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20th January 2004 Archive

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  • Microsoft gets green light to punish OS-less PC vendors

    Seattlement Review

    The Microsoft antitrust settlement - dubbed a "Seattlement" by one reader because of the generous terms - is to be reviewed by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, this week. But lawyers at the Department of Justice and the settled States have already been indicated that they're not altogether happy with Microsoft's compliance to the …

    Software 20 Jan 2004, 00:18

  • Software brownouts turn SAN users blue

    Networking away uptime

    Somewhere in the vendors' sales pitches for a storage area network the phrase "application brownout" went missing. An exhaustive search through material from EMC, HP, IBM and whomever else shows an incredible list of adjectives used to describe a SAN - ease of deployment, scale, high uptime and performance gains top the list. …

    Storage 20 Jan 2004, 01:14

  • You got Google mail – report

    "Dear Sergey. Thank you for the email. Now can you fix your search engine...?"

    Advertising broker Google, best known for its search engine, is to launch an email service according to a Reuters report. The point of the exercise is to create a new virtual billboard for its lucrative keyword-based advertising service. Google declined to confirm the story but a spokesman pointed out that Google already …

    Music and Media 20 Jan 2004, 06:29

  • IBM to outsource thousands of euphemisms

    Don't say the O-word

    IBM has warned staff not to use the word "off-shore" when it starts to move white collar jobs from the US to China, India and Brazil this year, the Wall Street Journal reports today. "Do not be transparent regarding the purpose/intent" of the moves, IBM advises, and "on-shore" and "off-shore" should never be used. Gartner has …

    Business 20 Jan 2004, 06:31

  • Husband and wife VIA chiefs deny software theft charge

    Industrial espionage case opens

    VIA president Wenchi Chen and his wife, company chairwoman Cher Wang, denied industrial espionage charges in the Taipei District Court, yesterday. The pair are accused of sending VIA employee Jeremy Chang to work at D-Link in order to acquire test simulation software, Associated Press reported last night. Chang also denies …

    Channel 20 Jan 2004, 09:59

  • Judge stops short of saying it’s OK for DVRs to skip commercials

    Oi, you! Watch that ad now!

    It was not enough that ReplayTV stopped making DVRs that can skip commercials or send programs across the internet, but content companies were considering taking legal action against owners of the devices which were sold before these facilities were dropped in June. Actions against ReplayTV’s previous owners, Sonicblue, have …

    Personal 20 Jan 2004, 10:03

  • US Internet homes aware of VoIP and want it now

    Don't we all, love, don't we all

    A new survey from Parks Associates, out this week, shows that US internet households have a firm grasp of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and they want it now. The survey conducted for Residential Voice-over-IP: Analysis & Forecasts sampled 3,300 US households on VoIP services. Half of all those households that already …

    Data Networking 20 Jan 2004, 10:03

  • Small firms to get ‘better protection’ with new patents bill

    Arbitration option

    Small businesses should soon be provided with better protection for their ideas under a new Patents Bill, the government has announced. Ministers said the Bill will give small firms greater ability to enforce patent rights and will boost innovation. The new Bill will: Enable the Patents Office to provide an independent non- …

    Small Biz 20 Jan 2004, 10:04

  • The Giant Wooden Horse Did It!

    Not me, guv

    Introducing a new legal defense to computer crime charges - one that's all the more frightening because it could be true, says SecurityFocus columnist Mark Rasch. According to Greek mythology, the seer Laocoon, a priest of Apollo, warned the residents of Troy against accepting into their city the giant wooden horse designed by …

    Anti-Virus 20 Jan 2004, 10:19

  • Airships to deliver broadband to rural areas

    High Altitude Platforms

    A new international €5.6m project aims to make Broadband internet available to remote rural areas and even moving trains by using airships, the University of York (UK) announced yesterday. Scientists will build High Altitude Platforms (HAPs): airships or solar-powered aircraft, which are permanently located in the skies at an …

    Telecoms 20 Jan 2004, 11:05

  • UK etail Xmas sales top £2.5bn

    It's been a cool Yule apparently

    Online sales during the busy Christmas period topped a festive £2.5 billion as shoppers shunned the high street in favour of the convenience of etailers. In all, online shopping accounted for 7 per cent of all UK retail spending during November and December with experts predicting that the trend towards Internet shopping is set …

    Small Biz 20 Jan 2004, 11:06

  • Red Hat intros software warranty

    Counter SCO measure

    Red Hat is to offer software warranties for enterprise users of Red Hat Linux, the company said yesterday. Not only does the Open Source Assurance Program make Red Hat a proper grown-up enterprise software company, but it also offers customers a measure of vendor-indemnification against legal action on copyright infringement …

    Hardware 20 Jan 2004, 11:34

  • Nigerian 419ers run dry

    Bag of tricks empty?

