4th February 2004 Archive

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EC draws line in spam sand

Had enough, can't put up with any more, no, no

The EC is calling for greater international co-operation in combating spam. Speaking at this week's OECD workshop on spam in Brussels, Commissioner Erkki Liikanen said the OECD should "rapidly agree" a five-point framework to promote effective legislation against spam. This programme calls for co-operation between enforcement …

Security 4 Feb 2004, 00:01
PalmSource chief outlines twin-track OS strategy

Tablet PC a 'disaster', says CEO

Catching PalmSource CEO David Nagel at the launch of Good Technologies' Good Link 3.0, we had a burning question. "David, why are you keeping your new OS a secret?" we asked. PalmSource stealth-released the rewritten 'Version 6.0' to licensees just before Christmas, but didn't tell anyone about. The company's web page …

Mobile 4 Feb 2004, 08:43
EMC remembers to upgrade hardware line

Software only goes so far

After months of shaking up its software strategy, EMC is set to hone in on the hardware side of the house with one of the biggest product launches in recent memory. EMC next week will upgrade a wide range of kit from high-end Symmetrix systems to lower-end Clariion gear, according to a number of industry reports. A new …

Storage 4 Feb 2004, 09:27
Europe in Brief Iliad soars on Paris bourse debut

Shares in Iliad, the French ISP-cum-telco, surged 35 per cent on its debut, Friday on the Paris bours. AFP report. Investor demand was so strong that shares were at first suspended from trading. Iliad, the company behind French ISP Free, is the first Internet IPO to hit the French market since Liberty Surf in 2000, although it …

Business 4 Feb 2004, 09:42
ATI touts mobile chip's low-k technology

Mobility Radeon 9700 launched

ATI unveiled its latest mobile graphics chip, the Mobility Radeon 9700, yesterday, calling the processor the first of its kind to be fabbed using a low-k dielectric material at 130nm. The insulator was developed by ATI's fab partner, TSMC. It reduces the diffusion of current between the chip's layer interconnections. That …

Channel 4 Feb 2004, 10:21
Tiscali racks up 1m broadband users

Crossing the threshold

Pan-European ISP Tiscali has notched up one million broadband punters, the company announced yesterday. At the end of December it had 840,000 punters but with numbers growing 35,000 a week since then, the ISP has now passed what it describes as an "impressive threshold". Yesterday, another ISP with operations in a number of …

Telecoms 4 Feb 2004, 10:23
Cisco's profits drop even as sales rise

Swings and roundabouts

Cisco Systems yesterday reported a lower quarterly profit on increased sales. For the quarter ending January 24 (Q204), net sales were $5.4 billion, compared with $4.7 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 14.5 per cent. Cisco's Q204 sales were up 5.8 per cent from the $5.1 billion recorded in Q104. …

Data Networking 4 Feb 2004, 10:31
Prescott offers ‘indiscernible gains’ over Athlon XP

Intel must do better - analyst

AMD still has Intel licked on mainstream desktop processor performance, beating even Intel's newly released 90nm 'Prescott' Pentium 4. So said American Technology Research (ATR) analyst Rick Whittington in a report published this week. Now, Rick's a little pro-AMD, so we'd expect him to talk up the chimp's chips against those …

Channel 4 Feb 2004, 10:44
UMC beats Q4 forecasts

Foundry business picks up

UMC, the world's second largest chip foundry, sold NT$23.7 billion ($698 million) worth of chips during the fourth quarter of its 2003 fiscal year, 35.3 per cent more than it managed during the same period a year ago. And the foundry's quarterly revenues were up 10.1 per cent on Q3's total. UMC beat its own income expectations …

Channel 4 Feb 2004, 11:10
Wi-Fi Alliance preps WPA 2 security spec

Full 802.11i coming at last?

The Wi-Fi Alliance yesterday said it will offer a second generation of its Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security system later this year. The Wi-Fi standards body also announced that more than 175 products have been certified as compatible with the first version of WPA. Launched in mid-2003, WPA provides a rather higher level …

Wireless 4 Feb 2004, 11:45
BPI forces CD Wow to drop price surcharge claims

Undertaking to court

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has won an injunction ordering Internet retailer CD Wow to drop claims that it had been forced by the UK record industry to raise CD prices. CD Wow has given an undertaking to the court that it will not make any more such claims. The case returns to court on March 1. At a hearing …

Music and Media 4 Feb 2004, 12:29
Sewer broadband idea floated again

Scottish Water to pilot project

Scottish Water is to allow its sewers to be used to roll-out a fibre broadband network to a business park at Rosyth in Fife. At the moment, the tie-up between Fibrelink (Scotland) Ltd and Scottish Water is being plugged just as a pilot. If the trial is successful, Scottish Water could allow cable to be threaded through 24,000 …

Telecoms 4 Feb 2004, 12:33
The Register Mobile edition goes live

Tone Poem

The Register Mobile edition has gone live, following tests involving 1,600 readers. Thanks to everyone for the feedback - we'll implement many of your suggestions in coming weeks. The Register Mobile is a live service, rather than a daily download. This ensures that you’re kept up to date with the latest news as it breaks. The …

Site News 4 Feb 2004, 13:31
Swisscom to connect UK Premier Lodge hotels

140 sites

UK budget hotel chain Premier Lodge is to install WLANs in its 140 properties across the British Isles. Three sites will go live this month - Liverpool Albert Dock, Daventry and Southampton Airport - with the remaining hotels coming on stream by the end of August. Access points will provide coverage throughout each location, …

