21st November 2002 Archive

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RIAA engineered the webcast split – former exec

Divide and conquer

The Recording Industry Association of America engineered the recent split in the webcast community, engaging in what appears to be classic divide-and-rule tactics. That's what Susan Pickering, the former executive director of the International Webcasting Association says in an interview today. Pickering says the RIAA's approach …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 00:07
MS denies plans for WinXP ‘Second Edition’

Service packs, not code refresh

Microsoft Corp's senior vice president of the Windows division, Brian Valentine, has denied suggestions that the company is readying a second release of its Windows XP desktop operating system. Following reports that Windows XP's replacement, codenamed Longhorn, had slipped to a 2005 release date, rumors have been growing …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 09:34
J-Phone claims 1m video messaging subs

Turning Japanese

Japanese demand for multimedia messaging services (MMS) shows no sign of abating, following the news that J-Phone Co Ltd, the Japanese mobile phone unit of Vodafone Group Plc, has signed over a million subscribers for its mobile phone video messaging service in as little as nine months since its launch. The large take-up …

Mobile 21 Nov 2002, 09:44
Really critical hole in Microsoft Web software

Unchecked buffer

Just one day after raising the threshold beyond which it considers security vulnerabilities "critical", Microsoft Corp released a security advisory saying there is a "critical" hole in its browsers and web servers that could cause serious problems, even if it is patched. There is an unchecked buffer in Microsoft Data …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 09:44
Interoperability is long-term goal – IM vendors

Don't hold your breath

Enterprise instant messaging services is said by some to be the first big driver of interoperability between currently separate and competing public IM networks, but the technology providers behind these services don't think it will happen quickly, Kevin Murphy writes The introduction of enterprise services by Microsoft …

Hardware 21 Nov 2002, 09:45
‘Processing XML with Java’ at 30 per cent off

A comprehensive guide from IT-minds.com

This week's featured book from Reg associate IT-minds.com is Processing XML with Java by Elliotte Rusty Harold. Harold may be familiar to many of you as the author of XML in a Nutshell and The XML Bible and also as the creator of the highly popular Café au Lait and Café con Leche websites. Written for Java programmers who want …

Site News 21 Nov 2002, 09:49
Sun presents XML Office challenge

Lines up partners

Sun Microsystems Corp has floated a series of XML-based specifications designed to crack-open Microsoft Corp's Office monopoly and improve interoperability with StarOffice. Sun has lined-up partners to form a technical committee at the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that will …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 09:53
Universal puts 43,000 tracks on the Net

Sing the Body Electric

In an effort to cash in on a sector dominated by piracy, Universal Music says it will begin selling music on-line through certain outlets. Beginning Wednesday, the subsidiary of Paris-based Vivendi Universal will release over 43,000 tracks through a service provided by Liquid Audio Inc. Each track sold though the system will …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 10:05
Reg black minilogo t-shirt hits the stores

Say it gently with Cash'n'Carrion

We're always looking to respond to readers' requests for new product lines, so this week sees the launch of the Black Register minilogo t-shirt . Many of you expressed the desire to sport your Reg logo with pride without it being visible from another county, or state, as the case may be. Well, try this out: Yup, less …

Site News 21 Nov 2002, 10:09
Light up your life with the Traser GlowRing

Amazing luminous keyring available at Cash'n'Carrion

Today sees a new manufacturer making its debut in our Cash'n'Carrion gadgets section. Yes, prepare to be amazed by the UK's Traser and its fabulous GlowRing. According to the blurb: The glow inside a GlowRing is created by a small self-activated cold light source called a traser. Trasers are produced by using highly …

Site News 21 Nov 2002, 10:10
Kerberos bug bites

Authentication system in stack buffer overflow risk

A flaw has been identified in certain implementations of the widely used Kerberos authentication protocol. The flaw could be exploited by crackers to gain root access to authentication servers. The issue is serious, with at least one exploit known to exist in the wild, but there is a patch. All releases of MIT Kerberos 5, up …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 10:11
Europe busts Nintendo for keeping game prices high

Nintendo for antitrust? Makes a change...

