19th February 2003 Archive

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AltaVista flogged to Overture

The new seekers

AltaVista is to be sold by investment house CMGI for $140m in paper and cash to paid-for search outfit Overture Services. Overture said it plans to use AltaVista as a way to test new search services and marketing products for its advertisers before selling them on to its global distribution network. The deal - made up of $80m …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2003, 10:32
Strikes loom as BT mulls moving 700 jobs to India

Hold the line

BT is facing the threat of industrial action over concerns that it could move 700 directory inquiries (DQ) jobs to India. The Communications Workers Union (CWU) claims BT is looking to export jobs in response to the recent deregulation of the DQ sector in the UK. The lost jobs would be a massive blow representing around a …

Business 19 Feb 2003, 12:01
Apple founder Woz moves house over mobile signal failure

'You'll have to speak up, I'm on the mobile'

Steve Wozniak - who co-founded Apple Computers - is moving out of his "castle-like mansion" in Los Gatos near the South Bay part of the San Francisco Bay Area, because he can?t get a signal on his mobile phone. The LA Times reports that Wozniak has spent a fortune upgrading the house, stuffing it full of technology, extending …

Personal 19 Feb 2003, 12:44
Hotmail files anti-spam lawsuit

What unemployed antitrust lawyers did next

Microsoft has targeted spammers with a lawsuit aimed at bulk mailers who harvest email addresses of Hotmail subscribers in order to bombard them with junk. The lawsuit, against unnamed defendants, was filed in the federal court for the northern district of California in San Jose yesterday, CNET reports. In the suit, Microsoft …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2003, 12:46
Power5 boasts quadruple performance gain

Prototypes run like the clappers

Servers based on IBM's forthcoming Power5 chip will be four times faster than current Power4 machines. That's the message from Bill Zeitler, head of IBM's server group, who told reporters at the IBM PartnerWorld conference in New Orleans that Big Blue has had a prototype Power5 server humming away in its labs for the last three …

Servers 19 Feb 2003, 14:58
Yahoo! in! tea! branding! row!

Milk or lemon with your Yahoo?

Yahoo! has won an interim injunction preventing an Indian tea company from marketing its products using the Yahoo name. A judge at the Delhi High Court called on the Sarda Trading Company and those involved in selling, distributing and marketing the tea to stick the kettle on and take a tea break until the matter is resolve. …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2003, 15:00
NTL customers not ‘tech’ enough to grasp BB cap

That's why they weren't told, apparently

NTL decided not to inform its customers about its decision to cap its broadband service because it didn't think they were "'tech' enough to understand". So says Kingsley Smith, the campaigner behind the Don't Pay NTL, who met Bill Goodland, NTL's Internet director, and Steve Upton (Technical/Network Manager) in Hook yesterday …

Telecoms 19 Feb 2003, 15:03
Does London mayor's ‘ring of steel’ breach UK Data Act?

If it really exists, it certainly looks like it...

London mayor Ken Livingstone's claims earlier this week that the capital's new charge zone cameras had a security aspect raised numerous questionmarks, not least of them being the one over Transport for London's registration under the Data Protection Act. Livingstone in the past few days has performed something of a somersault, …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2003, 15:17
BT backs down in ‘substantial discount’ row

Compliance

BT has climbed-down over allegations that it offered a "substantial discount" to a major corporate customer in a bid to trump a competitor. A week or so ago telecoms watchdog Oftel issued a provisional order against BT, claiming that the telco had "breached its licence by failing to make transparent and publish information …

Business 19 Feb 2003, 15:19
Micron gets aggressive with costs, workforce

1,800 jobs

The pips are getting squeaked at Micron which today proclaimed its intention to fire 10 per cent of its workforce - 1,800 jobs worldwide. The hard-pressed US DRAM maker says this is one of a "series of cost-reduction initiatives to further capitalize on the Company's aggressive migration to .11 micron manufacturing process …

Channel 19 Feb 2003, 15:44
Intel colours in server roadmaps

IDF Codenames galore

Mike Fister, 'the Godfather of Itanium' (yes, really), and head of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group, coloured in some server CPU and chipset roadmaps at IDF yesterday. First up the Itanium 2: The Deerfield low-voltage Itanium 2 - it's half the power of Madison - will make its public debut in 2H' 03. Chipzilla is touting …

Servers 19 Feb 2003, 18:21
Sakoman quits Palm amid job cull

20 per cent gone

One of Silicon Valley's best loved engineers, Steve Sakoman, has left PalmSource. Sakoman was the de facto engineering chief for Palm's software division PalmSource, and led a team of forty-odd engineers from Be Inc who are writing a new OS for the PDA pioneer. Sakoman was formerly at Apple and served as CTO during Be's roller …

Personal 19 Feb 2003, 18:23
DoD mailing lists left wide open

Virus spoofing defences backfire

A semblance of order has been restored to US Department of Defence mailing lists after an automated attempt to inject the Klez virus onto two lists indirectly led to a message storm. Although the infectious attachment was stripped out, the message text (which as is common with Klez came from a spoofed email address) made its …

Malware 19 Feb 2003, 18:28
Watch out for those malicious referrer links

Bloggers beware!

Bloggers were warned this week to raise their guard against posting potentially malicious referrer links into their Web logs. It's potentially easy to hijack blogs through mendacious JavaScript code, a posting on one Web log (kasia in a nutshell) notes. So the message is to double check referrers to make sure they link to a …

Security 19 Feb 2003, 18:30
Nominet takes six months to do nothing over net.uk

Communication breakdown

Second-level domain .net.uk has been reprieved indefinitely but at the cost of Nominet's reputation, papers released today reveal. Despite six months of consultation and argument, the Policy Advisory Board of Nominet - the organisation that owns all .uk domains - has failed to reach a conclusion over changes to the domain and …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2003, 19:09
IBM pitches eServer iSeries to wider user base

Prices down, performance up

The IBM eServer iSeries platform, formerly known as AS/400, is very highly regarded by those who work with it day in and day out, writes Tony Lock. The server has achieved almost cult status within its existing user base, but has been seen as being a "niche" tool by those unfamiliar with its capabilities. Recent announcements …

Servers 19 Feb 2003, 20:10