9th September 2003 Archive

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PWLAN: hotspots finally heating up

Customers! We got customers!

The number of PWLAN 'hotspots' in the world is set to quadruple within the next three years. Asia Pacific is currently the leading region in terms of PWLAN locations, but North America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) are ready to catch up and surpass it in terms of overall numbers. Factors such as lowering prices …

Wireless 9 Sep 2003, 07:42
AMD unwraps faster Opteron 100, 800 CPUs

Just ahead of Opteron 200 series speed up

AMD rolled out two new Opteron processors, one each for its 100 and 800 series of chips. Both the Opteron 146 and 846 had been widely anticipated. The former is aimed at single-processor systems, the 846 for four- and eight-way machines. Both are clocked at 2GHz, like the Opteron 246 release a month or so back. The Opteron 200 …

Channel 9 Sep 2003, 07:53
IBM boffins boost chip performance by 65%

New techniques improve old processes

IBM scientists today claimed they have merged two key manufacturing techniques - strained silicon and silicon-on-insulator (SOI)- allowing them to create chips that deliver the performance improvements provided by the former without the implementation headaches the technology has so far caused. The company also said it had …

Channel 9 Sep 2003, 09:02
SiS details Pentium M support

We got a licence and we're going to use it

Having yesterday announced that it has licensed Intel's Pentium M, chipset maker SiS today unveiled a pair of products that will support the mobile microprocessor. The SiS648MX and SiS661MX are discrete and integrated parts, respectively. Both work with the company's SiS162 802.11b chipset. The 648MX provides a 400MHz …

Channel 9 Sep 2003, 09:08
What do we want? System Developers! When do we want them? Now!

Contractors in demand

System developers are the most sought after IT contractors in the UK, according to somewhat dated stats from the CWJobs UK Quarterly IT Skills Index. There were more than 3,000 vacancies advertised for system developer contractors in both Q1 and Q2 of this year - accounting for one in four of the total number of contract …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 09:56
80 per cent of UK homes can now get ADSL

BT 'committed'

Eight in ten homes in the UK can now get ADSL broadband, according to telecoms giant BT. Once lambasted for being broadband laggard, BT claims that the increase in ADSL reach has come two years ahead of schedule. BT says it is now "committed" to bring ADSL broadband nine out of ten homes in the UK. Speaking at the World …

Telecoms 9 Sep 2003, 09:58
NY Times hacker set to surrender

FreeLamo.com

Hacker Adrian Lamo has agreed to walk into a federal courthouse in Sacramento, California, Tuesday morning and turn himself in to law enforcement officials, Lamo and his attorney said Monday. In exchange, the government will release him on bail within hours, and allow him to transport himself to New York to face charges …

Security 9 Sep 2003, 11:45
Scary WiFi TV launch by Sharp – spectrum congestion looms?

Bandwidth of Brothers

At first thought, you might ask yourself what's so clever about "wireless TV"? - hasn't TV been broadcast for decades? Yes - but this one is a WiFi wireless TV, from Sharp... and you can bet it will swamp the channels. The new product is just an LCD 15-inch screen, with a WiFi radio in it. It uses standard 802.11b LAN …

Personal 9 Sep 2003, 11:46
Nokia pumps up the handset volumes

But dollar is a drag

Nokia today reported strong shipments of mobile phones, with sales volumes up more than 10 per cent year-on-year, in its mid-quarter update for Q3. But dollar depreciation means the company will pull in slightly lower revenues from its mobile phones division than the same quarter last year. As for profits, Nokia says that EPS …

Business 9 Sep 2003, 12:00
Outsourcing: does it reward theft?

Opinion Turning a blind eye

Simon Galbraith is co-founder and marketing director for Red Gate Software, a supplier of tools for software developers and testers. As I was walking down the street last week I saw a young man loitering around a rich-looking tourist couple sitting down at a café enjoying a coffee - coats on the back of their chairs. There was …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 13:28
Virgin.net in charitable broadband giveaway

Nimble marketing

Virgin.net is prepared to go that little bit further to secure punters for its broadband service. Earlier this summer the ISP - a JV between the Virgin Group and cableco NTL - teamed up with local campaigners in Eccleston, Lancashire, who were working towards getting their exchanges upgraded to ADSL as part of BT Wholesale's …

Telecoms 9 Sep 2003, 13:33
Bill Joy leaves Sun

Edison turns off the lights

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems chief scientist and co-founder, is leaving the company, moving on to "different challenges". No, he's not saying yet what those different challenges are. Greg Papadopoulos, CTO, will take over Joy's responsibilities. Sun wheeled out another co-founder, Scott McNealy, for the valedictory press release …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 14:35
UK Gov's response to child abuse – unique IDs for all

Enter, the Department of Toyland Security...

The British Government yesterday announced that it would be issuing unique ID numbers for all the country's children, and that local databases of all children would be set up in order to facilitate information sharing between child- (and not so child-) related agencies. The objective, depending on which Government songsheet you …

Music and Media 9 Sep 2003, 14:38
The RIAA sees the face of evil, and it's a 12-year-old girl

Brianna busted

The RIAA has nailed one of the most prolific file-traders in the U.S., filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara. When not at the playground with her friends, "Biggie Brianna" is trading music files from her home in New York. The little girl received one of the 261 lawsuits filed by the RIAA (Recording Industry …

Music and Media 9 Sep 2003, 14:43
A different kind of Mono culture

Back of the .NET

Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Web services platform, can dramatically improve developer productivity, according to the leading light of the project. Miguel de Icaza, CTO and co-founder of open source firm Ximian, which was acquired by Novell last month, took centre stage at the company's BrainShare …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 14:53
Micro Warehouse flogs North American ops

Bargain basement

Micro Warehouse, the mail order reseller, is selling its North American business to CDW for $22m. This is a knockdown price. Micro Warehouse's US customer base generates annual sales of more than $900m, while Canada brings another $40m, and inventory is valued at about $14m, according to CDW, which will become a $5bn t/o …

Channel 9 Sep 2003, 15:12
Websites that crash

Like being booted out of a restaurant before finishing your meal

Nine out of ten people have been forced to abandon an online transaction because the application failed before completion. As a result more than half of those dumped midway through their transaction either had to waste more time contacting the company concerned - or have given up and gone to a rival firm. According to network …

Small Biz 9 Sep 2003, 15:37
MS' Linux obsession – time to call in the shrinks

If you need to keep proving yourself, people wonder about the size of your...

This week's 'Windows is cheaper than Linux' story comes to us courtesy of Giga Research, which with the aid of Microsoft funding has produced a study indicating that it is cheaper to create a portal using Windows and Microsoft development tools than using Linux and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) tools. The study is apparently …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 16:21
Fireworks cancelled: Be, Microsoft settle

$23 million buries lawsuit

The settlement between Microsoft and Be on Friday has deprived the public of some spectacular allegations. A month after its liquidation auction, held on a chilly January day last year, Be filed suit, alleging anti-competitive behavior by Microsoft. The settlement pays Be $23.5 million, most of which will find its way to …

Software 9 Sep 2003, 21:04
BT OKs commercial SDSL roll-out

SMEs targeted

BT Wholesale has given the green light for the commercial roll-out of its SDSL broadband product. Ten ISPs took part in trials for the SDSL service, which began at some 20 exchanges in London last year. Since then around 100 exchanges have been enabled for SDSL (a symmetric DSL product that offers the same rate upstream as …

Telecoms 9 Sep 2003, 21:06