8th July 2002 Archive

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Chapter 11 looms For WorldCom

Bonded labour

WorldCom Inc is trying to bash out a massive debt-for-equity swap with its bondholders, as the company battles to survive. Wall Street Journal reported sources close to the talks as saying Friday that holders of $26bn of bonds are talking to WorldCom management over the potential deal, which would be executed under the …

Business 8 Jul 2002, 09:35
KPN favorite to acquire KPNQwest

Everyone else loses interest

Bankrupt carrier KPNQwest NV is expected to be bought by its former parent Dutch telecoms incumbent Royal KPN NV for around 20m euros ($19.6m), after all the other bidders lost interest in the operation. The level of the bid will be a bitter disappointment to the banks that were owed 220m euros ($215.6m) when KPNQwest went …

Business 8 Jul 2002, 09:35
HP to squeeze Asian Suppliers

Post-merger savings

Fears that the merger of Compaq Computer Corp with Hewlett-Packard Co would spark a bloody rationalization of the company's Far Eastern supply chain appear to be unfounded, according to reports in the local media. However, HP's decision to retain most of its and Compaq's existing relationships electronic service …

Business 8 Jul 2002, 09:35
IBM to integrate DB2 with Visual Studio.NET

No news like old news

IBM Corp has announced that it has joined Microsoft Corp's Visual Studio.NET Integration Program (VSIP) to provide tighter integration between DB2 and .NET. The idea is that "support for VSIP will enable developers to leverage the power of DB2 combined with the benefits of the Microsoft .NET Framework for application …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 09:35
Phone Java to get Summer facelift

Midlet push

Sun Microsystems Inc is set to launch a major upgrade to the phone variant of its Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) specification featuring a standardized application delivery method and server-side application invocation alongside improved security, multimedia and networking features. The specification, known as MIDP (mobile …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 09:35
Intel Announces Itanium 2 Chips

Price. Performance

Intel launches the "McKinley" Itanium 2 processor today. It hopes to set itself on a profitable path of dominance in the market for processors for relatively expensive midrange and enterprise server servers, much as it accomplished in the PC market by the late 1980s, and in the entry server market in the mid-1990s, Timothy …

Servers 8 Jul 2002, 09:39
Redmond retirement ratchet spells doom for Win2k

Upgrade or die, punks...

Windows 2000 has been given nine months to live, as far as OEMs are concerned, and Microsoft is pressuring the PC companies to stop offering dual install Win2k/WinXP systems immediately. Microsoft operating systems magically become more expensive and difficult to obtain as soon as there's a new rev out, but so long as the …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 10:32
First legal Linux program runs on Xbox

OK, it might only be a little program, but...

The first Linux program to run legally on Xbox has been released, says the Xbox Linux Project. It is not clear to us what the program, which was created without the Xbox SDK, actually does, and just maybe all it does is put Tux on the Xbox screen, but still, it's progress. The Xbox Linux Project aims to overcome the best-laid …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 10:51
eBay buys PayPal

$1.5bn in stock

eBay is to buy Paypal, for $1.5bn in stock. That's sorted then, or it will be when the deal closes at the end of the year. PayPal conducted its IPO in February - four months ago. Surely the point of that exercise was not to sell up so soon? All that expense could have been avoided by going for the trade sale in the first place …

e-Business 8 Jul 2002, 12:02
Worm blocks access to The Register

Gunsan fires poison pellet

Having trouble accessing The Register lately? It may not be your crap porn filter, or the ebone shutdown spilling over into DNS error reports at several ISPs. You may need deworming. For virus writers have created a worm which, among other tricks, blocks access to El Reg. The Gunsan is a mass-mailing worm which infects local …

