31st July 2003 Archive

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HP reclaims benchmark lead with Unix

New Alpha kit too

There are times when a vacant moan makes its way through the streets of Palo Alto, haunting innocent children and sending tremors up the spines of adults. This is the cry of HP's tireless server engineers after they have managed to wring another benchmark record out of Superdome. It's not enough for HP to post a second or third …

Servers 31 Jul 2003, 01:25
Panel probes the half-life of bugs

Predictable decay rate

Software security holes never die, they fade from the Internet at a rate of 50% every thirty days after a patch is released, according to the results of a study released at the Black Hat Briefings security conference here Wednesday. Researchers at the California-based security company Qualys analyzed the results of 1.5 million …

Security 31 Jul 2003, 06:08
Sony wins Aussie mod- chip sales ban

Legal retreat

Australia is now officially under the thumb of the mod-chip banners, after the Court of Appeal, accepted its argument that mod-chips should be made illegal. Mod chips enable games console players to overcome protection built into their machines to run imported games bought legitimately and to back up games legitimately. But …

Personal 31 Jul 2003, 07:27
Yaha usurps Klez

Monthly malware chart

Yaha-E displaced Klez as the most common viral menace on the Internet over the last month, according to Messagelabs. The managed services firm has blocked Yaha-E 367,158 times so far in July, relegating Klez-H (332,343 interceptions) to second place in its monthly viral charts. Sobig-E (blocked 188,235 times) and BugBear-B (108 …

Malware 31 Jul 2003, 07:30
Ingram profits up, sales down

Cost cutting axe

Ingram Micro, the world's biggest IT distie, posted better than expected Q2 earnings, thanks to cost-cutting. Cost-cutting is, of course, what commodity disties have to do if they want to stay in business, but Ingram appears to have mastered this brutal art better than most. Even so, skinny profits show that there is little …

Channel 31 Jul 2003, 07:50
Intel Celeron price cuts revealed

To be trimmed on 24 August, apparently

Intel is expected to cut the prices of its Celeron desktop processors on 24 August, but until now the extent to which those prices will be reduced has not leaked out of the chip giant. A DigiTimes report, citing "company sources" has the gen. The cuts are not massive, it has to be said - the biggest reduction amounts to just 13 …

Channel 31 Jul 2003, 10:11
UK e-voting pilots deeply flawed

Security expert speaks out

A leading British academic has warned of the shortcomings of electronic voting schemes tried at this year's local elections. The criticism, from Dr Ben Fairweather, Research Fellow at De Montfort University's Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, comes in advance of the publication of the Electoral Commission's …

Security 31 Jul 2003, 10:19
BT profits up, revs flat

Broadband on the up

BT rung up a 56 per cent increase in pre-tax profits during Q1 even though turnover remained flat at the UK's dominant telco. The improved figure comes as BT continued to sit on costs such as property and IT. In the three months to the end of June, pre-tax profit was £502 million ($811.5 million), compared to £322 million ($ …

Telecoms 31 Jul 2003, 10:24
Inland Revenue site ‘failing to perform’

Taxing appears to be, erm, taxing

The Inland Revenue's Web site which enables tax returned to be filed online is "failing to perform". So says UK IT service management company, Parallel Ltd, which carried out tests on the site during the last week or so. It found that inlandrevenue.gov.uk was unavailable from around 7:25am on Thursday July 24 to 6:55pm on …

Small Biz 31 Jul 2003, 10:37
Dell misses PDA patch posting deadline – again

Update upgraded OS as well as firmware

Dell failed to make its Axim x5 PDA firmware fix widely available for the second time yesterday after an eleventh hour glitch forced the PC maker to pull the patch from its servers. To be fair to Dell, it did post the patch as it had promised to do on Monday. Then, having previously said the fix would be made available on …

Mobile 31 Jul 2003, 10:50
SiS to ship 800MHz FSB notebook chipset

Offers better AGP than AGP, apparently

SiS will next month bring the Pentium 4's 800MHz effective bit rate frontside bus to notebook PCs when its SiSM661FX chipset goes into mass production, the company said today. The SiSM661FX, which was officially unveiled earlier this month, supports any Pentium 4 CPU, 266, 333 and 400MHz DDR SDRAM, and the company's notebook- …

Channel 31 Jul 2003, 11:37
Data Protection : Subject Access Requests – any complaints?

Plenty

A Government Consultation Paper, published in October 2002 by the Lord Chancellor's Department, asked for opinions on whether the arrangements for 'subject access requests', under the current Data Protection legislation, were satisfactory or not, writes John MacGowan of Bloor Research. A summary of the responses was published …

Storage 31 Jul 2003, 12:35
Govt BB aggregation plans take step forward

Steady...

