Monday, May 27, 2002		Latest in IT world

An Egyptian man and his wife have been arrested on suspicion of posting naked pictures of the woman on the Internet, security sources told Reuters last week. The arrests were made when the police found state-of-the-art video equipment at the businessman's Cairo flat, after a special police vice-squad unit came across the pictures while surfing the Internet. The man, in his 40s, had been placing pictures of his wife, in her 20s, on the Web for three years and owns a series of video stores and an Internet cafe. The couple has been in detention for 15 days while prosecutors investigate possible charges of "encouraging immorality via a channel of public information," which carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail and a fine of 5,000 to 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,078-$2,155).

E-commerce - the new kid on the block that has changed the way companies do business, rendering geographical distances and time zones irrelevant- is here to stay, The Telegraph reports. But, the e-commerce that sets the cash registers ringing brings with it a new risk- e-snoopers. A study conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Pricewaterhouse Coopers observes that of the 103 large Indian and multinational companies that the survey covered, more than 80 per cent have suffered some form of internet security (IS) breach in the last 12 months, indicating a rise of 20 per cent over 2000-01. While viruses continue to be the most chronic of all kinds of breaches, hackers and unauthorised users are also responsible for over two-thirds of the security breaches.

Personal computer (PC) sales in India will rise five to seven per cent this year and by 15-20 per cent in 2003, a local consultancy forecast, rebounding from a fall last year and outpacing global growth predictions, Hindustan Times reports. Sales next year could expand to nearly 2 million machines, a report by Skoch Consultancy Services, an IT and telecom industry consultancy based in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi said. Still, that is less than the number of PCs now sold in China in three months, posing a threat to India's ambition of dominating the burgeoning global market for IT-enabled services. Skoch's forecast puts India ahead of expected global growth rates, which leading research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) puts at 3.2 per cent this year. Skoch estimates PC sales in India fell 6.3 per cent by value and 7.0 per cent by volume in calendar 2001, due to the sharp slowdown of the economy and the IT industry's tarnished image as a career choice.

According to analysis from IDC's new research and advisory service, Asia-Pacific Bio IT Infrastructure, the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) Bio IT market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 56 per cent to reach $3.6 billion by 2006. The Life Sciences race in Asia-Pacific has now kickstarted as many countries in the region are investing heavily to position themselves as genuine players in the global biosciences industry. Factors driving this growth include rapid acceptance of new biology methods and informatics-based drug design. IT provides the necessary tools to create, organize, analyze, store, retrieve and share genomic, proteomic, chemical and clinical data in the life sciences. IDC's research has demonstrated that between 15 and 50 per cent of capital expenditure from the majority of life sciences organisation will be spent on the required technology stack to support the drug discovery processes.