no reason, call it "skeletor" but it looks remarkably corporal to me, see what you think by clicking here.

(27.02.04) MS has admitted that Win98 shipped with no security checks at all but says that now security is it's number 1 priority. Funny I seem to remember them saying this before XP was released...Read more here.

(26.02.04) Just when you thought the RIAA vs P2P file sharers saga couldn't get any stranger - it does. Someone who is being sued by RIAA is in turn countersueing, accusing them of racketeering. That is attempting to extort through threats in this case, read more here. I'm just waiting for the RIAA to discover downloaded songs on it's own computers and to sue itself now...

(25.02.04) Symantec is warning of a trio of worms that have emerged this week, all of which have been included in their updates, so it's only people who haven't been online for a while who need to worry. None of them have turned up in the community yet though. Meanwhile a ICQ (remember them) worm is causing havoc, it doesn't seem to do much damage (I may speak to soon) except clogging up the system, it is interesting because it it could be a precursor of a similar Win Messenger worm, virus,thing. Click here for Symantec and here for ICQ.

Ebay are going to insure auction purchases paid for through PayPal (which it owns) for up to £250 should the deal go wrong. This is a big improvememnt on the previous £100 (minus £15) limit they had on only some transactions. Click here for more.

(24.02.04) The source of the MS code leak has been tracked down to a software company that specializes in creating interfaces between and Unix platforms who hold a license from MS to possess the code. It turns out that the leaked code was Win2000 Service Pack 1. Read more here.

Gigabyte, a female hacker from Belgium that I wrote about sometime ago, has been arrested. They've also closed down her website that gave a great insight into what motivates a hacker, which is a pity IMO, read slightly more here.

Net Heros and villians have been named in an annual awards from Ispa. Verisign beat off very stiff competiton from the RIAA for the villain title, to find the hero click here.

Read one of the first assessments of the MS source code leak here, not as dramatic as originally thought and the code is very well written apparently.

The first hack created from the leaked MS code has appeared, apparently it allows hackers to embed code into a bitmap (surprised look) and run arbitrary code via a browser (or something). Fortunately it only affects IE 5, 6 is ok apparently but it does affect all version of Windows. Click here for more. 

(13.02.04) MS sourcecode leaked onto the Internet with two files, each containing millions of lines of code, circulating. The files contain source code for Win2k and Win NT respectively but the former is the basis of XP so the leak could eventually impact consumers if new viruses are written as a result. For the IT industry as a whole this could turn out to be a good thing as it will be harder for MS to argue against sharing source code in the future. Read more here.

Copy protected CDs don't work on all CD players according to another story on the Reg., in particular in-car players seem to be badly hit. I seem to remember that this was predicted when the protection was first proposed. Read more in a well argued piece here.

(11.02.04) Sodaplay has been voted one of the best websites on the net and with 150 000 visitors a month for a non-porn, non-commercial website they must be doing something right. They let you create 3d "creatures" in a 2d space that then develop along Darwinian lines in a Newtonian environment. I got the story from Culture Lab, a wonderful website run by the British Council, click here to explore.

(09.02.04) As anticapated the new US antispan laws in the US are having little affect. Rather than making spammers ask permission before sending it, they give the recipient the option of opting out of recieving more from the sender. As the opt-out link on a spam is merely a way of the sender discovering that an address is active this will actually lead to more spam in the long run IMO. The clue to the law's affectiveness is in it's acronym, CAN-SPAM.

Peer-to-Peer news: PDT.org reports that RIAA has served papers on 512 unamed computer users for the "illegal" sharing of music files (click here and scroll down). Meanwhile in Australia music piracy investigators have obtained search warrants for twelve sites across the country, including the headquarters of Kazaa's parent company and have been in to search for evidence of piracy, click here for more.

(07.02.04) The UK has joined 25 other countries to sign up to an anti-spam initiative which I'm not sure I can explain briefly or actually understand completely. It involves making all email hosts use secure servers to prevent spammers useing their service to route emails through. Read morehere.