Console outfit Nintendo broke European antitrust laws, and an announcement of the level of fine is possible by next week, according to today's Wall Street Journal. Nintendo's sin, says the Journal, was obstructing cross-border sales, thus allowing it to keep prices high, and keep a frim grip on its distribution channel. …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 10:12
Low cost server market booming

Intel gains

The low cost server has cut itself quite a niche through the turmoil of the tech industry. While budgets seldom extend to a half million dollar server implementation, they may well reach the few hundred thousand needed for some low-cost Intel server power. Indeed, that's the picture that's emerging. Bucking the downturn in the …

Servers 21 Nov 2002, 10:24
Blair misses e-commerce targets

Talking Shop

The UK government has failed to achieve its target of having the worlds best environment for e-commerce by the end of 2002, according to a new report from the office of the e-envoy. Despite the stuttering attempts of the New Labour policy makers the report, 'The Worlds Most Effective Policies for the E-Economy', categorically …

e-Business 21 Nov 2002, 10:34
The truth about tritium II

Readers set the record straight

I'm happy to stand corrected today on my recent piece regarding tritium and its many and varied uses. I stated - incorrectly - that the civilian use of radioactive material was prohibited in the US. Not so. Indeed, the States are apparently awash with tritium, and more besides. I'm obliged to all those readers who put me …

Bootnotes 21 Nov 2002, 10:37
‘Prices are trade secrets’ – stores unite to make DMCA look stupid

Oh? What, you mean they're serious?

Four major US retailers have thrown their weight behind the anti-DMCA campaign by making it look ridiculous. The bargain hunter site FatWallet.com has been given notices under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act by WalMart, Target, Best Buy and Staples claiming that their sale prices are copyright trade secrets. Aren't lawyers …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 11:10
Failure to back up data could cost you millions – Fujitsu

Don't we know it

Thanks to a Reg reader for alerting us to the following flyer from Fujitsu: Failure to back up mobile data could cost you millions I see that Fujitsu are hosting a series of Seminars advising IT managers and directors about the good sense of backing up data, our informant writes. I wonder what would happen if some of their less …

Bootnotes 21 Nov 2002, 11:38
IT graduate salaries on the up

Vacancies fall

Graduate salaries in the IT sector are on the up in spite of a significant fall in the number of vacancies on offer. So says the latest Graduate Trends Survey from careers publishers GTI, which found that those lucky enough to find work were often paid well. This is because despite the downturn, companies are prepared to pay …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 11:39
MS paper touts Unix in Hotmail's Win2k switch

But concludes 'we should eat our own dog food'

An older MS internal whitepaper from August 2000 on switching Hotmail, which MS acquired in 1997, from front-end servers running FreeBSD and back-end database servers running Solaris to a whole farm running Win2K, reads like a veritable sales brochure for UNIX, but concludes that the company ought to set the right example by …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 11:39
BT issues broadband roadmap

Wider reach, more quickly

BT today forecast that broadband could reach 90 per cent of the UK by mid-2005. Speaking at the e-Summit in London, BT Retail chief exec Pierre Danon said the current momentum of broadband roll-out means many more people will be able to get broadband in the near future. The optimism surrounding the availability of …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:43
Call for domain name code of practice

Nominet UK fingered as paymaster

UK domain name outfit Internetters has called on Nominet UK to take the "moral high ground" and set up and fund a code of practice in a bid to stamp out cowboy domain sellers. Internetters claims the UK domain name industry must police itself or face the threat of external regulation. This latest call for an industry-wide code …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 12:44
SGI gets dense with Origin 3900 Supercomputer

128 CPUs in one rack

Silicon Graphics Inc has quadrupled the density of its Origin MIPS-based server line by placing 128 processors in a single rack with its new Origin 3900 server, and has also shed some more light on its forthcoming 64-way Intel Corp Itanium 2 server line. The new Origin 3900 is being demonstrated later this month at the …

Hardware 21 Nov 2002, 12:49
Apps on menu at Oracle users' conference

Spreading wings

Database giant Oracle Corp will make an applications push at its annual user conference this week, with announcements expected around the company's Collaboration Suite, management software and application server. The Redwood Shores, California-based company is today expected to open its OracleWorld conference in San …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:50
Symantec undeletes mail deletion bug

That's a relief

Symantec has issued a fix for a serious bug within Norton Internet Security 2003 which is responsible for the unexplained deletion of emails for some users. Users are advised to run the LiveUpdate automatic updating facility to fix the flaw. Symantec was first notified of the serious bug, which it says only affected a small …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 12:51
All CDs will be protected and you are a filthy pirate

EMI Deutschland consumer relations ups the ante...

