25th February 2004 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

Tell us why this is a Land of Confusion

Reader quiz Help us, help Intel, HP and Sun

Given the tumultuous events in the server and processor worlds over the last couple of weeks, it seemed appropriate to take a moment and clear up a couple of nagging details surrounding the strategies of HP, Intel and Sun Microsystems. And to make things fun, El Reg is asking for reader help with these server/processor …

Servers 25 Feb 2004, 00:01
Retailers warned on Chip and PIN

Self-serving survey time...

Retailers not upgrading to chip and PIN technology will face a bigger risk of fraud according to Visa managing director Colin Grannell. The technology requires customers to swipe a card and key in a PIN number - the banking industry hopes the change will help to cut fraud by up to 60 per cent. Most large chains are in the …

Small Biz 25 Feb 2004, 09:30
Gates ‘optimistic’ on security

RSA MS soldiering on against those with malicious intent

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is grateful to the independent security researchers who routinely punch holes in his company's software. Really. "We really appreciate the relationship we have with these security experts," said Gates in a keynote address at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. But, "the unfortunate fact …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 09:56
Who needs passwords?

RSA Windows logon alternative

RSA Security is teaming up with Microsoft to simplify the process of logging into corporate Windows networks. SecurID for Microsoft Windows is designed to replace static passwords with strong, two-factor authentication. It should become available in the second half of this year. Two-factor authentication is very well …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 09:56
Battle for mmO2 hots up

A bidding war? For a mobile company? No kidding

NTT DoCoMo has signalled it could be interested in mmO2 - if the UK operator used i-mode - DoCoMo's data service. Keiji Tachikawa, president of the Japanese mobile monster, told the FT he'd be interested in talking to any operator who adopted i-mode. He said he would have to talk to 3, the company's current British partner. …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 09:57
Ryanair, Stelios in telecoms departure

Anyone fancy flying with Air BT?

No frills airline Ryanair is lending its name to a new telecoms outfit that claims it will shake up the telephone market with half-price local and national calls. Ryanair Telecom - an Irish-owned private company operating under licence from Ryanair PLC - unveiled its new service in Dublin yesterday and is promising to slash the …

Telecoms 25 Feb 2004, 10:04
India comes to Europe

Europe in brief Fears greatly exaggerated

Last week AP wrote that Siemens was to relocate more than 15,000 IT jobs from Europe to India, a story later downplayed by the German company. But India itself is interested in investing in Europe, Copenhagen Capacity reports. Subramanian Ramadoria, of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) - one of the biggest IT companies in India …

Business 25 Feb 2004, 10:07
IT security to become political battleground

RSA DRM and wire-tapping rise up the political agenda

Security will re-emerge as a major arena for political debate over the next year, cryptography legend Whitfield Diffie predicted today. The cryptographic community fought a long and ultimately successful battle to lift US export restrictions on encryption technology. The climax was a Clinton administration decision more than …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 10:07
Advertising on The Reg

Who to talk to...

To advertise on the Register to specific geographic audiences please contact: Liam Blackwell liam.blackwell@theregister.co.uk +44 (0)7919 444944 For Channel advertising opportunities please contact Nevil Dickinson nevil.dickinson@theregister.co.uk +44(0)7793 440394 For Event advertising opportunities please contact Liam …

About Us
Nvidia unveils ‘fastest’ mobile workstation GPU

Plumps for TSMC 110nm process, too

Nvidia rolled out its latest workstation-class mobile graphics chip, the Quadro FX Go1000, claiming the part out-performs "competing" desktop workstation graphics accelerators. Like its previous mobile Quadro FX, the Go700, the new chip supports AGP 8x and a 128-bit floating-point graphics pipeline with 12-bit sub-pixel …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 10:58
321 Studios to fight ripper injunction

All the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary

321 Studios will appeal the expected court ruling passed last week by Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District Federal Court for California, effectively halting sale of many of the company's products. The case was brought by the Paramount and Fox movie studios and Macrovision, which claims that its licence is being abused …

Personal 25 Feb 2004, 11:22
Future rosy for UltraWideBand

UWB and USB to live happily ever after?