(05.02.04) Janet Jackson's boob at the superbowl has propelled her past Brittany and into the number one position in the most searched for Internet image according to Google. I didn't bother - Channel4 news reran the oroiginal footage, which made a change from WMD.

The prospects for nanotechnology and miniture processors reduced with the news that one of the leading researchers in the field has been exposed as a fraud. In a story that seems to suggest that a genius has been exaggerating his achievements, breakthroughs have been called into question and the hopes of many dashed. it's all rather sad. Read more here.

(04.02.04) ID cards: Many of us who oppose the introduction of ID cards do so primarily because we believe that they are to expensive and are ineffective in combating the crimes that their proponents claim. Many other people do so simply on grounds of civil liberties, believing that a Government will use them to gather information on citizens that they have no business knowing. Well a article on computerweekly.com (click here) suggests they could be right. The passport and driving license authorities intend to use credit agencies to verify peoples identities and to establish "social footprints" of applicants when the new "bio-metric" passports and licenses are introduced. This will help quadruple the cost of passports as the Government intends to raise the cost and halve the time they are valid for.

Intel has slashed prices on P4 processors by up to a third (click here) in the wake of the introduction of the amusingly named Prescott chip (click here). The new chips have a smaller architecture at 90nm and can process multiple strings of information at the same time (I've got that right). Meanwhile an odd story has emerged which reports that the new chip doesn't support AGP, which is strange even if AGP is about to superseded by the new version of PCI (click here). Thanks to Steve for last link.

Correction: In yesterday's Mars story I refered to the "Mar Rover" being lost when it was actually the "Beagle lander", apologies for the confusion.

We're all disappointed by the failure of the Mars ROver but Mars Explorer, the thing that dropped it, has been sending back some great arial photos of the red planet. Click here for the BBC story and a link to the pictures.

The EU is about to hit MS with a huge £3 billion+ fine as responce to its anti-competitive practices according to the Scotsman, click here for slightly more.

If you had problems getting your last minute online tax return in on time you weren't alone, thousands of others are in the same boat. Click here for more.

(29.01.04) Dell is introducing a rival to the i-Pod and has joined up with MusicMatch to provide similar Internet/device interface. The two products appear very similar and downloads are priced identically (99c per song $9.99 per album). Click here for details (I wonder if the batteries are easier to replace).

(27.01.04) The clothes shop fitting room, with it's flimsy curtain and inflattering lighting could be a thing of the past if the latest idea from Japan catches on. A 3d camera will take your picture and then you can add clothes and assecories to the resulting image. It could be in use by 2006, can't come soon enough to my mind, click here for now.

(26.01.04) eProcurement is a groundbreaking initiative from the Scottish Executive that allows anyone running a budget and working for a local authority to order materials and services directly via a central server. It gives them the same level of service that private individuals purchasing online have come to take for granted, a simple interface, order tracking and direct messaging between the vendor and purchaser. Four local authorities have signed up so far and more are expected in the near future, read more here.

Bizarre items on ebay #94: Someone called ehosin has put a "new Windows folder" up for sale, unused and in mint condition. That's right, a new folder like the one you create on your desktop and there's been 28 bids so far. The top bid is £10,000,000, I suspect it will win...read more here. 

Could Bill Gates become the next IT knight? The Telegraph seems to think so, afterall he's very rich, a pal of Tony's and he's endowed a chair at Oxford, read more here, thanks to Steve for this and the previous story

(24.01.04) Welsh speakers are to get their own versions of XP and Office thanks to the pressure  put on Microsoft by an army of volunteers who have adapted 90 000 words and phrases for the software. There is talk of the same being available to Scots Gaelic speakers in the future, click here for more,thanks to Steve for the tip.

(22.01.04) Abslutely nothing to do with computers but I really enjoyed this virtual tram ride through Nottingham. Filmed on a very wet day I found it unintentionally hilarious.

(21.01.04) Arial photographs of WWII battlefields declassified under the 50 year rule are now available on the Internet. Click here for the website but be warned it maybe unavailable due to traffic.

