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23rd July 2004 Archive

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  • Sun's Solaris shines on Itanium

    Jonathan Schwartz ponders future of Solaris 10

    In the past few months, Jonathan Schwartz, the president of Sun Microsystems, has twice blurted out ideas about what Sun might do with its Solaris operating system that have a lot of heads in the IT industry cocking their heads to one side like Sun's old advertising dog, Network. In early June, it was open source Solaris, and …

    Servers 23 Jul 2004, 08:55

  • Transmeta sales grow as losses mount

    Significant 90nm sales not due until 2005

    Transmeta experienced modest sales growth during its second quarter of fiscal 2004. But in a reference to 90nm demand issues, the company warned that it is not expecting large-scale adoption of its second-generation Efficeon processor to take place until 2005. During Q2, Transmeta racked up sales totalling $6m, up 18 per cent …

    Financial News 23 Jul 2004, 09:10

  • US and Europe embrace the digital home

    I want my HDTV

    The US is the largest and most competitive digital TV market in the world today, with more than 45 million digital households at the end of 2003. However, Datamonitor analyst James Healey says that by 2006 Europe will represent a larger digital TV market than the US, with some 63 million digital households. Following …

    Personal 23 Jul 2004, 09:15

  • Europe: we will buy your PDAs

    But we prefer smart phones

    Europe's demand for PDAs and smart phones continued unabated through the second quarter of 2004, figures from market watcher IDC show. The company's numbers cover Western Europe - as opposed to Europe East and West, plus the Middle East and Africa, the zone covered by fellow researcher Canalys' figures released earlier this …

    Mobile 23 Jul 2004, 10:02

  • Porn filters ineffective against Tribbles

    Letters Pulitzer prize winning stuff from El Reg

    This Friday's post bag was bulging with comments about the number of child porn sites blocked by BT's new CleanFeed filter, ISPA's subsequent call for clarification, and BT's response. For anyone just back from an extended holiday in Cuba, the only way you could have missed this one, this is the story that BT kicked off by …

    Letters 23 Jul 2004, 10:38

  • VoIP must pay its dues - Senate

    No escape from Universal access, 911 fees

    Internet Phone providers won't escape the social obligations imposed on other telephony companies, after all. An amendment to the proposed 'Regulatory Freedom Act' by the Senate commerce committee gives states the right to impose the same levies on new providers to fund emergency services and access-for-all that established …

    Data Networking 23 Jul 2004, 10:40

  • UK govt IT an 'appalling waste' of public money

    EDS in the firing line. Again

    An all-party committee of MPs yesterday attacked the government's record on public sector IT projects, and said Whitehall was hiding "an appalling waste" of public money behind a "cloak of commercial confidentiality". The work and pensions committee was especially critical of the Child Support Agency's (CSA) telephone and …

    Policy 23 Jul 2004, 10:44

  • Dangers snags Sharp for Hiptop

    Manufacturing deal

    Palo Alto-based smartphone start-up Danger has signed Sharp to manufacture its second-generation Hiptop. Danger currently employs contract manufacturers in Thailand, and the deal should ease supply problems. T-Mobile, an investor in the company, sells the Hiptop as the Sidekick in the United States. Manufacturer Sharp will be …

    Mobile 23 Jul 2004, 10:47

  • Google contextual ads: working for humanity

    Letters special Delicious juxtapositions

    This is a one off. A Friday special, prompted by a couple of delightful examples of how one can use Google's contextualised advertising to brighten one's day. Regular readers will remember the rumour causing panic in Lagos, spiritual (and fiscal) home of 419 scams, that picking up the phone is potentially fatal. As Lester says …

    Letters 23 Jul 2004, 10:48

  • Euro notebook sales slowdown signals end of boom

    Desktops back on buyers' wish lists?

    Notebook sales in Europe's seven biggest economies are slowing, figures from market watcher Context reveal. Each month this year saw successively lower growth over the same month in 2003. So while February 2004's sales to end users made by resellers were up 42.2 per cent on February 2003's figure, by May this year, the year-on- …

    Channel 23 Jul 2004, 10:48

  • Police to retain DNA records of cleared suspects

    Crimebusting more important than human rights

    Police will be able to keep DNA and fingerprint records of innocent people on file indefinitely following a landmark legal ruling yesterday. The House of Lords, the highest court in England and Wales, upheld earlier rulings by the High Court and Court of Appeal against two people who wanted their records destroyed by South …

    Security 23 Jul 2004, 11:09

  • Gateway loss balloons to $339m

    Revenues miss expectations

    Gateway's acquisition of eMachines once again hammered the parent's finances, widening its Q2 loss by a hefty margin. During the quarter, Gateway achieved $838m in revenue, up just four per cent on the year-ago quarter's $800m, a four per cent fall from Q1's total, and well below the company's forecast of $860-880m. CEO Wayne …

    Financial News 23 Jul 2004, 11:19

  • Novell eyes lean, mean Linux

    Crash diet for SuSE

    Novell is developing a slimmed-down version of SuSE Linux especially designed to desktop enterprise deployments easier to support. SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, the latest version of the desktop OS, comes with 3,000 packages and seven web browsers, according to Novell. Steve Brown, Novell’s European VP, said there was a danger …

    Operating Systems 23 Jul 2004, 13:45

  • Introducing the iPod London toilet guide

    Taking the p***?