One mad consumer relations team might be an isolated incident, two begins to look like a trend. The dismissive response Bertelsmann Music Group's copy protection team recently issued to a consumer's query essentially boiled down to, 'all Cds will be copy protected, it's not our problem that they won't play on some devices, so …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:57
FCC spurns request to publish AOL-AT&T cable contract

Not relevant

The US Federal Communications Commission this week denied a request from EarthLink Inc, one of the nation's largest ISPs, to have AT&T Corp, Comcast Corp and AOL Time Warner Inc reveal the terms of their cable internet access deal. After reviewing the contracts, the FCC said, in a 3-to-1 vote, the terms of the deal were …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:57
Most Europeans won't bother with DSL

We don't need a revolution

Scepticism among the public about broadband remains high in Europe with the "broadband revolution" appearing to some way off, a research company has said. Jupiter Research said it found that the majority of existing European Internet users are either unlikely to upgrade to broadband or do not want it at all. A quarter of Web …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:57
Telewest beats BTo with broadband numbers

Neck and neck

Telewest added 39,000 new broadband customers during the summer taking its overall subscriber base to 216,000 at the end of September. This puts it just a smidgen ahead of BTopenworld - the ISP division of dominant telco BT - which today announced that it had 213,000 broadband subscribers at the end of September. For Telewest …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 12:57
NTL UK MD quits

Moves aside for Barclay Knapp to run the show

Stephen Carter, the MD and COO of NTL UK and Ireland, is to leave the company at the end of the year. NTL is not looking to find a replacement for Mr Carter. the cableco gave no reason for Mr Carter's departure. However, in a memo seen by The Register Mr Carter explains that it was a "personal decision" to leave, but one …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 13:00
Pogo PDA maker restructures

Preps MBO

Pogo Technology Ltd, the privately-owned UK niche PDA designer, is paving way for an MBO, through a restructure, following the failure of a shareholder to meet a funding commitment. CTO Matthew Woolf said the management team has secured alternative funding and hopes the new arrangements will be in place in seven days. He …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 13:00
RIM snares Nokia, Palm as licensees

Don't mess with the Mini Me QWERTY

Research In Motion Ltd took several important steps towards securing its future last week, signing potentially lucrative licensing deals with three of the mobile computing world's most prominent names. In what is almost certainly RIM's highest profile signing to date, Nokia is licensing "certain BlackBerry software in …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 13:01
IBM relaunches PC division

Aims to reduce lifetime cost of PC

Computing giant IBM has a new name and a new strategy for capturing market share in the PC business. Currently, the PC inventor's market share languishes in third place behind Dell and Hewlett Packard with less than half their worldwide sales, writes Steve Malone. IBM admits that companies like Dell have been better at selling …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 13:01
What sank Sendo's Stinker?

Analysis Back to the chalkboard for Microsoft phones

After you shake hands with Microsoft, goes the saying, count your fingers. Sendo's decision to abandon Microsoft's cellphone platform for the emerging Nokia standard, Series 60, gives the British company a new lease of life. But it's a crushing blow to Microsoft, which needed every OEM it could find for its Smartphone 2002 …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 13:01
VeriSign expects big things from AOL deal

Security guard

VeriSign Inc hopes to give its digital certificate business a boost with next year's launch of enterprise instant messaging systems from AOL Time Warner Inc. VeriSign is providing security for the software, and expects to see "hundreds of thousands, if not millions" of cert shipments as a result, according to an executive …

e-Business 21 Nov 2002, 13:05
Climbing Spam Mountain

Porn spammers target consumers

Pornographic spam rose slightly last month, while financially-related unsolicited messages became marginally less of a problem. That's according to monthly statistics from spam filtering firm Brightmail which reports adult spam rose one per cent to 12 per cent in October while financial spam decreased slightly to 36 per cent …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 13:30
IBM offers to disarm Web services royalties…

