The Week in Review: SCO reloads Linux attack
Published: 23 May 2003 16:26 BST
This week is likely to be remembered by many companies because of SCO Group, which broadened its attempts to increase its revenues from its Unix patents by implicating Linux -- both the companies that sell it, and potentially even the companies that use it. Microsoft dropped a bombshell at the beginning of the week by casually announcing that it had licensed SCO's Unix intellectual property, which appeared to give SCO some credibility.
Microsoft to license SCO Group Unix rights
SuSE: SCO's anti-Linux attacks are 'curious'
SCO warns businesses over Linux liabilities
This was also, of course, the UK premiere week of The Matrix Reloaded, which probably shaved a significant amount off the productivity of many tech companies out there, as employees took repeated sickies or spent work hours surfing AintItCoolNews.com for the latest spoilers. The Matrix sequel made a tidy £30m for Atari -- formerly Infogrames -- which sold more than a million copies of the video game Enter the Matrix.
Atari makes $50m from Matrix in a week
Kazaa may still be more controversial than ever after a court recently ruled it was not necessarily liable for the file-trading actions of its users, but it appears to have gained some legitimacy in the eyes of users, who are on track to make it the most popular download on the Web. The software saw 230 million downloads, with 366,000 more per day, surpassing ICQ's 229 million. If users think Kazaa is now safe, though, they might want to read the fine print of the court decision, which said that while Kazaa might not be liable, users who broke the law certainly would be.
Kazaa hits download record
The UK's broadband providers teamed up to break another landmark number this week, having connected two million users to broadband services, primarily cable and ADSL. That's just seven months after the one million mark was passed, suggesting that providers may have finally hit a pricing sweet spot.
Broadband Britain booms with two million home users
Hutchison's 3G wireless provider 3 must be hoping for a similar spike in subscriptions as a result of a new tie-up with Playboy. Well, all that bandwidth has to be used for something...
Playboy does mobile deal with 3
The EU could be finding a novel use for RFID tags -- embedding them into money. Will Big Brother be watching you from your wallet? Not exactly -- these chips are just there to make counterfeiters' jobs that much more interesting.
Euro notes may be radio tagged
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