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20th September 2005 Archive

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  • HP throws scandal-dogged Peregrine a future

    $425m buy-out

    "If the corporate culture is so infected with problems that they have not yet been solved and if they are selling a product that is suspect on its face, then maybe society is better off if Peregrine Systems is laid to rest." So wrote Penn State ethics professor J Edward Katz last December, in one of the most damning judgments …

    Financial News 20 Sep 2005, 02:34

  • Verizon embeds 3G for Wi-Fi challenge

    EV-DO hunkers down into notebooks

    With its 3G data network all dressed up and with nowhere to go, Verizon is courting PC notebook OEMs and cutting prices. Today it announced deals to embed CDMA EV-DO chips with the top three US PC manufacturers, Dell, Lenovo and HP, in their notebook PCs. Verizon's monthly tariff falls to $60 - half what European business users …

    Mobile 20 Sep 2005, 04:52

  • Cisco targets small.biz with networking bundle

    Staying ahead of the 3Coms

    Cisco has set up The Cisco Business Communications Solution, a one-stop networking shop for small and medium-sized firms. The "Solution" bundles products, services, support and financing options for firms with between 20 - 250 workers, long a stronghold of competitors such as 3Com. Pricing details were not available at the time …

    Small Biz 20 Sep 2005, 07:38

  • MS sues eight US resellers over hookie software

    Customers dobbed them

    Microsoft is suing eight resellers in the US for allegedly selling counterfeit versions of their software. The company said the prosecutions were a last resort after other attempts to stop the companies' behaviour failed. Consumers tipped off Microsoft by calling the hotline - 1-800-RU-LEGIT. Secret shoppers were then sent out …

    Channel Register 20 Sep 2005, 08:17

  • Ancient meteorites tell tales of early solar system

    Smashing

    Scientists at London University's Imperial College have gained a new insight into the earliest days of our solar system through a new analysis of some of the oldest, most primitive, metorites found on Earth. The meteorites, all of which date back to the earliest days of the solar system, and predate our planet by a substantial …

    Science 20 Sep 2005, 08:19

  • Put up or shut up, Friends Reunited tells bidders

    Imposes deadline

    Divorce specialist Friends Reunited has set a deadline of next week for bidders to put their money where their mouth is. You've read the story, now wear the t-shirt The website has ruled out selling to venture capitalists. It has attracted interest from at least six companies ranging from old media like News Corp to Yahoo! and …

    Financial News 20 Sep 2005, 09:39

  • Intel tweaks 65nm process to blitz leakage

    But there's a catch...

    Intel is working on a version of its 65nm chip fabrication process that will produce processors with even lower power consumption characteristics. The chip giant says he technology will reduce transistor leakage by a factor of 1000. There's a catch: the process halves the processor's potential performance, admitted Intel's …

    System Builder 20 Sep 2005, 09:40

  • Baidu appeals music download court ruling

    EMI compensation claim

    Chinese search engine Baidu is likely to appeal a decision which found it guilty of helping illegal distribution of music over the internet. Although the company did not offer any download services directly it provided links to websites which did. The action was brought by a Chinese subsidiary of EMI, Shanghai Push, which …

    Financial News 20 Sep 2005, 09:44

  • Of technicolour lungfish

    The colourful world of living fossils

    The Australian lungfish, often described as a living fossil, has probably been living in a world of blazing colour since before the dinosaurs arose. Research from the University of Queensland has identified genes for five colour pigments, despite the fact that vision was always assumed to be of little importance to the fish. By …

    Science 20 Sep 2005, 09:53

  • Opera gives away ad-free browser

    No strings attached

    Opera Software has permanently dropped the inclusion of advertising banners in the free version of its PC browser software. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download here. The browser was previously available free of charge with an ad banner. Users had the option of paying a licensing fee to remove …

    Applications 20 Sep 2005, 09:55

  • US e-sales to rocket

    Say analysts

    Online sales in the US will rocket in the next five years as etailers become more adept at getting shoppers to part with their cash. Online saleswill grow from $172bn this year to $329bn in 2010, equivalent to 13 per cent of total US retail sales, Forrester Research forecasts. Travel will remain the largest online retail …

    Financial News 20 Sep 2005, 10:00

  • Toshiba preps Cell mobo for developers

    Reference board, processors to ship after PS3 debuts

    Sony appears to have exclusive usage of the Cell processor until the PlayStation 3 console ships next March. Toshiba - with Sony and IBM one of the chip's co-developers - said today it would offer Cell-based hardware development kits in April 2006. The reference platform comprises Cell and support chips and is geared toward " …

