10th October 2002 Archive

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Punters tell of NatWest e-banking woe

Working fine says bank

Customers of NatWest's online bank are still reporting problems accessing their accounts following an upgrade at the weekend. Said one reader: "They did some upgrades on Sunday, after which one of my accounts disappeared from view and the comments for my payments also went AWOL. "Tried to login earlier [today] and it said I …

Music and Media 10 Oct 2002, 07:13
Ads keep Yahoo! in the black

Making Overtures

Yahoo! Inc yesterday showed that the second quarter was not just a blip on the radar, as a 50% increase in revenue, aided by a resurgence of advertising dollars, gave the web portal firm its second consecutive profitable quarter since the bubble burst. The company predicted an ad revenue rebound in July, and seems to have …

Business 10 Oct 2002, 07:28
C&W seek another injunction against Akamai

They really, really don't get on

Cable & Wireless Plc this week asked a San Francisco District Court to stop Akamai Technologies Inc selling its flagship EdgeSuite service on the basis that it may infringe a C&W patent on internet route selection. C&W sued Akamai in August, saying EdgeSuite infringes its "host-to-host adaptive route protocol" US patent. …

Business 10 Oct 2002, 07:28
Philips dissolves Components business

Shuffling the portfolio

Royal Philips Electronics is to dissolve its Components Division and sell off or merge some of its sub units, after a wide-ranging review of the business' performance. The Dutch electronics giant said its aim was to reduce costs and simplify the structure and organization of its electronics activities and bring its optical …

Channel 10 Oct 2002, 07:28
Microsoft outlines 3D progress to Trustworthiness

SD-cubed

Microsoft Corp senior vice president, chief technology officer and security czar Craig Mundie claims the software company is on track in its Trustworthy Computing initiative with a series of near-term security developments known as SD-cubed. The moniker refers to Microsoft systems that are to be secured by design, by …

Security 10 Oct 2002, 07:28
'It's Tough' for Symbian as Psion sees WinCE device surge

Future Proofing

Psion Teklogix is experiencing soaring sales of its Windows CE-powered netpad devices, only months after launch. But the news, while good for Teklogix, may not be as welcome to parent company Psion Plc, whose Symbian operating system (OS) looks set to be the loser, Tony Cripps writes. Raf Jezierski, director mobile …

Personal 10 Oct 2002, 07:30
Fujitsu Siemens doing better than market

'Driving our own success'

Fujitsu-Siemens Computers BV CEO Adrian von Hammerstein yesterday revealed the company made a pre-tax loss of €21m ($20.7m) on revenue of €2.45bn ($2.42bn) for the six months to September 30. The company said that discounting a 23m euro restructuring charge, operating profit was 2m euros. At the PC maker's annual …

Business 10 Oct 2002, 07:30
Man dies playing computer games

86 hours on the go

A South Korean man died after a marathon session playing computer games. The unemployed man was discovered in the toilets of an Internet café in Kwangju, 160 miles south-west of Seoul. According to Ananova, he collapsed and died after playing computer games for 86 hours non-stop without food or sleep. In February a mother …

Software 10 Oct 2002, 13:50
November 18 date set for UnitedLinux

Klingon GUI not included

The first full version of UnitedLinux will be available from November 18. That's one of the main snippets of news from an informative presentation on the progress and rationale of the UnitedLinux from a presentation by Gregory Blepp, VP at SuSE and board member of UnitedLinux, made at the London Expo show in London yesterday. …

Software 10 Oct 2002, 13:55
Judge blows Lawsuits in Motion a Raspberry

Merge or die, we say

A California Judge has dealt a setback to Research in Motion's attempt to prevent Good Technology from selling its copycat pager in the United States. Judge Ikola, in Orange County, Ca. denied RIM a request for a restraining order against Good. In a blizzard of litigation, RIM has sued Good four times this year, and recently …

Personal 10 Oct 2002, 13:56
Dell nukes HP with printer ink pledge

It's ten paces, cartridges at dawn

Michael Dell yesterday repeated his threat to undercut rivals on the price of printer consumables, a pledge which could nuke Hewlett Packard's biggest source of revenue. "The price for the total offering - printer and supplies - can come down quite considerably," said Dell. Half of HP's income, or $18 billion a year comes from …

Personal 10 Oct 2002, 13:57
NTK 404/shirt/tie found

Back in stock, and now for women too

Good news for those Cash'n'Carrion customers who have been waiting for new stocks of the NTK "404/shirt/tie not found" t-shirt - we can report that they are now back in stock. And it gets better. The NTK marketing department has printed a small number of these classics on a Mantis Women's Skinny Tee M/L (to fit bust 36"-38"). …

Site News 10 Oct 2002, 13:58
Beware the IDEs of disk

Sweet spot between tape and RAID

The enterprise storage industry could not ignore IDE for much longer. At the low end, IDE-based RAID boxes now beat SCSI hands down on price per MB, and with many drive manufacturers making their SCSI and IDE products from common components, the argument that SCSI offers better quality doesn't wash anymore. What SCSI does …

Music and Media 10 Oct 2002, 14:06
Games of the 80s bounce back on Nokia handsets

Like the good old days, except it's in your pocket

One of the strange quirks of today's mobile phone market is that the greatest hits games you might recall from nigh on 20 years ago are returning, on a device in your pocket Real Soon Now. Or indeed, actually now. Greybeards among The Register readership who remember Repton for the BBC Model B will be pleased (or possibly …

Personal 10 Oct 2002, 17:28
NTL was jetliner in power dive, says leaked memo

Kind of thing that demotivates employees, apparently...

Morale at NTL is low, according to a recent survey of employees at the cableco. A memo from boss Barclay Knapp found that only four in ten of employees (or "associates" as they're called at NTL) are "proud to work for NTL". Worse still, only a third said they would recommend NTL as an employer. "We've focused so hard on our …

Music and Media 10 Oct 2002, 17:36
Supremes sympathize in copyright immortality case

Updated Not that it matters

The US Supreme Court heard arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft Wednesday, where the infamous Mickey Mouse copyright extension law of 1998 was challenged and defended. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig presented the challenge, asserting that Congress' continual extensions of copyright amounted to a violation of …

Music and Media 10 Oct 2002, 21:23