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12th March 2004 Archive

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  • TruLogica proboscis grows out of HP's adaptive enterprise

    Can other software makers survive?

    HP's Adaptive Enterprise vision keeps on evolving with the purchase of yet another software appendage - TruLogica. HP is to add TruLogica's identity management and user privilege technology into the OpenView Select Access software. The basic idea is to improve user management across across a wide variety of applications running …

    Hardware 12 Mar 2004, 08:53

  • Intel preps Xeon chipset with discrete memory manager

    North Bridge, South Bridge and Memory Bridge parts

    Intel's upcoming 'Twin Castle' chipset separates the memory controller from the North Bridge chip to yield a three-chip product rather than the usual two-chip set-up. So claims Xbit Labs citing sources close to the chip giant. Twin Castle is aimed at four-way and up multiprocessor servers running Xeon MP processors, in …

    Channel 12 Mar 2004, 09:56

  • Freelancers set for IR35 tax rebate

    Verily, he that giveth shall receive

    Thousands of entrepreneurs could have the chance to reclaim money taken from them under the controversial IR35 tax, a consultancy firm has claimed. Qdos Consulting said that small businesses and freelancers who paid the "stealth tax’ soon after it was introduced in 1999 could be in line for a rebate because they handed over too …

    Small Biz 12 Mar 2004, 10:33

  • Broadband war breaks out in Australia

    Telstra v. everyone else

    There's a right old ding-dong Down Under after incumbent telco Telstra was accused of anti-competitive behaviour. It all kicked off after the telco cut the price of its retail broadband product without offering a similar cut to its wholesale service. Australia's competition watchdog, the ACCC has since intervened stating that …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 10:35

  • Oracle profits jumps on new licence sales

    Dollar helps too

    A big jump in new Oracle database license sales shows a company in rude health. The enterprise software vendor had a good Q3 with new software license sales up 12 per cent to $847m (2003: $755m). Profits for the quarter ended 29 Feb were up 11 per cent to $635m (2003: $571m) on revenue of $2.5bn, nine per cent up on last year's …

    Hardware 12 Mar 2004, 11:11

  • Guardian Unlimited introduces registration

    Media section sign-up 'not prelude to charging'

    The Guardian’s website has moved further towards its more commercial competitors with the news that, from today, readers will have to register before they can access stories in its Media section. The registration page has been kept as simple and short as possible - just seven pop-down questions - and Guardian Unlimited’s editor …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 11:13

  • China tells Intel to calm down over Wi-Fi

    'This could be a critical decision that Intel is making'

    Intel has been told to "calm down" and reconsider its decision to stop selling Wi-Fi products in China. The chip giant objects to the Chinese government's insistence that WLAN products sold in China support the country's own wireless security system, dubbed Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI). The technology …

    Wireless 12 Mar 2004, 11:36

  • Broadreach to bring major mobile telcos to Wi-Fi market

    'All you can eat' tariffs

    Public Internet access provider Broadreach Networks will later this month roll out a series of branded Wi-Fi deals with a number of leading ISPs and mobile phone operators, the company has revealed. On the same day, 25 March, Broadreach will stop offering free Wi-Fi, but will roll out a series of what it claims will be very …

    Mobile 12 Mar 2004, 11:40

  • Artimi demos working UWB chips

    Slow now, USB 2.0 speed soon

    Cambridge-based UK fabless semiconductor developer Artimi has begun showing off working ultrawideband (UWB) silicon ahead of shipping sample chips later this year, the company said this week. However, the company tacitly admitted that volume production has slipped. While Artimi's web site states its plan to ship in volume "by …

    Mobile 12 Mar 2004, 12:03

  • Daily Mail group buys Jobsite for £35m

    Cross-selling

    The Daily Mail group (DMGT) is stumping up £35m for Jobsite, the online recruitment business. The group now has a robust vehicle to cross-sell jobs across print and online. Based in Havant, Sussex, Jobsite has 80 employees. It claims 1.6 million unique visits a month to its various job websites. And it also has a recruitment …

    Business 12 Mar 2004, 12:20

  • Campaigners triumph in BT favouritism row

    Yorkshire Forward de-BTs grant scheme docs

    Yorkshire Forward has made wholesale changes to a broadband grant scheme that critics claimed was skewed in favour of dominant telco BT. A leaked document seen by The Register this week was littered with references to "BT" and "exchange" areas, prompting fears that the £300 grants could only be used for the telco's own ADSL …

    Telecoms 12 Mar 2004, 12:38

  • Nintendo patents handheld emulation software

    All your GBA emulator belong to us

    Nintendo has successfully patented the emulation in software of handheld gaming devices, and the company has already begun challenging emulator developers to cough up royalties. Nintendo's patent, number 6,672,963, was filed in November 2000 but only granted on 6 January this year. It is titled 'Software implementation of a …

    Mobile 12 Mar 2004, 12:43

  • My shirt went to America and all I got was a gay sheep

    Letters: The really important thoughts of you, our beloved readers

    The majority of your letters this week have been prompted by our less technical offerings. The largest volume of letters, by a huge margin, came in response to the continuing saga of the India T-Shirt. To recap, The NY Times ran a story insinuating that the legendary "My job went to India and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" …

