2nd March 2004 Archive

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IBM to aid American ethos with human capital fund

Skill up these warm bodies

IBM will dole out a modest amount of cash to fund a new worker retraining program, as the company moves to help employees keep their jobs in a fiercely competitive global economy. IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano on Monday announced the Human Capital Alliance at the company's ParterWorld event in Las Vegas. This human capital deal will …

Hardware 2 Mar 2004, 09:53
Computer courses for computerphobes

Irrational fear of PCs? Then why are you reading this?

The British Computer Society (BCS) has introduced a skills course to help people overcome their fear of computers. According to BCS, nearly a third of the UK's population are being left on the sidelines because of a "genuine fear of attempting to use a computer". The new BCS Equalskills course is "non-threatening in its format …

Small Biz 2 Mar 2004, 10:33
IBM spends big bucks on software push

Wealthy older gentleman seeks young love

IBM boss Sam Palmisano will spend more than $1bn to lure software developers back onto IBM software platforms. He wants IBM's software division firing on all cylinders ahead of this year's expected upturn in the global IT market. IBM holds 18 per cent of the middleware market and this will form a key part of the software …

Hardware 2 Mar 2004, 10:50
Businesses: are you tooled up for change?

Site Offer No? Then get 30% off FT Executive Briefings

Your business has access plenty of information, but do you have the right information to hand when you need it? FT Executive Briefings concentrate on delivering actionable information, designed to help executives ask the right questions, make the right decisions and take the right action. This week at The Reg Bookstore we've …

Site News 2 Mar 2004, 10:52
London tube gets mobile access

I'M ON THE TUBE! NAH, IT'S RUBBISH!

London Underground (LU) is in talks with the four main mobile networks to allow mobile access on the Tube network. Underground networks elsewhere, like Newcastle and Prague, already have full mobile access. But London's 113 mile network of tunnels is likely to be a more challenging project. A spokeswoman for LU said: "This is …

Mobile 2 Mar 2004, 11:30
Rosetta space-bound at third attempt

Next stop: comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Rosetta, the £600m comet-chasing probe, lifted off at the third attempt from its launchpad in French Guiana this morning at 08:17 CET. Following a standard ascent - lift-off, booster separation and burn-out of the central core stage of the Ariane 5 rocket - the upper stage entered a prolonged ballistic phase. This was followed …

Science 2 Mar 2004, 11:33
BOFH: We who are about to dial salute you

Episode 7 A grisly end for he who disturbs the pax bofhica

BOFH 2004: Episode 7 It's quiet. Damn quiet. And I like it! Apart from the boredom that is... The PFY's skipped off to an extended lunch with some woman he was "accidentally" stuck in the lift with for a couple of hours yesterday, and I have the place to myself. Peace. Quiet. Boredom. >clickety< >Ring< "My mail's just …

BOFH 2 Mar 2004, 11:46
Blaster beats up British business

IT security woes grow

Half of UK businesses suffered from computer virus infection or denial of services attacks over the last 12 months. This was up from 41 per cent in 2002 and 16 per cent in 2000, The Department of Trade and Industry's 2004 Information Security Breaches Survey reveals. Yet again, computer viruses were the biggest problem. Other …

Anti-Virus 2 Mar 2004, 11:51
IBM lobbies Sun in open source Java debate

Letters exchanged, views expressed

The controversy surrounding the open sourcing of Java continues unabated, writes Bloor Research analyst Robin Bloor. Printed below is an open letter from Rod Smith (VP, Emerging Technogies, IBM Software Group) to Sun, suggesting that it should be made available to the open source community. Officially, the letter was sent to Sun …

Software 2 Mar 2004, 12:12
EA president piles into N-Gage

It's a dog, opines games supremo

Electronic Arts president and COO John Riccitiello has described Nokia's N-Gage system as a "dog" and further stated that software shipments on it have been "non-meaningful". "When I picked that thing up I knew it was a dog - it just feels stupid," Riccitiello told news agency Reuters in an interview last week, before …

