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22nd April 2005 Archive

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  • Asia boosts Nokia earnings

    Rosier outlook

    With its first positive financial news for a year, Nokia bounded past analyst expectations, and raised its outlook for the remainder of 2005. In Q1 FY 2005, Nokia sales rose 17 per cent year-on-year to €7.4 bn, with net income up to €1.13bn, up from €1bn a year ago. Operating margin fell by a percentage to point to 15.1, while …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 00:55

  • Longhorn is big - no, this time we mean it

    Microsoft cranks up hype machine

    Having scaled back the vision for Longhorn, Microsoft is re-setting expectations to help drive enthusiasm around the delayed operating system. Chief executive Steve Ballmer was on the Longhorn stump this week calling the repeatedly delayed operating system a platform for the next 10 years. At the Microsoft's Management Summit …

    Operating Systems 22 Apr 2005, 04:08

  • Borland open sources JBuilder

    Take our R&D costs, please

    Borland Software is releasing code from its core JBuilder integrated development environment (IDE) into the Eclipse open source community after a surprise drop in first-quarter sales. The company hopes to offset JBuilder's R&D expenses by putting the suite into Eclipse, where the open source community would - theoretically - …

    Developer 22 Apr 2005, 04:17

  • AMD tells software companies to re-think dual core

    Be warned: This is just the beginning

    AMD has urged ISVs to re-examine their software licensing policies for dual-core systems, the same day IBM reportedly said it will pursue separate policies for x86 and its own Power5 processor. While Oracle has declared it will treat dual core chips as separate processors, and price its software accordingly, Red Hat, Sun …

    Software 22 Apr 2005, 08:57

  • Email destroys the mind faster than marijuana - study

    Are we feeling munchy?

    Modern technology depletes human cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs, according to a psychiatric study conducted at King's College, London. And the curse of 'messaging' is to blame. Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users, in a clinical trial of over a …

    IT Director 22 Apr 2005, 09:10

  • Boston jumps on Opteron bandwagon

    Resigns from Intel-only camp

    Boston Limited is spreading its processor wings, by taking on AMD for the first time. The server room products distie is kicking off with its own-brand AMD Opteron and AMD dual-core rack servers in 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U heights. And now for a quote from Boston’s MD, Manoj Nayee, to explain the firm’s defection from the Intel-only …

    Servers 22 Apr 2005, 09:17

  • Qwest makes final offer for MCI

    Take it or leave it

    Qwest is making a last ditch attempt to acquire MCI after upping its bid to $9.75bn. This "best and final offer" for a tie-up between US telcos MCI and Qwest is 30 per cent higher that the one made by Verizon and accepted by the company formerly known as WorldCom. In a letter detailing the latest offer Qwest told MCI: " …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 09:52

  • Tridgell drops Bitkeeper bombshell

    Open for all

    Samba developer Andrew Tridgell has released the source code to a tool that interoperates with Bitkeeper, the proprietary tool used by waddling Finn Linus Torvalds to manage the Linux kernel until last week. The shotgun wedding of an open source project and a closed source tool was always likely to end in tears, and it finally …

    Operating Systems 22 Apr 2005, 10:26

  • Bean counters love the fluffy side of IT

    Soft benefits, not cold hard cash

    Even accountants have learned that an IT project cannot be thought of purely in terms of its impact on the bottom line, according to research. Instead, before the costs are even considered, 63 per cent of accountants prefer to weigh the risk to the business of a new system failing against the risk to the business of not …

    IT Director 22 Apr 2005, 11:08

  • .EU will be live by Jan '06

    Make a note in your diaries

    The European Commission has announced that Europe's own top-level-domain - .eu - will be live and available by the end of the year. In a dazzling display of horrible marketing speak, the Commission said yesterday that the domain will give businesses higher visibility within the single market, and will level the playing field …

    Public Sector 22 Apr 2005, 11:12

  • MP3 zapping malware worms onto P2P network

    Vigilante virus

    Vigilante virus writers have launched an offensive against file traders with the release of a worm that deletes MP3 files on infected PCs. The Nopir-B worm, which appears to have originated in France, poses on P2P networks as a program to make copies of commercial DVDs. In reality the application offers no such function. …

    Malware 22 Apr 2005, 11:21

  • Q1 brings nothing but good news for Google

    Results almost absurdly healthy

    Google has reported a near-six hundred per cent increase in profit for the first quarter, with net income of $369.2m, up from $64m a year ago. The company said advertising sales almost doubled in the period, thanks largely to increased business outside the US. Revenue was $1.26bn for the quarter, up 93 per cent on the year. …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 11:22

  • Cardiff tops broadband electoral poll

    Election 2005 Get a load of this swing-o-meter

    Cardiff is the broadband capital of the UK, according to the boffins at research outfit Point Topic. With less than two weeks to go until the general election, analysts have done some pre-vote number crunching and discovered that two constituencies in Cardiff are streets ahead in the broadband polls. Some four in ten households …

    Public Sector 22 Apr 2005, 12:15

  • Managing spreadsheet fraud

    Do managers know how much errors cost?

