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29th September 2004 Archive

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  • Job Opportunity: Sales Executive

    Join the team...

    Job Title: Sales Executive Department: Advertising Sales Address: The Register Telephone: 020 7733 3021 Website: www.theregister.co.uk Company Background The Register hit the Web as a daily UK based news operation in May 1998. In November 2003 more than 2.2 million unique users (ABCe) visited the site. According to some …

    The Company 29 Sep 2004, 07:32

  • Job Opportunity: Account Manager

    Work for El Reg...

    Job Title: Account Manager Department: Advertising Sales Address: The Register Telephone: 020 7733 3021 Website: www.theregister.co.uk Company Background The Register hit the Web as a daily UK based news operation in May 1998. In November 2003 more than 2.2 million unique users (ABCe) visited the site. According to some …

    The Company 29 Sep 2004, 07:40

  • Tories mock PM for broadband pledge

    Don't ya just love politics

    Tony Blair has pledged to end the "digital divide" by 2008 - if the Labour Party wins the next election. Speaking at his party's conference in Brighton, the Prime Minister delivered ten things a "future Labour third term can do for Britain's hard-working families". Said Mr Blair: "Our country and its people prospering in the …

    Broadband 29 Sep 2004, 09:12

  • EC wrong on Worldcom / Sprint deal

    Court spanks Monti

    Competition Commissioner Mario Monti suffered an embarrassing defeat in a Luxembourg court this week - it ruled that his decision on the Sprint-Worldcom merger was illegal. Sprint and Worldcom were to merge in 2000 but called the marriage off after a distinctly negative reaction from US and European Commission regulators. The …

    Financial News 29 Sep 2004, 09:17

  • RIP the online exchange

    Opinion Long live the trading grid

    In the heady days of the dotcom boom, online exchanges grew with surprising rapidity, touted as the ultimate platform for more efficiently communicating and trading with business partners. Not many survived. With public exchanges, the main problems with the model espoused centred around getting suppliers and customers connected …

    Financial News 29 Sep 2004, 09:32

  • Cendant offers $1bn for Orbitz

    Travel mergers takeoff...

    Travel company Cendant, the owner of Avis and Budget car hire firms, is in advanced talks to buy travel website Orbitz for $1bn. Orbitz was started by five US airlines in 2000 and floated on Nasdaq for $300m in December 2003. It competes with the likes of Expedia and Travelocity, offering flights, hotels and vacations. Shares …

    Financial News 29 Sep 2004, 10:16

  • Brit IT pros pessimistic on spending

    But optimists are more optimistic...

    This year's National Computing Centre survey on UK IT spending shows slightly more pessimism than last year. Some 53 per cent of respondents expect IT spending to rise, 39 per cent expect a fall and the rest expect no change. But the median growth rate in IT spending across all sectors was 1.9 per cent, up from last year's …

    Management 29 Sep 2004, 10:35

  • BT doubles DSL speeds for business

    Residential upgrade looms

    BT is doubling the speed of its broadband connections at no extra costs for business users. It said the Business Broadband Network speed hike, along with better service levels, showed its "continuing drive to give our business customers the tools they need to really harness broadband". BT's Business Broadband Network products …

    Small Biz 29 Sep 2004, 10:36

  • Linux, the pirate's friend, says Gartner

    Or has it changed its mind about that?

    We in the press find recalls and corrections a big help. We get a hell of a lot of junk that we assume is dull and therefore throw away without reading, often without even noticing, but the shrill words RECALL!!" or "CORRECTION!!!!" signify to us that there is something somebody has decided they'd rather not have said, or that …

    Operating Systems 29 Sep 2004, 10:37

  • PalmSource unveils Cobalt OS

    Phone-friendly for fast Wi-Fi data

    PalmSource finally unveiled its new OS, version 1.1 of Palm OS Cobalt, as "the first PalmOS designed specifically to support phones". The unveiling was done here in Munich, at the Euro developers conference this week. CEO David Nagel said: "If you want to make a wireless data device, it will be much simpler, faster in the future …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2004, 10:42

