13th January 2004 Archive

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RIAA adopts paramilitary garb for parking lot bust

"Freeeeeeeeeze!"

With one eye on their role in a future crimebusting cop show [*], RIAA employees donned paramilitary kit as they swooped on a Hispanic parking lot attendant in Los Angeles before Christmas. Faced with ex-cops wearing raid vests with "RIAA" emblazoned on the back, 55 year old Ceasar Borrayo handed over 78 CDs and DVDs of dubious …

Bootnotes 13 Jan 2004, 02:51
50 Cent and Crow torpedo HP's RIAA love-in

Mute witnesses

Did artists 50 Cent and Sheryl Crow know what they were getting into last week, when they played a mute but starring role at Hewlett Packard's keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? If they did, then they've reversed their publicly held positions supporting changes in online music distribution. Both artists were …

Bootnotes 13 Jan 2004, 03:17
Novell indemnifies Linux customers

SuSE buy completed

Novell is to indemnify enterprise customers of SUSE Linux against legal action undertaken on IP grounds by "third parties" - i.e. SCO. Which is nice, as the company only yesterday completed the purchase of SUSE, and so it has a helluva lot more accounts which could be affected by SCO's Linux jihad. Ts&Cs are here. Novell is …

Hardware 13 Jan 2004, 09:59
Sun insures software model with Blue Cross win

One step at a time

Sun Microsystems has found life for its Java Enterprise System (JES) software at a large health insurance company, giving a boost to one of the most aggressive and risky pricing strategies in the software industry. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) is exactly the type of company Sun hoped to woo with the JES …

Hardware 13 Jan 2004, 09:59
Locking your door in 2004

Opinion Teach your users to think as you do

I've never been a big believer in "New Year's Resolutions." I figure if you're going to resolve to do something (or not do something) waiting for a new year to is really just an excuse to procrastinate, writes SecurityFocus columnist Tim Mullen. But when I look back over the last year and consider some of the security issues we …

Security 13 Jan 2004, 10:22
Rural areas wooed by wireless broadband outfit

C'mon, you know you want it

Yorkshire-based, ehotspot, has cut to 15 the number of punters needed for it to install its wireless broadband service. Designed for those areas where demand for broadband isn't sufficient enough for BT to invest in converting the local exchange to ADSL, the service is already being adopted by rural communities. Punters …

Telecoms 13 Jan 2004, 10:45
Sp@m: the myst.eries xp1ained!!! By Stob

Stob How the stripes get in the toothpaste

(Previously: Verity Stob has travelled deep into Essex to meet Sam ‘The Spam’ Osborne, England’s first spamillionaire.) Inside the house, I expected a typical wealthy Essex businessman’s abode: crossed sawn-offs over a granite mantel, 300 inch widescreen TVs in every tennis court, more fake marble than you could shake a …

Bootnotes 13 Jan 2004, 11:02
Judge rules Lindows MS settlement claims invalid

But you can keep the software and claim again

Lindows.com's attempt to submit claims under the California-Microsoft settlement procedure has been rejected by the judge, but people who submitted claims via the msfreepc.com site have still had a reasonable deal. They can keep any software they got from Lindows.com, and the judge has instructed the claims administrator to send …

Software 13 Jan 2004, 14:22
MS joins in German chain's RFID Future Store project

All your tags in one basket

The German supermarket responsible for the Future Store Initiative is to roll out RFID tagging across the entire process chain, starting with 100 suppliers, ten central warehouses and approximately 250 stores. Metro Group's Initiative is supported by around 40 companies, including IBM, Intel and SAP, and in what we can can only …

Music and Media 13 Jan 2004, 15:26
Yahoo! IM! in! flaw! flap!

Its buffer floweth over

Older versions of Yahoo! Messenger are subject to a security flaw that could allow crackers to run hostile code on vulnerable systems, according to security researchers. The vulnerability stems from a buffer overflow bug in versions of Yahoo! Messenger earlier than 5.6.0.1351. The latest version (5.6.0.1358) of Yahoo! Messenger …

Security 13 Jan 2004, 16:50
VeriSign snags RFID tag deal

All your consumer goods are belong to us

VeriSign has snagged the tag contract, to manage a key component of a Net trading systems for consumer products identified by radio-frequency identification tags. Standards organization EPCglobal has asked VeriSign to manage the root directory for its EPCglobal trading network. The EPCglobal network will use Radio Frequency …

Music and Media 13 Jan 2004, 16:52
Orange punts mobile walkie talkie service

Talk Now

Orange today became the first major European operator to launch a walkie talkie-style service on mobile phones. The service, dubbed Talk Now, is similar to existing US Push-To-Talk services from the likes of Nextel but with refinements designed to make the service more attractive to European customers. Talk Now will offer …

Mobile 13 Jan 2004, 16:54
Store staff gemüsed by potato PC guerrilla

Smash the system...

