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14th May 2003 Archive

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  • BB punters would ‘tolerate’ price rise

    Hooked

    Freeserve, BT and AOL continue to dominate the UK's ISP sector accounting for almost two thirds of market share. The latest figures from Oftel reveal that Freeserve has 21 per cent of the total ISP market, BT has 20 per cent while AOL UK has 17 per cent. Overall, just under half of UK homes have Net access with 14 per cent of …

    Telecoms 14 May 2003, 07:52

  • PI calls on punters to test Govt data retention

    Telcos will not be happy

    Campaigners opposed to the UK government's controversial data retention policies are going on the counter-offensive. Ahead of a public debate on the subject in London tomorrow, Privacy International is calling on consumers to initiate Subject Access Requests for their data from communications providers. It plans to publish set …

    Music and Media 14 May 2003, 07:55

  • Microsoft iLoo was no hoax – official

    MS dumps digital Dunny

    Microsoft has now admitted that its wired Dunny - the iLoo - was not a hoax. In a statement issued last night Microsoft UK had this to say. The MSN iLoo was not false or a hoax. It follows a UK strategy to bring the Internet to as many people in Britain as possible and encourage debate about how the Internet can affect our …

    Music and Media 14 May 2003, 08:09

  • Fujitsu Siemens goes a SuSE bundle on Intel

    Two horse race

    Fujitsu Siemens is to bundle SuSE Linux Enterprise Server with all Intel Xeon-based PRIMERGY servers, from the entry-level system with one processor right through to the high-end 16-way server. Fujitsu Siemens Computers and SuSE expect the option to be popular for blade servers in particular, as well as for the new tower and …

    Servers 14 May 2003, 08:15

  • Microsoft toilet troubles continue

    Analysis Prototype developed 'toilet' characteristics - but how?

    Troubling questions are being asked about Microsoft's toilet initiative. MSNBC, the news channel co-owned by Microsoft and General Electric, has published a story denying that Microsoft's WiFi toilet was a hoax. We reported Microsoft's toilet statement here earlier this morning. "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in …

    Bootnotes 14 May 2003, 08:20

  • My Life in a Terabyte

    The Memex lives

    In the course of our lives, we accumulate a vast amount of documents, photographs, pictures, videos and even e-mail messages that are too important to throw away, writes Martin Langham of Bloor Research. This collection becomes a vast store of information that can often become overwhelming - filling our bookcases and studies …

    Personal 14 May 2003, 08:48

  • Six firms named as Govt BB suppliers

    Important stuff is it?

    Six companies have been chosen to supply broadband services, kit and consultancy to the public sector. BT, Easynet, Fujitsu, Kingston, Synetrix and Telewest have all been selected by the Government's procurement outfit, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), as part of its Broadband Solutions Framework Agreement. In essence …

    Telecoms 14 May 2003, 09:13

  • Security research exemption to DMCA considered

    What doesn't get written

    Computer security researchers would be allowed to hack through copy protection schemes in order to look for security holes in the software being protected, under a proposed exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) being debated in official hearings this week. Enacted as an anti-piracy measure in 1998, after …

    Security 14 May 2003, 09:16

  • Traffic news and views on your GPRS phone

    Jam today -none tomorrow?

    In a week when the operators of the first private motorway in the UK announced its toll rates, it's comforting to know that technology can provide some alternatives. At least alternative things to pay for. When the new toll road opens in January 2004, car drivers will be paying £3 to miss one of the busiest sections of motorway …

    Mobile 14 May 2003, 09:22

  • BT ‘telling porkies’ about its phone services

    Telewest talks tough over ad ruling

    Telewest has accused BT of "twisting the truth" and telling "porkies" about its phone services. The onslaught from the cableco follows a ruling by the advertising watchdog that BT made a series of misleading statement in a direct mailing and a local press advertisement targeted at Telewest customers. The offending ads said …

    Data Networking 14 May 2003, 09:34

  • Hynix ups output of 0.10 micron SDRAM

    Not lagging behind our competitors, company claims

    Hynix has begun mass-producing 0.10 micron SDRAM chips, the company said yesterday. First on offer are 512Mb DDR and DDR 2 parts, with a 1Gb DDR 2 chip to following in the second half of the year. And 512Mb NAND Flash chips may be fabbed using the process later this year too. By the end of the year, some 20 per cent of the …

    Channel 14 May 2003, 10:08

  • Reg readers devote 1600 years to cancer cure quest

    Unused CPU cycles donated to beating disease

    The Register's valiant band of Cancer Busters continue to generously dedicate their unused CPU cycles to sniffing out potential cures of the disease. Some 2671 Reg readers are currently running special software that grabs unused processor time to analyse research data generated by Department of Chemistry at the University of …

    Site News 14 May 2003, 11:35

  • UK gov seizes data on 100m calls, 1m users, a year

    Is Blunkett a snooping billionaire yet?

