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4th August 2003 Archive

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  • Sage bids £66m for Softline

    Debt management

    Sage has tabled an offer for Softline, valuing the South African-owned accountancy software provider at £66m. Should it succeed, the cash offer will be financed from existing debt facilities, Sage says. As well as its home turf, Softline commands good market share in Australia. The company had cash reserves of £11.1m as of …

    Business 4 Aug 2003, 07:47

  • SCH snaps up Hays payroll biz

    No numbers

    Specialist Computer Holdings has bought Hays Payroll Services for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is to be transacted through SCS, the reseller's payroll bureau division which will combine with Hays. Hays is, or was, a leading business outsourcing operation. In recent months it has sought to divest most of its businesses to …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 08:15

  • SCO and Linux: this one will run and run

    Wacky Races

    SCO's latest act in the Linux lawsuit saga has been to implement a licensing scheme for Linux users, writes Robin Bloor of Bloor Research. In the words of SCO CEO Darl McBride, "SCO is prepared to offer a licence for SCO's UnixWare 7.1.3 product for use in conjunction with any Linux product. This licensing format will assure …

    Servers 4 Aug 2003, 09:04

  • Intel ‘Yamhill’ coming in 2005 – report

    Can AMD make the most of the next 18 months?

    Intel's mysterious 'Yamhill' technology - the chip giant's answer to AMD's AMD64 architecture - is a runner, but won't appear before 2005, a report from investment research organisation American Technology Research (ATR) has claimed. Rumours that Intel is working on Yamhill, a set of 64-bit extensions to the 32-bit x86 …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 09:07

  • VAT's up? – help at last

    Holy bureaucracy - what a money saver!

    The EC Directive (2002/38/EC), concerning VAT levying arrangements, came into effect from 1st July 2003, writes John MacGowan of Bloor Research. This removes the obligation for EU suppliers of electronic services (i.e. software, music, videos) - which can be downloaded from their websites - to levy VAT when selling in markets …

    Small Biz 4 Aug 2003, 09:10

  • Arima preps Athlon 64 notebook

    Reg Kit Watch It's all in the online spec. sheet

    Notebook Taiwanese manufacturer Arima is preparing a notebook based on AMD's Athlon 64 processor and ATI graphics, according to specifications posted on the company's Web site. Before anyone gets too excited, it's worth noting that the spec. document for the machine, dubbed the A520, was produced in March or April this year …

    Personal 4 Aug 2003, 09:48

  • phones 4U declares price war on CPW

    £20m campaign

    phones 4U is slashing handset prices in a bid to leapfrog Carphone Warehouse (CPW) into UK market leadership. phones 4U is to spend £20m on the campaign, called phones 4 Less. It could use up its war chest very quickly if the competition responds in kind, for the company is guaranteeing to undercut all competitors on handset …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2003, 09:51

  • Speculation grows ahead of Freeserve, Dixons split

    Better to have loved and lost...

    There's fresh speculation that Dixons is to ditch its long-standing relationship with Freeserve and cuddle up instead with AOL UK. The move would mean that AOL's software would be pre-loaded on PCs flogged by Dixons with the giant electrical retailers earning commission for new sign-ups. According to the Telegraph, Freeserve's …

    Music and Media 4 Aug 2003, 09:52

  • BT dismisses MMO2 reports

    'Silly Season'

    BT has distanced itself from weekend reports that it is planning to buy back MMO2 - the mobile business it spun off less than two years ago. According to reports, investment banks have sidled up to BT suggesting that the telco borrows a stack of cash to buy back the mobile operator. The story, though, has been dismissed as …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2003, 10:59

  • Sneaky virus poses as email from sysadmin

    Mimail: social engineering tricks part 14

    One of the sneakiest viruses to date began spreading rapidly across the Internet this weekend. Mimail, which poses as an email from a potential victim's own sysadmin or ISP, suggests that a user's email account is about to expire. Potential victims are urged to open an attachment message.zip, containing a copy of the virus. …

    Malware 4 Aug 2003, 11:09

  • Orange slams Three's ‘bad PR’ for 3G

    Suffering network and handset problems, allegedly

    Orange has accused Three and its parent company, Hutchison, of bringing 3G technology into disrepute. In an interview with Scotland on Sunday newspaper yesterday, Orange's UK finance director, Mike Newnham, claimed that Three customers were having to return their videophone handsets to the company's shops because the hardware …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2003, 11:33

  • Notebook chips driving CPU biz recovery

    AMD, Intel do the market share shuffle

    The microprocessor market appears to be picking up on the back of increasing demand for mobile products, according to the latest figures from market watcher Mercury Research. Mercury's numbers show a slight decline in processor shipments during Q2. But while the total was down, the number of mobile chips in the mix was up to …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 12:03

  • ebookers looks to India for cost savings

    In for the longhaul

    ebookers blamed Iraq and SARS for falling demand in longhaul flights. But the UK's biggest online travel firm expects a bounce-back in the winter, on the basis of good forward bookings. Pre-tax "adjusted" losses (i.e. with out interest, depreciation etc.) for the three months to June end were £0.9m, half that of last year. …

    Business 4 Aug 2003, 12:03

  • Rombyte fined £16K for flogging fake DRAM

    False Memory Syndrome

    Newbury memory distributor Rombyte has been fined £16,000 for selling counterfeit memory. At a hearing at Reading Crown Court last Friday (August 1), judge Mr Recorder Moylam also ordered Rombyte to pay costs. Rombyte directors Andrew Jones, Jazz Dhillon and Patrick John Shaw Rombyte pleaded guilty to eight counts of supplying …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 12:07

