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4th November 2002 Archive

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  • Thus inches towards the black

    Still swimming in red ink

    Thus only needs £60m or so to take it through to profitability by March 2004 ( a year earlier than previously planned), or in its words "free cash flow breakeven on a sustainable basis". The alternative telco hailed today's interims as evidence of 'strong improvement', in operating performance and financial controls. In spite …

    Business 4 Nov 2002, 08:36

  • Hutchison 3G in launch date slippage

    No deadlines, right?

    Hutchison Wampoa won't set launch dates for 3G services in Europe, in order to avoid any embarrassment. This is what Nora Yong, a Hutchison spokeswoman in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. "Our plan remains unchanged, A plan for a fourth-quarter launch isn't a deadline. Our priority is to make sure the product is 100 per cent right …

    Mobile 4 Nov 2002, 09:35

  • BT in free broadband promo

    Ta very much

    BT is offering free use of its high street broadband Internet kiosks as part of a promo to plug the service. From today, BT won't charge a penny for services such as Web access, email and text messaging from its Internet kiosks in London. The London promo runs for a week until November 10. Punters in Leeds and Manchester can …

    Broadband 4 Nov 2002, 09:47

  • MS job ad seeks evangelist to ‘demolish competition’

    Business as usual, then...

    Now that pesky antitrust action is out of the way, it's back to business as usual at Microsoft. The kind and gentle convicted monopolist is now seeking a Developer Evangelist who can: “Demolish competition by knowing everything they do and thwarting their every move in the relevant spaces.” Now don't go running away with the …

    Software 4 Nov 2002, 10:23

  • BT to undershoot sales targets

    Faltering growth

    BT Group Plc is this week expected to add to the woes of the IT sector with second-quarter figures that show it is way short of the 6% to 8% growth targets set by new CEO Ben Verwaayen. The London, UK-based company has pioneered the recovery route for European incumbents by abandoning overseas expansion, ditching its …

    Business 4 Nov 2002, 10:47

  • IBM goes cheap(er) with pSeries Express Configuration

    Decent discounts

    IBM Corp wants to move existing midrange pSeries iron based on its S-Star PowerPC processors even as it is getting ready to revamp its Unix midrange with the Power4-based pSeries 655 and pSeries 655 within the next few weeks, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. To that end, IBM has announced so-called Express Configurations, …

    Servers 4 Nov 2002, 10:47

  • Micron calls for US penalty tariffs on Korean DRAM makers

    Level playing field

    Micron Technology Inc on Friday charged that Korean memory manufacturers have received unfair levels of support from their government and asked US authorities to impose tariffs on memory imports from the country. The Boise, Idaho-based vendor has filed a "countervailing duty case" with the US Department of Commerce and the …

    Channel 4 Nov 2002, 10:48

  • Wireless drives chip growth

    Picking up

    Despite the gloom over vast swathes of the tech industry, the chip sector was given something to smile about on Friday when the Semiconductor Industry Association released its third quarter figures. Total sales in September were $12.29bn, up 3% on the previous month and 20.6% on the year. On a three month moving average …

    Channel 4 Nov 2002, 10:48

  • Moodys cuts Nortel and Lucent ratings (again)

    Networking junkies

    Credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service delivered a bleak verdict on the telecom equipment sector's prospects on Friday, when it downgraded Nortel Networks Corp and Lucent Technologies Inc from junk to even junkier. The rating on Lucent's senior unsecured and senior implied debt was cut from B2 to Caa1. Lucent's trust …

    Business 4 Nov 2002, 10:48

  • EMC loses storage crown to Hitachi – briefly

    Delaying the inevitable?

    For a few hours, Hitachi Data Systems last week took the number one slot in the high-end storage array market from EMC Corp, according to estimates issued last week by investment bank AG Edwards. The bank revised its market share estimate only hours after they were first issued, after EMC disputed its analysis and …

    Storage 4 Nov 2002, 10:49

  • UK ‘sleepwalking towards broadband monopoly’

    Wake-up call

    The UK is "sleepwalking towards a broadband monopoly" unless BT is stripped of its dominance over the UK's telecoms network. So says a report from left of centre think-tank, Demos, which calls for the local loop (the wires which links homes and businesses to the main telecoms network) to be put in the hands of a "public …

    Broadband 4 Nov 2002, 10:53

  • AMD strongarms into low-power handhelds

    Updated Going wireless

    Intel isn't alone in integrated wireless technologies into mobile chipsets with its forthcoming Banias processor. AMD says the first fruits of its Alchemy acquisition are now sampling, tieing 802.11 wireless to a low-power, MIPS core. Alchemy was founded by Rich Witek, the brains behind the StrongARMs and one of the designers of …

    Mobile 4 Nov 2002, 10:57

  • DC court blooper 2 – MS verdict emailed two hours early

    Isn't technology wonderful?

