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27th November 2001 Archive

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  • Can Club Nokia thwart .NET?

    Nokia catches Portalitis

    Nokia is expected to announce ambitious plans for its Club Nokia portal at its Capital Markets Day in New York tomorrow. Club Nokia is an overlooked part of the phone services jigsaw, but one that will be increasingly important as the Finnish giant focuses its artillery on Microsoft, and tries to coalesce an array of carriers …

    Data Networking 27 Nov 2001, 01:13

  • Nerdy image keeps women out of networking

    Career advice

    Women are shunning careers in IT networking because they think it is too nerdy. A lack of strong female role models and a perception that women are less able to undertake technical tasks than men also contribute to a massive under-representation of females in network engineering jobs. Even so, the number of female networking …

    Business 27 Nov 2001, 10:09

  • Grey software is not black and white

    Be careful though

    UK resellers selling cheap Microsoft software are not necessarily flogging pirated goods. Microsoft is currently locked in legal proceedings with two UK businesses regarding the sale of what it says are counterfeit products, and which the resellers say are products acquired legitimately on the grey market. Matthew Rippon, a …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 10:22

  • BT's Colossus's knees wobble

    Is this its Achilles' heel?

    BT's broadband network wobbled again on Friday afternoon after its Colossus IP network was floored by a recurrent software problem. Friday's incident was much more minor than the outage which hit Colossus last Tuesday (when thousands of the UK's ADSL users were left without Net access). BT has put a temporary fix in place …

    Broadband 27 Nov 2001, 10:31

  • US assumes global cyber-police authority

    You knew it was only a matter of time

    Much has been written about the new anti-terrorism legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, particularly as it respects the ability of the government to conduct surveillance on email, voice-mail, and other electronic communications. However, too little attention has been paid to other provisions of the …

    Security 27 Nov 2001, 10:32

  • Infineon freed from future Rambus DDR lawsuits

    Judge grants permanent injunction

    Rambus may never pursue Infineon for further alleged infringement of its DDR SDRAM patents, a US court has ruled. Judge Robert Payne issued the permanent injunction against Rambus in response to a request from Infineon. Judge Payne presided over Rambus' legal assault on Infineon in the Virginia District Court earlier this year …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 10:58

  • Palm to shut personal data portal

    Updated Get your data back first - or lose it

    Palm is to close its MyPalm Web-based personal information management service on 10 January 2002, the company has warned the portal's users. The move comes as no big surprise: Palm rid itself of a dozen workers at the MyPalm HQ in Cambridge, Massachusetts recently, according to sources close to the company. "All MyPalm Web …

    Personal 27 Nov 2001, 11:44

  • Refusenik attorneys want $14-$38bn from MS

    Doesn't it feel odd to be cheering greedy lawyers on?

    Microsoft's cunning wheeze of dumping shedloads of free software (free to both involved parties, really) on IT-deprived US schools will be challenged today by a rival bunch of attorneys. The free deal was negotiated by Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld, and is allegedly worth $1 billion. But the refuseniks reckon Redmond …

    Software 27 Nov 2001, 12:01

  • BT finally sells £2.4 bn in property

    Contract signed yesterday

    BT has finally signed the deal which will see it sell £2.4 billion worth of property and then hire it back on a lease, providing the debt-laden telco with some much-needed financial relief. The plan to sell about 6,700 properties, including offices, telephone exchanges, vehicle depots, warehouses, call centres and computer …

    Business 27 Nov 2001, 12:46

  • Mobo wrestling and maxing 3DMark

    HWRoundup MSI update

    Mobo wrestling Tom's Hardware Guide gets its hands on with thirteen motherboards, putting VIA's KT266A chipset head to head with nVidia's nForce 420D. Oh the whole, nVidia feels the force of a VIA smackdown, with a board from Soltek holding the champion's belt at the end of it all. Soyo made a close runner up in the race. The …

    Personal 27 Nov 2001, 12:49

  • IR35 appeal date set

    PCG to return to High Court on 4 December

    The Professional Contractors Group (PCG) will return to the High Court on 4-6 December to appeal against an April judgment that the government's controversial IR35 tax legislation is not illegal. The group - which represents 14,000 independent contractors, mostly in IT - argues that the measure is illegal under European law …

    Business 27 Nov 2001, 12:54

  • Europe semicon sales fall

    Biggest drop ever

    European semiconductor revenues will be $29 billion this year, a 33 per cent drop from 2000. Worldwide, revenues for the sector are set to fall 35 per cent, according to new numbers out from Gartner Dataquest. The research company says 2001 will mark the largest semiconductor revenue downturn ever recorded. On the plus side, …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 12:55

  • This is what Microsoft said about grey imports in 1998

    'Grey software is illegal'

    This article was published on The Register in March 1998. Last year, Levi Strauss & Co refused to allow UK supermarket chain Tesco to stock its denims. The jeans manufacturer had spent years and millions of pounds persuading the Great British public to stump up £50 for a pair for the privilege of wearing the brand. And it saw …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 13:15

