24th July 2001 Archive
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MSN bug serves up porn
'Microsoft Assport'
Note: the 'Magic Link' to the 'MSN Assport' referenced below has been updated to one which now works. The original had apparently been disabled shortly after we posted this story. An apparent bug in Microsoft's MSN Communities site that exposes members' personal, and often smutty, image files at random is becoming an …
Software 24 Jul 2001, 00:52
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Adobe Folds!
PR terror does the job, but will DoJ stand down?
Adobe Systems has done an abrupt about-face under considerable public pressure in the case of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who helped develop Advanced eBook Processor, an application which cracks the lame access controls on Adobe's eBook Reader. Sklyarov was arrested last Sunday and slapped with a severe criminal charge …
Software 24 Jul 2001, 02:22
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Code Red worm cripples US military sites
But not in the way you'd expect
Fear of seeing its public Web servers taken over by the Code Red worm has inspired the US Department of Defense (DoD) to disable nearly all of them as a precaution. "Most Web sites will not be accessible by the public until this worm no longer poses any threat to DoD networks," Col. Catherine Abbott is quoted by the Associated …
Security 24 Jul 2001, 05:10
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US Reps vote for Carnivore oversight
One down, one to go
A bill by US Representative Bob Barr (Republican, Georgia), called the Department of Justice reauthorization bill (HR-2215), sailed through the House late Monday, strengthening the possibility that the FBI will finally be brought to heel by Congress. Several recent, highly-publicized FBI debacles starting with the controversy …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 06:42
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The Steve Gibson / Reg hack radio debate
As promised
The long-awaited face-to-face (OK, ear-to-ear) debate on the Win-XP raw-sockets implementation involving Steve Gibson and myself on the radio show Online Tonight with David Lawrence is available. Reg reader Vince Wilton has graciously offered to host the file (3mb). Download it here in WMF format, or, if you prefer, listen to …
Software 24 Jul 2001, 07:34
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Palm signs Intel, Motorola as ARM chip partners
Will all build reference designs for ARM-based PDAs
Palm today announced it is indeed moving over to ARM's processor platform, and has signed up Intel to produce reference silicon for ARM-based PDA hardware designs. Not that Palm's current processor partner, Motorola, is being left out. Its move to licence ARM's CPU design for incorporation into its Dragonball processor family …
Channel 24 Jul 2001, 09:55
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Egg has cracked online finance
More customers, buying more, costing less
Net bank Egg says its on target to break even in Q4 this year. So it look like the online finance firm may have cracked it. The company is cutting losses, gaining customers, and it's also no longer offering the cheapest deals around (according to the Motley Fool personal finance site) which should save it a few bob. On top of …
e-Business 24 Jul 2001, 10:15
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MS bungs out first post-RC1 Windows XP build
Nothing much to see
Microsoft has bunged the first post-RC1 build of XP to testers. The word around is that Build 2520 doesn't include many changes, and the code has just been cleaned up for bugs. In an email MS made clear that "this build is NOT RC2". XP gold code is expected mid-August, and the full thing should go on sale on 25 October. ® …
Software 24 Jul 2001, 10:38
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Lexmark warns of sales slowdown
Q2 profit bucks trend
Lexmark posted a three per cent rise in profits in Q2, but warned of a slowdown for the rest of the year. The US printer company said net income grew to $87.1 million, or 65 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30 2001. Sales rose 11 per cent to $988 million. Lexmark chairman and CEO Paul Curlander said that the " …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 10:40
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DVD Forum to stamp out region-crackable players
Threatening to seek import bans on 1 October
The DVD Forum, the movie and consumer electronics business-backed consortium that controls the DVD standard, has begun taking steps to eliminate Chinese-made players and drives that play fast and loose with DVD region encoding. Its tactic: to threaten Taiwanese DVD player makers with legal action to enforce a ban on all …
Personal 24 Jul 2001, 10:41
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White House Web site moves to Linux
Updated Linux cache front-end but presidential site sticks with Solaris
The White House Web site has been moved onto a Linux platform after its administrators managed to successfully side step an attack by the Code Red worm. Netcraft reports that Whitehouse.gov is now being hosted by a peering firm and that the site uses a Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 Web server on a Linux platform. [But this is …
Security 24 Jul 2001, 10:42
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Amazon on the way to profitability
And AOL gets its teeth into it
Amazon.com looks as though it is fulfilling the Internet dream - drawing closer to a profit while continually expanding its customer base. Its second quarter results announced yesterday show that the online retailer has cut losses to $58 million, from $116 million this time last year. This time next year we may see it enter …
e-Business 24 Jul 2001, 11:37
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‘Obsessive’ email claims cost Met £40k
Out of court settlement
A police civilian worker has won a £40,000 payout after being bombarded with emails by a male colleague. Personnel manager Christine Jordan claimed she received "obsessive, excessive, undesirable and uninvited" messages almost daily from the man, who has not been named, the Daily Mail reports. The Metropolitan Police agreed an …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 11:39
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Track Data goes old skool and sells domain name
Updated That's right, we said 'sells'. And for $1 million too
Well, here's a bit of Net nostalgia for you. Financial services company Track Data has actually sold its www.tdc.com domain name to another company for - get this - $1 million. We can't remember the last time someone actually paid for a URL rather than go to WIPO and use its flawed rules to pull it off people. And $1 million …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 11:40
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How would your IT career go if you lost your eyes and hands?