...if rivals follow suit

IBM will disarm royalties over technologies it owns that are used in Web services standards, but only if other vendors with similar claims on technologies follow suit, Gavin Clarke writes. Steve Holbrook, IBM program director for emerging e-business standards, told ComputerWire that charging royalties could impede …

e-Business 21 Nov 2002, 13:30
Accused eBay hacker out on bond

Irritated judges chill out

Accused superhacker Jerome Heckenkamp was released from jail last week after seven months in federal stir, but only after assuring two federal judges that he respects their authority after all. Heckenkamp, 23, was taken into custody last March during a court appearance in San Jose, Calif. where, representing himself against a …

e-Business 21 Nov 2002, 13:32
MobilCom teeters on the brink

Schmid won't play ball

German mobile operator MobilCom AG continues to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, as its founder and former CEO Gerhard Schmid remains at loggerheads with the German government. Schmid has failed to strike an agreement over the transfer of his family's 50% stake to an outside trustee, a key part of the rescue plan for the …

Mobile 21 Nov 2002, 13:33
DoCoMo scales down 3G target as income slumps

Customers stay away in droves

NTT DoCoMo Inc expects to have only 320,000 subscribers for its 3G services by the end of its current financial year, and has abandoned its original optimistic forecasts that it would have 1,380,000 users by that date. The downgrading of targets by the Tokyo, Japan-based mobile carrier will add to the alarm of its …

Mobile 21 Nov 2002, 13:33
BOFH: Today the CEO. Tomorrow the Board!

Episode 23 Disciplinary proceedings

BOFH 2002: Episode 23 So The PFY and I are laxing out in the office when a Bloke from HR wanders in with The Boss, looking rather nervous. "Ah... Could you two, uh, spare some time?" The Boss asks. "There's a a disciplinary meeting that we'd like you to come to..." "Whatever it is, we didn't do it!" The PFY pre-empts, "We've …

BOFH 21 Nov 2002, 13:46
Verisign moves DNS root servers in defensive ploy

In wake of DDoS attack

Key Internet Domain Name System (DNS) servers have been relocated to improve Internet security and stability in the wake of a recent, serious distributed denial of service attack. Verisign, which manages two root DNS servers, moved one to a different locations, connected to different parts of its network earlier this week. It …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 13:48
Microsoft and friends push Tablets

Kinda pricey right now

Microsoft Corp launched its tablet PC yesterday in New York with a raft of OEM partners, even though the platform is unlikely to see widespread take-up for at least a year. Microsoft roped in hardware makers including Hewlett Packard, NEC, Toshiba and Viewsonic to back its launch. Ten vendors had shipping designs at the …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 13:50
Palm licenses LIM's secret fusion formula

"QWERTY" revealed

Palm has followed Handspring and licensed Research in Motion's extraordinary new technique of generating cold fusion energy at room temperature. RIM has "a history of developing breakthrough wireless solutions", and the fusion patent allows it to create pagers that can run, quite literally, forever. Licensing terms were …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 13:51
MS admits its Linux-bashing jihad is a failure

ESR dishes more Halloween dirt

The Beast has hired a research crew to do a bit of attitude sampling among the Great Unwashed in the US and abroad, and has found that slagging Linux is not winning it any points. In a company memo posted by Eric S. Raymond here we learn that regular folks are both eager for a Microsoft alternative and generally respectful of …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 13:52
Data security for Linux power users

Howto Frustrating three-letter agencies

A couple of months ago I wrote a security howto for Linux newbies, the goal of which was to help people achieve decent security using easy and safe techniques. Now it's time to address you power users out there, by which I mean people comfortable with the command line, using a text editor from the console, and tweaking …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 13:52
MySQL, NuSphere Settle GPL Contract Dispute

Friends again

Open source database vendors MySQL AB and Progress Software Corp's NuSphere Corp business have settled their differences over a contract dispute that very nearly became a legal test case for the open source GNU General Public License (GPL). Uppsala, Sweden-based MySQL AB and Bedford, Massachusetts-based NuSphere have …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 13:52
AMD cuts costs, predicts big charge

Lowering sights

Advanced Micro Devices Inc will absorb a charge of "several hundred million dollars" in the fourth quarter it warned analysts yesterday as it scrambles to lower its breakeven point. At a meeting with analysts AMD president and CEO Hector Ruiz reiterated the company's prediction that in the fourth quarter it will increase …

