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10th February 2005 Archive

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  • Napster does the maths

    And it isn't pretty

    Napster urged TV viewers to "Do the math!" in a poorly-received Superbowl commercial on Sunday. But when we do the maths on Napster's business, we discover the company lost $1.36 on every $1 it earned in the last three months. Excluding income from Roxio, which Napster now classifies as "discontinued operations", Napster had …

    Financial News 10 Feb 2005, 06:27

  • UK.biz fined £1.8m for illegal software - BSA

    Five year enforcement plan

    UK companies paid out £1.8m ($3.34m) in fines over the last five years in settlements for illegal software use, the Business Software Alliance reports. As well as paying fines, firms caught using unlicensed software were obliged to cough up an undisclosed amount to put their software assets in order. The BSA routinely blames …

    Small Biz 10 Feb 2005, 08:53

  • BT in 2Mb broadband giveaway

    'About giving value for money'

    BT has followed in the footsteps of its ISP rivals today and announced that it is upping the speed of its retail broadband service at no extra cost. BT Broadband and BT Yahoo! Broadband will now run at 2 Meg while the speed of BT Broadband Basic will be doubled to 1 Meg. If phone lines won't support the new higher rates, then …

    Small Biz 10 Feb 2005, 09:33

  • Hackers sued for tinkering with Xbox games

    Skinned alive

    In the first case of its kind, a California video game maker is suing an entire community of software tinkerers for reverse engineering and modifying Xbox games that they legally purchased. Tecmo, Inc., a subsidiary of a Japanese company, announced a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Mike Greiling of Eden Prairie, Minn., and …

    Music and Media 10 Feb 2005, 10:20

  • Small.biz gets the virus jitters

    Concern at threat, but little action

    Businesses are becoming ever more nervous with news that almost 100,000 viruses are worming their way around UK IT systems. A report by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reveals that over 85 per cent of businesses believe that the problem will get worse in the future. Despite such worries, only a quarter of businesses …

    Small Biz 10 Feb 2005, 11:03

  • South America warms to Open Source

    Comment An awful lot of Linux in Brazil

    The trend to Open Source in South America seems to be stronger than it is anywhere else. Almost all governments there seem to be setting an Open Source agenda. Brazil, with 170 million or so citizens and by far the largest South American economy (the economy of Sao Paolo on its own is roughly as big as the economy of Mexico), …

    Operating Systems 10 Feb 2005, 11:06

  • BT retail DSL market share slips some more

    'Disappointed'

    BT Retail's slice of new DSL punters continues to slide, according to the telco's own figures released today. The former monopoly admits that the figures are "disappointing" but remains chipper that it is still the UK's largest broadband ISP. Of the 4.1m wholesale BT DSL connections at the end of December, 1.49m were made via …

    Telecoms 10 Feb 2005, 11:09

  • Beware the unexpected attack vector

    Threats from all sides

    A new round of attacks and phishing attempts use some unexpected attack vectors that we should have been paying attention to, but weren't, writes Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus. Back in 1882, Los Angeles was a rough, dry town of 12,000 people that had been an incorporated municipality for a little over 3 decades. 1882 also …

    Security 10 Feb 2005, 11:24

  • Symantec anti-virus flaw hits 30 products

    Updates issued for critical bug, calamity averted

    A cross-platform flaw affecting many Symantec security products - both consumer and enterprise - has been discovered. Users of Symantec's Norton SystemWorks 2004, Norton SystemWorks 2004 (both Mac and Windows), Norton AntiVirus 2004, corporate anti-virus apps and Brightmail anti-spam software (among others) all need to apply …

    Malware 10 Feb 2005, 11:26

  • European software patent law hangs in the balance

    Poland changes its mind, but all is not lost

    The fate of the European software patent directive is set to be decided next week, as its supporters and its opponents head to a final showdown in Brussels. In the red corner, we have the Council of Ministers, the authors, and long-time supporters, of the current draft. In the blue corner, we have the European Parliament, an …

    Developer 10 Feb 2005, 11:43

  • Ebbers failed to tell of book fiddling

    Didn't stop fraud happening

    Former WorldCom boss Bernie Ebbers knew the telco's books were being cooked but failed to do anything about it, former CFO Scott Sullivan testified yesterday. In his third day in the witness stand Sullivan recounted how Ebbers kept saying that the company had to hit the financial projections expected by Wall Street. In response …

    IT Director 10 Feb 2005, 12:41

  • Sniffer dog threatens online privacy

    Comment Implications of US Supreme Court ruling

    The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is supposed to be the one that protects people and their "houses, places and effects" against "unreasonable searches". Forty-two years ago, the US Supreme Court held that attaching a listening device to a public pay phone violated this provision because the Constitution protects people …

    Music and Media 10 Feb 2005, 12:43

  • BT net income rises 70%

    Hurrah

    The UK's biggest phone company, British Telecom, has posted a 70 per cent rise in profits, driven in large part by sales of overseas businesses. Net income during its fiscal third quarter climbed to £653m, or £0.076 a share, from £385m, or £0.044 a share, a year earlier. A huge proportion of the profits came from the sale of BT …

    Financial News 10 Feb 2005, 12:47

  • Yahoo! betas! toolbar! for! Firefox!

