UK drops superfast broadband tax

The UK government's plans for a 50p landline tax to fund the rapid expansion of superfast broadband are being killed off in the 'wash-up' of legislation being rushed through Parliament before it is dissolved for the general election on 6 May, writes Computing.co.uk.

Angry rows about the way the telephone tax is being treated broke out in the Commons late on Tuesday.

Treasury financial secretary Stephen Timms launched a bitter attack on the Tories for holding up the provision of faster broadband in rural areas, and warned that cash from the BBC licence fee, which the Tories plan to use instead, will not be available for another three years.

Hamas has accused Israel of using Facebook to recruit spies from among the Palestinian community in the Gaza strip, reports The Register.

For years Israel has maintained a network of agents in the West Bank and Gaza. Those discovered face torture and almost certain execution as collaborators.

Hamas believes fans of Facebook and similar services are giving away too much personal information on social networking sites and this, in turn, leaves them open to attempts to coerce them into becoming spies.

Some owners of the newly-available Apple iPad have reported problems with connecting their devices to WiFi, states the BBC.

Hundreds have complained about weak signals on the tablet computer.

Apple acknowledged on its support page that "under certain conditions, iPad may not automatically rejoin a known WiFi network".

The "father of the personal computer", who kick-started the careers of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, has died at the age of 68 after a long bout of pneumonia, reports the BBC.

Dr Henry Edward Roberts was the inventor of the Altair 8800, a machine that sparked the home computer era.

Gates and Allen contacted Dr Roberts after seeing the machine on the front cover of a magazine and offered to write software for it. The program was known as Altair-Basic, the foundation of Microsoft's business.