    London-based iPod users, sensitive souls that they are, can now avoid the horror of unkempt public toilets, thanks to pPod (yes, pPod), a directory of reviewed public conveniences designed especially for the trendy music player. Developed by digital media firm Nykris for reasons probably best known to themselves, pPod is a …

    Bootnotes 23 Jul 2004, 13:57

  • Japan ponders Wi-Fi tax

    If phone users have to pay for spectrum, why not you WLAN guys?

    Japan's Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry is considering taxing Wi-Fi devices, sources within the government department have claimed. Legislation to impose fees for making use of the 2.4GHz spectrum will be put before the Japanese parliament next year, the sources told The Japan Times this …

    Broadband 23 Jul 2004, 14:31

  • Do you play air guitar to MegaDeth?

    Poll The Mother of all Music Polls

    We were rather concerned at our beloved readers' response to the Training Camps's recent informal survey into the musical preferences of various IT trades according to the contents of their iPods. Many of you wrote in to protest in the strongest possible terms that the remit of the survey - and indeed the number of participants …

    Developer 23 Jul 2004, 14:59

  • Iomega drops 'Son of Clik' as losses swell

    Storage firm ends CE flirtation to focus on business kit

    Iomega is to ditch its consumer-oriented 1.5GB micro removable drive system, DCT, and focus on business products in a bid to recover from its financial woes, the storage company said this week. It also posted a widening $19.8m (38 cents a share) loss on sales totalling $77.6m for its second fiscal quarter, which ended on 17 …

    Financial News 23 Jul 2004, 15:03

  • Trojan poses as bin Laden suicide pics

    Usenet spam plan

    Virus writers are trying to trick users into opening a Trojan horse on their PC by passing malicious code off as a "suicide photographs" of Osama bin Laden. At a result, Usenet newsgroups are overflowing with bogus messages claiming that journalists found the terrorist leader's hanged body earlier this week. The messages direct …

    Security 23 Jul 2004, 15:44

  • Giant waves spotted from space

    These are not for surfing

    New analysis of satellite images has proven the existence of rogue waves: massive surges of water rising more than 25 metres above the ocean. Scientists are now starting to understand the factors that combine to produce such huge waves, long dismissed as myths. The MaxWave project, was initiated by the European Union in 2000 …

    Science 23 Jul 2004, 15:46

  • Cassini eyeballs Saturnian lightning storms

    Another first for spacecraft

    The Cassini spacecraft, now in orbit around Saturn, has spotted lightning in the gas giant's atmosphere, something that has never been directly observed before. The spacecraft's radio and plasma wave science instrument picked up radio emisions from storms on the planet The BBC reports. The results will help observers on Earth …

    Science 23 Jul 2004, 15:48

  • Wiki-fiddlers defend Clever Big Book

    Letters It's a Children's Encyclopedia

    Wiki-fiddlers* may be accused of many things, but having a robust sense of humor is not one of them. In the week that colleague Ashlee Vance pointed out a few failings in the archive that isn't an archive, we took a pop at the encyclopedia that isn't an encyclopedia. Our jibe that the Wikipedia is the world's most useless …

    Letters 23 Jul 2004, 16:19

  • Spam poetry: transcending the junk mail paradigm

    Freight train over avocado pit self-flagellates

    It's taken a while, but we have sifted through the flotsam and jetsam which washes every day through inboxes world-wide and found the precious pieces of amber which lie hidden within. Yes indeed, it's time to hand out some Reg goodies for contributions to what we have called "Spam Poetry" - those bursts of random, spam-filter- …

    Security 23 Jul 2004, 16:19

  • The Internet - cheap at twice the price

    ICANN buys round of drinks, hopes others will arrive to celebrate

    The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has just finished its bi-annual five-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur and it's feeling pretty good about itself. What in retrospect may be seen as the organisation's most vital period has gone off without hardly a hitch. Its head, Dr Paul Twomey was already calling the …

    Financial News 23 Jul 2004, 17:33

  • Chicago's emergency call center suffers heat exhaustion

    911 down, 311 up

    Chicago's 911 emergency call center was sent into a state of disarray Thursday after a power outage knocked the center offline. An extremely hot power source is apparently to blame for the 911 shutdown. The faulty power source forced city officials to pull the plug on their communications center and reroute all calls to the 311 …

    Bootnotes 23 Jul 2004, 18:23

  • Amazon misses Q2 numbers

    Slipping on shipping

    Amazon.com has reported profits and upped its forecasts but still failed to meet expectations for its second quarter - just like eBay and Yahoo! For the three months to the end of June, the dotbomb survior had net income of $76.5m, or $0.18 a share, compared with a loss of $43.3m, or $0.11 a share, a year earlier. The figures …

    Financial News 23 Jul 2004, 19:47