The Associated Press has an interesting article today on the fledgling Palestinian high tech industry and how it could one day drive the territories’ sluggish economy.
The Seattle Times writes that “Microsoft is flying University of Washington student Jeffrey Bigham to Paris where he’ll collect a grand prize in the Imagine Cup, a student-programming contest sponsored by the company. Bigham, a doctoral candidate in computer science, won for a project called WebAnywhere. The Web-based screen reader helps blind people access the Web from almost any computer that can produce sound, without requiring expensive accessibility software. Basically, it reads Web pages aloud.”
The New York Times reveals that “[t]he United States has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over European tariffs on technology goods like computer monitors and printers. The duties, which are as high as 14 percent, make American technology goods less competitive in Europe, according to the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade association. The group’s members include Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Cisco Systems. The complaint reflects the Bush administration’s view that the European duties violate a 1996 W.T.O. agreement that eliminated tariffs on information technology equipment. ‘The E.U. is effectively taxing innovation,’ the United States trade representative, Susan C. Schwab, said in a statement. ‘We wanted to make sure that the commitments to give duty-free treatment to these products would be maintained in the face of the evolution of technology.’”
Internetnews.com points out that “Microsoft’s chief software architect dislikes the limelight but his role is crucial to shaping and coordinating the company’s far flung product and services plans. […] Ozzie is passionate about what he does, particularly regarding pet projects like Live Mesh, search, and the company’s emerging software-plus-services initiative. However, despite the obvious interest from his audience [at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference currently taking place in New York], he didn’t spend much time talking about the company’s recently dropped bid for Yahoo, referring to the deal’s potential as an ‘accelerator’ for Microsoft’s strategic vision for search. ‘We view Yahoo as an accelerator to the ad platform, potentially to the user engagement, and so on. We’d love to still discuss possibilities with Yahoo, but beyond that I don’t have anything to talk about,’ said Ozzie.”
NetWorkWorld reports that “[a]fter warning on Tuesday that hackers were exploiting an unpatched bug in Adobe Systems’ Flash Player software, Symantec has backtracked from this claim, saying the flaw is ‘very similar’ to another vulnerability that was patched last month. Symantec’s initial warning described a disturbing threat — a previously unknown and unpatched flaw that was being exploited on tens of thousands of Web pages. The flaw allowed attackers to install unauthorized software on a victim’s machine and was being used to install botnet programs and password-logging software, Symantec said. Now Symantec believes that the bug was previously known and patched by Adobe on April 8, said Ben Greenbaum, a senior research manager with Symantec Security Response. However, the Linux version of Adobe’s stand-alone Flash Player, version 9.0.124, is vulnerable to the attack.”