EC to fight data roaming charges

The European Commission wants to drive down the cost of mobile data services across the continent, reports Computing.co.uk. Brussels is expected to battle the high cost of data roaming charges this week, as the deadline for operators to take action expires.

The European market for mobile data services is now worth EUR7 billion, according to industry body the GSM Association. In February, commissioner Viviane Reding set a deadline of 1 July for operators to lower charges for roaming data use, threatening to intervene with regulation if her demands were not met.

Last year, Reding oversaw the introduction of the continent's Eurotariff, which sets a price cap on the cost of making mobile voice calls when outside of your home nation.

The intellectual haze that envelopes American Internet gambling policy thickened the past week, as lawmakers failed to define what exactly constitutes "unlawful" Internet gambling, says The Register.

Two years after the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), Congress still can't make up its collective mind as to what behaviour the law is intended to cover.

A Bill before the House Financial Services Committee would have blocked the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve from enforcing the UIGEA. It would have forced the lawmakers to define what constitutes illegal online gambling. But the Bill died, leaving the nation in the dark.

On Monday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.4, says CNET.com. In addition to enhancements to existing features, Apple bundled in 13 specific security updates, including one for Safari 3.1.2.

The security update APPLE-SA-2008-004 and Mac OS X 10.5.4 can be downloaded and installed from Apple Downloads.

This patch only affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.11 and Mac OS X Server v10.4.11. The update addresses an alias manager vulnerability described in CVE-2008-2308. According to Apple, a "memory corruption issue exists in the handling of AFP volume mount information in an alias data structure".

Fed up with patent-holding companies suing them, a consortium of hi-tech companies is taking a different approach: beat them to the punch, reports Ars Technica.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the business heavyweights behind the move include Google, Verizon, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard.

The premise is that the companies will put money into a holding company, to be called Allied Security Trust, which will buy up patents and then license them to consortium members for free.