Naked Egyptians jailed

Egyptian officials are starting to crack down on Internet nudity, jailing a man and his wife for six months. The couple was found guilty of posting pornographic photos and films of themselves on the Internet, security sources said. The man, an engineer in his 40s, and his wife, in her 20s, were arrested after a police vice squad traced the site on the Internet. Egyptian police have stepped up vice surveillance in recent years with a unit that specialises in Internet crime. In a previous "couple bust", Cairo police arrested another man and his wife in May on suspicion they had posted naked photos of the woman on the Internet. And it is not only the happily married that the police are after - they have also hauled a number of gay men into court for posting pictures online to solicit sex.

Sections of the US government are throwing their weight behind hackers with a new Bill introduced to congress yesterday suggesting that media companies should be allowed to hack and sabotage Napster-like music-sharing networks. The bill, if accepted, will allow recording companies and copyright holders to hack into networks to thwart users looking to download free music, and will protect them from lawsuits from users. Bill sponsor Howard Berman, a California Democrat, says the measure was necessary because the decentralised systems were impossible to shut down. He says no legislation can eradicate "peer-to-peer piracy" but copyright holders should be allowed to take action to "prevent an infringing file from being shared".

The IT horizon is starting to look rosier, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) figures. A new study released by the research company predicts that IT spending will start recovering by the fourth quarter of this year and could well hit $1 trillion by 2003. Based on current economic expectations, worldwide IT spending this year will reach $981 billion, an increase of 3.7% over 2001. The company says that while spending on IT hardware will show a full year-on-year decrease of 4% this year, growth of spending on software and services will result in positive growth for the total IT market. "The uptick will become more evident in the fourth quarter," said Stephen Minton, programme director of worldwide IT markets research at IDC. "The bottom has already been reached, the green shoots of recovery will begin to emerge gradually during the third quarter and the fourth quarter will show strong year-on-year comparisons with 2001." Perhaps a case of nowhere to go but up?

News is out that IBM and Opera Software are developing a "multi-modal" browser based on the XHTML+Voice specifications. And what all of that means in simple speak is that the browser will accept a number of different inputs, including voice. Install it on a handheld and you can literally talk your way around the Net, which is great idea considering the size of a handheld and the severely limited space for normal menus and buttons. The only problem, according to TheRegister, is that neither IBM nor Opera seem clear on exactly what their plans are. TheRegister reports that Opera is not certain of which platform the browser will run on, even though it is doing all the coding. And IBM has not yet announced hardware plans. What is clear, however, is that IBM and Opera will release a voice-controlled browser for various platforms sometime later this year. So now you know. [More at TheRegister]

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