(16.01.03) MS is to appeal the Eolas patent case, the $500 million+ pluggin case. Wether this has anything to do with Tim Bernard-Lee's intervention I have no idea but I hope they win. Eolas should have settled out of court. Read more here.

Despite CD sales actually rising last year (see below) the prospect of P2P users being sued for sharing music files is raised in this article on the register. It's home taping all over again...

(15.01.04) Kodak is to cease the distribution of 35mm film cameras in the USA and Europe in order to concentrate on digital imaging systems. Is this the end of film? I think not - you can still buy box cameras afterall but it is a significant move for a mass manufacturer. Read more here.

Despite the dire warning of the RIAA CD sales actually went up in the UK last year, suggesting that P2P file sharing is acting as a spur to purchase in the same way as home taping did. Read morehere.

(13.01.04) Multivision, if not one of the big players, certainly one of the big advertisers in the home PC market is to cease trading. No reason is given and it's quiet a surpise coming from a company that has been winning prizes for its computers only last month. It just shows how competitive the market is and how narrow the margins are I suppose. Read slightly more here if you need contact details.

Toshiba has unveiled the smallest hard drive ever manufactured and aimed at the mobile market. With a 2 Gb disc about the size of a pound coin it's about half as big as the one in an iPod (still not found any batteries for sale btw). Read more here.

(12.01.04) Games: Click here for a summary of the treats in store for gamers in 2004, including the latest release date for half-life (snigger). I shouldn't laugh, at least they get a mention which is more than the beleagured fans of Black and White do. The developers seem to be having a good time though, if this article is anything to go by.

iPod: I'm sure everyone has heard the news about the iPod battery ceasing to recharge after between one year and eighteen months and replacements costing almost as much as a new machine. I've been looking for alternatives because I'm pretty sure you can by them for around £50 but so far have only found this page on ebay for an add-on which only backs up the still functioning battery and looks horrible. I'll keep looking, in the meantimehere are some FAQs.

(10.01.04) Verisign, the company that issues website SSL certificates, has caused chaos on the Internet and created a lot of work for system managers over the last few days. Their old certificate ran out on the 7th and a combination of Norton antivirus and various other programs slowed down computers as they checked for and then downloaded a valid certificate.

This was spotted before it hit the news by sgegreen (see yesterday's software updates - thanks sge). It's a very complicated story (well for me anyway) and you can read more here, here, and here. If this is affecting you and downloading the new certificate (I'm not sure if that helps the home user anyway) turning off the "Check for publisher's certificate revocation" in the advanced tab of IE Explorer options (as recommended by Symantec) solves the problem (apparently).

(09.01.04) Linux has had a very big year and is becoming a real rival to Windows, it's even got its own long running court cases just like its big brother. Click here for a review of its year.

(05.01.04) The January sales seem a great time to buy a computer but according to this article on the inquierer it might be best to wait (well if you are thinking of buying near the top of the range and want to be able to upgrade anyway). Changes to just about every component will make todays top of the range tower unupgradeable in 6 months. New cpus from Intel and AMD will require new sockets, new memory slots, out with AGP and PCI etc in 2004 will make todays best obsolete.

(03.01.04) Somethings are just beyond me and sometimes I'm quite glad. The inquierer found this piece of extrodinary gobbledy-gook for us to enjoy and wonder at.

(02.01.04) So farewell to Jennicam: Webcams are now just the stuff of sleazy webcams and it's hard to believe that once they were considered a social experiment or even art but back in the late '90s, when Jenny stuck a camera on top of computer for the first time, they were. It was never clear exactly why she was doing it but at one time her website was receiving millions of hits a week. If being responsible for an avalanche of spam she can also take the credit for Big Brother style TV shows - if only we'd known, a simple virus could of saved us so much trash! Read more here.

(01.01.04) Tim Berners-Lee, often called the father of the Internet has been given a knighthood in the New Years honours list. It's probably the most prominent IT award since Clive Sinclair back in the '80s. The news has been greeted warmly around the world and as an example of the coverage click here for the Time of India.