12th May 2003 Archive

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• Oracle sends up the Red Flag

  Gets close with China and Linux

  Oracle and China's Red Flag Software have firmed up their partnership. Oracle will certify and support its 9i Database on the Red Flag Linux operating system. The companies also plan to make Orace 9i Application Server, Collaboration Suite and E-business Suite available later on as part of the agreement. The deal gives the …

  Hardware 12 May 2003, 08:53

• IBM puts Unix back on top

  HP, Windows and Itanium denied

  It takes a boat load of cash to win a benchmark these days. IBM has unseated Hewlett-Packard as the top transaction processing heavyweight with a 32 processor Unix server priced at more than $7 million. The p690 server running IBM's AIX version of Unix topped out at 680,613 transactions per minute using the TPC-C benchmark. HP …

  Servers 12 May 2003, 08:55

• Telewest goes live with 2Mb service

  £50 a month

  Telewest has launched its 2Mb broadband service following a trial of 1,500 of its blueyonder punters. The service costs from £50 a month. Said Chad Raube, director of Internet services at Telewest Broadband: "While BT and other major ADSL providers offer a one-size-fits-all service, we recognise people have different needs and …

  Telecoms 12 May 2003, 08:57

• New PCG boss predicts doom and gloom in IT sector

  New broom makes dire prediction

  The new boss of the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) has warned that a shortage of IT skills could seriously dent the future prosperity of the UK. Simon Griffiths, who was appointed chairman of the PCG on Saturday, warned that lack of training and short termism could result in the UK's tech sector facing a crisis. Add to …

  Small Biz 12 May 2003, 08:58

• Korea's chip biz faces exploding trade gap

  Exports != imports

  Korea continues to import more chips than it's exporting, the country's Semiconductor Industry Association has announced - but during the first quarter of the year, the trade gap ballooned by a massive 1.29 trillion win ($1.08 billion). During Q1, Korea exported 4.89 trillion won ($4.08 billion) worth of semiconductor products …

  Channel 12 May 2003, 09:09

• Stelios High Court favourite vows to battle on

  "My crusade is not at an end, broahahahaha":

  Contrary to our story on Friday that EasyGroup had called off its easy domain crusade, boss Stelios Haji-Iannou has been in touch to assure us that he will strike down another three "easy" offenders in the next few months at the High Court. Last week, Stelios withdrew his case against Easyart.com just weeks before it was due to …

  Music and Media 12 May 2003, 09:11

• Elpida DDR 2 SDRAM fit for future Intel server chipsets

  Update Twin Castle and Lindenhurst due during 2H 2004

  Elpida has finally figured out how to do DDR 2 SDRAM for Intel servers, the company announced this past Friday. It said its 512Mb 533Mbps DDR2 chips has passed all of Intel's tests and would be available to be used in Intel servers next year. The memory is likely to be used in Intel's upcoming server chipsets Twin Castle and …

  Channel 12 May 2003, 09:31

• IBM rumoured to be building 65nm fab for AMD

  Makes sense

  Is IBM building a 300mm, 64nm fab for AMD? Yes, if rumours doing the rounds are to be believed, Silicon Strategies reports. It's claimed that IBM is converting its Advanced Semiconductor Technology Center (ASTC) in East Fishkill, New York State into a production fab. When it's finished its work, IBM will hand the plant over to …

  Channel 12 May 2003, 10:01

• Public Wi-Fi has look and feel of a dead duck

  T-Mobile swallows the bill

  Who's going to pay for the great Wi-Fi revolution when the roaming public expects Wi-Fi to be free? Where, exactly, is the business model? On Friday, T-Mobile helped provide an answer. In the United States, T-Mobile has been trying to entice the public to its network of over 2000 hotspots without much success. Unlike more canny …

  Wireless 12 May 2003, 10:04

• Google News comes to UK

  Search us

  Google has opened up a UK front for its automated news service. The world's favourite search engine has the same clustering of news stories, which we like. And it gives more prominence to stories about the UK. Which we probably also like. We trust that Google's sturdy news-grabbing algorithms will continue to yield the …

  Music and Media 12 May 2003, 10:25

• Telewest email down for four days

  Underlying hardware failure blamed

  Telewest punters have been left fuming after the cableco's email service went titsup following a spam attack last Thursday. At the time Telewest said the average delay in receiving email would be around two hours, although a small proportion of punters faced delays of up to five hours. But customers of Telewest's blueyonder …

  Music and Media 12 May 2003, 10:26

• Al-Qaeda said to be using stegged porn

  More .jpg terror

  From time to time a rumour that international terrorists are trading Net porn embedded with secret blueprints for some dastardly deed resurfaces. It has returned this week, in a New York Post article claiming that Italian members of al-Qaeda have been caught with stegged terror .jpg's. "Chilling details of al-Qaeda's secret …

  Security 12 May 2003, 10:26

• Hacking victim goes postal

  One dead, three wounded

  A Cleveland man named Biswanath Halder, who claims his Web site was destroyed by a hacker, took hostages at gunpoint on the campus of Case Western Reserve University on Friday. Tragically, the hacking victim killed a young postgraduate student at the university, Norman Wallace aged 30, and wounded two others when he fired …

  Security 12 May 2003, 10:33

• Bango bakes m-commerce cookies

  Fingerprints

  What if you could access items of content from content providers, but not have to keep logging-on each time? Now this might sound like the idea behind Microsoft's .NET Passport with one account for all online services, but this is different. First it's for mobile phone users. This week Bango.net announced Bango Fingerprint, …

