8th August 2002 Archive

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S&P slams Level 3 acquisition plans

Credit rating cut

Level 3 Communications Inc's ambitions to lead the consolidation among global carriers were dealt a blow yesterday when ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating and poured scorn on its acquisitive ambitions. With a debt burden that led to interest payments of $646m in its last financial year, the agency fears …

Business 8 Aug 2002, 07:43
McAfee.com to shift 1m units on P2P piggyback

Blubster joins Morpheus

McAfee.com Corp reckons it can grow its user base by over one million in the course of the current quarter, after striking deals with two major peer-to-peer file-trading software developers, Kevin Murphy writes. The company said its recently launched SecurityCenter application will ship with Blubster and Morpheus clients, …

Malware 8 Aug 2002, 07:44
RealNetworks streams staff

Decimation (kinda - 1 in 9)

RealNetworks Inc is laying off 11% of its staff as it tunes up its strategy to focus on its recently introduced Helix streaming media platform and RealOne consumer service. The company said it will record a restructuring charge of between $4m and $6m relating to the layoffs - 90 out of RealNetworks' current total of about …

Malware 8 Aug 2002, 07:44
Linuxcare returns with mainframe provisioning software

And why not?

Little has been heard of Linux services vendor Linuxcare Inc since its planned merger with Turbolinux Inc bit the dust in May 2001, but the company is now back with a new software product for the provisioning and configuration of the Linux operating system on mainframe systems. Having been through a period of consolidation …

Hardware 8 Aug 2002, 07:44
VeriSign settles slamming charge with BulkRegister

Mailshot in the foot

BulkRegister Inc and VeriSign Inc said yesterday they have settled a false advertising lawsuit that helped spark a US Federal Trade Commission investigation into a VeriSign marketing campaign that ended in May. Terms were not disclosed, but it seems likely VeriSign will part with some cash. BulkRegister said it will …

Music and Media 8 Aug 2002, 07:48
Interliant execs quit following bankruptcy filing

UK trading normally?

Managed hosting firm and ASP Interliant Inc has lost its CEO and president Bruce Graham and COO Steve Munroe after finally filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Purchase, New Jersey-based Interliant, also lost directors Thomas Dircks and Merril Halpern and Charlie Feld from investors Charterhouse Group and The Feld …

Business 8 Aug 2002, 07:48
Ex Grey Archers launch support site

Band together

A Web site has been set up to provide support for 150 former employees of Grey Archer, an online exchange for the UK pub trade. Japanese investment bank Nomura pulled the plug on Grey Archer last month, forcing the company into liquidation. All permanent members of staff were made redundant without notice and so far they've …

Business 8 Aug 2002, 07:56
Whither Exchange users?

Explore your options

E-mail is now a tool that is to be found at the heart of everyday business. Along with the increasing reliance that is now placed upon e-mail has come a cost: the very large cost associated with managing these systems. At the moment Microsoft supplies one of the most widely deployed e-mail engines in the guise of Exchange. But …

Data Networking 8 Aug 2002, 09:42
‘Dotcom millionaire’ flogs porn empire

So Sensible

One-time teenage "dotcom millionaire" Benjamin Cohen has finally flogged his porn empire. Last month he put hunt4porn.com and dotadults.com up for sale because he said they were a drain on resources. The porn sites and their users were bought by Liddell Consultants, an investment outfit based in the British Virgin Islands. …

Music and Media 8 Aug 2002, 15:08
Telecity paints grim picture of Web hosting sector

Matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs

The Web hosting industry is on its knees and shows little sign of recovery in the near future. This downbeat assessment of the sector was delivered yesterday by Telecity after it reported that turnover remained flat. Turnover to the six months to the end of June was down a smidge to £12.17m from £12.56 during the same period …

Music and Media 8 Aug 2002, 15:08
Edsger Dijkstra: RIP

Pioneer and wit

Dutch computer pioneer Edsger W Dijkstra has died, aged 72. Over forty years, Dijkstra enriched software with many concepts, often expressed with such wit and clarity they make your teeth hum. He most famously proselytised structured programming, but his work battled against an electronics industry that "solved no problems, …

Software 8 Aug 2002, 15:09
PSINet Europe mulls jobs cull

Begins strategic review

Workers at PSINet Europe will have an anxious wait over the next eight weeks following the ISP's decision to begin a strategic review of the company. PSINet Europe declined to speculate about job losses until after the review, but it seems likely that jobs will be lost as the company attempts to streamline its business …

Business 8 Aug 2002, 15:38
Porn spam on the rise

Updated Tricks and countermeasures

UK corporates are bombarded by porn and pedo bulk-emails - and ineffective anti-spam software and outdated email usage policies mean that many are coping badly That's the warning from messaging firm Nexor which reckons pornographic emails are on the rise and that many are passing through ineffective defences to reach workers' …

Music and Media 8 Aug 2002, 15:56
Convergys to cut 90 Euro Jobs

70 in UK

Convergys - the software billing outfit - is to axe 90 jobs across its European operation. Staff were told yesterday of the cuts and informed that 70 of the job losses would be coming from the UK alone. The rest will come from the company's European outfits. Convergys employs 1,400 people throughout Europe. A spokeswoman for …

Business 8 Aug 2002, 16:03
NTL shoots itself in the foot

Updated Scary graffiti is just test code

NTL restored its Web site to normality today after its contractors mistakenly loaded an alarming pop up message on to ntlworld.com. Last night visitors to ntlworld.com were confronted by a pop up message that said: "You have successfully configured your hard drive for re-formatting. Next time You start this computer you will …

Security 8 Aug 2002, 16:09
Microsoft squares FTC over Passport claims

Consumer win

Microsoft is to introduce a wide-ranging information security program for its Passport web service, after falling foul of the USA's might Federal Trade Commission. The FTC today said the software firm had agreed to settle charges concerning false security and privacy promises made about personal information collected from …

Software 8 Aug 2002, 16:41
Attacking Nimda-infected attackers

Updated Vigilance or vigilantism?

A presentation at Blackhat last week by Tim Mullen of AnchorIs, offering a novel treatment for the Nimda worm, has caused considerable controversy because it involves taking unauthorized actions against the offending box. Mullen has come up with two possible ways of shutting down the bandwidth-hungry attacks when an infected …

Software 8 Aug 2002, 16:58
IBM lays desktop PowerPC on Cupertino lawn

Who else could want it?

IBM is to release a version of the dual-core Power4 processor aimed at the desktop, and will disclosed details at Microprocessor Forum in October. The new chip designed for "desktops and entry level servers", and will be an 8-way superscalar, SMP-ready design capable of 6.4GB/s throughput. Tantalisingly, the processor has it …

Mac Channel 8 Aug 2002, 20:16