29th November 2002 Archive
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AOL's new iDTV service fails to impress
Needs more thought
AOL's decision to expand into interactive digital TV (iDTV) has yet to impress analysts. The new service, announced on Tuesday, offers a range of AOL services such as instant messaging (IM) and email as well as news, sport and weather. The service is available to AOL users in 6 million homes in the UK hooked up to Sky's digital …
Telecoms 29 Nov 2002, 08:50
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Sklyarov gets US visa -DMCA trial to kick off
Cause célèbre
The first criminal prosecution under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act is to begin in San Jose next week after a visa was finally granted to Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and Alex Katalov, the chief executive of his former employers ElcomSoft. US District Judge Ronald M. Whyte was informed during a pre- …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 09:25
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Amnesty slams tech giants for ‘aiding’ Chinese human rights abuse
Weapons supply
The great and the good of the IT industry - including Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Websense - stand accused of aiding and abetting human rights violations in China. The charge comes in a critique by human rights watchdog Amnesty International entitled State Control Of The Internet In China, …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 09:33
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O2 network go tits up North
Scotland and Northern Ireland
O2's network in Scotland and Northern Ireland went tits up yesterday afternoon leaving thousands of punters unable to use their mobile phones. A power failure at one of its switching sites near Glasgow at around 4.30pm yesterday afternoon caused the network to fall over. Although power was restored within the hour users still …
Mobile 29 Nov 2002, 10:23
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Wanted: ISPs to flog StarOffice
Sun widens channels
Sun Microsystems Inc is in talks with some of the major internet service providers regarding possible tie-up agreements through which the ISPs will distribute and offer services around Sun's StarOffice productivity office software suite. Sun's business manager for SunONE Desktop Solutions, Mru Patel said that Sun was in …
Software 29 Nov 2002, 10:31
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Ease 3G rules, operators beg EU
Competition regime too harsh
Europe's struggling carriers and equipment suppliers are stepping up pressure on the European Union for measures to alleviate their problems ahead of a meeting of Europe's telecoms ministers in Brussels next week. Laden with debt from the cost of 3G licences and facing massive delays in getting a return on the investment …
Mobile 29 Nov 2002, 10:31
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MobilCom posts huge 3G write-down
Deck clearing
Troubled German mobile operator MobilCom has taken a €9.9bn ($9.84bn) write-down on its abandoned 3G plans as part of its plans to slim down after a cash crisis almost forced it into bankruptcy. MobilCom also announced a restructuring plan, which includes cutting a third of its workforce and concentrating on its roots, by …
Mobile 29 Nov 2002, 10:31
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Mirapoint battles growth in spam
But not standalone
Messaging appliance vendor Mirapoint has released what it claims is the industry's most comprehensive spam-protection software. Available now as part of the company's Message Server and Message Director appliances, the new anti-spam tools are designed to be deployed by ISPs, mobile operators and enterprise or public sector …
Security 29 Nov 2002, 10:32
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Web Services sidestep firewall – survey
Enterprising stuff
Results of a survey of software developers suggest that nearly half of all web services are being deployed outside the enterprise firewall to bridge business partners with an access route to company data. "Currently, the perception is that web services, whether based on .NET or the J2EE platform, have yet to break through …
Hardware 29 Nov 2002, 10:33
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Energis keeps Freeserve gig
Hugs all round
Energis is to continue providing network services for Freeserve after the companies secured a new two-year multi-million pound contract. Under the deal Energis remains the sole provider of metered and unmetered narrowband Internet access for Freeserve's 2.5m customers. The Guardian reported that the deal is worth £150m a year …
Business 29 Nov 2002, 12:15
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Anti-spam filters kill legitimate emails
Definitely, maybe
Heavy-handed anti-spam filtering can frequently lead to the loss of legitimate emails. That's the warning from email appliance vendor, Mirapoint, which has integrated improved anti-spam technology in its Message Server and Message Director products. Most anti-spam products available today employ brute-force comparison …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 12:21
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HP, Compaq user groups merge
Two hearts beat as one
HP and Compaq's European user groups are merging - after six months of negotiations. Blimey, that's a helluva lot longer than HP and Compaq took to agree to merge, and almost as long as HP and Compaq have taken to integrate their vast businesses. That's the trouble with talking shops: too much talking shop. The new user group …
Hardware 29 Nov 2002, 12:47
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Letters On penis burns, red hot laptops – and badgers
Man burns penis with laptop The sorry tale of the 50 year-old victim prompted a bulging postbag including this outpouring of sympathy from Henry Keultjes: I pitty a guy who has that little sensitivity in his pecker. Which begs the question: what is Henry made of? Dr Jon Jenkins, from Australia notes: I thought I would just …
Letters 29 Nov 2002, 14:35
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UK Govt to post UFO sightings on Net
X marks the spot
"If people know what we're doing, they know what we're doing wrong" Yes Minister The UK government is to post documents on UFO sightings on the Net. Britain's X-Files are to be published as part of a government move to apply laws on freedom of information, according to wire report. Among the files to be released are documents …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 14:45
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Interoperability issues dog Bluetooth – survey
Competititive threats
Bluetooth continues to be dogged by interoperability problems and remains vulnerable to the threats of competing technologies. That's according to the initial results of a survey by Berlin based market research company Metrinomics which quizzed mostly Reg readers on their attitudes to the technology. Half (49 per cent) of …
Data Networking 29 Nov 2002, 14:50
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Affinity narrows losses
Etc
Shares in Affinity Internet were up almost 8 per cent by lunchtime after the UK internet company announced increased revenue and lower losses. Publishing the numbers for the nine months to the end of September Affinity reported that turnover had jumped to £57.18m, up from £30.23m during the same period last year. It also …
Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:51
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MPEG-4 licences go live
Like it and lump it
The MPEG Licensing Authority, MPEG LA, this week said it is ready to start offering general licenses to companies wanting to use the MPEG-4 video format, after lengthy negotiations and concerns over the lack of royalty caps. The organization, a coalition of about 20 companies that own patents essential to MPEG-4 technology …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:52
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Where the heck is all this spam coming from?