    Police and other UK government agencies are demanding personal data concerning over 100 million phone calls, subscriber data on almost a million consumers and an unknown quantity of email and Internet logs, every year, claims Privacy International. The data, to be unveiled today at Scrambling for Safety 6 at the London School of …

    Music and Media 14 May 2003, 11:39

  • E-biz video diaries not waste of money

    O'Really?

    UK online for business - a Government-backed scheme to promote ebusiness among firms - has denied that an online video diary soap is a waste of taxpayers' money. The video diaries were unveiled yesterday and will track the day-to-day experiences of two small UK companies as they grapple with various e-business strategies. …

    Small Biz 14 May 2003, 13:28

  • IBM debuts T-Rex mainframe

    Size of a fridge

    IBM yesterday introduced its most powerful mainframe to date, the zSeries 990. Formerly code-named T-Rex, The z990 represents the fruits of $1bn investment and the labours of 1,200 IBM developers. This z990 scales up to 9,000 MIPS (million instructions per second) on 32 processors - twice the number of processors and almost …

    Servers 14 May 2003, 13:44

  • 2002 is IT services Annus Horribilis

    First decline ever

    Last year was the most difficult year on record for worldwide IT services industry, according to analysts Gartner Dataquest. End-user spending on IT services totalled only $536 billion in 2002, an 0.6 per cent decline from 2001 results, according to Gartner Dataquest. Last year was the first year of declining revenues for the …

    Hardware 14 May 2003, 13:49

  • Gartner's look at Alternatives to Microsoft

    Discipline required

    An increasing number of companies and governments are looking at non-Microsoft options, with Linux the number one threat, Gartner says. The research firm on Tuesday combined ten separate notes into a report entitled "A Look at Alternatives to Microsoft." Among other things, it concludes that Linux and other open source software …

    Software 14 May 2003, 14:02

  • Hitachi creates dedicated notebook 7200rpm HDD

    Reg Kit Watch Plus Nvidia revamps nForce 2, and HP's new widescreen notebook

    Hard Drive Hitachi has unveiled what it claims is the first 7200rpm hard drive designed for mobile systems, the Travelstar 7K60. To date, mobile-oriented drives have had to run at 5400rpm, says Hitachi, in order to maintain acceptable noise levels and power consumption. Vendors have offered 7200rpm hard drives for notebooks, …

    Personal 14 May 2003, 14:06

  • NTT DoCoMo claws back to black

    But losing out in 3G race

    DoCoMo has returned to profitability, but its main rival KDDI has leapt ahead in the 3G subscriber race. DoCoMo has just 330,000 subscribers compared to KDDI's 7.5 million. Also worrying are DoCoMo's low expectations for revenue growth, as increased spending on data services seems to be coming at the expense of conventional …

    Mobile 14 May 2003, 14:23

  • Worldwide Q2 PC sales up a little on last year…

    ...but well down on last quarter

    Worldwide PC shipments will grow just 6.4 per cent this quarter, compared to Q2 2002, market researcher Gartner believes. However, shipments will fall sequentially by 10.9 per cent, a point the company doesn't make in its press release. Some 30.7 million PCs will ship around the world during Q2 2003, generating $38.3 billion in …

    Personal 14 May 2003, 14:38

  • Buffalo Spammer arrested

    Earthlink gets their man

    Howard Carmack - the Buffalo Spammer - has been arrested and charged in New York for four felony (i.e. criminal) and two misdemeanour counts relating to his alleged fraudulence in obtaining Internet access accounts to send more than 825 million spam emails. His nemesis, Earthlink, the US ISP, last week won $16.4m damages and a …

    Security 14 May 2003, 15:07

  • NTL Q1 BB growth ‘unusually high’

    Steady outlook

    NTL has around 691,000 broadband customers, the UK's biggest cableco announced today. Publishing Q1 results to the end of March the company said that it around 661,000 broadband users. At the end of April that figure had risen to 691,000, it said. However, NTL warned that broadband growth was "unusually high" in the first …

    Telecoms 14 May 2003, 15:16

  • Nvidia set to up GeForce FX 5600 speeds

    Got to grips with 0.13 micron

    Nvidia is preparing to boost the performance of its GeForce FX 5600 graphics chip, the company told The Register yesterday. The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra core currently clocks at 350MHz, the same as its memory clock frequency. However, both speeds will soon be raised to 400MHz, in the form of the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, the company …

    Channel 14 May 2003, 15:24