    The early escape of the Microsoft verdict was more widespread and serious than first appeared. Initially it seemed that the court's techies had just made the documents available on the site, without flagging them, one hour and 40 minutes before they should have been available; however, it is now clear that it began sending out …

    Software 4 Nov 2002, 11:10

  • SOAP 1.2 stumbles on IP blocks

    Royalty issues

    With the ratifications of the proposed SOAP 1.2 standard within spitting distance, a number of intellectual property issues are proving stubbornly hard to shift. To date, standards body the W3C has cleared hundreds of hurdles in defining SOAP 1.2 but it has failed so far to overcome 11 IP issues. SOAP 1.2 is a lightweight …

    e-Business 4 Nov 2002, 12:06

  • Email deletion bug bites Norton Internet Security

    'Rare' but ghastly glitch

    A serious bug within Norton Internet Security 2003 is responsible for the unexplained deletion of emails for some users. Symantec is aware of the problem with the latest version of its security suite and is working on a fix. It promises to deliver a patch through its LiveUpdate automatic updating facility this week. The company …

    Media 4 Nov 2002, 12:58

  • UK Govt slammed for duff Web sites

    They suck

    The UK Government's Web sites are a shambles and in urgent need of an overhaul, according to an independent report published today. The state of the UK's drive to e-government is so bad, even the Prime Minister's own site is described as a "mess" and is ranked 19th out of 20 "flagship" sites tested against the Government's own …

    Media 4 Nov 2002, 12:58

  • How did Microsoft end up policing Microsoft?

    Analysis Because there's no justice like us

    I've been reading Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's decision to affirm the DoJ-Microsoft Seattlement in great detail this weekend, with one thing in particular growing from a small seed of a doubt, but gradually fomenting into a terrible and inescapable conclusion. I want to be a Judge. No, seriously - it's a Judge's life for me. …

    Software 4 Nov 2002, 13:16

  • German secret service taps phones, bills buggees

    Wasn't Inspector Clouseau supposed to be French?

    A software error is being blamed for an incident in which mobile phone users discovered they were being bugged by German secret squirrels. According to reports last week, some customers of mobile phone operator O2 noticed an unusual phone number on their bills they didn't recognise and a call charge associated with the number …

    Data Networking 4 Nov 2002, 14:41

  • IBM intros Gallatin servers

    Claim 20% performance boost

    IBM today revamped its line of Intel servers with four and eight-way eServer systems based on "second generation" 2.0GHz Intel Xeon MP, or Gallatin, processors. The company said the servers offer customers "more bang for their bucks" - delivering up to 20 percent more performance, at the same price as the models they replace. …

    Servers 4 Nov 2002, 14:51

  • Mississippi tops software piracy roll of shame

    Bad 'ol boys

    Mississippi flouts software licensing regulations more than any other state in the Union. Almost half (48.7 per cent) of the business software used in the southern state is pirated, according to a state-by-state study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance and conducted last year. By comparison, New York's business are …

    Software 4 Nov 2002, 15:03

  • Nintendo confirms long-term console plans

    Here to stay...

    Nintendo has no plans to hang up its joypad. That’s the news from Peter MacDougall, Nintendo of America's VP of sales and marketing, who has told critics that Nintendo will remain a platform holder in both the handheld and living room arenas for the foreseeable future, with work on successors to both GBA and GameCube already …

    Personal 4 Nov 2002, 15:26

  • Axe man hacks man over hacking fears

    PC bug paranoia lead to 'life-threatening' assault

    A family friend who linked the PCs of two brothers together was attacked with an axe after one suspected he'd hacked into his machine, a Scottish court heard today. John Wilson, 36, unemployed, attacked John Evans, an oil company analyst, after inviting him over to quiz him over his suspicions last January. Things quickly got …

    Security 4 Nov 2002, 16:58

  • BT develops talking SMS for the blind

    Gr8

    BT wants someone with pots of cash to help it develop a talking SMS system for people with sight difficulties. The monster telco developed a prototype that reads text messages after a chance remark from a visually impaired teenager visiting a project run by BT last year. The 17-year-old happened to mention how being unable to …

    Mobile 4 Nov 2002, 17:06

  • In victory, Microsoft morphs into IBM, and loses it

    Commentary : Ruling the world has its ups and downs...

    Throughout the antitrust trial Microsoft executives have seen it as vitally important that they avoid the legal threat turning Microsoft into IBM. Big Blue itself faced a major antitrust action in the 80s, and although it eventually emerged relatively intact (apparently), it did so with a large gaggle of lawyers attached to it …

    Software 4 Nov 2002, 21:21

  • Nokia fusing radios, cameras and games consoles

    Winter fashions

    Nokia unveiled six new handsets at its annual mobile internet conference today, but the much anticipated Communicator refresh didn't take place. Two of the handsets are characteristically dazzling experiments in industrial design, and the Finnish giant announced a new gaming platform based on Symbian OS and Nokia's own Series …

    Personal 4 Nov 2002, 22:11