    System Builder 20 Sep 2005, 10:08

  • Compel maintains return to form

    Turnover and profit up

    Compel has put in a solid set of prelimary results for the year ended 30 June 2005. Turnover for the UK reseller grew 25 per cent to £79m and operating profit went up 89 per cent to £2.3m, after exceptional items this was reduced to an operating profit of £400,000. Margins grew from 8.8 per cent to 9.1 per cent, before shared …

    Channel Register 20 Sep 2005, 10:11

  • Oracle promises 'lifetime support' for bought-in customers

    Holdouts welcome

    Oracle Corp has promised continued support for acquired applications while juggling with a shareholder legal action against its $5.85bn Siebel Software bid. Charles Phillips, Oracle's president, announced a lifetime support policy to give customers confidence their existing software investments would be protected. "We'll give …

    Applications 20 Sep 2005, 10:50

  • Nvidia GeForce Go 7800GTX to launch '29 September'

    Borrows Intel's 'performance per watt' message

    Nvidia is borrowing Intel's new approach to chip marketing to help it promote its upcoming GeForce Go 7800GTX So suggest allegedly leaked company presentation slides that outline the next-generation mobile graphics part and its launch on 29 September - a week on Thursday. The slides stress the chip's "revolutionary performance …

    Channel Register 20 Sep 2005, 11:08

  • Acer launches compact VGA Wi-Fi PocketPC

    The n300 family debuts

    Tantalising images of what purports to be Acer's next, Windows Mobile 5.0-based PocketPC have been tacitly confirmed as genuine by the manufacturer The snaps, posted on Chinese-language website Mobile1, show a stylish black and silver unit sporting a 3.7in, 65536-colour, 480 x 640 display which takes up most of the device's …

    Mobile 20 Sep 2005, 11:11

  • Trade bodies ask EC to stop broadband regulation review

    'Massive extension of regulation'

    The UK government's advisory broadband group BSG and Intellect, the IT industry lobby group, have teamed up to ask the European Commission to stop its review of broadcast legislation. The EC recently pledged to look again at the TV Without Frontiers Directive which aims to regulate new forms of broadcasting. But the Broadband …

    Telecoms 20 Sep 2005, 11:13

  • Competition to drive down telecoms costs

    It's tough out there

    The cost of telecoms services will continue to fall as increased competition bites and new technologies are developed that can deliver more for less. So says Paul Reynolds, chief exec of BT Wholesale, who was speaking today at the Carriers World conference in London. He told delegates that the economic rules that used to …

    Telecoms 20 Sep 2005, 11:14

  • eGovernment 'ignoring' poor, unemployed, homeless

    Don't give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses

    Socially excluded groups are currently "very poorly served" by the UK eGovernment agenda, says new government research. A report out today warns that eGovernment, at both national and local level, largely ignores the needs of 'hard to reach' individuals and is failing to adequately promote social inclusion. Similarly, social …

    Public Sector 20 Sep 2005, 11:43

  • O2 i-mode launch is 'imminent'

    NEC lets slip the dogs of PR

    Mobile phone network O2 will start up its i-mode service "this autumn", technology partner NEC revealed today. Indeed, the launch could come as early as next week, sources familiar with the matter claim, with the carrier making public its pricing and content plans. O2 announced it had licensed i-mode in November 2004, pointing …

    Mobile 20 Sep 2005, 11:46

  • Akimbi automates application testing pools

    Taking humans out

    A start-up is using virtualization technology to stake out a place in application testing with a product that streamlines development and helps cut costs. Akimbi Systems has announced Slingshot, software capable of taking a snap shot of a server environment, storing hardware and software configurations, and automatically …

    Software 20 Sep 2005, 12:10

  • Phishers trawl for victims in Europe

    Jeux sans frontières

    Security watchers are reporting a surge of phishing attacks targeting European banks. Phishing attacks against over two dozen European banks were detected by security firm Websense last weekend (17-18 September). Traditionally, fraudsters have targeted North American banks in phishing attacks. "This is the first time we have …

    Spam 20 Sep 2005, 12:12

  • Regulators call for global data protection law

    They would say that, wouldn't they?