UltraWideBand's prospects for becoming the dominant wireless technology for the home improved significantly this week, with Motorola poised to support a coexistence protocol that bridges the two rival would-be standards, and Intel demonstrating integration with wired USB. The main brake on the adoption of UWB, which can achieve …

Wireless 25 Feb 2004, 11:26
Channel Roundup Ingram Micro sales solid

Super-distie Ingram made a proft of $46.4m for the fourth quarter ended January 3, 2004, on sales of $6.76bn. European sales were $2.77bn, an increase of 33 per cent on the same period a year ago. Gross margin was 5.37 per cent, against 5.62 per cent last year. C2000 wants top Big Blue spot Computer 2000 is putting resources …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 11:32
Intel, Sony to deliver quality video to MS smart phones

Emuzed not bemused

Intel's "strategic relationship" with Sony's music division has borne fruit, with Microsoft coming out as a beneficiary of the pair's partnership. The alliance, announced last October, has yielded client and server components of an application that delivers high-quality video on mobile devices designed around Intel's Xscale …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 11:33
European PC sales up

UK tops Euro growth

Indirect sales of PCs to businesses grew six per cent in January compared to the same period a year ago. The survey of France, Germany and the UK showed second tier sales to small and medium businesses was the main driver for growth. During the same period retail sales of PCs to consumers fell 13 per cent. According to Jeremy …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 11:35
Cyber-terror drama skates on thin Black Ice

Book Review Essential bedtime reading for the paranoid

Computerworld columnist Dan Verton has covered the security beat for several years. He has recently weighed in on the cyber-terror discussion with a book called Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism. Verton gets off to a good start in his introduction, where he notes that physical attacks against high-value …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 11:47
Time to invest, say CEOs

Downsizing out, growth in, says IBM survey

Downsizing is out and growth is in, according IBM's annual global CEO study. Of 456 CEOs interviewed, 80 per cent said their priority is to grow revenues, rather than to cut costs. If the mood of a CEO is an accurate barometer of the economy, then the long-promised upswing could, indeed, be about to happen. Asia and China were …

Business 25 Feb 2004, 11:54
Nokia's new Communicator – who needs it?

3GSM Two hands on

Fans of Nokia's Communicator were ecstatic at the fourth generation product announced on Monday, and the feature list and form factor provide everything that that the 9200 series was missing, and then some. But it isn't quite what many were expecting, and it obliges Nokia to maintain a platform it had officially "retired" - …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 12:16
The Register RSA coverage in full

RSA Security. And then some

Gates parades Windows security advances Who needs passwords? IT security to become 'political battleground' Gates 'optimistic' on security Cyber security alliance sets sights on Washington Homeland insecurity starts at home RSA shows RFID tag blocker MS takes fight to the spammers Windows leak dangers 'exaggerated' …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 12:21
IBM debuts pocket-sized PC

Take all your data with you, wherever you go

IBM Japan has developed a tiny prototype PC that measures just 16 x 8.2 x 2.2cm (6.4 x 3.3 x 0.9in) and weights a mere 300g (10.6oz), the company said today. For now dubbed the PC Core System, the (literally) pocket PC is based on a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 processor. Inside the case, you'll also find 256MB of memory - it …

Hardware 25 Feb 2004, 12:36
BOFH and the pointless questionnaire

Episode 2 It doesn't pay to ask too many questions

BOFH 2004: Episode 2 "Ah... Now I don't think you want to be doing that..." I murmur, watching the Boss authoring an online Client Survey form for the masses about things that don't matter. (i.e. their expectations, How they'd like us to deliver them, etc.) "Really?" he asks "Why's that?" "It doesn't pay to ask questions! We …

BOFH 25 Feb 2004, 12:52
The Register 3GSM coverage in full

3GSM Let there be phones - and more

The Beast must buy? Fear and loathing in the Symbian shareholdings Nokia and IBM update the Communicator with Wi-Fi Can a phone have too many hinges? Symbian releases real-time, one-chip OS UI wars 'tore Symbian apart' - Nokia Siemens touts 'Push to Flirt' T-Mobile spearheads university WLAN project Venture …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 13:17
Operators blame handsets for 3G delays

Bad user experiences

Mobile operators are blaming handset makers for the delayed launch of 3G. Speaking at the GSM World Congress in Cannes, Arun Sarin, Vodafone's chief executive, said the phones were not good enough, and that bad user experience is putting people off. People will simply not sign up to 3G services, unless the handsets match the …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 13:41
Terra Lycos narrows FY loss

Broadband growth etc.