    Letters 12 Mar 2004, 12:45

  • Telewest dubs broadband ‘most successful product’

    Debt restructuring set for summer

    The number of punters subscribing to Telewest's broadband service is accelerating, the cableco reported today. In the three months to the end of December, Telewest added 47,000 new broadband punters, taking the total number to 415,000. As of yesterday, total broadband numbers had increased to 452,000, of which 38,000 are …

    Telecoms 12 Mar 2004, 12:46

  • EC seeks to stamp out Net child porn, racism and spam

    Safer surfers are happier surfers

    The European Commission is investing €50m in cleaning up the Net with a three-year programme, Safer Internet Plus. Its main aim is to improve the protection of children and minors, but it will also cover a broader range of areas of illegal and harmful content and conduct of concern are covered, including racism and violence. " …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 13:50

  • US puts on pair of robotrousers

    A great step forward for humanity

    Some people never learn. Anyone who has ever seen the chilling and prophetic Aardman animation The Wrong Trousers will be fully aware of the perils awaiting he who attempts to produce the world's ultimate pair of strides. Be afraid, then, at the announcement that Berkeley Robotics Laboratory has been for some time developing …

    Science 12 Mar 2004, 15:11

  • Torpoint tames cruel sea in ADSL hook-up

    Plain sailing

    There will be much dancily merrily round the capstan in Torpoint later this month when the town's broadband connection finally hoves into view. The Cornish community has been anxiously waiting for broadband since it hit its trigger level in July last year. Now that a kilometre-long undersea fibre-optic cable has been slung …

    Telecoms 12 Mar 2004, 15:13

  • VIA aims latest P4 chipsets at HDTV generation

    Reg Kit Watch Integrates UniChrome Pro graphics

    VIA today launched a pair of integrated chipsets for the Pentium 4, touting the parts' graphics performance delivered courtesy of an S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro core. The chipsets, the PM800 and PM880, offer single- and dual-channel 400MHz DDR SDRAM memory controllers, respectively. That's their only distinguishing feature: both …

    Channel 12 Mar 2004, 15:14

  • Psion gets green light for Symbian sale to Nokia

    Not all done and dusted yet, though...

    Psion weathered its shareholder revolt this morning, when a two to one majority of 67 per cent of the company's shareholders approved the sale of its stake in Symbian to Nokia. That does not however mean that the deal will go ahead, merely that it has passed the first hurdle. Institutional investor Phoenix Asset Management and …

    Mobile 12 Mar 2004, 15:29

  • Apple posts Compaq iTunes as HP music store goes live

    Sooner than the Summer

    When HP CEO Carly Fiorina launched the company's digital music service last January, she said the online store and Apple iTunes-derived jukebox software would become available this summer, in the same timeframe that the company will launch its own hard drive-based portable music player. Summer appears to have come early: HP …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 15:46

  • Unravelling the IP enforcement debate

    Analysis What does it really mean?

    This week the European Parliament voted to enact the Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement Directive. This legislative framework for dealing with piracy and theft of coptyrighted goods is now sent to the member states, which have two years to enact laws which comply with the directive. The vote was welcomed by industry and the …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 16:18

  • ICANN: Return of the Jedi Engineers

    Heart and soul

    That strange beast The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) gathered in Rome last week for one of its regular meetings. The not-for-profit organisation appears to be torn between market players who pull no punches and interminable government WSIS discussions on the future of the Information Society. …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 16:33

  • Feds slap cuffs on Google stock scammer

    Victims taken for an IPO ride

    The FBI has arrested a Dutch man in connection with a $2.8m stock fraud. Shamoon Rafiq, who has been living in New York City since October 2003, sold non-existent Google stock prior to the company's impending IPO. Rafiq told his victims he was a limited partner of prominent venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & …

    Music and Media 12 Mar 2004, 17:26

  • Daftness rewarded during National Science Week

    All hail the Ig Nobel prizes

    Today marks the start of National Science Week, which, rather bizarrely, lasts for nine days. The highlight of the event will be the Ig Nobel Prizes tour. This acknowledges and applauds the daftest scientific research in the country. An Ig Nobel prize is awarded for work that "cannot or should not be reproduced". The Annals of …

    Science 12 Mar 2004, 17:56

  • Bush backtracks on offshore czar post

    Tony Raimondo's China Syndrome

    Revelations of Nebraska businessman Tony Raimondo's past dealings in China have cut short his time as the Bush administration's manufacturing czar before he even started. Raimondo was due to take on the new role of assistant Commerce Department secretary - monitoring, in part, the loss of US jobs overseas. But it emerged that …

    Business 12 Mar 2004, 18:13

  • Final robot grunts picked for $1million DARPA race

    Slow going

    Fifteen teams have shown their mettle and their metal in DARPA's $1 million Grand Challenge event, receiving approval to compete in the contest tomorrow. Only seven teams this week actually made it all the way through a 1.36 mile test course. DARPA, however, will let another eight teams that showed promise compete in Saturday's …

    Bootnotes 12 Mar 2004, 21:44