Rupert Murdoch's divorce became final last week when his thirty one year marriage was dissolved. His ex-wife had filed for divorce in California where the 50-50 divorce laws had entitled her to 50% of the couple's assets. The settlement was secret and details have not been made available. The UK's Daily Express newspaper claimed that it involved a cash payment of £63.5 Million. Apparently the settlement does not involve shares in News Corp.  In a press release, it was stated that "The family ownership and the management of News Corporation will not be affected.

Last year, Telecom Eireann invested in Nua and local.ie. The local.ie thing is billed as "an original concept by Nua". Perhaps Nua is a good investment for TE as they have knowledge and expertise that is clearly lacking in TE's own operation. But again that is not unique knowledge. And the concept is neither unique or original.

Microsoft's acquisitions in the UK's cable television business have not gone unnoticed by BSkyB though as usual, it seems to have escaped the notice of many of those who analyse the business. The recent move to give away free digital receivers for Sky Digital is clearly a move to boost the pathetic subscription figures for BSkyB's digital service. NewsCorp has bought into thestreet.com prior to flotation. AOL is moving into the satellite television/web TV business with equipment manufactured by Philips, programming by DirecTV and Hughes Network Systems providing the dual use receivers. AOL also seems to be trying to go towards a network appliance with an operating system such as Linux. These things taken with BSkyB's attempt at being an ISP indicates that a major showdown between BSkyB and Microsoft could be on the way.

The A5/1 algorithm has been released at a monthly meeting of Cypherpunks mailing list in the USA. The algorithm which is used in the GSM system to encrypt transmissions had been the subject of a lot of speculation, much of which now turns out to be accurate. The algorithm has been posted on the internet.

The algorithm uses a 64 bit key but all of the GSM implementations examined so far have ten bits of this key zeroed. This is apparently a concession to the intelligence agencies. The GSM MOU in their extremely finite wisdom believed that Security By Obscurity was a good thing.