    Privacy chiefs from 40 countries have called upon the United Nations to prepare a legally binding instrument which clearly sets out in detail the rights to data protection and privacy as enforceable human rights. The call to the UN was made in a declaration adopted at the 27th International Conference of Data Protection and …

    Public Sector 20 Sep 2005, 12:27

  • Apple CEO blasts 'greedy' music labels

    Push up prices: encourage piracy

    Apple CEO Steve Jobs today claimed the world's biggest recording companies have begun to demand the iTunes Music Store raise its prices. But the Mac maker is responding with the spectre of a return to the days of mass online music piracy. "We're trying to compete with piracy," he said. "We're trying to pull people away from …

    Financial News 20 Sep 2005, 13:21

  • Million pixel student makes £32k

    That'll do for starters

    Enterprising UK student Alex Tew has sold enough pixels to fund his way through university. Tew, 21, decided to flog pixels for a buck on his Million Dollar Homepage as part of a cunning scheme to raise cash. He may not have made his million, but in the few weeks since he launched the site he's flogged some 60,000 pixels - …

    Music and Media 20 Sep 2005, 14:29

  • EC moots more charges against Microsoft

    Bundling-related, apparently

    The European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has said she won't be waiting for the outcome of Microsoft's appeal against the original anti-trust charges before she decides whether or not to start another law suit against the firm. Kroes said the Competition Commission has already received more complaints against Microsoft …

    Software 20 Sep 2005, 14:34

  • Solar flare menaces scamming lungfish

    Letters Plus Symantec, Opera and hackers

    Lots to get through this week, so where better to start than with a story of a star-crossed lover (can you have just one?) who thought he'd met his match online. But, as they exchanged love notes, it became increasingly apparent that it was not true love at all, but a scam designed to do nothing other than extract large amounts …

    Letters 20 Sep 2005, 14:42

  • Google Earth threatens democracy - again

    More secrets laid bare to Godless commies

    Our recent article on Google Earth blowing military secrets to the forces of darkness provoked a huge response - much of it from eagle-eyed readers who obviously have nothing better to do than spend all day peering at the earth's surface for eye-catching hardware and installations. Accordingly, we thought we'd chase up a few …

    Bootnotes 20 Sep 2005, 14:44

  • Apple's Intel Mac 'on track' - Jobs

    Steaming into the station early?

    Apple is on track to ship Macs based on Intel processors by June 2006, CEO Steve Jobs claimed today. Jobs' comments follows speculation aired this week that the Mac maker could ship Intel-based PowerBooks as early as January 2006, with other rumours pointing to a much later introduction. Speaking to reporters at a meeting …

    Mac Channel 20 Sep 2005, 14:58

  • ATI pitches for PC-TV convergence

    Tune into Avivo

    ATI today unveiled a new consumer brand covering high-quality video performance across platforms, from TVs to PCs. Dubbed Avivo, the technology builds on the experience ATI gained developing and selling its Xileon line of image processing chips for digital TVs. The brand encompasses a range of image enhancement features, all of …

    System Builder 20 Sep 2005, 15:29

  • Siebel is done deal, Oracle says

    Hurdles? What hurdles?

    Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel is a done deal as far as the delegates to OracleWorld in San Francisco are concerned. In the closing event on the first day of the conference Charles Phillips, Oracle’s president, and George Shaheen, Siebel’s CEO, appeared together on stage in a show of solidarity. “Bet you never thought you’d see …

    Applications 20 Sep 2005, 15:38

  • Spam map Googles junk mail proxies

    Botnets ahoy

    Mailinator - the service that offers free, disposable email addresses for use in web registrations - has created a "real-time" spam map. The system receives around a million junk mail messages a day. By resolving the IP addresses of proxies1 used to distribute this junk mail (and plugging this data into Google maps) the people …

    Spam 20 Sep 2005, 15:38

  • Scientists tout diamond-coated implants

    How many carats was that?

    A newly-developed coating for medical implants could help to reduce the number of MRSA infections, according to UK physicists. The diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating, which makes implants harder wearing, reduces friction between components and protects them from corrosion, has several advantages over its rivals, according to …

    Science 20 Sep 2005, 15:54

  • Nvidia ships GeForce 6150, 6100 North Bridges er... GPUs

    When is an integrated graphics engine not integrated?

    Nvidia will launch 'C51', its first integrated chipset, later today, according to motherboard partner Foxconn. Trumpeting its own WinFast 6150K8MA-8EKRS mobo, Foxconn said the board was based on Nvidia's GeForce 6150 North Bridge chip, which hooks up to the Nvidia's new nForce 430 South Bridge. Since the AMD CPUs the chipset …

    System Builder 20 Sep 2005, 16:04