  Mobile 12 May 2003, 11:04

• Recyled credit card numbers pose fraud risk

  Here's one I social engineered earlier

  The use of recycled credit card numbers by UK banks could create loopholes for fraud. Clydesdale Bank customer Stuart Robertson recently discovered that a MasterCard from the bank he cancelled a few years ago was still "live". The number has been reissued to another Clydesdale customer. Robertson found that all he needed to …

  Security 12 May 2003, 11:10

• ATI ships DDR 2-based Radeon 9800 Pro

  Reg Kit Watch Plus NEC's new handheld PC

  Graphics ATI has shipped a 256MB DDR 2 version of its Radeon 9800 Pro board, the company said today, clearly with an eye to spoiling Nvidia's GeForce FX 5900 launch later this week. We say 'shipped', but the board is only available in "limited quantities", according to ATI. That said, since not only end users but OEMs can get …

  Personal 12 May 2003, 11:40

• UK gets new ebank

  Smash-ING

  ING Group, the Dutch financial group, has opened an Internet bank in the UK. ING Direct has only got one product - a savings account. But once it gets enough punters on board, it intends to flog 'em all sorts of other financial stuff like mortgages, mutual funds, pensions and life insurance. According to Lindsay Sinclair, …

  Music and Media 12 May 2003, 12:25

• Fizzer stealth worm spreads via KaZaA

  Dangerous payload

  Yet another Internet worm has been discovered spreading through the KaZaA P2P file-sharing network. Fizzer, which can spread via email as well as over file sharing networks, is more dangerous that most such worms because its malicious code includes key logging and Trojan functionality. The worm normally arrives at the target …

  Malware 12 May 2003, 12:27

• Logitech to offer Mac OS X digicam drivers

  Pocket Digital no longer PC-only

  Logitech will tomorrow release drivers allowing Mac OS X users to download pictures taken with the company's credit card-sized Pocket Digital camera, The Register has learned. Sources close to the company say the drivers, which work with Mac OS X's Image Capture application and iPhoto, will be offered free of charge as a …

  Mac Channel 12 May 2003, 12:49

• Lindows in the living room – can you live with it?

  Nice ideas, but pity about quite a lot of things...

  Earlier this year The Register expressed an interest in Lindows.com's Lindows Media Computer, and despite the accompanying back-handed compliments, Michael Robertson himself got in touch and arranged to have one shipped round. So for the past couple of months I've been able to check out LindowsOS itself, the Lindows.com business …

  Software 12 May 2003, 13:38

• Madonna's new British Friends

  Why we love Google News

  Google's automated algorithms sometimes have as much influence on the gaiety of nations as they do on search engine strategems. Witness today's handy juxtaposition in the inaugural issue of Google News UK: Madge, Madge, surely you can do better than this? For those of you outside the UK, the guy on the right is Abu Hamza, an …

  Bootnotes 12 May 2003, 13:56

• This phone box does not exist

  If it ain't in our records, it ain't there

  For three years, residents and traders have pushed BT to repair or replace a derelict phone box in Worsley, Leeds. But when records of the booth mysteriously disappeared when vandals ripped out the phone (a former favourite with drug dealers) at the turn of the century. Without a phone number to go on, residents can only give …

  Bootnotes 12 May 2003, 14:12

• Nvidia unveils GeForce FX 5900

  NV35 launched at last

  Nvidia has launched the GeForce FX 5900 family, aka NV35, and will be shown at this week's E3 show, as anticipated. The 0.13 micron 256-bit 5900 and 5900 Ultra graphics chips sport 256-bit memory buses connected to up to 256MB of DDR 2 SDRAM clocked at 425MHz (for an effective clock speed of 850MHz). The GeForce FX 5800, which …

  Channel 12 May 2003, 14:34

• Unemployed virus writers take heart

  The Music Biz want you

  The recording industry is hiring cyber miscreants to attack its own customers. And we thought you'd never amount to anything, writes George Smith, SecurityFocus columnist. Nowhere Man, please listen, the recording industry has a job for you. The pay is good, the work easy and exciting, ripe with opportunity for someone …

  Malware 12 May 2003, 14:42

• UK public IT spending to surge

  It's Criminal!

  UK public sector spending on technology will grow by 9 percent a year until 2005, according to a new report from Ovum Holway The report which is previewed in the Financial Times, notes that the commercial market for software and services will grow just 0.3 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, a poor showing compared to the …

  Business 12 May 2003, 14:53

• Sainsbury's phone calls '30% cheaper'

  It's good to Talktalk

  Supermarket giant - J Sainsbury - could cut the cost of home phone bills by almost a third as it gears up to offer a rival service to BT. The grocer announced last month that it had teamed up with Carphone Warehouse to provide mobile and fixed line telecoms services. At the time Sainsbury's said the deal would provide its 11m …

  Data Networking 12 May 2003, 20:47

• Check Point bolsters apps security defences

  Fatter firewall

  Check Point Software is introducing defences against application-driven attacks to its flagship firewall and VPN software. In recent months, Cisco, Netscreen and Network Associates have attempted to redefine the function of traditional firewalls with intrusion prevention features. That's the rationale behind Cisco acquisition …

  Security 12 May 2003, 20:51

• Itanic 2 springs a leak

  Clock down or swap out

  Intel has acknowledged a bug in its Itanium 2 processor. The error shows up in some rare data sets when a particular sequence of instructions is executed. Intel tells us it has shared a test with OEMs and as a workaround advises concerned Itanium customers to knock the frequency down to 800MHz. The red-headed stepchild of IBM's …

  Channel 12 May 2003, 23:30

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• 13th May 2003 →