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26th April 2002 Archive

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  • Yahoo! extends! e-mail! offer!

    Privacy backlash?

    Could Yahoo! be feeling a privacy backlash? The portal duly blocked access to users who had been taking advantage of forwarding and POP3/SMTP e-mail services yesterday, as promised. Yahoo! will now charge $29.99 a year for the privilege. But some late sweeteners have appeared. Yahoo! had trailed the news with a special …

    Media 26 Apr 2002, 06:49

  • FAA hacked by patriots

    Hey, it could have been terrorists

    Hackers were able to penetrate a Federal Aviation Administration system earlier this week and download unpublished information on airport passenger screening activities, federal officials confirmed Thursday. Styling themselves "The Deceptive Duo," the hackers on Wednesday publicly defaced an FAA server used by what was the …

    Security 26 Apr 2002, 06:55

  • Electronic courts scheme in crisis talks

    Another government IT disaster looms

    A project to link hundreds of magistrates' courts in the UK electronically may have to be abandoned because discussions between the government and a key supplier are floundering. An internal memo from the Lord Chancellor's Department said it had been "unable to reach an agreement with Fujitsu" on a proposal for the delayed …

    Business 26 Apr 2002, 08:32

  • BT Broadband not sexy enough

    Oh well

    Analysts have cast doubt over BT's latest assault on the UK's broadband market and its planned introduction of a "no frills" service. It seems the pricing of the access-only service - just £3 cheaper than full ISP services on offer from the likes of BTopenworld and Freeserve - might not be enough to sway punters to opt for the …

    Broadband 26 Apr 2002, 08:33

  • Intel kickstarts Fab 24 in Ireland

    Irish govt election boost

    Things must be looking up: Intel has begun work again on building Fab 24 in Leixlip, Ireland. The chip monster has frozen construction on the $2bn building twice, citing downturn in demand. The news comes as a boost to the Irish government, which is fighting a General Election. But the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Mary …

    Channel 26 Apr 2002, 08:45

  • So farewell then, Elsa: PNY picks up the pieces

    Update Nvidia's new Quadro partner

    Nvidia has appointed New Jersey firm PNY Technologies to flog Quadro workstation graphics boards into the OEM market worldwide. PNY recently told the German press that it was in talks with administrators about Elsa's graphics business. It says it will release more details in coming days. Elsa, the German graphics card maker, …

    Personal 26 Apr 2002, 09:07

  • MS Word runs malicious e-mail scripts

    Patch on

    If you've chosen MS Word for your e-mail editor in Outlook 2000 or 2002, you'll need to patch a flaw which enables script execution when a malicious memo is replied to or forwarded. Outlook blocks scripts when an HTML e-mail is viewed; but when Word is the editor, replying or forwarding calls it in an unprotected mode, and it …

    Software 26 Apr 2002, 09:46

  • Datawiping doesn't work

    eTesting Labs finds products wanting

    eTesting Labs has run a series of tests of eight commercial available diskwiping products - and only one of them worked properly. This is Redemtech Data Erasure, from the company which contracted eTesting to run the trials. So the results should be treated with caution. The eight products were run on six variously configured …

    Personal 26 Apr 2002, 10:18

  • Hants hit by BT power failure

    That's funny, the line's gone dead

    Tens of thousands of people in southern England were without phones last night after a power failure in Southampton brought down BT's network. Parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Wiltshire were hit after phones went dead at around 6.30pm yesterday evening. Most were restored by midnight although the whole service wasn't …

    Business 26 Apr 2002, 10:19

  • Disaster recovery disaster finds buyer

    Sungard swoops on Guardian IT

    Guardian IT, the ailing disaster recovery firm, up for sale after spending lots of borrowed money in anticipation of business which never happened, has a buyer. It's Sungard Data Systems, a $2bn t/o disaster recovery player from the US. Sungard values Guardian IT at £168m, inclusive of debt. As Guardian IT's net debt is £110m …

    Business 26 Apr 2002, 11:00

  • Another.com suffers disappearing emails

    Snag should be fixed today

    The boss of subscription-based email service, Another.com, said he hopes that a snag that has crippled the service for some 100 users during the last week will be resolved today. Users have reported that their emails - both those sent to their account and those saved in their inboxes - have been lost. According to reports the …

    Media 26 Apr 2002, 11:05

  • Japan's DRAM market exodus

    Bad idea

    A top Japanese electronics executive has criticized the country's leading manufacturers for their wholesale abandonment of the DRAM memory chip business, warning that an "emotional" herd mentality could seriously damage the country's high-tech sector. In an article published by Nikkei Business, the chairman of Texas …

    Channel 26 Apr 2002, 11:37

  • NAI on-off bid for McAfee.com is off again

    Accounting inaccuracies

    Network Associates on-off bid for the shares in its McAfee.com consumer ASP subsidiary that it doesn't own is off, again. Last Month, NAI offered a stock swap deal worth around $208.2 million for the 25 per cent of McAfee.com shares outside its control. The aim of the acquisition was to remove confusion over Network Associates …

    Business 26 Apr 2002, 11:37

  • Yahoo! keeps! Overture!

