2nd March 2005 Archive

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Microsoft to end 64-bit Windows endurance test in one month

IDF Spring 05 It's serious this time

After years of delays, Microsoft will deliver a pair of 64-bit operating systems within the next month. Honest. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's SVP of platforms, promised to ship the Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating systems "in about a month." These operating systems - one for …

Servers 2 Mar 2005, 00:50
Intel confirms Itanium has a future

IDF Spring 05 Welcome, Richford, Reidland and Poulson

Intel today dished out code-names galore for its future server processors, covering both the Itanium and Xeon product lines. Many of you will already be familiar with the dual-core version of Itanium called Montecito due out this year. You'll also likely know its follow on named Montvale and a low-end version of the same chip …

Servers 2 Mar 2005, 01:30
ATI paves way for sub-$50 graphics cards

Radeon X300 SE targets integrated chipsets

ATI today introduced a low-end Radeon X-class graphics card that utilises the company's AGP-like HyperMemory technology to save money by limiting the on-board memory. The Radeon X300 SE is expected to ship in 128MB and 256MB versions, of which just 32MB and 128MB, respectively, consists of on-card video memory. The rest is …

System Builder 2 Mar 2005, 02:41
P2P promises economic Valhalla - Grokster et al

Don't kill the golden goose, Supremes are urged

In a recent brief written for the US Supreme Court, the embattled Grokster and StreamCast (Morpheus) claim that their P2P technology represents an economic boon to the entire internet because it uses bandwidth more efficiently than other technologies: "Peer-to-peer arrangements also provide efficiency benefits at the high end …

Music and Media 2 Mar 2005, 08:50
Yahoo! rebrands! Overture!

Wants! more! developers!

Yahoo is hoping to tempt more developers to its search products by providing easier access to its Web service APIs along with programmes and tools. Yahoo wants to create an active online community of coders around its products. The "Yahoo! Search Developer Network" will include mailing lists, discussion groups, application …

Financial News 2 Mar 2005, 10:50
Investor fined £15k for net share abuse

'Improper dissemination'

An "experienced" private investor has been fined £15,000 for posting sensitive financial information on an internet bulletin board to help boost a company's share price. David Isaacs "dishonestly obtained relevant information" about satellite navigation firm Trafficmaster while visiting a friend's house in 2003. His friend, an …

Music and Media 2 Mar 2005, 11:01
Gamers get greater access to pizza

Order while you Everquest

Way back in the early 1990s, the first stories about the commercialization of the internet included the idea of using the web to order pizza. So it struck a chord when Sony introduced the idea of being able to order pizza while you are playing the online multiplayer game, Everquest II. Players can just type /pizza when they are …

Financial News 2 Mar 2005, 11:12
Coral DRM spec imminent

Interoperability is go

When the Coral Consortium formed last October, Faultline trumpeted loudest and longest that this may finally be the breakthrough in Digital Rights Management that the digital media industries have all been waiting for. The one reservation was that it had to move rapidly and get its specification out to the world without fuss. …

Financial News 2 Mar 2005, 12:03
Logicalis UK buys Notability

IBM channel play

Logicalis, the reseller arm of the South African Datatec group, has bought Notability, a Surrey, UK IBM business partner, for an undisclosed sum. Notability gets a new name - Logicalis Computing Solutions - and brings on board annual revenues of £30m a year. At the same time Logicalis is combining its former Logicalis UK and …

Channel Register 2 Mar 2005, 12:07
Rambus Infineon claim chucked out of court

'Unclean hands...'

Rambus shares fell ten per cent last night on news that a judge has thrown out its claim for patent infringement against Infineon Technologies. The case concerns Rambus patents for SDRAM and DDR DRAM memory chips and dates back to August 2000. Judge Robert E Payne dismissed Rambus's patent infringement claims, a decision …

Channel Register 2 Mar 2005, 12:32
Bill Gates now Sir Bill Gates: official

Honours Queen with royal visit

Microsoft employees take note: philanthropic rich bloke Bill Gates should now be formally addressed as Bill Gates KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) - following a quick tap on the shoulder from Her Imperial Majestyness Liz II at Buck House this morning. The Queen has been pacing up and down …

Bootnotes 2 Mar 2005, 12:39
MPs scrutinise telecoms review

What's all this 'equivalence' about then?

