23rd September 2002 Archive

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US tightens ICANN leash

Oversight over domain oversight

Saying its progress over the four years since its inception has been "disappointing", the US Department of Commerce nevertheless has renewed the powers of the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers, which coordinates the internet's addressing systems, Kevin Murphy writes. But the one-year renewal of the Memorandum of …

Music and Media 23 Sep 2002, 07:29
Palm targets the wireless enterprise

With new models

Palm Inc is set to make a concerted attack on the high-end device and enterprise space in October with a brace of new wireless-enabled models and greater use of the software from its ThinAirApps acquisition, Tony Cripps writes. The Milpitas, California-based PDA pioneer is also attempting to preserve its consumer market …

Mobile 23 Sep 2002, 07:30
HP to give away BEA application server

Going a bundle

Hewlett-Packard and BEA Systems will today announce that BEA's WebLogic application server will be bundled free with all copies of the HP-UX 11i operating system worldwide. Customers can utilize a fully functioning copy of WebLogic for free for six months, after which time they will need to license the software at list …

e-Business 23 Sep 2002, 07:30
Oracle calls for Web Services choreography peace

Bring on the W3C

Oracle Corp has called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to mediate a growing web services standoff around XML specifications. Oracle said rival choreography specifications backed by IBM, Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc should be passed to W3C to prevent fragmentation of standards. The company believes the W3C …

e-Business 23 Sep 2002, 07:30
Let there be light: the ‘invisible’ keyboard

Finger cramps from typing into mobile phones or PDAs could be a thing of the past following the launch of a full-sized keyboard made out of light. San Jose-based Canesta last week said it had developed the world's first fully integrated projection keyboard for mobile and wireless devices. The technology enables a keyboard to …

Personal 23 Sep 2002, 07:44
Review: Lindows 2.0 has beautiful skin, iffy personality

Suffer not the newbies

Lindows 2.0 looks cool, I have to admit. The company has stopped aping KDE and gotten a desktop look that is more its own. Lindows has made scant concessions to the knowledgeable, allowing for a somewhat more advanced setup configuration. I'm still concerned for the newbies, though. The latest release of Lindows recognized all …

Software 23 Sep 2002, 07:48
Nintendo confirms Rare sale

Pulling a fast one over MS?

Nintendo has officially confirmed that it has sold its 49 per cent stake in UK developer Rare, ending an exclusive relationship which has lasted through several console revisions and handing over with it the rights to such franchises as Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazooie. Although the company did not name the purchaser, information …

Personal 23 Sep 2002, 09:49
Google muscles into news searching

Whither Moreover, Newsnow, Newshub etc.?

Google has launched its news search facility after months of testing. Officially still in beta mode, the purply-brown liveried Google News has a button on the launch page, which means gazillions will access the service. Google News trawls 4,000 news sites, including The Register, and updates continuously. We like the way the …

Music and Media 23 Sep 2002, 10:36
BTo gets tough with Sat bandwidth hogs

Stoppit

BTopenworld has put the frighteners on its satellite broadband users over their excessive use of bandwidth at peak business hours during the day. Around 40 customers have received letters from BTopenworld warning them that the ISP will soon start imposing bandwidth limitations on their accounts at peak hours unless they cut …

Telecoms 23 Sep 2002, 10:37
Woman falls for Nigerian scam, steals $2.1m from law firm

A fool and her bosses' money are soon parted

A bookkeeper for Michigan law firm Olsman Mueller & James has been taken for $2.1m by Nigerian 419 fraudsters, the Detroit Free Press reports. The 59-year-old woman received a fax from one Dr. Mbuso Nelson of the Ministry of Mining in Pretoria, South Africa, asking for help in getting a cool $18m transferred to the US. We all …

Bootnotes 23 Sep 2002, 12:55
HP blade sales ‘taking off like a rocket’

Fireworks for fast growing server category

HP reports blade server sales are "taking off like a rocket", with 1,800 units shifted a month. The company says is well ahead of its competitors, citing analyst estimates of 54.8 per cent market share of this emerging server segment. Which is nice. But don't read too much into the results just yet - it's rarely safe to name …

Servers 23 Sep 2002, 13:04
Freeserve slams BT broadband ad blitz

Abusing dominant market position etc.

Freeserve is considering launching a new complaint against BT following the introduction of its massive broadband advertising blitz. The UK's biggest ISP believes that the dominant telco is abusing its market position as a residential telephony service provider by offering a broadband service directly to its 20 million or so …

Telecoms 23 Sep 2002, 13:09
BT crosses fingers for ADSL fix

Some users out for almost two weeks

BT Wholesale should know this afternoon whether it has been able to fix a problem that has dogged an unknown number of ADSL users for more than 10 days. On September 12 BT began an upgrade to Alcatel DSLAMS in 306 of its local exchanges. Almost immediately there were reports that some end users lost their connections and were …

Telecoms 23 Sep 2002, 14:21
Freeserve confirms CEO

Finance man gets it

Freeserve - the UK's biggest ISP - has named bean counter Eric Abensur as the ISP's new CEO. The former Freeserve CFO took on the post temporarily in the summer following the departure of John Pluthero, who left the company to join alternative telco Energis. Abensur, 38, was appointed CFO of Freeserve in spring 2001 having …

Business 23 Sep 2002, 15:27
Wife hired hitman to kill ex-Apple UK boss

The Hitman and Her

The wife of former Apple UK boss Jon Molyneux today pleaded guilty to soliciting to murder her husband. Shelley Molyneux, 41, hired a hitman to kill Molyneux for his insurance money. Fortunately for her husband, the 'hitman' was an undercover journalist who told the police. At the time of the planned hit, Molyneux was the £175 …

Mac Channel 23 Sep 2002, 16:03
Crypto boffins: let's get physical

Plastic Tokenism

Researchers at MIT have developed a physical token, based on tiny glass spheres encased in epoxy resin, as a more secure alternative to generating cryptographic keys electronically. With computers getting ever more powerful, especially when quantum-based technology come on the scene, some predict the mathematical algorithms …

Security 23 Sep 2002, 16:20
Sun Crypto curves into open source project

OpenSLL gets Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Sun Microsystems has donated its Elliptic Curve Cryptography technology to the OpenSSL project. The donation is designed to boost efforts among developers to move to the latest encryption technology and enhance Sun's reputation as a provider of secure technology. Elliptic Curve Cryptography uses the mathematics of elliptic …

Security 23 Sep 2002, 16:27
3G branding absurd, admits Sprint rep

Inflationary pressure

Both Intel and AMD have received been slammed for misleading customers by labeling processors according to a performance rating rather than clock frequency. The difference between the PR and the "equivalent" Mhz is pretty small: usually only a few per cent. But what happens when telcos give their networks a "performance rating …

Music and Media 23 Sep 2002, 19:55
Creative launches Audigy 2 (but no PC, OK?)

Cool, quiet components

Today Creative launched the Audigy 2, its next generation sound card, in Singapore. Within hours the hardware maker issued a press release correcting Bloomberg's "inaccurate report" which had stated that it was planning "to introduce a computer for music and movies." Poppycock, there are no such plans, says the company which …

Personal 23 Sep 2002, 20:54