Gigabyte aims to ship 100,000 optical drives per month by year-end

Gigabyte Technology on March 26 formally introduced its first optical storage product, a five-in-one combo drive co-developed with its strategic partner Asour Technology, taking one step further into the systems product market. Gigabyte's new business is built upon its strategic alliance with optical drive designer Asour, in which Asour provides technology and Gigabyte handles production and sales. The companies target shipping 100,000 units per month by the end of 2003. ...more

Police arrest and caution Wi-Fi thieves

Worcestershire police have cautioned two people who were arrested for accessing unsecured wireless networks in breach of the Communications Act 2003. Last weekend officers were alerted to a man sitting in a car with cardboard blocking the windows. They found him using a laptop to access a network in a nearby house. ...more

Sun fires back over Open Source Java accusations

Sun has offered a frank response to the open letter from Eric S, Raymond, President, Open Source Initiative, in which he called on Sun to make its Java platform Open Source and described the company's Open Source strategy as 'spotty' and 'confused'. 'I'd say this is 100 per cent rant,' Sun's Chief Technology Evangelist, Simon Phipps told us. 'His simplistic accusations don't hold water. ...more

Pretty Good Privacy 7 launched

Network Associates has released version 7 of its software encryption suite. PGP Desktop Security 7 contains the usual public key encryption and electronic signature features as the previous version, but upgraders will find the addition of a personal firewall and an intrusion detection component. ICQ users can now secure their instant messaging sessions. ...more

Google tries 'cost per action' model

Google is launching its own affiliate marketing network where websites that host ads from Google are paid for any action the visitor makes rather than just clicking on a link. The search engine has invited a number of web site owners to take part in the pilot programme that will see site owners getting extra payments if their visitors take some kind of beneficial action on the advertisers' sites - such as buying a product or requesting further information. The new 'cost per action' (CPA) programme is not a replacement for the existing AdSense system but is said to run in parallel with it as the Content Referral network. ...more