Security 8 Jul 2002, 12:16
EU calls for open source e-government

And why not

A report published by the European Commission is encouraging EU governments to share open source software resources as a way to cut down on e-government costs. According to the study, "Pooling Open Source Software", which was financed by the Commission's Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) programme, a kind of …

e-Business 8 Jul 2002, 12:38
UKBetting buys Sports.com's gamblers

Sports.com loses domain name

UKBetting has swooped on the gambling operations of stricken sports site, Sports.com. It's paying £670K - £100K in cash and the rest in assumed debt ( of 'no more' than £570K) - for SCG Enterprises, the bookmaking arm of Sports.com. At the same time, Sportsline.com, a one-time major investor in Sports.com, today announced that …

e-Business 8 Jul 2002, 13:16
Tiscali lobs LLU brickbats at EU

Broadband unbundling bungled

European Union reforms designed to extend the availability of ADSL and consumer choice through Local Loop Unbundling are failing. That's the stark conclusion of Renato Soru, chief executive of Tiscali, who plans to tell a Brussels meeting today that Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) legislation has failed to create healthy …

Broadband 8 Jul 2002, 13:32
Cracking MS SQL Server passwords

Made simple, that is

The inner workings of the undocumented pwdencrypt() hash function in Microsoft SQL Server have been revealed in a paper by security researcher David Litchfield of Next Generation Security Software (NGSS). pwdencrypt() creates the user's password hash, which is stored in the main database. Litchfield begins by observing that …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 14:02
Bloodbath in W.Europe PC market

First half sales down 10 per cent

PC sales in Europe's seven biggest economies slumped maybe as much as 10 per cent in the first half of the year, according to market research firm Context. And it ain't going to get any better in the second half, with "the cost associated with Microsoft's new licensing system is diverting funds away from hardware purchases". …

Personal 8 Jul 2002, 14:15
Dancing at the Microsoft Palladium

Letters Do the share-denial quick-step

Re: MS to micro-manage your computer MS DRM OS, retagged 'secure OS' to ship with Longhorn? Why Intel loves Palladium More on AMD and Palladium MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you - paper European antitrust chief concerned over MS Palladium Palladium tech up for discussion, says MS security chief This was a very …

Letters 8 Jul 2002, 14:15
EC disposal rules whack small PC builders

Gartner note

In coming months, the member countries of the EU will enact waste disposal laws conforming with the European Commission's Waste from Electrical and Electronic (WEEE) directive. The new regime, coupled with more disposal regulations coming down the line will hit smaller PC makers hardest, according to Gartner. Waste disposal …

Personal 8 Jul 2002, 15:32
Palm ‘mulled Linux’ for next-gen OS

Exclusive Insiders tell Secret History of PalmOS

Palm Inc was considering Linux as the foundation of the next-generation PalmOS as recently as last spring, sources tell us. Palm eventually acquired Be Inc's development team last August, but internal discussions on the viability of a Linux-based handheld OS were taking place up to fifteen months ago. These were squashed by the …

Personal 8 Jul 2002, 15:44
Bugs delay flagship MS phone

Again

The Sendo Z100 has been delayed again, with a spokesperson for Sendo citing integration issues as the cause. The Z100 was originally slated to ship last autumn [Feb 01 prediction], then delayed to first quarter of this year [Nov 01 prediction] - which we said here might be a touch optimistic - was subsequently delayed to June [ …

Personal 8 Jul 2002, 16:44
Show us the bugs – users want full disclosure

Test case needed

End-users overwhelmingly support the full disclosure of security vulnerabilities, according to a recent survey by analysts Hurwitz Group, which demonstrates widespread frustration about vendor responsiveness to security issues. Based on interviews with more than 300 software security professionals, the report shows that end …

Security 8 Jul 2002, 18:04
MS ‘retires’ corporate Windows Update in favour of SUS

We told you it had to happen...

According to the date on the relevant pages, Microsoft started talking about SUS (Software Update Services) on 20th June, but it's only today we've had the press release from the UK arm. Granted, it might have been announced somewhere else during the past couple of weeks, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the main press …

Software 8 Jul 2002, 20:20