17th January 2003 Archive

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IBM Q4 sales stable, profits hurting

Less bad than competition

IBM Corp might have an equally sized rival in Hewlett Packard Co, but Big Blue, more than HP, is still a bellwether for the IT industry because of the broad range of markets that it plays in, writes Timothy Prickett Morgan. And if IBM's fourth quarter 2002 financial results are any indication, the IT market might finally …

Business 17 Jan 2003, 10:22
Microsoft shells out first dividend

'Daunted' by 2004

Just days into 2003, Microsoft has predicted 2004 will be "daunting". Faced with an uncertain economy and growing competition from Linux to Microsoft's server revenues, the company faces a tough time improving on this year's results. That's according to the company's chief financial officer John Connors who, announcing …

Business 17 Jan 2003, 10:22
SAP positions to avoid IBM and Microsoft Web Services

Friends

SAP AG has announced products and strategy which it hopes will establish the company as a cross-platform web services player, while avoiding direct competition with IBM or Microsoft Corp, writes Gavin Clarke. Waldorf, Germany-based SAP yesterday announced a data management product under its newly named Enterprise Services …

Hardware 17 Jan 2003, 10:23
Dell laptop named in SA burns explosion

Battery pack blamed

The 15-year-old-girl in South Africa who suffered second-degree burns to her hands and thighs after her laptop exploded was using a Dell machine, it's been revealed. iafrica.com reports that the laptop was a Dell Inspiron. The story also quotes the girl's father as saying: "It would appear the battery pack had exploded and …

Personal 17 Jan 2003, 10:24
AMD makes massive Q4 loss

Misses revenue target

Advanced Micro Devices Inc reported a massive loss for its fourth quarter yesterday and failed to meet the raised revenue forecast it set itself back in December. Although the Sunnyvale, California-based vendor saw increased shipments of its CPU and flash memory products, its already large operating losses were swollen by …

Channel 17 Jan 2003, 10:24
Hutchinson 3G confirms March launch

Claims 30k UK registrations

The ambitious plans of Hutchison 3G UK Ltd to be the first operator to launch a commercial 3G service in Europe, received a further boost following the news it has 30,000 registrations for its video mobile service in the United Kingdom. The company is expected to spend tens of millions of pounds this year on advertising …

Mobile 17 Jan 2003, 10:25
Microsoft thanks Bush with historic share dividend

Thanks, Bill! No, thank you George...

When the Bush Administration was sworn in, in January 2001, Microsoft was in the position that we so often find James Bond in mid-way through a movie: strapped to a table and heading inexorably towards a huge carving machine or deadly laser. By November, the fix was in. Attorney General John Ashcroft had indicated that he had …

Business 17 Jan 2003, 11:03
First Segway owners are rich, bright, but not fat

Walking the Talk

Bicycles are the best 'short-range personal transportation devices' you can buy yet the mainstream media still seems to think Segways are more sexy. Could electric bikes and ultralight electric motorbikes plug the gap? BikeBiz.co.uk talks to one of first Segway owners in the world. Phillip Torrone is your archetypal early …

Telecoms 17 Jan 2003, 11:46
So sorry Adobe urges more DMCA busts

Compassionate convictions?

We erred on one important detail in our summary of the Elcomsoft verdict on Wednesday. We wrote that Adobe had urged the authorities not to prosecute Dmitry Sklyarov or his employer Elcomsoft for circumventing the encryption in its eBook software to allow fair use. That's not true - and Adobe's FAQ about the prosecution sets …

Telecoms 17 Jan 2003, 11:47
Mobile phonecos braced for tough price cuts

Competition report due out next week

It appears that the UK's mobile phone operators have lost their fight to stave off enforced price cuts following a year-long investigation by the Competition Commission. The FT reports that termination charges - the fees service providers charge for routing calls from other operators through their networks - could be slashed by …