    There are clear signs that easy life has turned tough on Nigeria's con men and that 419 scammers – after the Nigerian Penal code fraud section - are struggling to make money. Some reports out of Africa seem to confirm that the bogus appeals are falling on stony ground. There's too much publicity about 419 these days. People are …

    Music and Media 20 Jan 2004, 11:41

  • Intel reschedules P4 price cuts to 1 February

    Day before Prescott launch

    Intel has brought planned price cuts across its Pentium 4 processor line forward two weeks to 1 February, Far Eastern PC company sources have claimed. So suggests a DigiTimes report, which says that the chip giant will drop the prices of its 2.8GHz P4s - one with HyperThreading support, the other without - to $178 and $163, …

    Channel 20 Jan 2004, 12:04

  • Data on 10m Northwest fliers handed to NASA for ‘testing’

    And brainscans planned to nail shifty thinkers

    Documents obtained by EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) under the US Freedom of Information Act reveal that a second US airline, Northwest, handed over passenger data to the feds without the passengers' knowledge. The agency in question, NASA, was given data covering a three month period covering passengers travelling …

    Music and Media 20 Jan 2004, 12:52

  • Taiwan hit by sudden outbreak of rebranding madness

    LogoWatch Strategy Boutiques strike to deadly effect

    In June last year we reported of a particularly nasty outbreak of whalesong-driven rebranding madness in Spain and France. This highly-infectious disease - symptomised by dynamic power brunches where the words "thrust" and "synergy" hang in the joss-stick fuelled smog like corporate mantras - appeared to have been contained …

    Bootnotes 20 Jan 2004, 13:30

  • Morse customers start spending again

    Upbeat Q2 statement

    Morse customers in the financial sector are at last flashing the cash again, returning to Europe's biggest Sun reseller for big infrastructure deals in its Q2. This is good for morale and profits: however, the revenue mix is such that Morse margins are down - there's less profit to be had in hardware prices than in services. …

    Channel 20 Jan 2004, 13:55

  • Coke's music download site falls flat

    Gremlins in the mix

    Coca-Cola's mycokemusic.com music download site should have gone live yesterday but was offline most of the day. It is still inaccessible at the time of writing. A notice on the site says mycokemusic.com is "currently being updated" and promises its availability by 16:00 today. Coca Cola blames the failure on "minor technical …

    Music and Media 20 Jan 2004, 14:01

  • Kodak to drop 35mm cameras in Europe, US

    Everyone buying digital or disposables

    If you want evidence that digital photography is on the verge of supplanting film, look no further than Kodak. The world's largest photography specialist will this year phase out the sale of its 35mm film cameras in North America and Western Europe. The move will also cover Advanced Photo System (APS) cameras, which it will …

    Personal 20 Jan 2004, 14:21

  • Disabled users struggle to access FTSE 100 sites

    Damning report

    Nine in ten of the UK's top companies are failing to make their Web sites accessible to people with disabilities. A study by Web accessibility consultancy Nomensa found that many FTSE 100 companies simply fail to consider matters of accessibility when creating their corporate Web sites. It found that almost 90 per cent of …

    Music and Media 20 Jan 2004, 15:45

  • Thousands of Sun Opteron boxes spotted in the wild

    Rare ontime arrival

    Sun Microsystems has been notoriously late bringing hardware to market, but if an industry analyst is to be believed, its new line of Opteron servers will arrive right on time. Sun shipped more than 5,000 Opteron servers last quarter, according to Mark Stahlman at American Technology Research. The Opteron sales are of …

    Servers 20 Jan 2004, 16:56

  • SCO sues Novell – retaliation expected

    Putting on the writs

    The SCO Group has sued Novell, claiming the born-again Linux company is interfering with SCO's right to collect money from Linux users. The 'Slander of Title' suit - which is invoked when ownership of a contested property has not yet been established by the courts - seeks to block Novell from filing further UNIX™ copyrights …

    Software 20 Jan 2004, 21:55

  • OSDL creates client Linux spec

    Talking shop

    The nonprofit vendor consortium OSDL, or the Open Source Development Labs, is to create a set of specifications for commercial client Linux by mid-year. OSDL already has specifications for Carrier Grade Linux aimed at the telco market - version 2.0 of which was released in November - and a Data Center Linux. OSDL says it isn't …

    Software 20 Jan 2004, 23:12

  • AMD pumps out a profit in Q4

    Athlon and flash up

    It took awhile, but AMD is back in the black thanks to a strong fourth quarter. AMD reported sales of $1.21 billion and net net income of $43 million for the quarter ended December 28. These fourth quarter figures blow past the $686 million in revenue and $855 million net loss posted in the same period a year ago. The fourth …

    Channel 20 Jan 2004, 23:49