Terra Lycos reckons "efficient management" over the last couple of years has helped it reduce the amount of cash it lost last year. Te global Internet group reported total revenues of €546.6m for 2003, down from €621.8m in 2002. Crucially, the company narrowed its pre-tax loss to €173m down from an eye-watering €1.7bn the year …

Business 25 Feb 2004, 13:55
Intel promises all-singing, all-dancing 3G phone

3GSM All you can eat at 2G prices

Intel has not yet delivered the Bulverde super-phone chipset it announced last summer - but Paul Otellini is already promising delegates at 3GSM that for 2005, he'll have a phone that will save 3G, and integrate it with Wi-Fi. Oh, and it will have a two megapixel camera built in. Otellini, Intel's chief operating officer, did a …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 13:57
El Reg moots Bangalore hack outsource plan

Transfer of newsroom to the Subcontinent?

One unexpected effect of the release of our terrific "My job went to India and all I got was this lousy T shirt" limited edition is that Vulture Central itself is now considering outsourcing all of its hacks to Bangalore. The plan involves transferring Reg newsroom functions to India, thereby liberating huge sums of cash to be …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 2004, 13:57
Business texts the ‘next big thing’ – Voda

Ur sackd, gudby

Vodafone is looking to drum up extra revenues by getting business users to text more. Not just the preserve of kids, gossips and lovers, the monster mobilephoneco reckons that although currently under-used, texting is the next "big thing" for business people. To prove its point, it's laid its hands on some research which shows …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 13:58
Bell Micro ends French rule

Acting president appointed

Storage distributor Bell Microproducts has appointed Martin Blaney acting president for western Europe. He replaces Ian French who is "leaving the company to pursue other interests", according to the press release. French was head of Ideal Hardware when it was bought by Bell in 2000. Martin Blaney was chief operating officer …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 15:18
US chip biz tells China to ditch local WLAN standard

WAPI not a barrier to trade - but bias towards local firms is

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has demanded that the Chinese government abandon plans to impose a proprietary WLAN security standard on 1 June. The standard, called Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI), was published last May in a bid to address the Chinese government's concerns that existing …

Wireless 25 Feb 2004, 15:19
TI builds graphics hardware into mobile chip

Rival for Intel's Carbonado?

Texas Instruments has updated its OMAP all-in-one mobile processor platform with a second-generation architecture that integrates graphics acceleration hardware, support for hi-res digicams and camcorders, and provides TV output. Central to the new OMAP 2 is the incorporation of Imagination Technologies' PowerVR MBX graphics …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 16:02
Morse signals upturn in '04

Not a lot but a bit...

Morse, Sun's biggest European reseller, increased turnover by 13 per cent to to £187.1m in the six months ended 31 December 2003 (2002: £185.8m). Loss before tax was down 28 per cent on the previous six months. Turnover in the UK and Ireland advanced 15 per cent, while continental Europe was up eight per cent for the half year …

Channel 25 Feb 2004, 16:09
Server competition heats up

HP's Opteron-driven Proliant kit adds spice

Advanced Micro Devices must be happy. After 18 months of secret development and the biting of many corporate tongues at the Intel Developer Forum last week, Hewlett-Packard has finally announced it will deliver variants of its ProLiant X86 servers that use AMD's 64-bit Opteron processors. The server market is suddenly getting …

Servers 25 Feb 2004, 16:10
Vendors wary of MS Windows Firewall

Deployment considered a fire-fighting measure

Microsoft's announcement of its imminent entry into the personal firewall market was expected, but it is still concerning for some companies already playing in that space. However, in some ways the product seems to be focused on improving Microsoft's security reputation rather than making a splash in the market. Microsoft has …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 16:12
Tiscali in Net phone deal

Ofcom consults on VoB too

Pan-European ISP Tiscali has teamed up with NetCentrex to provide residential broadband telephony services for its one million ADSL punters. The deal was announced yesterday and should mean that punters in Italy could be in the position to make voice and video calls using their broadband service by the autumn. A spokeswoman …

Telecoms 25 Feb 2004, 16:23
Infineon demos nano-scale transistor

Retail still some way off

Researchers at Infineon say they have built the first power semiconductor made from nanotubes. Nano scale parts were thought to be too weak to withstand the high voltages and currents used in power applications, but the team has demonstrated a nanotube switch that can control LEDs or electric motors. Power semiconductors are …

Science 25 Feb 2004, 17:06
Gartner analyst explains HP and Itanium leanings

Letter Bit of balance

re: HP calls in Gartner cheerleader for Opteron launch We gave Gartner's John Enck a pretty hard time in a story yesterday, detailing HP's Opteron server launch. Enck showed up on an HP conference call, and this seemed a bit out of the ordinary to us. After a very pleasant e-mail exchange, Enck agreed to send along his take on …

