Hearing expert hesitant to judge headphone risk

A US health expert has said that more work has to be done before he can say for certain whether portable music players such as iPods increase the risk of hearing loss. James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), said that more research is also required to test whether certain types of headphones have a different impact on hearing. Battey was responding on behalf of the National Institute of Health to a letter from Edward Markey, a Massachusetts member of the House of Representatives, who asked it to review existing research into whether portable players are contributing to premature hearing loss. ...more

CD sales rocket despite digital success

The UK music industry is celebrating record quarterly CD sales of 27.9 million, defying predictions that the rise of the digital market would hit physical sales. Downloads rose by 152 per cent year-on-year, leading the BPI to suggest that the digital market is complementary to the physical, although only last week it was telling us that music downloading was having an adverse effect on CD sales. ...more

Symantec warns of weakness in its firewall and gateway products

Security specialist Symantec has admitted to a number of vulnerabilities in its firewall and gateway products. The weaknesses make them liable to denial of service attacks and other compromises. The affected products are the Symantec Firewall/VPN Appliance 100, 200 and 200R and the Symantec Gateway Security 320, 360 and 360R. ...more

ATI back on form?

Graphics chipset company nVIDIA may be the current king of the 3D hardware realm, but one of the contenders for the crown, ATI, has announced some new technology, Truform. Essentially, Truform allows programmers and 3D modellers to improve the visual quality of models in 3D environments by smoothing-out polygon edges. How does it do this? Well, you could be forgiven for thinking that it actually increases the polygon count in each model, which is the obvious choice. ...more

E-commerce grows with popularity

A new MORI survey reveals that two million people in the UK are now using the Internet to manage their money. This news comes despite fears about security and the recent online scares. The Internet financial services sector has grown by 11 per cent in the past year, with an estimated 6. ...more