Insurance leeches start sucking
Have you ever thought about how you'd manage if you lost your sight and your hands? No, nor had we until a scaremongering press release landed in the office. 'Do you use computers?' It asked. Well then you need Milo - the eyes and hands policy. It offers £150,000 payable on losing an eye, hand, both eyes, both hands, and …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 11:42
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SSH hits the fan for Unix admins
Gaping security hole needs careful review
A password authentication vulnerability with SSH Secure Shell 3.0.0 could allow hackers to gain root access on Unix servers. Because of weak password authentication to the SSHD2 daemon it's been discovered that accounts with password fields consisting of two or fewer characters can be compromised using any password, including …
Security 24 Jul 2001, 11:45
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Intel to ship 2GHz Xeon launch by 26 August
Big server chip price cuts coming too
Intel will launch a 2.0GHz Xeon server processor on or before 26 August - the date one which the chip giant has pencilled in price cuts of up to 38 per cent for its other server chips. The 2GHz Xeon - codename Foster and based on the Pentium 4 core - will ship for $615, according to pricing data leaked to Web site Xbit Labs. On …
Channel 24 Jul 2001, 11:57
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Intel's Server Roadmap
Thin-server Pentium IIIs ahoy!
Intel's server processor roll-out programme remains broadly unchanged from the roadmap we saw early this year. High-speed Pentium 4-based Xeon processor will drive the mainstream one- and two-way server markets, with Itanium coming in at the top end of the workstation arena. Itanium will share the four- and eight-way server …
Channel 24 Jul 2001, 12:31
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ICL does not abuse mainframe maintenance
Small fish in a big pond
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has thrown out a complaint that ICL violated competition laws by stitching up the market for maintaining the mainframe computers it supplies. Synstar Computer Services, a rival maintenance biz, was aggrieved at its inability to obtain a full diagnostic service on mainframes. It accused ICL was …
Hardware 24 Jul 2001, 12:53
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Fellow Brits unite! As one behind Nora Batty
We will fight them on the Web sites, we will download them on our PCs
Word has reached us of an Internet war. No ordinary war though. This one turns every other war on its head and has us Brits pitched against former allies Australia and by default America. Even scarier than this, the French have decided to join in this time and they're supporting us! What is this war? The battle of the world's …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 12:57
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SuSE sheds German jobs
50 to go
SuSE, the privately-held Linux distributor, is to shed 50 jobs in Germany, the company said in a press release yesterday. SuSE's US operation in Oakland, Ca. was scaled back to a skeleton staff in February as "30 to 35" jobs were lost. The company's chief European rival MandrakeSoft announced plans to go public on the …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 13:05
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Bastard Satisfaction
Episode 20 Master of all I survey...
It's rare that I'm ever excited by snail-mail, but this is an exception that just has the prove the rule. "You little BEAUTY!" I cry, waving the piece of paper around like a Get-out-of-Jail-Free card. "And to normal people that would mean?" The PFY asks, obviously bitter about having missed out on something. "Dear Customer," I …
BOFH 24 Jul 2001, 13:37
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Europe: Local loop unbundling delivers nominal benefit
Red tape, bureacracy etc.
It may well be a fairly nebulous piece of cable – which links customers homes from the main telephone network – but the furore that the local loop has caused in the UK recently has been on a par with "Son of Star Wars," without the glamour of George Bush though, obviously. So sensitive has this debate been that Government …
Telecoms 24 Jul 2001, 13:48
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Tech salaries tumble 6%
But sales guys cream it
IT sales staff have seen their salaries rocket this year compared to the rest of the industry, a survey claims. Pay packets in the IT sales sector in the US have risen an average of two per cent since January, according to research by Techies.com. This may not sound like a fortune, but overall, tech salaries have dropped six …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 13:59
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Sun revs UltraSPARC II chips, cuts prices
Life in the old dog yet
Sun is squeezing revenues out of its successful but ageing UltraSparc II servers and today announced faster chips and lower prices for its top of the range server. 466Mhz processors with 8MB of internal cache are now available for the Starfire Enterprise 10000. Starfires currently ship with up to 64 400Mhz CPUs. The new chips, …
Hardware 24 Jul 2001, 14:05
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New Napster bossman
Hilbers to oversee legitimisation of music site
German media exec Konrad Hilbers has been announced as the new chief exec of Napster. He'll take over from Hank Barry, the man brought in as interim head just over a year ago when VC Hummer Winblad put $15m in the company. Konrad Hilbers is a suit through and through. But with a fair bit of experience at running both music and …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 14:46
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Lucent to cut another 15,000 to 20,000 jobs
Sliding down the pan
Lucent Technologies is to cut another 15,000 to 20,000 jobs in an effort to trim $4 billion off its yearly costs. The troubled US phone kit maker also plans to take a charge of up to $9 billion in the fourth quarter and to scrap its dividend from 1 September - the latter is expected to save the company $68 million a quarter. …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 14:55
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Everything you ever wanted to know about PC security
But were too stupid to ask
Security clearing house CERT has published advice on how home PC users can protect themselves from the security threats posed by the Internet. Traditionally the importance of consumers becoming aware of security risks has been a neglected area, but the emergence of Trojan horses which can turn domestic PCs in zombie clients …
Security 24 Jul 2001, 15:51
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AT&T Wireless sees 36% revenue leap
Earnings also up thanks to subscribers and acquisitions
AT&T Wireless has announced a 36.5 per cent jump in revenue to $3.38 billion. The wireless arm of the telco giant, recently floated off, also saw earnings before interest, tax etc leap 50.4 per cent in Q2 to $765 million. It's all thanks to more subscribers and recent acquisitions. Average revenue per user has gone up by just 2 …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 16:04
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AMD unwraps HyperTransport consortium
Transmeta, Sun, Apple and other anti-Intellers sign up
AMD has launched the IT equivalent of a Quango - a quasi non-governmental organisation - to steer the promotion and development of its own HyperTransport bus technology. And there are some interesting names among the 180-strong member roster, including Sun, Transmeta and Apple. The HyperTransport Technology Consortium was …
Hardware 24 Jul 2001, 16:04
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Can you hack while getting a blow job?
