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23rd January 2004 Archive

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  • Hollywood drops DVD lawsuit

    Decryption code is not a trade secret anymore - Official

    Hollywood has abandoned its attempt to stifle publication of DVD decryption code, by dropping its lawsuit against a Californian publisher. The DVD CCA (Copy Control Association) filed a trade secrets lawsuit against Andrew Bunner (and others) for disclosing details of the DeCSS, which circumvents the CSS encryption scheme used …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 2004, 02:32

  • Google debuts Friendster-clone Orkut

    Exclusive Will you be my friend?

    Google will shortly unveil its social networking site, Orkut. The Friendster clone is the work of Google employee and former Stanford graduate Orkut Buyukkokten. Undetered by the feeding frenzy around the social networking bubble, and rebuffed by Friendster Inc, which it attempted to buy, Google has decided to build one better …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 2004, 02:33

  • DNS Rootservers go international

    Anycast anywhere

    For the first time in Internet history there are more DNS rootservers outside the United States than within, following this week's launch in Frankfurt of an anycast "instance" of RIPE NCC-managed K root server. The K-root DNS server is one of the 13 official DNS rootservers which answer lookups for domain names all over the …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 2004, 10:19

  • Intel's Dothan successor to consume 45W at 65nm – report

    What OEMs are designing for, apparently

    Intel will follow its recently delayed 'Dothan' mobile microprocessor with 'Jonah' late next year, Japan's PC Watch claims, speculating that the part may even be one of Chipzilla's first 65nm products. The latter claim is based on indications from the paper's sources that Jonah's likely to appear late in 2005 and will come in …

    Channel 23 Jan 2004, 10:27

  • Bradford IT strike on hold

    Time to talk

    Strike action among Bradford's IT staff has been put back a month while union officials continue negotiations over the council's plans to privatise its IT department. Earlier this week 100 members of UNISON voted overwhelmingly to strike at the end of the month. They're concerned that any move to bring in private finance to run …

    Business 23 Jan 2004, 10:50

  • Microsoft posts $10 billion quarter

    Profits down

    Microsoft posted its first ever $10 billion quarter, although profits were down. "Home and Entertainment" more than doubled to $1.26 billion; Microsoft says the Xbox live service now has 750,000 users "Information Worker" revenue grew 27 per cent, helped by the release of Office 2003, to $2.89 billion in the quarter. Client …

    Business 23 Jan 2004, 10:50

  • Siemens' phone biz profits, sales jump

    Double-digit growth

    Siemens' mobile phone business sold 26.7 per cent more handsets year on year during the group's most recently completed fiscal quarter, Q1 2004, the company said yesterday. The group's Information and Communication Mobile (ICM) division shipped 15.2 million handsets in the three months to 31 December, up from ten million in Q1 …

    Mobile 23 Jan 2004, 10:55

  • SSL to be one of 2004’s bright spots

    Mobile workers fuel demand

    Adoption of virtual private networks (VPNs) based on the browser-based SSL technology is shaping up to be one of the key trends of 2004, especially as enterprises mobilize their workforces. SSL allows for secure access to corporate networks from virtually any browser and so provides flexibility for roaming workers with laptops …

    Security 23 Jan 2004, 11:02

  • EU anti-spam laws are OK

    'Spam is the last refuge of the lazy marketer'

    It's just over a month since new anti-spam legislation was introduced into the UK with almost universal condemnation that the new laws would have a limited effect in the fight against junk email. The £5,000 fine for offenders has been branded by some experts as an "inadequate deterrent". And even those who've welcomed the new …

    Security 23 Jan 2004, 11:03

  • Grid and Web Services to converge

    Speccing out

    The two big computing ideas of the twenty first century grid computing and web services were brought closer together by an announcement this week at GlobusWorld the grid conference run by Globus Alliance, writes Bloor Research analyst Peter Abrahams. The Globus Alliance is a research and development project focused on enabling …

    Hardware 23 Jan 2004, 11:42

  • All Internet voting is insecure: report

    "Serious and unacceptable risk" for election fraud

    Online voting is fundamentally insecure due to the architecture of the Internet, according to leading cyber-security experts. Using a voting system based upon the Internet poses a "serious and unacceptable risk" for election fraud and is not secure enough for something as serious as the election of government officials, …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 2004, 11:42

  • 406mph Peugeot pushes back envelope of credulity

    Letters Readers muse on speed camera madness

    The speed camera issue is certainly emotive, if the response to our article this week on Peter O'Flynn and his amazing 406mph Peugeot is anything to go by. Many of the emails we received chronicled scandalous miscarriages of justice such as the chap clocked at 83mph while pedalling a bicycle down the A12. Obviously a technical …

    Bootnotes 23 Jan 2004, 11:47

  • Outsourcing Back-up

    Tape out

    I recently visited an outsourcing company in the Boston area that provides a back-up and disaster recovery service, writes Bloor Research analyst Robin Bloor. The company was Live Vault, although you're unlikely to hear the name directly as they sell through the channel. There were two interesting points that the company had to …

