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27th May 2005 Archive

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  • Netscape 8.0 disables Internet Explorer

    By fair means or foul

    Microsoft has confirmed that installing the recenlty launched Netscape 8.0 on on your PC will stop Internet Explorer from displaying XML-files, like blog feeds. In his blog, David Massy, a senior Microsoft program manager, said that users who install Netscape 8.0 and use IE to visit an XML file or XML file with an XSLT …

    Applications 27 May 2005, 07:00

  • IBM pushes 'software as a service' on partners

    Time to get educated

    IBM is buying into software as a service (SaaS) with training and online resources designed to encourage ISVs to evaluate the emerging business model. Two workshops, tackling the technical challenges and business models behind SaaS, are now available under IBM's PartnerWorld program. The Software as Service Financial Modeling …

    Applications 27 May 2005, 08:30

  • IT departments to get smaller and less technical

    Pen pushing up, Coding down

    IT teams will shrink dramatically during the next five years as employers adopt competitively priced external suppliers for IT services, according to new research. And, employees lucky enough to stay in a job will find themselves dealing less with technology and assuming more of a business role by managing suppliers. Gartner's …

    IT Director 27 May 2005, 08:44

  • AMD may be running in place

    Intel marketing on steroids

    This story has expired from The Register's archive. You can now find it at its original location on the Forbes.com website: http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/05/26/cx_ah_0526amd.html?partner=theregister.

    System Builder 27 May 2005, 08:54

  • BT unveils bulky LLU price promo

    Committed to competition, apparently

    BT has cut the cost of migrating broadband users onto unbundled phone lines. The promo offer kicks off on July 1 and means that the wholesale cost of migrating punters onto unbundled lines from its own wholesale broadband products will fall 42 per cent from £34.86 to £20.00 (ex VAT). The snag is that this year-long offer only …

    Telecoms 27 May 2005, 09:29

  • Dropped Tecmo suit means nudity for us all

    Analysis Does the law tolerate modding?

    Game developer Tecmo dropped its lawsuit against console website Ninjahackers.net this week. The lawsuit follows almost four months of legal wranglings over game modifications that the Ninjahackers created, and then posted to their website. Tecmo publish several games including Dead or Alive, a beat-em-up, and Dead or Alive …

    Music and Media 27 May 2005, 09:32

  • Fraud expert becomes victim of credit card crime

    It could be you

    The founder of an anti-fraud website has himself become the victim of credit card fraud. Andrew Goodwill, managing director of Early Warning UK, a scheme set up to help retailers avoid credit card fraud, is down $600 (£329) after crooks used his credit card to pay for services online. Far from being embarrassed by becoming a …

    ID 27 May 2005, 10:06

  • 3G TV: too little, too soon

    Need for better ARPU drives roll-out

    Mobile television is the closest the cellular industry has come to the elusive "killer application" for 3G – or so it hopes. Broadcast television to the handset has been the most talked-about application this year, and some operators, such as Sprint with MobiTV, already offer limited services. But the consumer appeal and the …

    Mobile 27 May 2005, 10:16

  • Nanotubes help neurons get chatty

    Small stuff, big potential

    Italian researchers have managed to persuade brain cells to grow on a nanotube-coated surface - a breakthrough that could provide immediate help to good, old humans. The team found that the nanotubes actually boosted communication, or neural signal transfer, between the cells, which were taken from the hippocampus. The research …

    Science 27 May 2005, 10:28

  • Business email services squeeze BlackBerry

    Operators keen for slice of pie

    The major cellcos are always keen to increase their penetration of the enterprise market, and they recognize that wireless email is the most promising starting point, since most large companies are building their mobile strategies around an initial deployment of mail. This trend has, of course, given RIM BlackBerry its …

    Mobile 27 May 2005, 10:34

  • Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' in depth

    Review Part One: Spotlight and Widgets

    I've been running Mac OS X 'Tiger' since the day after its release, on 29 April. At the time, hundreds of reviews of the operating system were published, but I didn't want to be a part of the herd, since many of them were little more than lists of the new features. I wanted to spend some more time with Tiger before getting off …

    Mac Channel 27 May 2005, 11:07

  • NatWest scraps online payment service

    From FastPay to NoPay

    NatWest is ditching its online payment service - FastPay - because it no longer fits in with the UK bank's plans. FastPay has already stopped accepting new punters and will close all accounts and cease service on July 15, although existing customers can still use the service until then. A statement on the FastPay site reads: " …

    Financial News 27 May 2005, 11:17

  • Collaboration technologies: the reader survey

    Reg Reader Studies Spare us five minutes...

    It's that time of the month when we at Vulture Central - in keeping with local custom - ask our beloved and tech-savvy readership to lend us a hand to give the IT barometer a light tap. May's subject is the enthrallingly-titled "Reg Collaboration Questionnaire", but don't let that put you off. Indeed, there's some useful data …

    Tech Panel 27 May 2005, 11:50

  • Mac users discover Tiger's hidden Booleans

    Letters They were just avoiding the Spotlight

    Hold the reviews page! Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4 does have Boolean operators. They just aren't documented, and they don't work very well. But here are your thoughts on our critique of Mac OS X Tiger's user interface, Spotlight and Dashboard. (The review focussed on the UI and the value of the upgrade: we look at compatibility …

    Letters 27 May 2005, 12:41

  • CA to restate five years of figures

    Oh, and it's filed Q4 results

    Computer Associates says it will have to restate five years of its accounts, according to reports, following the discovery of a number of "improper" contracts on its books. The software maker also said it will likely defer filing its annual accounts for 15 days. The news comes less than a year after the conclusion of a very …

    Financial News 27 May 2005, 12:49

  • BOFH: Defence of the Realm

    Episode 17 A public key encryption breakthrough

    So the new Boss isn't happy. It seems in his first week he's detected that someone is intercepting his email!!! The PFY and I are, of course, morally outraged at the thought of all this and assure him we'll leave no stone unturned in ensuring it doesn't happen again. We'll be much more careful next time, for a start. …

    BOFH 27 May 2005, 13:12

  • VIA to ship C7 next month

    But at what clock speed?