    From time to time over the last year I have written and spoken about the dangers of using spreadsheets, particularly from the perspective of compliance but also with respect to how much they are error prone and subject to fraud. However, the truth is that spreadsheets are beloved by managers the world over and nothing I or …

    IT Director 22 Apr 2005, 13:44

  • World Cup ticket draw results in

    Reg campaign to blag tickets starts here

    Applicants for the first batch of tickets for next year's football World Cup in Germany learned whether or not they were successful on Friday. A total of 812,000 tickets were available in the first sales phase: 665,000 individual tickets (including tickets for wheelchair users) and 147,000 team-specific tickets. Demand was high …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 13:49

  • One.Tel hoovers up RedNet for £5m

    B2B ISP snapped up

    One.Tel - the telecoms arm of Centrica plc - has coughed up £5m in cash to acquire privately-owned B2B ISP RedNet Ltd. The High Wycombe-based ISP - which provides networking and internet services to SMEs - has around a thousand small business customers and employs around 50 staff. All workers will be retained as One.Tel looks …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 14:28

  • AMD: dual-core not for gamers... yet

    Waiting for dualie-friendly titles - or Athlon FX stocks to sell?

    Gamers, AMD's upcoming dual-core desktop processor, the Athlon 64 X2, is not for you. What you want is the single-core Athlon 64 FX. So the chip maker said today. According to John Harris, AMD's head of marketing in North America, despite the performance benefits that the X2's extra core brings, "the Athlon 64 FX is still the …

    PCs 22 Apr 2005, 14:32

  • AOL seeks to block phishing sites

    'We're trying to cut the lines before a phisher can reel them in'

    AOL and security solutions provider Cyota announced yesterday that they are working together to identify and block access to suspected phishing sites, in yet another initiative aimed at tackling the on-line scam. According to AOL, whenever a possible phishing site is identified, it will limit client access to that site, and …

    ID 22 Apr 2005, 14:36

  • UK police tackle mounting internet porn caseload

    Computer forensics units take the strain

    British police are refining their crackdown on internet paedophiles as a swelling caseload of offences involving the downloading of images of child abuse pushes computer forensics teams to their limits. According to police sources over 300 people a month are still being referred to special police paedophile units. This is …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 2005, 14:38

  • Privacy watchdog warns job seekers to beware

    Would you like a job transferring our newly-aquired money?

    Would-be workers need to be more cautious with resume services and posting their personal information online. Online fraudsters and scammers are waiting. Online fraudsters are increasingly taking advantage of vulnerable job seekers by using online résumés to steal their identity, a privacy expert warned this week. The threats …

    ID 22 Apr 2005, 14:45

  • Freescale earnings grow post-restructure

    Business picking up

    Freescale, Motorola's erstwhile chip division, saw its income jump during Q1 FY2005 as it started to put the cost of last year's layoffs behind it. The quarter yielded sales of $1.44bn, up a mere fraction on the previous quarter's $1.43bn and the year-ago quarter's total, $1.4bn. Income for the three-month period came to $85m …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 14:52

  • Porn swallows 20% of NZ police IT capacity

    People like us

    Randy coppers in New Zealand waste so much time surfing for porn while on the job that fully 20 per cent of police computer system capacity is devoted to storing the images, an official audit has revealed. The investigation, begun five months ago, found vast reams of sexually-explicit material, some involving violence or …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 2005, 14:58

  • Sniping bloggers can keep America safe from terrorists and cats!

    And ninethly 'Snogging' militia is crucial

    When modern imperial ideologies have dehumanized you and modern enterprises have exploited your labor, post colonial situations become occasions to assert your sense of self and culture, even when doing so appears backward to those who have been riding your back - Cornel West Recent events have left me questioning our …

    Bootnotes 22 Apr 2005, 15:22

  • The mysterious link between security, laptops and rubbish dumps

    Letters No, really

    In the last letters bag, we tackled the desktop Linux issue. In this one, we've come over all Gwyneth 'n Chris, and are going for Apple instead. All this uncharacteristic fruitiness has been prompted by SecruityFocus' Kelly Martin's opinion piece on how the dearth of viruses for the Apple OS is fuelling sales of the cute …

    Letters 22 Apr 2005, 15:53

  • Sex android begats Armageddon machine

    We're all going to die. Here's why

    Back in February we reported that Kim Jong-Hwan of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre - controlled by explosive cranial implant from the Lizard Army's advance Earth base at French car manufacturer Renault - had developed software which would allow robots to acquire reasoning and emotions, plus a healthy machine sex drive …

    Rise of the Machines 22 Apr 2005, 16:18

  • The Boss is dead - long live The Boss

    Episode 13 The BOFH school of management

    So the Boss has resigned (which in itself isn't a great occurrence) except that neither the PFY nor I had a hand in it (which is). It seems he was made an offer he couldn't refuse which didn't involve horses or handguns but instead a large amount of money. The first thing we knew of it was the abusive leaving message taped to …

    BOFH 22 Apr 2005, 16:22

  • Surrey man claims $10k Moore's law bounty

    Dave's floor saves Moore's law

    Investors in Intel, the little-known chip maker, can breath a collective sigh of relief: the foundations of the company have been saved by a Surrey-based engineer. Just two weeks ago the company announced that it has lost Moore's law and was offering $10,000 for its safe return. Now, a copy of the original magazine in which …

    Bootnotes 22 Apr 2005, 16:26

  • Credit card firms push cybersecurity

    Countdown

    Large online merchants will have to abide to a new, stricter set of standards from credit card firms after June 30. The stricter guideline from MasterCard, Visa, American Express and other major credit card companies are designed to improve the security practices of online merchants and guard against fraud. Merchants that fall …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 16:30

  • Nasdaq swoops for $1.9bn Instinet

    Keeping pace with NYSE

    The Nasdaq, long rumored to have its eye on Instinet, has gotten its electronic patsy for $1.9bn in cash. In so doing, the Nasdaq closed the second major deal this week of US financial markets, following NYSE which merged with Archipelago. The structure of the Nasdaq/Instinet buy is quite complex. Once the deal is completed, …

    Financial News 22 Apr 2005, 21:38