The Government is pressing ahead with plans to aggregate public sector demand for broadband with the announcement that nine regional bodies will be set up in October. The Regional Aggregation Bodies (RABs) - set up in partnership with Regional Development Authorities (RDAs) - will be responsible for buying broadband services …

Telecoms 31 Jul 2003, 12:36
UK ‘bans’ iPod radio add-on

Treads on broadcasters' toes

Griffin Technologies' iTrip iPod add-on is illegal in the UK, British distributor A M Micro has said. The iTrip connects to an iPod and transmits songs by FM radio to any radio receiver in the vicinity. While its operation in the US is permitted by the Federal Communications Commission, over here the device contravenes the UK …

Mac Channel 31 Jul 2003, 12:40
Peregrine ready to emerge from Chapter 11

Crossing ts

One of the most widely recognised IT brands should next month emerge from the clutches of "Chapter 11", writes Tony Lock of Bloor Research. Since September of last year Peregrine Systems Inc., one of the leading suppliers of Asset Management and Service Management software, has been working to reorganise both its financial …

Hardware 31 Jul 2003, 12:41
Labels to delve deeper into ringtones

Money-making scheme no 93

Record companies may buy up mobile phone ringtone providers and are likely to go a step further by setting ringtone studios, a new report says. In the report, research company Strategy Analytics forecasts that sales of personalisation data services for mobile phones will rise from USD3 billion this year to USD6 billion in 2008 …

Mobile 31 Jul 2003, 12:48
IR35 ‘causes significant damage’ – MPs

Review urged

The Government has been urged to immediately review the controversial IR35 tax or face the wrath of the nation’s freelancers when it came to election time. An influential group of MPs from all political parties have told the government the tax is not benefiting anyone and is causing significant damage to the UK’s army of …

Small Biz 31 Jul 2003, 12:59
UK e-mentoring service for Small.biz

Roll-out time

A “unique” e-mentoring programme designed exclusively for small and medium-sized businesses is to be introduced in the UK over the next six months. The government-funded initiative is the first of its kind to offer help and advice to developing businesses, with the USA and Australia being the only other countries to currently …

Small Biz 31 Jul 2003, 12:59
Spam dumpster diving

A gigabyte of email addresses for grabs

Anti spam activists struck gold this week when they found a website, which contains thousands of zipfiles, left behind by or nicked from a spammer. Nearly a gigabyte of email addresses, unzipped. So, where is it from? Almost certainly from TornadoPromotions.com Inc, an American company that offers services to send e-mail …

Security 31 Jul 2003, 13:22
Blair shoots down UK ID card scheme

Quick fix compulsion out of the window, back to gradual approach?

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday knocked the wheels off Home Secretary David Blunkett's ID card bandwagon, citing "huge logistical and cost issues that need to be resolved" before the cards can be implemented. If words such as "privacy" and "freedom" also figured in his reasoning he neglected to share this with us, but he …

Music and Media 31 Jul 2003, 16:09
OS war over, OS dead, Sun won, Redmond lost

Yes, Scott McNealy's in town...

The OS war is over, as indeed is the OS, and Sun won. This interesting and challenging thesis was one of numerous presented by Scott McNealy at a European Technology Forum event in London this morning. Say what you like about Scott, he's generally good copy, even at 8.30am gigs. His reasoning is as always plausible, and goes …

Software 31 Jul 2003, 17:17
Yahoo! hunts! for! champion! amateur! yodeller!

Strewth!

Yahoo! has clearly kissed and made up with Wylie Gustafson after the cowboy singer's attempt last year to sue the Internet giant for $5 million. The man behind Yahoo!'s distinctive yodel used in its ads sued the Internet business because he alleged that Yahoo! didn't have the right to continue using his yodel. Days after the …

Music and Media 31 Jul 2003, 17:43
UK.gov security is pants

Worrying lapses

IT security levels in UK central and local government are worryingly poor and need significant improvements if the UK is to meet its e-government targets, a survey out this week warns. Government security levels fall far below those of comparable IT sectors such as banking and finance, according to a report from security …

Security 31 Jul 2003, 17:47
Sun starts flashing Solaris 10 to chosen few

Solaris 9 updates too

Sun Microsystems has decided to give key customers a sneak peak at future versions of the Solaris operating system, hoping to convince users to stick with the vendor over the long haul. Sun has put up a Web site for what it calls the Solaris Pilot Program (Update: Sun has since removed the page detailing this Reg exclusive. …

Hardware 31 Jul 2003, 19:58