    VIA's C7 'Esther' processor will go into mass production by the end of the quarter, the Taiwanese chip maker said today. The chip, designed by VIA's US subsidiary Centaur, is pitched at mobile devices, consumer electronics kit and small form-factor PCs - all machine types VIA has been increasingly targeting over the last few …

    PCs 27 May 2005, 13:18

  • UK.gov computer training scam gang jailed

    'Licence to print money' revoked

    A gang of crooks who ripped off the government of more than £2m through a fraudulent computer skills training course have been jailed for a total of nine and a half years. Stuart Leary, 39, of Poole, Dorset, John Stirling, 41, of Glasgow, and Steve Moran, 29, of Birmingham, savored a lavish lifesytle by exploiting Department of …

    Public Sector 27 May 2005, 13:31

  • Device drivers filled with flaws

    Security threatened, action required

    The uneven skills of driver programmers have left a legion of holes in software that ships with Windows and Linux, security experts say. Operating system vendors and hardware makers should commit more resources toward systematically auditing Windows and Linux device-driver code for flaws, security researchers say. While buffer …

    Enterprise Security 27 May 2005, 13:48

  • BT LLU promo only half-baked

    Key detail unresolved

    BT has yet to iron out all the details for its generous price cut offer for local loop unbundling (LLU) operators. Yesterday, the UK's dominant telco announced plans to cut the cost of migrating broadband users onto unbundled phone lines. The promo offer kicks off on July 1 and means that the wholesale cost of migrating …

    Telecoms 27 May 2005, 13:54

  • IBM Germany job cut fears tempered

    Fantastich!

    The number of IBM workers facing the chop in Germany has been scaled down, according to the FT. Unions had feared that as a many as 2,500 jobs would be axed as part of IBM's decision earlier this month to ditch 13,000 workers. The German edition of the financial rag cites insiders who say that the 2,500 figure was a "gross …

    IT Director 27 May 2005, 14:37

  • Itanic sinks at Lloyds Register

    Risk managers think again

    Intel’s list of potential Itanium customer case studies grew a little shorter on Friday, when Lloyds Register said it had reconsidered an earlier plan to shift from Unix (RISC) servers to Itanium boxes. The risk assessment and mitigation firm embarked on a wide-ranging IT overhaul three years ago, which has seen it move from …

    Servers 27 May 2005, 14:53

  • Rumours of Linux death greatly exaggerated

    Letters Plus Zombies, supercomputers and Belgians

    We had more letters about this article than any other this week. Practically (but not quite) more than all the rest combined. Boy oh boy did you get ticked off about the "Setback for Linux" story. Plenty of the letters just ranted, variously accusing the writer and us of spouting FUD, and so on. However, some correspondents had …

    Letters 27 May 2005, 15:07

  • BT cracks down on rogue diallers

    Free software working apparently

    BT is bragging that it's "winning the fight against unwanted internet diallers" following the launch of its modem protection software at the beginning of May. In the last four weeks more than 2,000 punters a day have downloaded the free software which warns customers if their dial-up modem tries to call any numbers other than …

    Telecoms 27 May 2005, 15:25

  • Reformed UK fraud law to tackle phishing attacks

    10 years for phishermen

    The UK government is reforming fraud laws to create an offence covering the perpetrators of phishing attacks. The provision is among a raft of measures designed to clarify existing laws within the new Fraud Bill, which was introduced in the House of Lords on Wednesday. A new offence of fraud, designed to strengthen the existing …

    Spam 27 May 2005, 15:36

  • IBM unsheathes Cell blade server

    Plans seven strong unit

    IBM demonstrated a blade server board based on the Cell architecture at the E3 show this week, and reportedly plans to sell the boards in rack-based server systems. The board carried two Cell processors running at up to 2.8Ghz, as well as 1GB of DRAM split across two chips, according to Nikkei’s TechOn service. The demo box ran …

    Servers 27 May 2005, 15:36

  • Cohen disputes UK registry's legitimacy

    Nominet doesn't exist

    The company that runs the UK's Internet registry is not officially recognised by the government and as such has no right to decide what should be done with the millions of domains that it sells each year. That at least is the claim of Ben Cohen, former owner of iTunes.co.uk, who lost ownership of the domain to Apple in March …

    Financial News 27 May 2005, 15:56

  • Patent Office makes a technical contribution

    Workshop findings on the web

    The UK Patent Office has published the findings of its workshops on the European software patents directive. The workshops were arranged to try to involve the technical community in defining how the term "technical contribution" should be interpreted in the UK. The workshops asked participants to play patent examiner for the …

    Music and Media 27 May 2005, 16:06

  • CIA plays cyberwar game

    All quiet on the Silent Horizon

    The CIA is running a cyber wargame this week designed to test how effective authorities would be in withstanding an orchestrated hacking attack. The three-day exercise - called Silent Horizon - is based on an imagined attack on US systems by a fictional coalition of anti-globalisation protestors set five years in the future. AP …

    Enterprise Security 27 May 2005, 16:09