Technology

Telstra has cracked under pressure from the competition watchdog and the possibility of AU$10 million penalties and will reduce ADSL pricing in the wholesale arena, making it more viable for competitors to resell ADSL services

Nokia’s woes over repeated claims that it’s selling defective mobile handsets seem to have been compounded by a survey which suggests that 69% of Nokia mobile phone owners have experienced problems with their handset’s LCD

After sealing a landmark deal to make itself China’s first foreign television broadcaster, AOL Time Warner has formed an alliance with a China-backed conglomerate to invest in media-related projects. AOL is to invest US$20 million — AU$38.52 million — in a new joint venture investment company with Shanghai Industrial Holdings

Microsoft has borrowed some open-source concepts in its shared source strategy, but makes no secret of the commercial benefits of its move. The company’s manager of international policy law and corporate affairs, David Kaefer, said Microsoft accepted that some widely-held beliefs about the fundamentals of the software business would have to change, but remained opposed to elements of the free software movement

Consumer groups will call on the financial services regulator to investigate Australia’s Internet banking capacity after technical problems Thursday locked millions of frustrated customers out of the cyber branch

X-Force — an Internet Security Systems anti-hacking team — takes its job very seriously, even taking to the streets of Sydney for security threat analysis in the form of drive-by hacking

Microsoft has issued a patch almost a week after a vulnerability was revealed in Internet Explorer that would allow hackers to gain access to someone’s cookies and expose the sensitive information they contain

Windows XP‘s search system includes a bizarre feature that appears to exclude files with non-Microsoft file extensions, under some conditions. It is however so odd that it’s surely got to be a bug, rather than monkey business. But you could go as far as saying it’s one of those MS things that inconvenience other companies if they don’t do things the new way we’re doing them in Redmond

Oracle‘s top executive told computer hackers on Monday night that his software is so secure they would never be able to break into Oracle’s Web site, a boast that may be taken by many as a challenge

The annual meeting of ICANN began this week with a warning from a US congress member that unless domain registrars can verify their customers, Congress may step in and force them to do it

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is gunning for Microsoft once again, this time with a new strategy aimed at the giant’s commanding lead in e-mail software

Be Inc shareholders have formally approved the transfer of key assets to Palm Inc. The deal was voted through yesterday and, realistically, only a board coup stands in the way of the transfer taking place. But over at BeUnited, campaigners are hopeful that they can catch the great BeOS operating system should it be dropped in the resulting shake-out. BeOS has been neglected for eighteen months and is unwanted by Palm — which have paid for the engineers, not a desktop OS

It would not take much for a malicious hacker to shut down the Internet, researchers at a meeting of the body that oversees Web address allocation warned on Tuesday. An attack designed to flood the Web’s master directory servers with traffic is capable of bringing down the Internet, Paul Vixie, a speaker at the ICANN annual meeting

Ofoto, an online photography service, will release new software that aims to streamline the process of ordering digital photographs. The software will auto detect prints from a digital camera and allow users to order prints before uploading the images

Linux is the long-term threat against our core business. Never forget that! Microsoft Windows Division Veep Brian Valentine exclaims in a confidential memo to his Sales Brownshirts obtained by The Register