Monday, April 29, 2002		Latest in IT world

Subscribers to the Internet in Kolkata are discovering to their shock that hackers are using their Net hours, The Telegraph reports. The police has recently begun to investigate the manner in which hackers have busted the password of subscribers, stealing Internet hours. The chief general manager, VSNL, P.D. Gupta, admitted that hackers are indeed stealing Net hours from subscribers. Investigations have revealed that hackers, seeking to crack the password of ISP subscribers, are using programs like Diablokey and software like Deep Throat and Trojan Horse.

A British composer is planning a "New Ring Cycle" — a symphony composed from the ringing tones of 30 mobile phones. Composer Simon Turner and writer Marcus Moore are to give "SIM-phone-ya" its world premiere at a music festival in July. "The work is supposed to be a bit of fun,"" Moore told London Times. "You hear these things go off every day so (we thought) perhaps we could use them to do something more interesting." They plan to invite 30 mobile phone owners to play the ring tones in the as-yet unwritten piece.

Sabeer Bhatia, the dude who gave the world its first well-known free e-mail before selling it to Microsoft for a cool $ 400 million, is now betting big on voice message service that could soon be available through any telephone in India. Debacles in his earlier venture like Arzoo.com notwithstanding, Bhatia is gung ho on what he calls the `common sensical’ applications that have great mass appeal, Times of India reports. One such, he thinks, is VMS that he is now keen to push in India through tie-ups with cellular and fixed telecom service providers. Bhatia expects VMS to fetch good revenue in India, but refuses to put numbers to his ambitions. "It is better and hotter than SMS. Knowing how SMS has caught on in India, we have decided to start VMS first in India, and then in Europe and the USA," he pointed out.

It isn’t just star players who are desperate to win soccer’s World Cup. Mobile phone companies are desperate to score too. The soccer matches are being played in Japan and South Korea, with most matches to be played when Europe’s fans are at work, possibly in the office, The Wall Street Journal reports. Mobile phone companies are betting their customers, desperate to keep up-to-date while appearing to work, will have to pay match updates beamed on their phones. Although major telecom operators have not announced prices for the World Cup 2002, typical charges for a package of match updates and news during the 2000 European Cup were $ 4.45 to $ 8.92.

Vietnam has detained a third dissident for publishing pro-democracy texts on the Internet, Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) said last week. The Paris-based media rights group said Son Hong Pham had been detained since March 29, apparently after translating and publishing on the Internet an article entitled "What is Democracy", which had previously appeared on a US Embassy Website. Vietnam's government did not respond to a request for comment. The RSF said Pham was the third Web dissident arrested in Vietnam in just over a month. Quang, a computer teacher, and literature professor Khue were detained in February and March for publishing on the Internet criticism of border agreements with China.