  • Ha, ha you're infected

    New Bagle worm poses as 'joke' message

    A new version of the infamous Bagle worm series is spreading widely across the net. Bagle-AS (AKA Bagle-AZ) normally arrives in emails with a price or joke-related (infected) attachments with exe, cpl, scr or com extensions. Subject lines are picked one of a series of innocuous greetings such as Re: Hello, Re: Thank you! or Re …

    Security 29 Sep 2004, 11:01

  • BlueGene sneaks past Earth Simulator

    Supercomputer chart officially out of date

    The Earth Simulator, an NEC supercomputer, is surpassed, at last. IBM announced yesterday that its Blue Gene/L supercomputer had achieved a sustained performance of 36.01 teraflops, or 36.01 trillion floating point calculations per second. Earth Simulator's highest recorded performance is 35.86 teraflops. The margin by which …

    Servers 29 Sep 2004, 11:50

  • UK policeman arrested over phone tap claims

    Watching the Detectives

    Six men - including a serving Metropolitan Police officer - have been arrested today concerning the alleged illegal interception of private phone calls carried out for clients of a central London detective agency. The Met police's Anti-Corruption Command arrested the men this morning following a tip-off by BT earlier this year …

    Security 29 Sep 2004, 12:32

  • BCS offers members proof of professionalism

    Training tool

    The British Computer Society (BCS) has designed a tool to help companies manage the career progression and develop the skills of its IT staff. The organisation's top brass say initiatives like this are essential in an industry "plagued by project failure and negative public perception". David Clarke, BCS chief executive, say …

    Management 29 Sep 2004, 12:41

  • Yahoo! now! sucks! - official

    Feeds at speed

    All good technology eventually becomes invisible, and Yahoo! has taken a step to making the much-hyped RSS push protocol disappear into its portal. The web giant previewed a new version of its My Yahoo! offering yesterday. Although there are only 42 Segway-owning, power-blogging web designers in the world who care about RSS, …

    Developer 29 Sep 2004, 13:21

  • UK gov pilots passenger tracking in fight against terror

    Project Semaphore

    The UK government yesterday announced plans to introduce electronic embarkation controls at UK ports by the end of the year. The £15m pilot scheme - called Project Semaphore - is the first phase of a broader e-Borders programme which aims to strengthen border controls by recording people as they travel into and out of the UK. …

    Media 29 Sep 2004, 13:29

  • SpaceShipOne bids for X-Prize

    Updated First competition flight a success despite 'anomalies'

    Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne is scheduled to blast off at 14.47 BST this afternoon for the first of its flights aimed at securing the $10m X-Prize. The vehicle - which has already made one successful trip to 100km in June - will be carried to 47,000 feet by its White Knight mother ship and after release blast its way to the …

    Science 29 Sep 2004, 13:30

  • Toshiba to punch out 0.85in HDDs by year-end

    iPod Micro, anyone?

    Toshiba is to put sub-1in hard drives into volume production by the end of the year, the company has said. While the capacity of the 0.85in drives has yet to be decided upon - 2-3GB seems the most likely size - they will be around 80 per cent smaller than the 1.8in drives Toshiba currently produces. Apple uses the 1.8in units …

    Storage 29 Sep 2004, 13:53

  • Intel ships 3.33GHz Mobile P4

    Halfway to 6.66GHz...

    Intel today rolled out its latest notebook-oriented CPU, the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 548. Pitched at desktop-replacement systems, the 548 is clocked at 3.33GHz and supports HyperThreading. Fabbed at 90nm, the 'Prescott'-derived part includes 1MB of L2 cache and SSE 3 support. Enhanced SpeedStep technology is included to keep the …

    System Builder 29 Sep 2004, 14:06

  • S3 ramps GammaChrome 3D production

    In retail cards in Q4, company claims

    VIA's graphics chip subsidiary, S3, will see its GammaChrome 3D part appear in retail boards in the Far East in Q4, the company's CFO said today. S3 will begin pitching the part at card makers and system builders in October. Claiming that the GammaChrome will offer comparable performance to ATI's Radeon X600 Pro, S3's Gerry …

