Despite pressure from high-tech companies such as Microsoft, the European Parliament has unanimously rejected legislation that would allow software to be patented. If the request is approved by the European Commission, the proposal will be sent back to the EU for initial review, effectively restarting the legislative process.

The software patent bill has met with objection from the start. Polish representatives twice rejected its adoption, while Spain and the Netherlands have supported a restart. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Brussels Thursday to convince European lawmakers to drop the proposal entirely. If the European Commission withdraws the bill, it cannot be reintroduced for two years.

Continue reading →

Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts have taken a new twist: helping parents better understand their children's online activities, and in turn, keep them from breaking the law. The company has posted a dossier detailing the online slang used by children, which outlines six key points for learning "leetspeek."

Leetspeek, derived from elite speak, may include numbers in place of letters and substitute characters that are similar in appearance. Rules of grammar are rarely obeyed, says Microsoft, and mistakes are often left uncorrected.

Continue reading →

America Online won't be issuing the first beta of Netscape 8 as expected this week, pushing the public release back until March. The company says it needs more time to prepare its revived browser, which is based upon Mozilla's Firefox code base and focuses on protecting users from malicious Web sites.

In January, the Netscape team released a minor update to its prototype Web browser that brought the code base up to Firefox 1.0. Netscape, which has been available to a limited group of testers since November, was originally built atop Firefox 0.9.3.

Continue reading →

The milestones keep on coming for the open source Web browser that could. Mozilla developers announced this week that Firefox has been downloaded 25 million times in less than 100 days after its 1.0 launch. Even Microsoft evangelist turned blogger Robert Scoble took the time to applaud Firefox developers for their success.

Since making its debut in early November, Firefox has turned the attention away from Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer and garnered rave reviews along the way.

Continue reading →

Finding another use for the material that has built its industry, Intel researchers have developed the world's first laser out of silicon.

Intel says it etched a "waveguide" into silicon's crystalline structure, which amplifies light that passes through it. The amplification has been dubbed the Raman effect.

Continue reading →

PERSPECTIVE Citibank UK has introduced a unique method for beating online scammers. When customers log in at Citibank.co.uk, they're now required to enter their passwords using an on-screen keyboard.

According to Citibank, forcing customers to mouse-click their passwords on the pop-up keyboard, rather than typing on the mechanical one on their desks, will "reduce the chance of malicious software attempting to record keystrokes and steal your details."

Continue reading →

Apple has agreed to put a hold on subpoenas issued to Mac enthusiast Web sites until a judge hears arguments from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is asking the Superior Court of Santa Clara County in California to proactively block Apple's requests for information on individuals that leaked company "trade secrets."

Apple's "John Doe" lawsuit has targeted Web sites to discover who tipped off the press about an upcoming FireWire-based interface for GarageBand, code-named Asteroid. The suit has sparked an outcry across the Internet from many who feel journalists should not be forced to reveal their sources, and has prompted the EFF to offer legal counsel.

Continue reading →

Wireless technology company Qualcomm said Tuesday at 3GSM that it expects low-cost phones for third generation cell networks to arrive within two years. Pricing could be as low as $50, with the help of $10 to $15 Wideband CDMA chipsets designed by the company. Wideband CDMA is the successor to GSM networks.

Qualcomm, which dominates the CDMA market, does not compete in the GSM arena. But the ongoing transition to 3G services means the door has been opened for Qualcomm to challenge GSM chipset leader Texas Instruments. Qualcomm is even looking beyond Wideband CDMA and testing chips for faster HSDPA, or High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, networks.

Continue reading →

Apple has set the stage for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) to take place June 6 to 10 in San Francisco. The primary focus of WWDC will be to showcase the upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.4, known as Tiger. Developers will get their first hands-on experience with the new operating system, along with programming guidance.

"You'll get the in-depth knowledge, hands-on instruction and one-on-one support you need to deliver products and solutions that transform the way your users work, play, search, and share on a Mac," Apple says of the conference.

Continue reading →

UPDATED Reversing its plans not to release a new version of Internet Explorer independent from Windows, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates now says IE 7.0 will debut before Longhorn. At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Gates acknowledged that IE had become a security risk and promised a beta of IE7 will be available this summer for Windows XP SP2.

The update will include new anti-spyware features, and likely draw on Microsoft's recent acquisitions of security companies GIANT and Sybari.

Continue reading →

Google is not the only search engine interested in leveraging the recent success of Firefox. Ask Jeeves recently met with members of the Mozilla Foundation to discuss opportunities for working together, which could include a version of Firefox tailored for Ask Jeeves, according to executive vice president Tuoc Luong.

Mozilla's release of the open source Firefox has opened the door for companies who want to offer a Web browser, but lack the development resources to start from scratch. AOL recently revived the Netscape brand with a new browser based upon Firefox's core.

Continue reading →

Not wanting to be left out of the growing market for voice over IP services, Motorola has announced an alliance with online telephony company Skype.

Skype, which was founded by the creators of the Kazaa file sharing network, delivers free voice calls using its peer-to-peer software and boasts 25 million registered users worldwide.

Continue reading →

One week after releasing build 8A369, Apple has seeded Mac OS X 10.4 build 8A378 to a limited number of developers. The next release of Apple's operating system, code-named Tiger, is due in the first half of this year. Tiger will introduce a number of new features, including Apple's Spotlight search technology.

The latest development releases of Tiger provide insight into the progress being made inside Apple. Build 8A378 resolves a number of minor issues including plain text e-mails being sent as attachments, problems with dual G5 systems, as well as Spotlight indexing indefinitely. Some bugs have yet to be worked out, however, and developers have expressed concern over the speed of Spotlight.

Continue reading →

AMD has announced three new 64-bit Opteron processors for servers, boosting top speeds to 2.6 GHz and increasing HyperTransport bus performance to 1 GHz. The new models also incorporate the SSE3 software instructions Intel previously added to its chips that speed up multimedia operations such as encoding video.

Most appealing to business customers, however, may be added support for AMD's PowerNow technology. PowerNow slows down the Opteron processors, thus reducing power usage, in order to keep systems cooler when not in high demand.

Continue reading →

Facing increased competition from a revamped MSN and search leader Google, Ask Jeeves is taking a new approach to spread awareness about its search offerings: television advertisements. Ask Jeeves will debut six 15-second TV spots with the tagline "Ask Jeeves. And get what you're searching for."

The problem, the company says, is that most people don't realize that Ask Jeeves offers everything its competitors do. "Over the past three years we have significantly improved the Ask Jeeves search experience with better relevancy, direct answers to search queries, local search results and personalization. So our marketing campaign emphasizes that Ask Jeeves is great for all kinds of Web search," said Greg Ott, Ask Jeeves vice president of marketing.

Continue reading →