    Rejects in-house, Google

    Yahoo! Inc has decided to renew its contract with Overture Services Inc for three years, Overture announced yesterday. The decision dashes speculation that Yahoo was poised to give its advertising search business to Google Inc, which is already a key partner, or build its own customer service in-house. "Since its inception …

    Media 26 Apr 2002, 11:38

  • IBM to ship BladeCenter eServers in Q3

    Xeon DPs

    Hoping to cash in on all the excitement building in the market about blade servers, IBM Corp's top brass in the Server Group who are responsible for the company's entry into this market started talking, very generally, about the company's plans, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. Like other blade server vendors, IBM is …

    Data Center 26 Apr 2002, 11:38

  • Vodafone ARPU stable

    But market sees little to celebrate

    The advanced maturity of Europe's formerly booming wireless network business was underlined yesterday as Vodafone Group Plc, the biggest operator in the region, posted quarterly subscriber growth figures down heavily on the earlier quarter. Net subscriber growth for the Newbury, UK-based company was 1.3 million in the …

    Mobile 26 Apr 2002, 11:38

  • MS exec argues for right to break rivals' software

    It's a good 'un...

    One of the exhibits in the previous stages of the Microsoft antitrust trial included an email from one Chris Jones, recommending to Bill Gates that the binding of IE into Windows should be such that users would find running rival browsers "a jolting experience." At the time many people, not least of them the Department of …

    Software 26 Apr 2002, 11:45

  • Time creates CIO post

    Appoints insider

    Time Group, the UK's biggest system builder, has created a new job - chief information officer - to handle "joined up IT delivery". The first incumbent is Jason Campion, who moves over from Time sister company Internexus, where he was technical director. Campion's job is to manage the installation of a retail system for the …

    Channel 26 Apr 2002, 12:40

  • PSINet Europe finds buyer

    Seeks approval

    An international group of investors led by a British financier has emerged as the frontrunner in the race to buy PSINet Europe. The group, which includes ClearBlue Technologies, Israel Corporation, Infinity Holdings and British financier Michael W Stevens, has entered into a contract to buy the ISP and Web hosting business for …

    Media 26 Apr 2002, 13:14

  • Crackers favour war dialling and weak passwords

    InfoSecurity Europe The old ones are still the best

    With all the talk about zero day exploits and sometimes esoteric vulnerabilities its easy to lose sight of the role of older, less sophisticated techniques as a mainstay of cracker activity. During a hacking debate at InfoSecurity Europe yesterday, black hat hacker KP said that when he broke into a network he did so 90 per cent …

    Security 26 Apr 2002, 13:17

  • The quest for the killer mobile app – beyond UIs, browsers

    Picsel's 'view everything' multimedia system

    Picsel's Interactive File Viewer (IFV) doesn't entirely lend itself to simple explanations. It's a file viewer (of course) that lets you look at and manipulate a variety of file formats, Word, Powerpoint, PDF, eBook, on a mobile device. Clever, no doubt, but why on earth would you want to do that? Picsel CEO Imran Khand sits …

    Mobile 26 Apr 2002, 13:33

  • WIPOUT names essay winners

    And on World Intellectual Property Day too

    Today is World Intellectual Property day; so how appropriate for WIPOUT to announce the 11 winners of its international intellectual property counter-essay contest. The Register is, we seem to recall, a sponsor in a very small way, of this contest, so clearly we think it's worth a story. And considering the provenance of WIPOUT …

    Media 26 Apr 2002, 13:44

  • Westcon picks up Landis pieces

    Leaves debts behind

    Westcon is to buy the networking distie assets of Landis, the stricken Dutch-owned firm, for the knockdown price of €7m. It assumes responsibility for 500 employees, fixed assets and customer contracts, but no debt and no liabilities. We guess there's a separate conversation going on for the products in Landis' warehouses. …

    Channel 26 Apr 2002, 14:27

  • VIA claims DDR333 Athlon mobo wins

    'First choice platform'

    In February VIA launched the Apollo KT333 chipset onto a suspecting world+dog. At the time, the Taiwanese chipset house (it prefers to call itself a core logic business these days), said that 40-50 per cent of new mobos would support DDR333 fast memory by the end of the year. Some industry observers raised their eyebrows. But …

    Channel 26 Apr 2002, 14:59

  • Microsoft's SGI 3D patents trickling back to Redmond

    Xbox bootnote

    The results of the transfer of Silicon Graphics' 3D patent portfolio to Microsoft have begun to show up in the US Patent Office database. Last October, SGI revealed a payment of $62.5 million from Microsoft for "non core" intellectual property. In January, we explained what this was. The US Patent Office now shows three patent …

    Software 26 Apr 2002, 19:38

  • Hands on with the PDA-killer Sony P800

    A contender, we reckon

    Attention: medical staff. Handspring's fine Treo communicator had Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal hyperventilating recently, with Walt describing it as the best phone and the best PDA he'd ever used. It probably is. But when Walt gets to see the Sony Ericsson P800, we recommend that the demonstrators bring along a …

    Personal 26 Apr 2002, 21:17

  • Alan Cox stars in EU copyright protest debate

    Open source and free use under threat?

    Linux heavyweight Alan Cox is to speak on a debate next week about the proposed European Union Copyright Directive which has alarmed many in the Internet community. Cox will speak on the negative effects the directive could have on open source software development during a Campaign for Digital Rights mini-conference, to be held …

    Software 26 Apr 2002, 21:57

  • Cisco and Sophos spoofed in virus mail-outs

    Forged infected email

    Cisco Systems has written to users to warn against forged messages containing computer viruses which purport to come from its Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT). Several forged virus bearing emails apparently from psirt@cisco.com have been sent out, one of which (containing an infected attachment 'width.pif') was …

    Security 26 Apr 2002, 22:00

  • SuSE touts user-friendly v8.0

    Up and running in minutes

    SuSE Linux aims to make its open source distribution more user friendly with version 8.0 of its Professional Edition, launched today. Version 8.0 is based on version 2.4.18 of the Linux kernel and includes an improved desktop interface, KDE 3.0, which is closer to the Windows desktop environment most users are familiar with. …

    Software 26 Apr 2002, 22:17