Wireless 4 Feb 2004, 14:27
Orange pushes try-before-you-buy

Helping Brits overcome 'innovation inertia'

Orange is to address the reluctance of a neophobic British public with ‘Try’, an initiative which will let Orange-users trial services for a month, free of charge. Less than 10 per cent of the UK population would go straight out and invest in a new technology, according to a new Orange survey. But the vast majority of …

Mobile 4 Feb 2004, 14:55
02 notches up 20m punters

ARPU rising

UK mobile outfit mmO2 has more than 20 million punters after signing up 855,000 new customers in the last three months of 2003. Publishing Q3 trading figures today, the former mobile division of BT reported that 430,000 of those new customers originated in the UK. Of those, 145,000 are contract users, while the rest are pay-as- …

Mobile 4 Feb 2004, 14:57
Oracle hikes Peoplesoft bid to $9.4bn

Upping the ante

Oracle has raised its bid for Peoplesoft, again. The offer price now stands at $26 per share,a premium of more than $4 on the closing price on Nasdaq on Tuesday, and valuing its target at $9.4bn. This latest offer, which Oracle claims will be its last, is also above the highest value seen in the company in the last year. The …

Hardware 4 Feb 2004, 15:49
Foundry beefs up high-end Gig switches

Gigabit over copper driving recovery

Foundry Networks has strenghtened its enterprise and carrier offerings with the release of enhanced fibre and Gigabit over copper modules for BigIron MG8 and NetIron 40G terabit switches. The product additions include a 40-port 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) over Copper module with RJ45 interfaces and a 2-port 10 …

Data Networking 4 Feb 2004, 16:26
Introducing the Technodepot ‘Bug’ t-shirt

Cash'n'Carrion It's an undocumented feature, actually

Those wags down at TechnoDepot have been at the crayons again and this time the fruit of their labours comes in the form of the lovely "Bug?" t-shirt. Of course, it's not really a bug - just an undocumented feature. That, at least is what the shirt says: a timeless classic of an excuse immortalised on cotton. This new Bug? …

Site News 4 Feb 2004, 16:27
HP grabs two more software makers

How to buy an Adaptive Enterprise

No management software start-up is safe from HP with the giant Wednesday announcing plans to acquire two more companies to help build out its Adaptive Enterprise strategy. The latest firms to fall into HP's clutches are Novadigm and Consera Software. HP expects to close the acquisition deals in the next "several months" and …

Hardware 4 Feb 2004, 18:03
El Reg gets experimental at Orange launch

Rare case of press refusing free lunch

This morning El Reg went to see Orange about its new ‘Try’ initiative. (This is the suck-it-and-see approach to mobile services the company is kicking off today.) To support the launch, the company commissioned research into consumer attitudes to new technology which basically showed that we are all a bunch of lily-livered, …

Bootnotes 4 Feb 2004, 18:06
EU Commission plots global travel surveillance system

Whatever made you think America was the privacy villain?

Observers of the European Commission's negotiations with the US Department of Homeland Security over the transfer of airline passenger data might easily run away with the impression that the Commission has meekly capitulated to the US' extraterritorial and unilateralist demands. A report into the Commission's activities …

Music and Media 4 Feb 2004, 18:08
Microsoft teases users with 64-bit XP trial

Software seduction

Microsoft continues to redefine the notion of a software striptease with the 64-bit version of Windows XP, kicking off yet another early access program for the OS. Rabid 64-bit computing fans can now pick up a trial version of Windows XP 64-bit Edition via CD or download off this Microsoft site. The pre-release software is good …

Software 4 Feb 2004, 19:18
Merging Hutchison Whampoa

Tech and telecoms converge

Telecoms operator Hutchison Whampoa is merging its Hong Kong-based IT services subsidiary Vanda Systems & Communications with another telecom division, Hutchison Global Communications Investments. The move is part of a growing trend to instill closer co-operation between such firms to attract network access business and …

Business 4 Feb 2004, 21:08
Victory for commonsense in nuke lab hacking case

Analysis Two cheers for British Justice

It’s rare - one might say even unprecedented - when both sides are equally happy with the outcome of a criminal case. But that’s what happened in court five at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday afternoon when a teenage hacker who caused a major security alert at a US Department of Energy research lab escaped jail. …

Security 4 Feb 2004, 21:30
Sun finally ships StarOffice for Solaris x86

Open source Office makeover in India

At long last, Sun Microsystems has delivered a version of StarOffice for its own Solaris x86 operating system. Big Solaris x86 fans have been searching for StarOffice 7 for several months. Sun's open source productivity suite has only been available for Solaris/Sparc, Linux and Windows, making the x86 clan feel a bit left out. …

Software 4 Feb 2004, 21:35
Wheels fall off CRM bandwagon in UK

Customer relationship mismanagement

British firms are losing valuable business because of their "sloppy" approach to tracking leads and inability to win new clients, research released today has claimed. One in four of the marketing and business development managers surveyed for the BT-commissioned customer relationship study admitted to recording crucial …

Hardware 4 Feb 2004, 21:52
AOL wants refund for nipple slip

Super Bowl pop-up gone wrong

AOL is seeking a refund for its sponsorship of the Super Bowl halftime show and for the money it paid to show the event online. And why not? The best bit of the program has already been consumed en masse. AOL wants a refund for all or part of the $7.5 million it's said to have paid as sponsor of the halftime show, according to …

Bootnotes 4 Feb 2004, 23:29