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17th May 2002 Archive

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  • Microsoft opts Passport holders into spam hell

    Trusted Computing at work

    Emboldened by user 'apathy' to Yahoo!'s privacy changes in April, Microsoft has followed suit. It has now co-opted existing Passport users to share their email addresses and other registration information with third parties, Register readers report. Three new checkboxes have appeared on the registration page, with "Share my …

    Music and Media 17 May 2002, 05:25

  • Open source shunned by monopolists' “good code” initiative

    World peace - federal grants

    In certain parts of this town, it's de rigeur for shopkeepers to display the sign: "OUR COMMUNITY IS A HATE FREE ZONE!" What a relief! I think, when I'm out buying my tomatoes. I'd much rather shop at a grocer that displayed one of these signs, than one that posted a sign saying "GENOCIDE PRACTICED HERE WEEKLY: 3.30PM EACH WED …

    Software 17 May 2002, 08:19

  • UK flights grounded following computer glitch

    Severe disruption

    Air travellers in the UK face severe disruption this morning following computer problems at the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) at Swanwick in Hampshire. Flights leaving London Heathrow, Gatwick and some other regional airports in England have been hit by the outage. A spokesman for Heathrow said: "We are restricting …

    Business 17 May 2002, 10:05

  • dabs.com pushes into corporate market

    No more dabbling

    dabs.com, the Bolton-based direct reseller, is gunning for more corporate business through a new outbound telesales division. dabs already sells to businesses through a corporate sales team, but most of its customers - it claims half a million registered shoppers - are end-users buying off the Internet site. The company says …

    Channel 17 May 2002, 10:15

  • UK SMEs profit from ecommerce

    Yes. Really

    Three out of four business-based Web sites in the UK make a profit, according to research by ecommerce software supplier Actinic. In its Ecommerce Report 2002, which surveyed 250 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Actinic found that 72 per cent of ecommerce sites claimed they were profitable in the 12 months to March 2002. …

    e-Business 17 May 2002, 11:01

  • Dimension Data hit by Asian loss

    Bad debts, low demand

    Network integrator Dimension Data Holdings Plc said yesterday that there is little demand for new contracts, and revealed that its Asian operation fell into the red during the first half of its fiscal year. In the six months to March 31, the Johannesburg, South Africa-based company was hit with exceptional charges and …

    Channel 17 May 2002, 11:05

  • NEC spins out chip biz

    Reorg Part 2

    NEC Corp kicked off phase two of its restructuring yesterday, announcing plans to spin off its semiconductor operations into a separate company. The Japanese electronics giant said it will establish the new silicon-based subsidiary by November 2002, and will launch an IPO of 30% of its stock as soon as possible. The new …

    Channel 17 May 2002, 11:10

  • Compaq wears the pants in HP's brave new storage world

    But bad news for Overland

    Hewlett-Packard Co's new storage boss, Howard Elias, yesterday expanded on his plans for the new combined networked storage business, Nick Crouch writes For Elias there may be an element of deja vu about the situation in which he finds himself. Elias originally came from Digital Equipment Corp and served as Compaq …

    Hardware 17 May 2002, 11:12

  • AOL to ditch IE on Macs

    Not very friendly

    America Online Inc is set to ditch Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer in favor of its own Netscape browser in the next version of its client software for Apple Computer Inc's Mac OS X, according to reports in the Mac community yesterday. AOL beta testers have evidently received mail inviting them to test Java compatibility …

    Mac Channel 17 May 2002, 11:14

  • Dell shrugs off HP threat

    Feels great to be number two

    Dell Computer Corp shrugged off the threat of the new HP yesterday as it unveiled its first quarter results. The Round Rock, Texas-based company trumpeted a better than expected performance for its first quarter, and said it expected to deliver year on year growth in both sales and earnings per share in its second quarter …

