UPDATED: Shiny gadgets mean hazardous waste - Greenpeace

Greenpeace has revealed the unsavoury cost that building the latest gadgets has on the environment, claiming many of the factories where components are built are producing hazardous waste fed directly into water systems. The environmental body's report 'Cutting Edge Contamination: A study of environmental pollution during the manufacture of electronic products' documents how many water samples taken from around these plants showed levels of toxic substances that were many times higher than health bodies recommended. 'Over recent years we have seen an increasing concern over the use of hazardous chemicals in electronic products but attention has focussed on the contamination released during disposal or "recycling of electronic waste",' said Dr. ...more

Ofcom warns consumers will be squeezed by caps and contention as media services rocket

UK Internet users are increasingly familiar with the issues surrounding broadband, according to industry regulator Ofcom, but remain unclear on two that can noticeably affect the level of service, contention ratio and usage caps. According to Ofcom's market report for 2005, 90 per cent of broadband users have never heard of contention ratios and 70 per cent believed their service to be uncapped, despite the fact that both are almost ubiquitous. The regulator acknowledges that at present neither has a significant affect on the 'user experience', except for a small minority of users who download large amounts of data, largely because service providers have gradually increased network capacity to cope with growing demand for bandwidth. ...more

AOL takes stock of Google

AOL has the right to buy 1.9 million shares in Google when it goes public, expected later this year. According its annual report, AOL cut a deal in June of 2002 with Google to buy 1. ...more

A low-down on... Spyware

The Web is oft-quoted as a wonderful resource, but also full of well-documented dangers. Unsavoury sights are waiting to greet the foolhardy browser and the information arteries are crawling with viruses. Most of us have the nous to avoid these pitfalls, but there is a more insidious danger out there. ...more

EU to investigate Italy and Germany over Intel-favoured procurement

AMD's legal dispute with Intel in Europe, over anti-competitive practices, has taken another twist. The European Commission is to investigate whether member states have procured computer systems based on specific suppliers. Specifically, that Intel was favoured by certain government agencies in the contract process, which would break Commission rules. ...more