Rick Perera

A new data-recovery technique could help trace suspicious financial transactions made shortly before the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11.

Law-enforcement authorities in the United States launched a series of raids Tuesday, targeted at piracy of software, computer games and movies. In a coordinated action, authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, and Norway also executed search warrants for leading members of the so-called warez scene, acting on information supplied by the United States.

The days of ever-fatter paycheques for IT experts are over, according to a new study. U.S. starting salaries in the industry are expected to increase on average by just 0.1 per cent in 2002, compared to the 8.4 per cent rise forecast this time last year, said RHI Consulting Inc. in a statement Thursday.

U.S. starting salaries in the IT industry are expected to increase on average by just 0.1 per cent in 2002, compared to the 8.4 per cent rise forecast this time last year, according to RHI Consulting.

The Austrian government is the first in Europe to take advantage of a Microsoft Corp. scheme allowing authorities to examine source code for the company's software products. The country's Interior Ministry will gain access to Microsoft's XP operating system under the Shared Source Initiative, the company said.

Japanese telecommunication company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) posted a consolidated net loss for the first half of its fiscal year of 261.8 billion yen (US$2.2 billion as of Sept. 30, the last day of the period being reported), the company said in a statement Thursday. By contrast, last year NTT reported a consolidated net profit of 175.3 billion yen for the same period a year ago.

Thirty countries signed a controversial international treaty to combat online crime Friday. Representatives of 26 Council of Europe (CoE) member states, plus the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Africa, put their signatures on the document at an international meeting in Budapest.

A simultaneous-translation computer that can be accessed via mobile phone to interpret business conversations between different languages has been nominated for a prestigious German technology prize.