Some of the leading operators in the UK's telecoms sector gave evidence to a group of MPs yesterday about the ongoing telecoms review being conducted by regulator Ofcom. AOL UK, Wanadoo UK, and Tiscali UK joined other operators including EasyNet and Cable & Wireless to outline their views about the progress being made so far to …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2005, 12:48
Costa Rican telco lobbies to criminalise VoIP

Holding back the tide

Costa Rica's state-owned telecommunications monopoly is lobbying to criminalise internet telephony. The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is pushing for stringent controls over VoIP that at their most draconian could make internet telephony a crime, Costa Rican daily La Nación reports. According to the paper, 20 per …

Data Networking 2 Mar 2005, 13:00
Open Office 2.0 beta arrives

Ready to play

A beta version of Open Office 2.0 is available for download. The open source office applications suite claims to offer most of the functions of Microsoft's Office product. It includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing software. The beta has a new user interface - designed to make refugees from Microsoft …

Applications 2 Mar 2005, 13:07
Enter the PHP-Nuke Garage

Site offer Top titles at 30% off

PHP-Nuke is remarkably capable and reliable, but until now, it's been poorly documented. This book fills the gap. Best of all, you can use it even if you have no experience with PHP, databases, coding, or hosting. Drawing on practical examples from a live example site, top IT author/trainer Don Jones illuminates every facet of …

Site News 2 Mar 2005, 13:10
Ebbers denies knowledge of WorldCom fraud

Trial continues

Bernie Ebbers continued to deny allegations yesterday that he was behind the $11bn (£5.8bn) WorldCom accounting scandal that led to the financial collapse of the US telecoms giant. The former boss of WorldCom challenged testimony given already by star prosecution witness Scott Sullivan denying that he put pressure on the former …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2005, 13:20
Galileo concession still up for grabs

Surprise delay on satnav contract award

It is not yet certain who will operate Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system after the Galileo Joint Undertaking body yesterday failed to announce a winner as was expected. Contenders Eurely and iNavSat will now have to continue pitching to the awarding body, the BBC reports. Galileo Joint Undertaking executive director, …

Science 2 Mar 2005, 13:23
Carly tipped for World Bank job

Make it up you couldn't

Carly Fiorina, dismissed as chief executive of HP three weeks ago, is in the running to be the next boss of the World Bank. She would replace James Wolfenson who has served for 10 years and has had a chequered relationship with George Bush. This might sound like bad news for the world until the you realise that the other …

Bootnotes 2 Mar 2005, 14:23
'Office' fan foils Ricky Gervais ID theft scam

Insider link

A dodgy impersonation tripped up a gang of ID fraudsters accused of plundering £200,000 from the bank account of comedian Ricky Gervais, a London court heard yesterday. The gang allegedly obtained Gervais's personal details from an insider at NatWest bank before forging a passport in his name to facilitate their scam. But the …

Bootnotes 2 Mar 2005, 14:55
Redbus offers 'sincerest apologies' for loss of service

Incident report in full

Redbus has offered its "sincerest apologies" for the loss of service following yesterday's power failure at its Harbour Exchange facility in London yesterday. The statement issued this afternoon reads: Incident Report for occurrence on Tuesday 1st March 2005 at Redbus Interhouse Facility, Harbour Exchange Square, London Time …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2005, 15:12
P4 to get Virtualisation Tech before dual-cores do

IDF Spring 05 No Vanderpool for Smithfield

Intel's dual-core desktop chip 'Smithfield', or Pentium D, as we should now get used to calling it, will not offer Intel's Virtualisation Technology (VT), a company source told us after we'd speculated that it might. Why did we say VT might make it into the D? Intel itself said in January this year that it "plans to offer VT in …

PCs 2 Mar 2005, 15:45
EDS wins £4bn MoD contract

What could possibly go wrong?