Channel 21 Nov 2002, 13:53
Share option move takes Nvidia to Q3 loss

Sales carry on climbing

Nvidia Q3 sales were $430.3m, up 18 per cent on the same period last year ($365m). But it was a very different story so far as profits were concerned, with the graphic chip firm tumbling into loss controversial and expensive decision to convert underwater employee share options into fully vested stock. Net loss in Q3, fiscal …

Channel 21 Nov 2002, 13:53
IBM sprinkles more Pixie Dust on HDDs

Five layer Ruthenium sandwich

IBM boffins have squeezed more areal density from its latest mobile hard drive, thanks to a liberal extra coating of Pixie Dust. This is IBM's nursery school term for some home-grown data storage technology called antiferromagnetically-coupled (AFC) media. IBM first embedded the technology in hard drives last year, and this …

Storage 21 Nov 2002, 14:10
DVD Forums averts Littlewoods legal action

Member posts discount code

Prompt action by the DVD Forums, one of the largest forum communities in the UK, has succeeded in averting threatened legal action for alleged fraud by Littlewoods. Early on Tuesday morning, a member posted a Littlewoods voucher code in the DVD Forum's Bargain Forum. The thread was taken up and at around 2am someone else …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 14:10
Sendo junks MS smartphone, joins Nokia camp

Joins Nokia Series 60 club

Ouch! Microsoft got a kick in the teeth today from one of its few Smartphone allies. Sendo, the UK handset maker, today announced that it's stopping all development on the Windows for Smartphone 2002 platform. It is instead signing a licence for Series 60, the Nokia smartphone platform erected upon the Symbian OS. This is a …

Mobile 21 Nov 2002, 14:11
MS UK MD takes Tablet PC to policy wonkfest

El Reg comes along for the ride

Neil Holloway, MD of Microsoft UK, took the opportunity his slot at Beyond the Backlash, today's Internet policy wonkfest to show off his brand new Tablet PC. In an attempt to wow the delegates, drawn from the ranks of the media, business,government policy advisors and - natch - thinktank types - Holloway showed them pen input …

Bootnotes 21 Nov 2002, 14:13
BT ups rev and profit

Triff

Shares in BT rose this morning after the monster telco reported improved turnover and profit for the second quarter. Group turnover rose 2 per cent to £4.66bn, up from £4.55bn during the same period last year. Although the dominant telco only saw a slight increase in turnover, pre-tax profit jumped 55 per cent from £321m to £ …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 14:13
Cisco remains milch cow, can't read customers

Net income up

When you're as big as Cisco Systems Inc, effecting a company-wide strategic turnaround takes some time. As the company reported its first fiscal quarter results yesterday, CEO John Chambers gave the latest chapter in his "show-me economy" story, saying eight-quarter-old strategies are bearing fruit, but hinting that the …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 14:13
BTopenwound still bleeds

Getting better

BTopenworld - the ISP division of the monster telco - has increased revenue and narrowed its losses. Even so, since it is still bleeding cash, people will still, rather cruelly, refer to the business as "BTopenwound". Publishing Q2 figures for the three months to the end of September, BTopenworld reported that turnover grew 20 …

Telecoms 21 Nov 2002, 14:13
Think tanks think about post dotcom future

Conference call

The hangover associated with the end of the dotcom party should not overshadow the huge social and economic potential made possible by digital technologies. That's just one of the issues due to be discussed at a conference today in London as four think-tanks comes together to try and map a post dotcom path for the digital …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 14:19
Why does my typing appear on my neighbour's PC?

HP wireless keyboard roams far and wide

HP's wireless keyboards can transmit data to other computers in faraway buildings. No this is not a feature but an astonishing security flaw, discovered by two neighbours in Stavanger, southern Norway. "Per Arild Evjeberg and Per Erik Helle made headlines (in Norway) when they discovered that text Evjeberg was typing in was …

Personal 21 Nov 2002, 14:20
Qualcomm monoculture is ‘killing American wireless’

Letters US & Canada wait, and wait and wait for Bluetooth

There's a huge reality gap if you follow wireless on this continent. Proponents of the CDMA phone system used by the large American networks (and rejected by most of the rest of the world) spend much time boasting about the system's "technical superiority". At the same time, the handsets and services here lag far behind those …