Filter Fish
The growth of the spam problem in 2002 has been exponential, writes Kevin Murphy. Companies that sell spam filtering software say currently the percentage of email that is spam could be 20%, 33%, or even up to 50%, compared to less than 10% a year ago. While the rise in spam is easy to notice, it is hard to quantify. Spam …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:52
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123reg.co.uk restores customer email after DNS botch
Upgrade didn't go to plan
Customers of domain registrar 123-reg.co.uk are promised their communications will be restored tomorrow following a DNS cock-up last week by the company which left many unable to receive email. At the beginning of last week 123reg.co.uk changed its control panel to allow users to update their MX records. That's when things …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:52
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Web Bugs – Here Are the Rules
AKA web 'beacons'
The Network Advertising Initiative, which comprises some of the internet's leading advertising and ad technology companies, yesterday said it has finalized a set of best practices for the use of web bugs. Web bugs, aka web beacons, are single-pixel GIF image tags in HTML documents used to track web users. The invisible …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:52
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TSMC ups Q4 forecast
Wafer thick
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd (TSMC) has substantially increased its forecast for fourth-quarter wafer shipments, predicting that they will be equal to the third-quarter level compared with its prediction in October that they would decline sequentially on a low-teen percentage rate. This dramatic …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 14:53
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Sex, Text, Revenge etc. – ‘spot the double standard’
Letters Gender bender
Sex, Text, Revenge, Hacking and Friends Reunited OK - spot the double standard. In your recent news item 'Sex, Text, Revenge, Hacking and Friends Reunited', you report sympathetically on the case of student Philip Norse humiliating his ex-girlfriend on the internet. Now, let's go back a few months to the infamous Brian Tindle …
Letters 29 Nov 2002, 15:52
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Dell's AMD server strategy
Softly softly
It's only a small detail in this InfoWorld story, but it has all the ingredients for a perfect storm. "A high ranking executive at a Dell partner has said, on condition of anonymity, that Dell will likely ship an Opteron-based server manufactured by Newisys Inc. Both Newisys and Dell are based in Austin, Texas," reports Ashlee …
Servers 29 Nov 2002, 16:01
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Govt 3G greed hurts us all – EITO
Never mind the telcos, what about the IT market?
The British and German governments have manufactured a high-tech recession by their greed in taking too much out of the 3G/UMTS mobile phone auctions, according to researchers at EITO, the European Information Technology Observatory. Dr Bernhard Rohleder, EITO's managing director and CEO, accused the two governments of shooting …
Mobile 29 Nov 2002, 16:23
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Demon explains punters' Net slowdown
'Unpredictable behaviour' of routers
Demon has blamed the "unpredictable behaviour" of some of its routers for problems experienced by its broadband customers trying to access the Net. In a statement issued to customers today the ISP said: "Some customers are currently experiencing packet loss and slow connectivity when connecting to our services. This has been …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 16:24
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NTL to exit Chapter 11 soon
'in the very near future'
NTL looks set to miss its deadline of emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by the end of the month. When it published its latest results two weeks ago the company said that it hoped to exit Chapter 11 by the end of November. But in a statement this afternoon the company said it expected to reach an agreement "in the …
Music and Media 29 Nov 2002, 16:24
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Brocade tightlipped about management cull
Unravelled
While analysts disagree on the cause of Brocade's shock warning of a coming sharp fall in revenue, the SAN switch making giant has indicated strongly that casualty list from the 12% layoffs it announced last week includes more than three vice presidents, as well as its COO and president. During its earning call on Thursday …
e-Business 29 Nov 2002, 16:25
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Commission to ‘look into’ antitrust work of MS' Eurocrat hire
It begins to look like they'd entirely forgotten he'd done it...
The European Commission has been performing a curious backwards shuffle over the departure of official Detlef Eckert for a three year furlough with The Beast. Eckert's departure earlier this month was originally spun as of no import, because he didn't work on the Commission's Microsoft investigation, but after our brief mention …
Software 29 Nov 2002, 16:26
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A Bluetooth iPod (and three other Apple distractions)
Think different?
Another processor landmark from Intel has taken its Pentium4 line past 3GHz chip, with a 3.6Ghz part following hard on its heels. It makes more dismal reading for professional Apple users, who've seen the most competitive Apple hardware spanked out of sight by Chipzilla's latest in tests by Digital Video Editing. This couldn't …
Mac Channel 29 Nov 2002, 17:57
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WLAN security is still work in progress
Incomplete standards
IT managers are cautiously optimistic that wireless networks will - over time - become as secure as today's local area networks, but security concerns are still holding back deployment of the technology. Those are the main findings of a limited (but still informative) survey of IT security manager attitudes on the deployment of …
Security 29 Nov 2002, 22:17
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Panda adds Personal Firewall to PC AV suite
Script blocker
Panda Software has added a personal firewall, new scan engine and a script blocker to its latest Panda Antivirus Platinum version 7.0 PC security suite. The script-blocking system prevents suspect email attachments from running and blocks the execution of malicious script using four types of scans to pick up viruses carried in …
Malware 29 Nov 2002, 22:55