Letters 25 Feb 2004, 17:09
Geeks do *so* have friends

And they have the empirical research to prove it

Gaming fans are a deeply social and friendly people, not isolated geeks. This is the main finding of a survey of gamers, published by GameMore, a UK gaming event co-ordinator. The survey of GameMore's users showed that most people prefer to play in multiplayer mode, rather than against the computer. Of those remaining, very few …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 2004, 17:55
Palmsource puts down its mark in the volume smart phone market

3GSM And maybe some other ones too

Not a lot of people have noticed yet, but at 3GSM this week Palmsource made what could turn out to be its big play for the smartphone market. The company's licensees of course do already have a presence that could be termed a "smartphone" presence, but if you think about it, what it really has is PDAs with built-in wireless, …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 18:18
WayFinder, GPS done right, preps for US launch

3GSM Swedes show Americans the way to go home

The top GPS system for mobile phones, WayFinder, is set for a US launch this summer. For anyone who doesn't have GPS built into their car, or a dedicated GPS with display, this is good news. While it's not the only navigation system on the market it is fantastically useful, giving you the capabilities of an in-car system, with …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 18:20
Danger's new gizmo – exclusive… er… sketch

3GSM Hands on - then hands off

Danger Inc. showed a prototype of its new Hiptop communicator - the world's most usable wireless device - at Cannes this week, and we can show you what it looks like. Alas, the illustration is not up the standards that you usually expect, because Danger imposed a no-photography policy on its new baby. But it's the best we could …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 18:24
Cyber security alliance sets sights on Washington

RSA We are all advocates now

A group of 12 security software and hardware vendors today launched the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) at the RSA Conference. This new advocacy group wants to "monitor and influence legislation and government regulation at both the state and federal levels"; create education programmes; launch a public awareness …

Security 25 Feb 2004, 19:26
Microsoft meets real world half-way

3GSM MSN, Hotmail goes WAP

Microsoft is to put MSN content, including Hotmail, onto OpenWave's V7 software, potentially bringing it in front of many millions of mobile phone users. The deal gives users offline access to Hotmail, MSN Messenger and Passport services. OpenWave is best known for the most popular, but least-used, piece of software in the …

Mobile 25 Feb 2004, 19:33
Stealthy Azul's Java plans unstealthed

Opteron attack

At last check, Azul Systems held tight to its stealth mode status, but a few sources have come forward to expose the company's hardware and software plans. Azul is a small start-up based in Mountain View, California and run by former Cobalt CEO and Sun Microsystems exec Stephen DeWitt. Up to this point, the company has refused …

Servers 25 Feb 2004, 19:50
Hitachi blows its own 300GB trumpet

Hard drives get bigger, smaller and more profitable

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is claiming its Ultrastar 10K300 is the industry's first 300GB enterprise hard drive. Due next quarter in Ultra 320 SCSI or 2Gb Fibre Channel forms, the 10,000 RPM drive has five platters and 10 heads, and can sustain 89MB/sec. Although described as a server drive, it is really intended for …

Storage 25 Feb 2004, 21:02
Sun offers a hand to confused HP-UX customers

EPIC squabble

Not satisfied with its assault on HP's Tru64 customer base, Sun Microsystems has made a move to go after HP-UX customers as well, offering them a "risk free" move to SPARC-based or Opteron-based hardware. For several months now, Sun has been trying to convince old DEC and Compaq users to come over to the Solaris camp. The basic …

Servers 25 Feb 2004, 21:48
Sun's services queen jumps ship for Salesforce.com

Committed today. Gone tomorrow

In a surprising move, Sun Microsystems' head of services Pat Sueltz has fled the company to work for a Sun partner - Salesforce.com. Sueltz will take on the role of president of marketing, technology and systems at Salesforce.com. For the time being, Marissa Peterson, chief customer advocate and executive vice president at Sun …

Servers 25 Feb 2004, 23:04
Thieves ravage Texan ATMs

Skimmers, Web cams and automobiles

ATM machines in the great state of Texas are under attack with some criminals using more sophisticated technology than others to get their loot. A report out of the University of Texas at Austin warns students to look out for some savvy ATM bandits. The thieves are attaching their own equipment - "skimmers" - to the front of …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 2004, 23:48