Swordfish disses the Torvalds name
Swordfish is a really terrible film. If you've seen the posters promising a tale of hacking and cyber crime, alarm bells should have been ringing. If you've been aware of pre-publicity that Halle Berry flashes her tits then you should know its time to evacuate the building. If they have to hang the publicity on a cheap thrill, …
Bootnotes 24 Jul 2001, 16:09
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Is this the rival to Google?
Teoma well worth a look
We've spent most of the afternoon testing out a new search engine called Teoma. You may have heard of it but it seems unlikely. Only this month did it hit the search engine industry's consciousness (it first appeared in May apparently), so we suppose its techie sites like us and then the mainstream. So what's the fuss about? …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 16:50
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Infamous porn site gets a hacker makeover
Updated Stile Project defaced in the hacker stylee
The Stile Project, a gross-out comedy-cum-sex site that has grown infamous on the Net, claims to have been defaced. The home page of the site, which won a Webby award in the weird category last year and has a cult following, was replaced by a profane message from hacker Fluffy Bunny, which featured a toy pink rabbit sticking …
Security 24 Jul 2001, 17:11
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BETRAYAL! .NET clones and GNOME in the firing line
MS wins when blessed by software libre
Veteran alt.os pundit Nick Petreley has turned his ire on Miguel de Icaza's Mono project .NET clone, suggesting it will legitimize Microsoft's divide and conquer tactics. Petreley's chief concern – voiced in two articles at InfoWorld and on his VarLinux weblog is that a groundswell of software libre support for .NET run time …
Software 24 Jul 2001, 17:14
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Hardware site reports dualie Tyan issues
HWRoundup Van the Man
It's been a while since our last recce of the hardware sites. A long while. There hasn't exactly been a huge clamour for its return, but we thought we'd give it another short run, anyhow. And so to Hardware Analysis and its thread on the stability or lack of for the Dual Tyan Thunder K7. There's a list of solutions for various …
Personal 24 Jul 2001, 18:06
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Arrow Electronics to axe 1,000 staff
US disti warns of consolidation
Arrow Electronics has added its own job cuts warning to the day's casualties. The PC components distributor warned it would axe another 1,000 jobs during the third quarter after it reported a Q2 profit nose-dive of 92 per cent. The New York-based company posted net income of $7 million for the second quarter. Sales fell 21 per …
Channel 24 Jul 2001, 18:09
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Logitech flogs 500,000 emasculated mice
Which was nice for them
It looks like there's still a healthy market for peripherals even though the PC business is super-sluggish. Mice mogul Logitech has posted Q1 sales of $177.9 million, up 26 per cent on last year's Q1 sales of $141.4 million. Net income hit $6.3 million compared with $5 million for the same quarter last year. Operating income of …
Business 24 Jul 2001, 18:11
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FBI becomes Copyright ‘911’
And we thought Ashcroft was a sensible guy
US Attorney General John Ashcroft bit the cybercrime hook dangled by media and dotcom giants eager to see taxpayer dollars spent cracking down on offences which they're too greedy to prevent with adequate access controls and proper network hygiene. Ashcroft, therefore, is obediently forming nine crack cybersquads to prosecute …
Music and Media 24 Jul 2001, 22:36
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PACT offers 80 Pentium4s on a 100Mhz chip
Extremely parallel behavior
PACT Corporation will reveal more details about takers for its 'extreme' XPP processor at the Inquest forum in San Jose this week. The XPP, claims PACT, has turned in performance of 50-60,000 MIPS at clock speeds of 100 Mhz, equivalent to 80 Pentium 4s. That gives some indication of how radically different the XPP approach is …
Channel 24 Jul 2001, 22:36
