PI-Business reports that, a day after announcing that it was chopping its work force by nearly a third, Freeinternet.com released yet another piece of bad news.

Sales of semiconductors, the tiny circuits that control devices
ranging from computers to mobile phones to car brakes, rose to
$18.2bn from the $11.9bn of August 1999, the Semiconductor
Industry Association (SIA) said Tuesday. From a report at ZDCOUK.

Recently, staff members have received pay raises as large as 60%, reports Bloomberg.com.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs hosted a
company-wide “communications meeting” from Apple’s
Californian headquarters on Friday morning that was
simultaneously broadcast to remote locations. Jobs reportedly told
employees that the company plans no layoffs — a hiring freeze is in
effect, Jobs said, with a few exceptions. From a report at ZDCOUK.

Oracle chairman and chief executive officer Larry Ellison celebrated the release of his company’s next generation 9i database Tuesday by issuing a $US1 million challenge based on the supposed strength of the new technology. From PCWorld.com.

PCWorld.com reports that Italian police have arrested 21 people accused of participating in a massive online banking fraud that could have cost the Sicilian regional government more than 1 trillion lire ($US465 million).

CNET.com says the company is redesigning the website to go along with the third preview release of its long-delayed browser software.

Linux.com published an article written by Brian Richardson in which he says, “When you have a ‘hardware problem’ that goes away when you change the software, it’s
not really a ‘hardware problem.'”

OSOpinion: “Clearly, Apple and Intel knew before
the end of the quarter that their sales would be soft, but they gave little notice to analysts and
journalists. One reason is fear of new SEC regulations that prohibit playing ‘favorites’ —
companies can only disclose this sort of information to the public generally, rather than to
individual analysts.” –Kelly McNeill

An anonymous reader writes: “One of the first encrypted IRC networks, SUIDNet, has debuted. SUIDNet features SSL encryption for server-to-server, server-to-client and client-to-client communications. In addition, all users who choose to connect unencrypted will have an “-insecure” appended to their hostname and be banned from all channels designated as SECURE. We are always looking for help and suggestions, including people willing to run IRC servers. For more information go to suidnet.org. If you would like to just look around, and do not mind that you are unencrypted then just set your IRC server to irc.suidnet.org:6667 and join #suid.”