Sony and Philips have launched two new types of recording systems that will let people copy between 30 and 100 hours of music onto a single compact disc.

Of course, the recording industry is up in arms about this latest development in the technology, blaming its worst downturn since the CD format was introduced on free online downloading and disc copying.

Sony's system will use a data compression system used in MiniDiscs, to put 30 hours of MP3 music onto a single blank CD. The discs will play on a new type of personal player. Philips uses a computer DVD recorder to save at least 100 hours of MP3 music on a blank DVD, which will play on a new portable DVD player, according to New Science magazine.

If you looking for a place to jaw-jaw about the upcoming Iraq war, you can go to the BBC's "Have Your Say Section". It's quite an active forum, with many of the comments coming from non-UK residents including from the US.

The current questions ask if readers back Bush's war deadline and whether the UN route has been abandoned. The BBC's readers' section is one example of the attempts by some web sites to gain reader participation in news production. At the site, readers are also encouraged to send in their digital photos of news events happening in their countries. BBC's "Have your Say Section" is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point.

This is a reminder to system administrators in Bermuda to patch any servers running Windows 2000. This week Microsoft issued a new patch for Windows 2000 to correct an unchecked buffer in a Windows component used by Microsoft 's World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol.

WebDAV is a set of extensions to the hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) that provide a standard for editing and file management between computers on the Internet. The patch is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/security.

As an IT person in Bermuda told me, there were many people on the Island who failed to keep up with the blizzard of Microsoft patches and so got infected by the Sapphire/Slammer Worm in January this year.

The worm infected more than 90 percent of vulnerable hosts within 10 minutes according to the computer science department of the University of California. The department has an incident map of the advance of the Slammer Worm and Bermuda is marked clearly with a big blue spot as one of the places hardest hit by the attack.

The worm infected at least 75,000 hosts, perhaps considerably more, and caused network outages and such unforeseen consequences as cancelled airline flights, interference with elections, and ATM failures. Go to http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/sapphire to see Bermuda take its spot in virus history.

PC Magazine has published its list of top 100 Internet sites. You can download a file that will automatically re-create the list in your "Favourites" menu under the various categories under which the sites have been classified by the magazine. In the computer section, one of the best sites listed is Qualys's Free Browser Checkup at http://browsercheck.qualys.com.

The site runs though a series of tests on your computer, spoofing a variety of hacker attacks to determine if your Internet Explorer on Windows machines has any security vulnerabilities. The site runs tests on hacks involving cookie disclosure, clipboard reading, program execution, file execution, web page spoofing, security zone spoofing and hard drive access.

Another good site is ThinkGeek.com, which horror of horrors, has all the gadgets that techies are supposed to like, including Shower Shock caffeinated soap to recover the next morning, or even a remote controlled flying saucer to keep the folks at the office amused for a second. More likely this toy would spark off a terrorist alarm.

At whatis?.com (http://whatis.techtarget.com ) visitors can keep up with the latest technologies and the quickly evolving terminologies that grow up around them at this superb reference site.

Nintendo is due to launch its new Game Boy Advance SP, which brings into its design features that a lot of gamers have been asking for in the machines. The new machine features a flip-screen LCD display and a built-in front light to illuminate the screen. The built-in light was asked by those keen gamers who liked to play in the dark, that is after their parents told them to get some sleep for the night.

So watch out for the glowing screen under the covers. The Game Boy Advance SP will be powered by a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery that will last from 10 to 18 hours.

Tech Tattle deals with issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editor@offshoreon.com