    Storage 23 Jan 2004, 11:49

  • IBM targets 2m customers with expiring NT support

    Linux play

    IBM’s big push at Linux World is to announce new programs to help customers dump Window NT and move straight to Linux. IBM’s logic is that by the end of 2004, Microsoft will discontinue support for the Windows NT operating system and discontinue the availability of security patches, which will require up to two million customers …

    Hardware 23 Jan 2004, 12:08

  • Blaster clean-up tool was stellar success – MS

    1.4m pox-ridden PCs fixed within hours

    Microsoft's recently released Blaster clean-up tool was downloaded 1.4 million times during the first few hours of its availability earlier this month. The strong need for the tool makes a case for greater automation of viral removal, according to Microsoft. The tool, which disinfects machines infected with either the Blaster …

    Malware 23 Jan 2004, 13:01

  • £9m buys North East broadband

    PM sees exchange wired for ADSL - lucky chap

    More than £9 million is being pumped into the North East of England to wire up all the exchanges for broadband. BT will use its own dosh to fund the conversion of 24 exchanges to ADSL as part of its successful pre-registration scheme. A further 87 exchanges will be wired up to broadband using £4.7 million from the local …

    Telecoms 23 Jan 2004, 13:03

  • Small firms to cash in on software bargain bonanza

    Time for David to haggle with Goliath

    Smart small and medium-sized businesses can nab themselves some serious software bargains this year if they negotiate hard with vendors currently bending over backwards to break into the SME market. Research unveiled today by META Group advises small firms that the time is ripe to nail vendors of enterprise resource planning ( …

    Small Biz 23 Jan 2004, 13:36

  • Dell server inferno hell

    Smoking PowerEdge? Don't panic

    If you're the proud owner of a Dell PowerEdge 1650 server and have noticed it has just shut down in a puff of smoke, then rest assured that help is at hand. Dell is well aware of the inflammatory tendencies of its rack-mounted server, apparently provoked by an overheating inductor. Speaking for Dell, Bruce Andersen has assured …

    Servers 23 Jan 2004, 13:50

  • The Apple Mac is 20

    From icon to iPod

    Will Apple introduce a 20th Anniversary Macintosh* on Monday, two days after the platform's 20th birthday? Suggestions from some quarters suggest it might well do so, and it's hard to imagine the company not wanting to commemorate this significant milestone. Today's Macs are arguably very different from the one Steve Jobs …

    Mac Channel 23 Jan 2004, 14:14

  • David Brent stars in MS training vids

    The MS Office

    TV boss from hell David Brent lives on in a set of two training videos made for Microsoft UK. Comedian Ricky Gervais, star of hit sitcom The Office, recorded the videos at Microsoft's Reading campus last month. Posters inviting staff to enter competitions to appear alongside Brent in the training videos - titled I'm Back, and …

    Bootnotes 23 Jan 2004, 16:06

  • BT's dial-up service dogged by network probs

    Coupla thousand people affected

    BT's dial-up service is being bugged by an intermittent network problem that is causing frustration for a couple of thousand punters. A number of readers have complained that they've experienced email problems and difficulty accessing certain sites. One reader told us how he'd been experiencing problems for the last week or so …

    Telecoms 23 Jan 2004, 16:08

  • Better security means lower TCO for Win 2003 – MS

    Patching pain relief

    Windows NT and 2000 customers should move to Win 2003 as soon as possible to take advantage of lower support costs, according to Microsoft. Stuart Okin, Chief Security Officer at Microsoft UK, said that the cost of supporting earlier Microsoft platforms has gone up because of the expense in applying security updates. But if …

    Hardware 23 Jan 2004, 16:13

  • Gates to meet Brown, OGC and NHS chiefs – Sun, OSS in crosshairs?

    Under no circumstances lose against Linux, Bill...

    Bill Gates will be making one of his bigger sales calls on Monday morning. He's over in the UK for Chancellor Gordon Brown's entrepreneurs' summit, and will also be speaking at a Microsoft Longhorn developer conference later in the day. But squeezed in between we'll have a meeting with Gordon Brown himself, Peter Gershon of the …

    Software 23 Jan 2004, 18:05

  • Analyst sees St. Fister in Itanium wafer

    Wickedness be gone!

    Does anyone have a direct line to the Pope? We've witnessed another Itanic miracle and think it's time Intel's server processor chief Mike Fister begin his walk toward sainthood. Joe Clabby, of analyst firm Clabby Analytics, is the third man to undergo the miraculous transition from Itanium basher to EPIC worshipper. In a …

    Servers 23 Jan 2004, 18:41

  • Kyocera recalls exploding PalmOS phone battery

    Burn rate

    Kyocera has issued a recall today for 140,000 batteries used in its 7135 PalmOS smartphone after a customer received "a minor burn injury". "The recalled batteries can short-circuit and erupt with force or emit excessive heat, posing a burn hazard to consumers," the company says in a statement. Owners should stop using the …

    Mobile 23 Jan 2004, 20:30