Services behemoth EDS has won a £4bn contract to sort out technology for the Ministry of Defence. The deal covers everything from civil service desktop machines to battlefield communications. Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Bach said the ATLAS consortium, led by EDS, had been awarded "Increment 1" - the first stage of the …

Data Networking 2 Mar 2005, 15:53
186k takes over 200 Tiscali UK VISPS

'Transferred ownership'

Tiscali UK has offloaded around 200 virtual ISPs (VISPs) to Leeds-based internet outfit 186k. Financial details concerning the arrangement have not been disclosed. In an email the VISPs were told: "Tiscali has transferred your VISP agreement to 186k who will take over the management of this agreement with immediate effect. " …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2005, 15:56
Big Blue goes after the little guy

Small and medium businesses

IBM is going after small and medium businesses and the white box server vendors who serve them. Talking at IBM's Partnerworld conference in Las Vegas Bill Zeitler, group executive of IBM Systems and Technology Group, said the Small and Medium Business market was growing faster than other markets and IBM had to do better in that …

Channel 2 Mar 2005, 16:15
AMD filing off by a few words

What we meant to say was...

Advanced Micro Devices forgot to include a few crucial words in a 10-K filing on Tuesday, leaving investors with the misleading impression that a slip in first quarter sales is inevitable. The original filing on Tuesday said, in the Outlook section, that computation product sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2005 would be “ …

Financial News 2 Mar 2005, 17:05
Philips unrolls 'paper' display

Flexible approach

Philips has announced that it will start developing rollable displays in earnest. Until now, the Dutch company only had a working prototype. Such displays are projected to be the primary solution to demand for larger displays in mobile devices: just pull the screen out of a smart phone or PDA and enjoy a movie. Or read an …

Mobile 2 Mar 2005, 17:08
'LLU Czar' to rule on Bulldog/BT dispute

There's a fault on my line, dear Peter, dear Peter...

Bulldog has called on the Telecom Adjudicator to intervene in a row over fault repairs between the local loop unbundling operator (LLUO) and BT. The complaint - one of a dozen gripes that date back to May 2003 - had been referred to Ofcom in March 2004. However, following the creation of the Telecommunications Adjudication …

Telecoms 2 Mar 2005, 17:37
BitDefender bug bites GFI

Email wipe-out

GFI's Mail Security anti-virus product threw a wobbler Wednesday afternoon (2 March) when an update to BitDefender Engine Module caused it to delete the body content of every incoming and outgoing message. The engine - one of three used by GFI MailSecurity along with components from Kaspersky Labs and McAfee - detected all …

Malware 2 Mar 2005, 17:52
Intel 'Yonah' to boost Centrino media speed

IDF Spring 05 SSE 3, updated graphics engine, more added

Intel's 'Yonah' microprocessor, the dual-core, 65nm cornerstone of next year's 'Napa' Centrino platform, will eliminate the limitations that have kept the Pentium M's multimedia performance well behind NetBurst architecture-based chips. Indeed, said Mooly Eden, VP of Intel's Mobility Group and one of the minds behind the ' …

PCs 2 Mar 2005, 20:19
Intel Developer Forum 2005

IDF Spring 05 Full Coverage

All the key stories from this Spring's Intel Developer Forum Desktop Intel sees virtualization as key to child-proof PCs Intel updates Ent PC with audio 'reality amp' Intel confirms chipset graphics update Intel dual-core Smithfield to ship as Pentium D Intel confirms 64-bit Celeron scheme P4 to get Virtualisation Tech …

System Builder 2 Mar 2005, 20:28
Intel confirms chipset graphics update

IDF Spring 05 The GMA 950 core surfaces

Intel's upcoming 945G chipset will sport an updated graphics core, the Graphics Media Accelerator 950, the chip giant let slip today. Presenting 'Anchor Creek', Intel's upcoming home PC platform, Don MacDonald, VP and General Manager of the company's Digital Home Group, revealed that the bundle's chipset would feature the …

PCs 2 Mar 2005, 20:58
Apple music store downloads top 300m

Run-rate rising

Apple's iTunes Music Store has sold more than 300m downloads, the company said today. The Mac maker last put a figure to the total number of purchases in January, when ITMS passed the 250m mark, up from 200m in mid-December 2004. The timing of the latest announcement marks a slight acceleration in song download activity. It …

Mac Channel 2 Mar 2005, 21:20