  • CPU sales rose 8.2% during Q2

    Good annual, poor sequential gains

    Worldwide chips sales continue to show almost negligible growth in June, with sales rising from $12.49 billion to $12.54 billion, an increase of less than half a percentage point. So reveals the Semiconductor Industry Association's latest monthly numbers. For the quarter as a whole, global chip sales totalled $37.6 billion, up …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 12:20

  • Outsourcing firm hires chimps

    Pay peanuts get monkeys

    Did you know that Visual Basic 6.O is the preferred programming language of chimpanzees? No, what about "recent research in primate programming suggests computing is a task that most higher primates can easily perform"? Us neither. Primate Programming Inc, of Des Moines, Iowa has leveraged this innate talent to teach …

    Bootnotes 4 Aug 2003, 12:42

  • Dell knocks IBM off number three cluster rung

    In less than a week, too

    IBM's Opteron-based supercomputing cluster, announced last week, has already been knocked out of third place in the world supercomputer chart, by another cluster that hasn't been installed yet. Dell today issued a future tense press release detailing its selection as the provider of a 1280-server cluster for the National Center …

    Servers 4 Aug 2003, 12:54

  • Novell buys Ximian

    Linux push

    Novell is beefing up its Linux play with the cash acquisition of Ximian. The company has confirmed that it will continue to support Ximian-sponsored Mono and GNOME open source projects. Mono, Spanish for Monkey, is, we guess, the more visionary, of the two. This will enable Linux developers to create and deploy .NET apps on …

    Software 4 Aug 2003, 13:32

  • Betting on Malware

    Predicting viruses and worms

    DARPA's plan to create a futures market for terrorist activities is dead, but the concept is a natural for predicting viruses and worms, says SecurityFocus columnist George Smith. The fun folks at DARPA were at it again last week, cooking up projects at the nexus of security and the war and terror that somehow manage to offend …

    Malware 4 Aug 2003, 14:00

  • Nvidia buys PDA, phone graphics chip maker

    MediaQ snapped up for $70m

    Nvidia today said it will buy MediaQ, a developer of graphics and other ancillary chips for wireless PDAs and cellphones, for $70 million in cash and stock, mostly the former. Interestingly, the announcement follows a number of suggestions posted on web sites that Nvidia is developing a PDA-oriented chip, possibly codenamed the …

    Channel 4 Aug 2003, 14:43

  • Smart cards, ID cards, nice, nasty, inevitable?

    All of the above, but what should we be doing about them?

    ID cards come in two quite distinct flavours - the nasty one, where they use the cards to police you, and the nice one, which you use to establish and protect your rights and identity. Simple? Actually, I lie when I say they're distinct flavours; in reality nice isn't absolutely nice, the two bleed most horribly into one another …

    Music and Media 4 Aug 2003, 14:55

  • AOL junks Monster.com

    Cosies up to CareerBuilder.com

    AOL is ditching Monster.com as its job board supplier. The new incumbent, CareerBuilder.com, is paying up to $115m over four years with a mixture of guaranteed and performance-related payments. CareerBuilder's tenure on AOL's online properties starts in December 2003. The company is a subsidiary of three big US newspaper groups …

    Music and Media 4 Aug 2003, 16:13

  • Sun speeds V480

    Dell under attack

    Sun Microsystems has added faster chips to one of its most popular servers, opening a door to take a shot at bitter rival Dell. Sun has started shipping its four processor V480 system with 1.05GHz UltraSPARC III chips. The new chips - a boost over 900MHz UltraSPARC IIIs - have the V480 running 22 percent faster. This was just …

    Servers 4 Aug 2003, 18:01

  • Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's a Windows Trojan

    Say hello to Autorooter

    While one of the sneakiest viruses to date began spreading rapidly across the Internet at the weekend, antivirus software vendor Panda Software detected a Trojan that exploits, you guessed it, another Windows vulnerability. Its actions leave affected computers at the mercy of hackers, the company warns. The Trojan Autorooter ( …

    Malware 4 Aug 2003, 19:17

  • Linux developers ignoring SCO

    So says Evans Data

    New research indicates that SCO's legal threat against Linux may go down as the "shot ignored around the world." Evans Data polled more than 400 software developers and found that 70 percent of them are not too concerned about SCO's IP assault. The developers largely agreed that SCO's actions will have little bearing on whether …

    Software 4 Aug 2003, 19:21

  • US court okays malware in hunt for Web paedos

    Close to the line

    A US appeals court last week gave tacit approval to the use of Trojan horse viruses as a tool in investigating crimes on the Net. The federal appeals panel ruling stems from a case in which a hacker "uploaded a file to a child porn newsgroup that made it possible to track who downloaded files from the service", News.com reports …

    Security 4 Aug 2003, 19:23

  • Red Hat takes the fight to SCO

    Linux "unjustly threatened"

    Red Hat has filed a complaint against SCO, hoping to protect Linux's good name. Red Hat is asking for a judge to confirm that the company has not violated SCO's IP. In addition, Red Hat wants to hold SCO accountable for using "unfair and deceptive actions" in its crusade against the Linux community. "We filed this complaint to …

    Hardware 4 Aug 2003, 21:14