    Exclamation mark

    Yahoo! has released a beta toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox browser. You can download the Windows version here. The net giant is to release MacOS and Linux flavours "shortly". The toolbar includes bookmarks and customs sites, "search this site", search history, "translate this page", courtesy of Babelfish, notifications when …

    Financial News 10 Feb 2005, 13:56

  • UK scientists want £100m stem cell foundation

    Cash to keep Britain at cutting edge

    UK scientists have called for £100m to keep Britain at the forefront of stem cell research, and are asking for a new charitable foundation to administer the funds. They say that a lack of cash threatens early advances and that there is a risk of UK research being left behind by ongoing foreign programmes. The announcement was …

    Science 10 Feb 2005, 14:08

  • SCO dodges bullet

    Still a case of smoke 'em if you got 'em

    SCO dodged a legal bullet, yesterday, as the judge overseeing its lawsuit against IBM refused the computer giant's request for a summary judgment. But it may only be a temporary reprieve, as District Judge Dale Kimball used his statement to launch a scathing attack on the merits of SCOs case against IBM. IBM was seeking a …

    Operating Systems 10 Feb 2005, 14:13

  • EU to scrap greenhouse gas targets

    Seeks new global agreement after 2012

    The EU will not set targets for lowering greenhouses gases after the first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, an EU executive Commission report has revealed. Instead, it will focus on bringing the US and other nations into the damage limitation fold. The US refused to ratify the Kyotot Protocol which which aims by 2008- …

    Science 10 Feb 2005, 14:30

  • Pfizer and MS sue Viagra spam gangs

    Big stick

    Pfizer and Microsoft today announced a joint legal offensive against sellers of illegal Viagra and two international spam syndicates alleged to have promoted illicit sales of counterfeit versions of the drug. The legal action follows a seven-month investigation during which Microsoft and Pfizer worked together to track down …

    Spam 10 Feb 2005, 14:34

  • Intel 65nm desktop, server CPUs 'up and running'

    In the labs, a year ahead of launch

    Intel has 65nm versions of its mobile, desktop and server-oriented dual-core processors up and running in the its labs, a senior company executive revealed today. Questioned in London today about Intel's 65nm processor plans, Kirk Skaugen, marketing director at Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, said the chip maker has "dual- …

    Servers 10 Feb 2005, 14:43

  • Broadband growth buoys Wanadoo

    Bon

    Almost half of Wanadoo's internet users are broadband subscribers, the company's parent France Telecom (FT) announced today. At the end of December the number of Wanadoo broadband subscribers had risen to 4.37m (up from 2.45m a year before) making up 46 per cent of Wanadoo's European customer base at the end of 2004. In France …

    Telecoms 10 Feb 2005, 14:55

  • Apple releases Mac OS X 10.3.8 update

    Panther patching time again

    Apple has updated Mac OS X 'Panther' to version 10.3.8, today posting separate updaters for version 10.3.7 of the operating system and for all previous Panther releases. According to Apple, the update provides a number of bug fixes and tweaks, primarily to improve the performance of a variety of third-party applications. …

    Mac Channel 10 Feb 2005, 15:09

  • Intel pushes out low end Grantsdales

    No fanfare for new 915 chipsets

    Intel has quietly extended its 'Grantsdale' Pentium 4 chipset family with a pair of low-end products, as anticipated. Neither the 915PL nor the 915GL have been formally announced so far as we can see, but the pair have now appeared on the chip maker's website among the list of 915-series chipsets. The 915PL is a discrete …

    System Builder 10 Feb 2005, 15:35

  • Group Sense preps Euro smart phone

    Exclusive Full M68 specs revealed

    Far Eastern smart phone maker Group Sense is preparing a new Palm OS-based handset, called the Xplore M68, and this time it's pitching the handset at the European market. To date, Group Sense has shipped a number of PalmOS-based phones, in each case targeting local markets in Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and Thailand. Now it's …

    Mobile 10 Feb 2005, 16:15

  • No DRM in Mr. Robertson's neighborhood

    Desktop Summit Child's play at MP3tunes

    There is a shallowness to Southern California culture that can make you question the authenticity of anything coming out of the place. The boobs are fake. The faces are fake. The water is fake - pumped in from far away reservoirs. The cities are filled with bland, repetitive strip malls loaded down with chain restaurants not …

    Music and Media 10 Feb 2005, 16:56

  • T-Mobile and Voda face monopoly abuse rap

    German roaming costs 'unfair', says EU commission

    The European Competition Commission has accused T-Mobile and Vodafone of charging too much for access to roaming services in Germany. It sent each firm a 'statement of objection', detailing alleged breaches of EC rules on abuse of monopoly powers. T-Mobile and Vodafone supply network time to domestic and foreign operators. Yet …

    Mobile 10 Feb 2005, 17:01

  • Users choke on mobile spam

    Customer churn risk

    Consumers are more likely to change their operator than their mobile number to dodge the growing nuisance of text message spam. More than eight in 10 mobile phone users surveyed in a study by Switzerland's University of St.Gallen and mobile services firm bmd wireless have received unsolicited mobile messages. Four in five (83 …

    Spam 10 Feb 2005, 17:07

  • Sun shuns Intel

    It's Opteron, or bust

    Sun Microsystems' embrace of Intel processors lasted all of two years. It has decided to go the Opteron-only route for its x86-compatible workstations and one- to four-processor servers. Last month, Sun stopped shipping its V60x and V65x Xeon-based servers, a company spokesman confirmed. Sun executives had hinted last year that …

    Servers 10 Feb 2005, 20:15

  • MPAA closes Loki

    Hollywood hijacks rebel Torrent trader

    One of the few BitTorrent hubs willing to battle the major movie studios has been shut down by Hollywood. A notice from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has gone up on LokiTorrent, saying a court order has grounded the site. "You can click but you can't hide," the notice reads. "There are websites that provide …

    Music and Media 10 Feb 2005, 22:40

  • MS seeks patent experts - no patent experience necessary

    Offshoring incompetence

    Microsoft is recruiting patent engineers - but complete ignorance of patent law is not considered an obstacle to being hired, according to the job ad. Last year, Redmond began outsourcing the task of researching and analysing patents to a firm called Intellevate, and the team is based in New Delhi, India. The applicant must be …

    Music and Media 10 Feb 2005, 22:48