  • Revenue up at Kingston Communications

    Losses widen

    Shares in Kingston Communications rose five per cent in mid-morning trading despite reporting widening losses for the first half of the year. Turnover for H1 leapt 44 per cent to £148.7 million compared to the same period last year. Earnings before interest etc (EBITDA) also increased by 44 per cent to £9.4 million on last …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 13:15

  • Samsung damns DRAM price-fixing charge

    'Total nonsense'

    Samsung did not attempt to drive DRAM prices down even further in a bid to push lesser players out of business, and it rejects any claims that it did, the company has said. The denial followed comments, reported in the Financial Times yesterday, from Infineon chief Ulrich Schumacher that the recent lift in DRAM prices had come …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 13:27

  • Intel Xeon multi-processing chip to ship next month

    IBM isn't waiting for January's official launch

    Intel's multi-way Xeon MP server chip, codenamed Foster, will arrive next month - a month ahead of the part's official release - courtesy of IBM. Big Blue yesterday unveiled its x360 server, which will be based on four Xeon MP chips running at 1.5GHz or 1.6GHz. Both versions will begin shipping in December, the company said. …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 13:56

  • Autodesk ‘not concerned’ by Microsoft motto mishap

    Slogan's run...

    Autodesk has decided not to charge Microsoft with trademark violation - despite the software giant's use of the CAD specialist's trademarked tagline 'Suddenly Everything Clicks'. Microsoft uses the phrase in its Windows XP advertising campaign, which has been the target of a series of pro-Linux defacements. Posters proclaiming …

    Business 27 Nov 2001, 15:49

  • Microsoft's eHome out of the closet

    First, we occupy the desktop

    Microsoft came out of the closet yesterday on its eHome strategy with a talk from Mike Toutonghi, the man in charge. The title of the presentation, "Thinking outside the box: distributing the power of the PC throughout the home", tells you most of what you need to know. Your Windows-powered PC will deliver entertainment the way …

    Personal 27 Nov 2001, 15:55

  • Hybrid viruses set to become bigger threat

    Watch out for the Nerds

    Viruses which try to infect users through a variety of means, such as the infamous Nimda worm, and mass mailers are predicted to become even more of a problem for Internet users next year. That's the prediction of anti-virus firm Sophos which has gazed into the crystal ball and come up with some predictions for the threats we' …

    Security 27 Nov 2001, 16:04

  • Brown gives IT firms and small business more tax breaks

    Pre-Budget report And it's all thanks to mobile phones

    Chancellor Gordon Brown has delivered his pre-Budget report and silenced the endless commentary on how he will split up the government cash between public services and tax credits aimed at removing poverty and encouraging business. The answer is: he will give huge amounts of money to both. Well, what did you expect? Who knows …

    Business 27 Nov 2001, 16:58

  • Sign up here for a better Broadband Britain

    Campaign seeks 1m signatures by Xmas

    A UK businessman is looking to collect one million signatures by Christmas as part of a campaign to highlight the failures of Broadband Britain. PR and marketing man Barrie Desmond says he is "fed up" with the current state of play of high speed DSL and leased line services in the UK, and has launched broadband4britain.co.uk to …

    Broadband 27 Nov 2001, 17:13

  • Mobile phone biz will resist Dell-ification – Nokia CEO

    To PC or not to PC

    Nokia CEO Jorma "Jurma" Ollila brushed aside comparisons between the mobile phone and PC industries today. In his introduction to eight hours of presentations by Nokia to financial analysts in New York, Ollila sought to dampen predictions that phone makers would become low margin box-shifters in the future. Nokia's flurry of …

    Data Networking 27 Nov 2001, 17:54

  • Dixons buys into Italy

    Sells Wanadoo shares

    Dixons Stores Group has bought a 24 per cent stake in UniEuro, said to be Italy's most profitable electronics retail chain, for E103m. It has an option to buy the rest of the business for E425m, and is funding the deal from existing resources. These have been topped up nicely with the sale of E245m worth of shares in Wanadoo, …

    Channel 27 Nov 2001, 18:17

  • Lego remakes Monty Python and the Holy Grail

    Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

    Lego - for some it's the ultimate kids' toy, for others the basis of an entire culture of cool. We thought 1999's Star Wars sets rocked, but we never imagined that these small plastic bricks from Denmark could get any better. But, thanks to some nifty work by anarcho-syndicalist animation team Spite Your Face, we now have the …

    Bootnotes 27 Nov 2001, 18:18

  • AV vendors split over FBI Trojan snoops

    Keystroke loggerheads

    Antivirus vendors are at loggerheads over whether they should include in their software packages detection for a Trojan horse program reportedly under development by the FBI. A keystroke logging Trojan, called Magic Lantern, will enable investigators to discover break PGP encoded messages sent by suspects under investigation, …

    Security 27 Nov 2001, 18:44