Picture this all-too familiar and annoying scenario:
You can't get money from the ATM, or retrieve your e-mail, or log onto a website without the password you have long forgotten. Or you can't subscribe to a website without it requiring one of those dreadful 12-character passwords that require punctuation, numbers and capital letters. It makes you want to trash your computer or kick the ATM terminal.
Well, now there's another way. In an idea with vision, security software maker Pointsec has introduced picture passwords for Pocket PCs.
The first version of the software, which is available to companies for $80 a pop, comes with 10 icons: a heart, tulip, dog, computer, envelope, cup of coffee, sun, man, woman and plane.
Rather than think up a password with letters, numbers and punctuation marks, users can make up a story and use as many of the pictures as they want as a password.
"It's time for the technology to be -- I know it's a stupid word -- user-friendly," said Kurt Lennartsson, senior vice president of strategy for Pointsec.
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Mind control: Do companies own the thoughts of their employees? According to one Texas judge, Alcatel, the French manufacturer of telecom equipment, does.
In a case tied up in the Texas court system for five and a half years, Judge Curt B. Henderson of the Collin County, Texas, District Court found that Alcatel owned a former employee's software idea that had never been written on paper.
Former employee Evan Brown said the idea -- a method for converting machine-executable binary code into high-level source code, reverse-engineering the intelligence from existing programs and recoding it into high-level language, and converting machine code into C language source -- existed in his head long before he worked at Alcatel and that he was the rightful owner of it.
The lawsuit began when DSC Communications, which later merged into Alcatel USA, sued Brown in April 1997 for withholding an idea for software. The company said it owned Brown's idea because of a signed employment agreement requiring him to disclose any inventions he conceived of or developed while at the company. Judge Henderson considered the document valid and ruled in favor of Alcatel.
Brown, who has been documenting his legal woes on his website, said he would appeal the decision.
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Sorry, wrong number: Japanese lawmakers are steamed. They want to put an end to the steamy calls disrupting cell-phone service in Japan.
Apparently, Japanese cell-phone users are being hit with a scam that involves causing cell phones to ring once and then leaving a phone number, tempting the phone owners to return the call. When they do, they receive lewd messages.
The cell-phone companies have not been charging for the calls. But the scammers have been sending official-looking bills to the targeted customers.
NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest cell-phone company, has been disconnecting customers who threaten the stability of its networks. However, Japanese legislators are considering enacting a law that would make such disruption of phone service illegal.
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A cell battery on steroids: MTI MicroFuel Cells, an Albany, New York-based company, has the prototype for a battery that lasts 10 times longer than the current lithium-ion batteries in cell phones, handheld computers and other small portable devices.
The fuel cell, scheduled for release in 2004, uses a replaceable methanol fuel cartridge.
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Wireless plans halted in Cuba: It doesn't look like Cubans will have access to mobile phones anytime soon.
Cuban president Fidel Castro has indefinitely postponed plans to make the country's cellular-phone system available to its people, a source from the phone company Cubacel told Cubanet, a free-press advocate in Miami.
The source, who said she did not know when or if the Cuban people would ever receive wireless phone services, said the original plan "interfered with certain political plans of the (Cuban) government."
Cuba has a wireless phone system based on the popular Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology. But it is used only by tourists and high-ranking government officials.
Reuters contributed to this report.