Personal 2 Mar 2004, 12:35
UK Govt should do more for broadband

'Fair terms at competitive prices' for all

The Government should do more to ensure that all of the UK - and not just towns and cities - is hooked up to affordable broadband services. That's one of the suggestions put forward in a report Always on, Changing Britain published by communications thinktank, The European Media Forum (EMF), which examines the social and …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2004, 12:39
HP gets deeper into DRM

Carly speaks, Carly does

HP has licensed digital content protection technology from Intel. The printer giant is also working with Philips to make copy protection technology. HP CEO Carly Fiorina signalled the move in January when she used her speech at the Consumer Electronics Show to attack file sharers. Intel's technology protects video streams as …

Personal 2 Mar 2004, 13:31
Chancellor wants nation of boffins

GB hints at scientific spending spree

The Government is to spend more money on making the UK a better place to do science. But how much more? The FT, which splashed the authorised-looking leak on its front page today, isn't saying. Perhaps Treasury spin doctors want to keep something back until chancellor Gordon Brown meets members of the scientific establishment …

Science 2 Mar 2004, 13:43
So how does Avecho's AV work?

Review If they told you, they'd have to kill you

UK-based email filtering firm Avecho is something of the enfant terrible of the anti-virus world. Since forming 18 months ago, it has consistently attacked the scanner approach and business model of traditional AV firms. Avecho argues that relying on scanning or heuristics (automatic detection) as a reliable method to protect …

Anti-Virus 2 Mar 2004, 15:43
PlusNet throws strop at BT cheapest broadband claim

'We're miffed'

Sheffield-based ISP Plusnet has blasted BT for misleading punters over the cost of its new "no frills" basic service. BT Openworld boss Duncan Ingram was asked on a BBC radio show yesterday: "This [BT Broadband Basic] isn't going to make you the cheapest is it?" Mr Ingram replied: "It's certainly going to make us the cheapest …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2004, 16:00
Tiscali names new chief exec

G'day, Mr Huisman

Tiscali has named former World Online finance bigwig Ruud Huisman to succeed Renato Soru as chief exec of the Italy-based pan-European ISP. Huisman's appointment still needs the green light when shareholders meet in April. Until then, he will act as Tiscali's managing director. Huisman has been CEO of Tiscali Benelux and …

Business 2 Mar 2004, 16:34
Brocade and Quantum toot their own horns

We are wonderful

Brocade and Quantum moved this week to do some damage control by dangling favorable analyst reports in front of the press. Over the past year, Brocade has been beaten up from time to time in the SAN (storage area network) switch game for falling behind rivals McData and Cisco. The main complaints stemmed from users who were …

Storage 2 Mar 2004, 16:38
El Reg in 419 glut scandal

One track minds?

DAER friEND, you will be SurPRise to hear my letter, as I AM NOT know to you. pleASE help me i TRUST you. I have in bank accoutn many 419 stories, with a value of at least $19,0000,00,000. However some, people think I have too many and want me to stop. I NEED YOUR help to get my 419 STORIES out of my country. I enclose …

Bootnotes 2 Mar 2004, 17:18
Intel adds more muscle to Xeon MP

SPARCed out

Intel's high-end Xeon processor received a pair of improvements on Tuesday with the chip's clock speed reaching 3.0GHz and a large cache being added on the product. The new Xeon MP - code-named Gallatin - is aimed at the multiprocessor server market and particularly at servers with four processors. The 3.0GHz, 4MB cache version …

Servers 2 Mar 2004, 18:04
Dell CEO confirms line of Opteron waiters

Are you being served?

Dell Inc. plans to roll out a fleet of Opteron-based waiters to sit alongside Xeon-based servers, according to a report out of France. Last week, trusted French trade publication 01net published an interview with Michael Dell in which the CEO contradicted past positions regarding AMD's Opteron processor. The story was titled: " …

Servers 2 Mar 2004, 19:58