Mac Channel 21 Nov 2002, 14:20
Germany, Austria take stand against EU ISP data retention laws

Big Brother laws welcomed by other European govts

Germany and Austria stand alone among European countries expressing reservations about controversial European Union data retention proposals. At present, service providers retain data only for billing purposes, but that is set to change because of plans that would compel ISPs to retain data for up to two years, in case the …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 14:31
Sex, Text, Revenge, Hacking and Friends Reunited

This court case has the lot

Sometimes, you come across a court case that is simply perfect. And this one, a tale of two-timing, intercepted text messages, computer hacking, and publication of sex pictures on Friends Reunited, scores a big fat nine out of 10. A 21-year old student who took revenge on his cheating girlfriend was jailed for five months at …

Music and Media 21 Nov 2002, 15:01
Interoute future in doubt

Receivers called in

The future of one of Europe's largest fibre-optic networks looks uncertain following the appointment of administrative receivers at pan-European corporate telco Interoute. The outfit owns and operates some 18,000km of fibre connecting 45 cities across nine European countries. It seems that along with other companies in the …

Data Networking 21 Nov 2002, 15:31
File swap nets will win, DRM and lawyers lose, say MS researchers

No, we are not making this up...

A group of Microsoft researchers, including Paul 'Mr Secure PC' England, has delivered a paper which concludes that all efforts to stop content swapping/theft - possibly even including Palladium - are in the long term futile. This message, particularly the bit that dealt with the economics of DRM-enabled versus 'clean' content, …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 15:34
Is this the Windows Longhorn PC? HP unveils ‘Agora’ concept

Apparently it's 'Mr' Bill Gates to them...

HP has been showing what might be the next generation of Microsoft business PC behind closed doors at Comdex, according to Mark Hachman of Extremetech. The "Agora" communications PC looks a bit switched off to us, possibly even wooden, but salient points are that HP told Mark that there would be a "fully-functioning product" at …

Software 21 Nov 2002, 16:37
Why is mi2g so unpopular?

Security through soundbyte claim

Richard Forno, author of The Art of Information Warfare and security consultant to the US Department of Defense, has launched a broadside against mi2g, accusing the UK-based security consultancy of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about cyberterrorism risks. In a critique entitled Security Through Soundbyte: The ' …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 21:18
Apple revs notebooks: the last true Macs?

Speed bump, price cuts

Apple has speed-bumped its PowerBook and iBook ranges, and although the more dramatic under-the-hood changes anticipated by the rumor sites haven't materialized, there are dramatic price cuts to the consumer line. These are the last True Macs in a way, if you're sentimental. Future models starting next year won't boot the …

Mac Channel 21 Nov 2002, 21:29
The killer BOFH bot from the basement

Episode 22 Robotic death whirs into Mission Control

BOFH 2002: Episode 22 "Hey, look what I found in the basement," The PFY burbles early one VERY slow afternoon, dragging a squat hunk of hardware on wheels into Mission Control and interrupting my afternoon meal and TV watch. I mean backup verification procedure. "Ah, it's one of those old cleaning bots," I reply nonchalantly …

BOFH 21 Nov 2002, 21:29
Fly the flag with ‘The Register London’

All-new Reg branded t-shirt from Cash'n'Carrion

It's been a while since we've launched a new Reg branded t-shirt, so it is with great pride that we unveil our lovely Register London fashion statement. Eagle-eyed readers will note that the graphic is the same as that carried on the sleeve of the best-selling Hacker range. We're obliged to the many readers who …

Business 21 Nov 2002, 21:36
BOFH and the Luser Group

Episode 20 Someone has to do it

BOFH 2002: Episode 20 So we're at a (l)user group meeting and are encountering the backlash that a computing professional can expect from the staff that they've selflessly served over the years. Those who aren't too afraid to turn up, anyway. And as per usual, there's a mixed group of a: people who want to know why we don't …

BOFH 21 Nov 2002, 21:38
Caught in a BIND

Why it is chronically insecure

How did one of the Internet's most ubiquitous software packages grow up to be chronically insecure? History offers a lesson, says Jon Lasser. Weinberg's second law, a decades-old programmers' joke, states, "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy …

Security 21 Nov 2002, 21:52