    Business 17 May 2002, 11:17

  • BTo donates 800 broadband connections

    Targets SMEs

    BTopenworld is to donate 800 ADSL connections to businesses and community groups over the next couple of years in a bid to drive demand for broadband. The £1million initiative was announced this morning at a BTo broadband summit held in London. As part of the initiative BTo will equip community groups and selected small …

    Telecoms 17 May 2002, 12:27

  • VIA flogs DDR333 P4 mobo

    One way to sell chipsets

    VIA has intro'ed a new P4 mobo, the "first mainboard featuring the VIA Apollo P4X333 chipset". This is not completely surprising - licensing issues between Intel and VIA means that few Taiwanese mobo makers want to stick their neck out selling and marketing P4 boards with VIA chipsets (although some are willing, obviously to …

    Telecoms 17 May 2002, 12:30

  • MS IE patch misses the mark

    Partial fix leaves 12 outstanding bugs

    Microsoft's latest cumulative patch for Internet Explorer fails to tackle at least one of the problems it is meant to fix, and leaves a dozen reported security bugs unpatched. That's according to postings by Danish security researcher Thor Larholm and GreyMagic Software to security mailing list BugTraq, which point to a number …

    Security 17 May 2002, 12:41

  • Citrix scores MS code deal, pulls NT 4.0 TSE support

    Worracoincidence...

    Earlier this week Citrix announced that it had struck a deal with Microsoft to give it access to Windows server code for another three years. And, by some strange coincidence, Citrix will not be supporting NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition in Metaframe XP, Feature Release 2, which is due out shortly. Pulling the plugs on NT 4.0 …

    Software 17 May 2002, 14:12

  • Psion ships Ethernet, 802.11 upgrade to netBook OS

    Although 'ships' may be a little overstating it...

    Psion as a company is adept at not telling people things, and indeed where you can get them, so it's no surprise that this week it has contrived to sneak out a new rev of the netBook OS which finally includes built-in support for Ethernet PC cards, including several 802.11 ones. This is presumably the support that was due (was …

    Personal 17 May 2002, 14:49

  • Bertelsmann saves Napster

    For what?

    Bertelsmann is to mop up the rest of Napster – for around $8m. Or rather the assets: it gets the name and it has the P2P software, and it pays off the creditors, but it sidesteps the liabilities – most notably, other shareholders, and the gazillions demanded by most of the music majors. The price is a lot less than had …

    Music and Media 17 May 2002, 21:01

  • blueyonder escapes Usenet death row

    UDP lifted, double secret probation

    Internet admins have lifted a Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) sentence from blueyonder after deciding it had done enough to clamp down on the stream of spam emanating from its network. For weeks Telewest has been criticised in postings to groups such as news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for failing to curb the abuse concerning its …

    Music and Media 17 May 2002, 21:08

  • From H to P and back again

    H****tt P*****d banished to swear box

    Hewlett Packard is no more, a spokesperson told us today. The company will now be known as "HP", confirming a report in the San Jose Mercury this morning. The families of the founders, Hewlett and Packard [who? It's working already - ed.] led the opposition to the merger with Compaq. Reports that a swearbox is in operation for …

    Bootnotes 17 May 2002, 21:29

  • Egg hatches one-stop Web banking service

    All your online accounts in one basket

    Egg has rejected criticism from its competitors about the security and privacy implications of a service, which allows its customers to manage all their online accounts from a single Web page. The account aggregation service, called Egg Money Manager, is promoted as a way for consumers to manage their finances more effectively …

    Music and Media 17 May 2002, 21:33

  • PlusNet cuts price for DSL

    Strings attached

    The battle to gain broadband customers took a new turn today after PlusNet introduced a new, cheaper ADSL product. The new "Home Surf" ADSL service costs just £20.99 and is aimed at punters who use the Internet for web browsing, gaming and email. However, it does not allow punters to engage in file sharing (or peer-2-peer) …

    Telecoms 17 May 2002, 21:34