22nd April 2003 Archive

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Real to acquire Listen.com

Rhapsody has a home

RealNetworks has gobbled up Listen.com for close to $36 million, the companies announced today. RealNetworks plans to add Listen.com's Rhapsody music subscription service to its own RealOne SuperPass service. The company wants to nab some of Listen.com's streaming and caching technology as well as its music and radio services …

Software 22 Apr 2003, 07:12
Sun salutes Opteron

Lukewarm software support

Sun Microsystems paid lip service to AMD's Opteron processor with an announcement on Monday to provide a modicum of software support for the chip. Just ahead of the Opteron coming out party, Sun decided to put out a short statement, saying it will support 32-bit Solaris, Java and the Sun ONE software stack on AMD's new chip, if …

Software 22 Apr 2003, 07:13
Who am I when I'm mobile?

Meta physical

Two recent announcements highlight the difficulties and importance of authenticating just who has access to what data or services via a mobile network, writes Bloor Research's Rob Bamforth. Each adopts a different approach, coming from two different perspectives in the mobile data world. The IT perspective, and the telecoms …

Security 22 Apr 2003, 08:32
PC sales climb, Centrino builds slowly

No major upturn

Personal computer sales were better than expected in the first quarter, according to figures from Gartner, with mobile PCs expected to draw continued interest. Preliminary numbers from the research house showed that worldwide PC shipments rose 6 percent in the first quarter of 2003. The Gartner report, "Preliminary 1Q03 PC …

Personal 22 Apr 2003, 10:25
Nominet UK to charge for domain transfers

Time to cough up

Nominet UK is to start charging punters £35 a time to transfer .uk domain names from one person or organisation to another. The .UK Registry insists the charge is being introduced to cover the administrative cost of transferring domain names. Up until now, the task - which includes a number of checks to ensure that any domain …

Music and Media 22 Apr 2003, 12:47
Betfair.com scoops Queen's Award

Double or quits?

An online bookie, which takes more than £50m in bets every week, has been honoured by the Queen for bringing gambling into the 21st Century. The Sporting Exchange, which trades as Betfair.com, picked up an award for "outstanding innovation in the sports betting market" in this year's Queen's Award for Enterprise. A spokesman …

Music and Media 22 Apr 2003, 12:47
Microsoft to license Windows ‘protocols’ to rivals

No help to us - Samba

Microsoft yesterday agreed to release details of internal Windows protocols to competitors under license, as part of last year's anti-trust settlement. These protocols will be licensed "for the sole purpose of creating server software to interoperate or communicate with Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP and successor …

Software 22 Apr 2003, 12:49
Itanic cluster to shake up oil exploration

Seismic deployment

Intel has come good (at least in part) with its claims that the latest version of Itanium would shake up the server market. No we're not referring to sales figures for Itanic, which remain subdued, but news that Itanium 2-based systems are to be used in BP's seismic research facility. Based in Houston, BP's advanced seismic …

Hardware 22 Apr 2003, 16:48
Nvidia targets workstation market with nForce 3 Pro

Opteron-oriented

Nvidia has released its third-generation nForce chipset, targeted at AMD's Opteron chip and its first official move into the professional graphics workstation systems arena. The company already offers pro graphics chips in the shape of its Quadro range. With the Opteron handling memory control, the nForce 3 Pro is essentially a …

Channel 22 Apr 2003, 16:54
Newisys readies Opteron gear

IBM goes it alone for now

Newisys Inc. is "the other company" betting its future on AMD's new Opteron chip and, as promised, the company unveiled its server on the big launch day. The two-processor Newisys 2100 is the first server to roll out of the Austin-based company's doors. The system ships with two, hot-swap hard drives, dual embedded gigabit …

Hardware 22 Apr 2003, 17:00
White House cybersecurity czar resigns. Again

Ex-Microserf Schmidt vacates 'bully pulpit' role

Former Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt has resigned as White House cybersecurity advisor, just weeks into his new role. Schmidt took over the job from his much-criticised predecessor, Richard Clarke, in February. He is leaving at the end of this month to work in the private sector. In a resignation letter, Schmidt said …

Security 22 Apr 2003, 17:09
AMD launches Opteron

Update Speeds and feeds

It should have been here nearly 18 months ago, but AMD finally got its Opteron dual 32-bit/64-bit server processor out the door today, launching the chip formerly known as Sledgehammer at a flash bash in New York City. AMD has three Opterons on offer, with the promise of more to come. Today's launch centred on the 240, 242 and …

Channel 22 Apr 2003, 18:14
Microsoft issues Office 2k reg. bug patch

No more unwanted registration requests

Microsoft has posted a patch to remedy the registration bug that has plagued Office 2000 users in some of the world's biggest organisations since 15 April. The bug invokes Office's Registration Wizard, even if the user has already registered the product, typically through the purchase of a Select Customer volume licence. In …

Software 22 Apr 2003, 19:51
Mac show gets Macworld moniker back

Macworld Expo -> Create -> Macworld Creative Pro

First it was Macworld Expo. Then it was Create. Now, less than a month after organiser IDG renamed its summer show for Mac users, it has restyled the event again. Now it's Macworld Creative Pro. Clearly Create didn't cut the mustard with the Mac user base who make up the vast majority, if not all, of the show's attendees. You …

Mac Channel 22 Apr 2003, 20:43
Like a virgin – Madonna hacked for the very first time

MP3s for free

Madonna's role as the material girl placed her in a spot of trouble this weekend when the pop star's Web site started doling out free song files from her new album. A hacker decided to take revenge on Madonna after she flooded P2P networks with fake music files from her "American Life" album. Madonna had apparently laced the …

Music and Media 22 Apr 2003, 20:54
VIA unveils Opteron-optimised K8T400M chipset

HyperTransport speaks unto V-Link

VIA today joined Nvidia and AMD itself and launched a chipset designed to support the new Opteron 64-bit processor. VIA's Apollo K8T400M is a two-chip product, that's essentially a modified version of VIA's KT400A, adding HyperTransport to the North Bridge to allow it to communicate with the CPU. The connection to the South …

Channel 22 Apr 2003, 21:38
Opteron zings through server benchmarks

Xeon pressure

Bored with Opteron yet? The best has yet to come. Ace's Hardware has been putting the new 64bit processor through its paces with Windows 2000, SuSE and Debian flavors of Linux in a head-to-head with Intel's Xeon processor. And the results are intriguing. Although Intel's venerable Xeon holds the edge in workstation performance …

Channel 22 Apr 2003, 23:04