    System Builder 29 Sep 2004, 14:21

  • Blair's Britain vies with US in ID snoop wars

    The CAPPS fits, Blunkett's wearing it

    A lucky 6 million travellers on riskier air routes are to begin to experience the first phase of the UK version of US-VISIT/CAPPS II by the end of this year. The government has not as yet specified the routes "chosen on the basis of risk assessments by the border agencies", so we are in no position to gauge the likely complexion …

    Media 29 Sep 2004, 14:32

  • Seagate seeks system builder support for 100GB notebook drive

    Ideal for barebone laptops, apparently

    Seagate has begun shipping the 100GB 2.5in notebook hard drive it launched back in June and is pitching the part at system builders keen to enter the mobile market using barebone laptops. The Momentus 5400.2 runs its two 50GB platters at 5400rpm to help conserve power. Indeed, the company claims the drive uses up the same …

    System Builder 29 Sep 2004, 14:38

  • IT professionals urged to swot up on new Sexual Offences rules

    Conditional defence

    Nine in ten IT professionals are unaware of recent law changes regarding the storing of child abuse images that might later be used in an investigation by police. In May, the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) 2003 came into force. It introduces a "conditional defence" which protects IT professionals who - in their day-to-day management …

    Management 29 Sep 2004, 14:47

  • ABIT intros video card overclock tool

    Plus ATI X300, X600-based boards

    ABIT today launched its first ATI-based graphics cards to incorporate overclocking software derived from the code its ships with its overclockable motherboards. The RX600 Pro-Guru, X600 Pro-HDTV and RX300 SE-Guru boards both ship with vGuru, the video version of ABIT's µGuru overclocking utility. vGuru allows users to modify …

    System Builder 29 Sep 2004, 15:06

  • CA to shed 800 workers

    $70m a year savings

    Computer Associates is to shed 800 staff worldwide, in $70m-a-year cost-cutting moves. The restructure will affect nearly all departments, beginning with a hunt for marketing efficiencies and improved productivity in the company's development business, the software firm said today. It will also examine its product portfolio, …

    Software 29 Sep 2004, 15:10

  • 3G chiefs choose AAC for mobile music delivery

    High Efficiency codec recommended to network, content providers

    3GPP, the organisation behind third-generation mobile phone network standards, has selected MPEG 4's High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) as its codec of choice for 3G-delivered audio content. HE-AAC builds on AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) by adding a spectral band replication system from codec specialist Coding Technologies. This …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2004, 15:54

  • Chinese IT student jailed for running XXX site

    Porn crackdown continues

    A 22-year-old Chinese computer student has been jailed for four years for running a porn site. State media reports that the student - known only by his surname Xie - was arrested in July for flogging XXX flicks. The court heard how Xie, a student at the east China's Zhejiang University of Technology, had earned more than 160, …

    Media 29 Sep 2004, 16:48

  • US phishing losses hit $500m

    The ones that didn't get away

    US consumer losses as a result of phishing scams have reached approximately $500m, according to a survey out today. A survey of 1,335 US net users conducted by think tank the Ponemon Institute found that three in four (76 per cent) are seeing an increase in spoofing and phishing incidents and that 35 per cent receive fake …

    Media 29 Sep 2004, 16:51

  • Sun does Opteron can-can for French bank

    Oh la la

    Just one week after wooing Wall Street, Sun Microsystems has secured a financial services win on the other side of The Pond. France's BNP Paribas has picked up Sun's V20z Opteron-based servers for a new government compliance system as well a new risk-management analysis application for traders. Funny enough, the bank went very …

    Servers 29 Sep 2004, 16:52

  • Biometric gear to be deployed in hospitals and GPs' surgeries

    Early sighting of ID scheme budget-laundering

    Biometric reading technology is to be installed in all UK hospitals and doctor's surgeries, Home Office minister Hazel Blears told Bloomberg earlier today. This will make healthcare conditional on eligibility, and potentially put the government on a collision course with doctors and healthcare workers, who are likely to resist …

    Media 29 Sep 2004, 17:11