A man has been arrested in Germany for allegedly stuffing two computers full of potatoes. The man returned a PC he'd just bought to shop in a Kaiserslautern, complaining that it didn't work. When staff opened up the machine they were astonished to find that it was packed full of spuds. The retailer duly replaced the machine …

Music and Media 13 Jan 2004, 17:02
StorageTek runs higher on revenue boost

Flying tape

Shares of StorageTek surged higher on Tuesday after the company raised its revenue forecasts based on strong tape sales and services. StorageTek is looking for fourth quarter revenue of more than $650 million. Analysts were expecting the company to post revenue closer to $600 million for the quarter. "We are excited about the …

Storage 13 Jan 2004, 17:15
HP users cry foul at death of the open PC

Letters Brave bean counters

re: HP declares war on sharing culture Based on early feedback, it seems that HP confused its corporate needs with customer needs when announcing its commitment to DRM last week at the CES conference. A boycott of HP's consumer products is the last thing the company's struggling PC business needs, but that is exactly what some …

Letters 13 Jan 2004, 17:44
CA faces SEC action

The Ghost of Accountancy Past

Computer Associates' past has come back to haunt it. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is to pursue a civil suit against the company over historic accountancy practices, and has issued a Wells Notice against CA, the enterprise software vendor said yesterday. The case against is unlikely to reach court: more likely CA …

Business 13 Jan 2004, 18:37
Stellent buys Optika

Continuing wave of consolidation

Stellent's acquisition of Optika will continue a wave of consolidation as enterprise content management vendors seek to offer a complete suite of products. However, this latest acquisition could make Stellent itself an attractive target for a major software company such as Oracle. Stellent, the enterprise content management …

Hardware 13 Jan 2004, 18:40
3Com plugs in its fastest LAN switch

Campus thang

3Com today unveiled its highest-performance enterprise LAN switch to date. The 3Com Switch 7700R, designed for enterprise campus network backbones, ships with Quality of Service and bandwidth management functionality designed to support to support "many thousands of users" and converged voice/video/data applications. Part of …

Data Networking 13 Jan 2004, 18:45
WLANs drive productivity growth

Let's go to work

Demand for Wireless local area network (WLAN) technology is exploding with the latest research indicating that over 80 per cent of firms currently using wireless kit will expand their deployments in the first six months of 2004. The biggest reason for these expansion plans is employee productivity improvements, according to the …

Wireless 13 Jan 2004, 18:48
Pennsylvania child porn law causes ‘massive overblocking of sites’

Unconstitutional failure, civil rights groups say

More than a million completely legal websites have been blocked by US ISPs in response to the Pennsylvanian statute against Internet Child Pornography. Now the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberty Union's Pennsylvanian Branch are hoping that District Jugde Jan E. Dubois will rule the statute …

Music and Media 13 Jan 2004, 19:01
CD sales rocket in UK

Away from bombs, subpoenas, and SWAT raids

CD sales rocketed 7.6 per cent in the United Kingdom last year, according to Music Week. 121 million CDs were sold, excluding compilations. Music industry executives in the United States have cited falling CD sales as an excuse to intimidate music lovers and curtail ordinary computer users' freedoms in their pursuit of file …

Music and Media 13 Jan 2004, 20:32
Intel and IDC at odds over Itanium's future

It's booming! It's shrinking! Just don't say it's sinking

On the same day that Intel met with the press to discuss the bright future of its Itanium processor, analyst firm IDC cut its sales forecasts for the chip, adding to a decade long slump for Intel's great 64-bit hope. Mike Fister, server processor chief at Intel, held a "state of the union" talk about both the Itanium processor …

Servers 13 Jan 2004, 20:39
PalmSource stealth releases OS milestone

Hush hush

PalmSource has released version 6.0 of its Palm OS operating system. The new software represents the biggest leap forward in the history of the OS, finally silencing critics (not least amongst current and prospective licensees) who have bemoaned the lack of memory management and multitasking. It's been a long time coming - four …

Software 13 Jan 2004, 22:05
IBM and Topspin link Infiniband lust

Together forever or at least five years

Topspin Communications has signed up another big name for its Infiniband switches with IBM agreeing to resell the kit alongside its storage and server products. Under the terms of the deal, IBM will sell the Topspin product for five years. This includes Topspin's current gear and future 10Gbit/s and 30Gbit/s kit. Sun …

Storage 13 Jan 2004, 22:28