Mobile 17 Jan 2003, 12:10
Sun eclipsed by worst ever quarter

Sun Burn

Sun Microsystems reported its worst ever quarterlies yesterday. Q2 2003 revenues were down six per cent to $2.915bn from $3.108bn in the same period the year before (Q2 2002). This resulted in a net loss of $2.283bn for Q2 2003, with margins also down 6.7 percentage points to 43.3 per cent. Sun wrote off $2.125 billion for the …

Business 17 Jan 2003, 12:16
Rumsfeld orders .mil Web lockdown

'Our enemies access DoD Web sites on a regular basis'

U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week directed the armed service to strip military Web sites of information that could benefit adversaries, citing a terrorist training manual and a year-long review of the Department of Defense's 700-gigabyte Web presence. "An al Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan states …

Security 17 Jan 2003, 12:33
Duncan leaves Xbox team

Personal reasons

The effusive head of Microsoft's Xbox division in Europe, Sandy Duncan, has announced his intention to retire from the games industry this year in order to focus on his personal life. Duncan has headed up the European Xbox and Home Retail divisions since early 2000, and has been with Microsoft for 16 years. He will continue to …

Personal 17 Jan 2003, 12:53
“I poisoned P2P networks for the RIAA” – whistleblower

Gobbles fesses up to hoax. Now read what they're really up to

"Gobbles", the German hacker who improbably claimed to have infected peer-to-peer file sharing networks and to "0wn" your computer this week, has confirmed that his brag was a hoax. That much, you probably suspected, as Goebbels (as we must now call him) failed to offer a shred of evidence in support of the notion that the RIAA …

Music and Media 17 Jan 2003, 13:01
GameSpy could let crackers mount network DDoS attacks

Hidden hints and cheats for crackers

Flaws within GameSpy, a popular program that allows game clients to find and connect to game servers, might permit crackers to flood systems with useless packets and tie up processors through DDoS attacks. The vulnerability, which affects many games across Windows and *nix server platforms, is based upon spoofed UDP requests, …

Security 17 Jan 2003, 16:49
Dick Parsons named as new AOL TW chairman

Parsons knows he faces a challenge

Dick Parsons - AOL Time Warner chief exec - has been named chairman of the giant media and Internet company. He will replace Steve Case, who announced his decision to quit earlier this week. The appointment - backed unanimously by the board of directors - becomes effective on May 16 when Mr Case steps down. In a statement Mr …

Business 17 Jan 2003, 16:50
ISC see a little silhouetto of a DHCP flaw

Thunderbolt and lightning - not so very frightening

Multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) implementation of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) have come to light. An advisory by security clearing house CERT on Wednesday night warns the flaws (in common with buffer overflow bugs in general) might allow remote attackers to …

Security 17 Jan 2003, 16:53
Red Hat Linux 8 books at 30 per cent off

More meaty discounts from IT-minds

This week's offering from Reg associate IT-minds.com is the biggest and the best in Red Hat Linux books. Red Hat Linux 8 Unleashed aims to provide the best and latest information intermediate to advanced Red Hat users need to know about installation, configuration, system administration, server operations, and security. At 1040 …

Site News 17 Jan 2003, 16:55
Nominet intros new domain moving rules

Making life easier

Nominet UK - the national registry for all domain names ending .uk - has introduced new rules designed to give greater protection to domain name owners. Anyone having problems moving their .uk domain name from one ISP or registration agent to another will now be able to get Nominet UK to do it for them - for a fee. Nominet UK …

Music and Media 17 Jan 2003, 16:56
Retail PC sales flat in Germany, France (but not in UK)

HP under pressure

Sales of PCs in December 2002 by large retailers were flat in Europe's top three economies, down one per cent in unit terms compared to the same month a year ago. Sales in Germany and France were particularly disappointing, with only the UK - with 7.7 per cent growth in retail PC sales last month - bucking the downward trend …

Personal 17 Jan 2003, 22:49