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5th October 2005 Archive

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  • Thank you. Did you mean to say 'get me an R&D team?' If so, say 'Yes'

    Yahoo! vs Nuance - judge declines injunction

    Yahoo! gutted a Silicon Valley speech company leaving it with just one engineer on a vital project, a court heard today. Nuance Communications is seeking an injunction to prevent twelve of thirteen employees poached by Yahoo! from working on related projects at the ad and media giant. It also alleges the dirty dozen, which …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 2005, 00:29

  • Chavez heralds el cheapo 'Bolivarian PC'

    Cheap oil, now cheap computing

    Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has already promised to sell cheap oil to the United States' poor, and now he's going to offer cheap PCs, too. The Venezuelan owned oil company CITGO operates eight refineries in the USA and franchises out 14,000 gas stations; the first cheap gas pilot project will start in La Villita in Chicago …

    PCs 5 Oct 2005, 01:52

  • Doctor Who to transmat onto PSP

    Daleks invade UMD

    The hugely popular revival of Doctor Who is coming to Sony's PlayStation Portable. 2Entertain, the music-to-movies company jointly owned by BBC Video and Woolworths, said last week it plans to release three episodes of the recent terrestrial TV ratings winner on the PSP's UMD format later this month. The new series was …

    Bootnotes 5 Oct 2005, 08:38

  • Business leaders team up to fight piracy

    Talk the talk, walk the plank

    Business leaders from across a wide spectrum of industries including entertainment, pharmaceuticals, and software companies met in London yesterday to globalise industry's fight against counterfeiting and piracy. High on the agenda was a discussion on how their individual anti-piracy efforts can be coordinated. The meeting was …

    Software 5 Oct 2005, 08:57

  • Sun lines Opteron kit up for grid and HP users

    Sends in Itanic lifeboat

    Sun Microsystems stepped up its server attack this week with one campaign aimed at grid computing customers and another targeted at disheartened Itanium server users. On the grid front, Sun has started selling its new X2100, X4100 and X4200 Opteron-based servers in large configurations. Customers who buy 20 or more of the boxes …

    Servers 5 Oct 2005, 09:07

  • Apple calls press to 'video iPod launch'

    Movie-themed invite goes out

    Claims are coming in that Apple will unveil the long-awaited video iPod next week. The Mac maker is certainly hosting a special event on Wednesday, 12 October, and it bears all the hallmarks of a product announcement. We'd note that Apple missed a trick here: ten more days, and it would have made the announcement on the fourth …

    Mac Channel 5 Oct 2005, 09:19

  • EC warns on roaming

    Still too expensive

    The European Commission has warned the mobile industry that it expects to see mobile roaming charges fall within six months or regulators will take action. Helping the process of "self-regulation" along the Commission launched a website to help European consumers check how much they are being charged and if they could get a …

    Mobile 5 Oct 2005, 09:21

  • Peter Jackson to appear on Halo movie credits

    More for the poster than the creative input?

    Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has been named as one of the upcoming Halo movie's Executive Producers. So has his missus, LoTR co-scriptwriter Fran Walsh. Halo fanboys and LoTR buffs are now viewing the proposition much more enthusiastically, which was surely Microsoft's intention. The software giant also announced …

    Bootnotes 5 Oct 2005, 09:26

  • Pentax Option S55 5mp digicam

    Review Could do better?

    It seems like every other week I'm reviewing yet another tiny Pentax five megapixel compact camera. In fact a quick browse through my camera samples folder shows that this is the eighth one that I've written about this year. Come on Pentax, give my aching fingers a break, writes Cliff Smith. Officially priced at £200 but …

    Reviews 5 Oct 2005, 10:23

  • BBC blew $375k on bbc.com

    And for what?

    The BBC has defended its decision to blow $375,000 (£212,000) of public money on the bbc.com domain. The broadcaster - which is funded by a licence fee payable by every UK household with a TV - bought the domain back in 1999 from US firm Boston Business Computing but refused to say how much it had paid out. At the time …

    Bootnotes 5 Oct 2005, 10:28

  • Microsoft eyes disposable, play-once DVDs

    Better for MS' DRM dreams than the environment

    The prospect of landfill sites pilled high with disposable DVDs has once again reared its ugly head on the shoulders of claims that Microsoft is touting just such a product to Hollywood as way to beat movie piracy. So suggests UK newspaper The Business which this weekend told its readers Microsoft has "invented... a cheap, …

    Peripherals 5 Oct 2005, 10:35

  • E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines

    'Black box that only a regulator can understand'

    A federally funded group of voting system experts called on the United States' Election Assistance Commission, which oversees the nation's state-run elections, to revamp its recommended process for evaluating the security of electronic voting devices. In comments published last week, the ten researchers that collectively make …

    Public Sector 5 Oct 2005, 10:41

  • UK Met Office to simplify weather forecasts

    How are they going to do that?

    BBC weather forecasts, not renowned for being enormously difficult to follow, are about to be simplified, the Met Office says, in a bid to make them "clearer and more relevant" to more people. Apparently, showery outbreaks will never darken our doorways again, though we might still be inconvenienced by patchy rain. Similarly, …

    Science 5 Oct 2005, 10:44

  • ARM pitches Cortex-A8 CPU at 65nm era

    Focus on media and security

    UK chip designer ARM yesterday debuted its latest high-performance, low-power microprocessor for mobile phones and other handheld devices. The Cortex-A8 is based on the ARMv7 architecture. It incorporates Java acceleration technology, signal processing extensions to improve media decoding, and adds a security engine to support …

    Mobile 5 Oct 2005, 11:00

  • Ofcom continues phone slamming investigation

    Slowly does it

    All of the UK's 35 leading phone operators have managed to introduce guidelines to prevent their staff from mis-selling phone services. That's a big improvement on six months ago when only three of the 35 had introduced the necessary measures to prevent customers being ripped off by unscrupulous sales staff. Of course, having …

    Telecoms 5 Oct 2005, 11:45

  • Consumer body bemoans harsher Euro IP laws

    Copyrights and responsibilities

    UK quango the National Consumer Council (NCC) has called on European Commission legislators to take a fairer stance on consumer intellectual property rights. The NCC believes it's disproportionate to invoke ever-tougher penalties for individuals found guilty of infringing intellectual property laws. The key word is 'individuals …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 2005, 12:06

  • Envisat could track coral bleaching

    Climate change canary

    The European Space Agency's Envisat satellite could be used to keep tabs on the state of the oceans' coral reefs, Australian researchers say. Scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) Wealth from Oceans Flagship program say that the satellite's MERIS sensor can detect …

    Science 5 Oct 2005, 12:13

  • 100 people to trial WiMAX for BT

    Belfast and Birmingham fingered

    A hundred people are to take part in WiMAX trials in Belfast and Birmingham as BT tests the water for wireless broadband. The UK's dominant fixed line telco is hooking up with US-based Navini Networks to carry out the pilots, which will run until March 2006. BT is looking to test the commercial viability and customer …

    Wireless 5 Oct 2005, 13:18

  • Nvidia G72 due 'early 06'

    90nm die shrink

    Nvidia's 90nm G72 graphics chip, believed to be a die-shrink of the company's GeForce 7800 GPU, will ship early next year. So claim Taiwanese graphics card maker sources cited by DigiTimes today. The GeForce 7800 line is currently fabbed at 110nm. The shift down to 90nm should increase Nvidia's yields, giving it scope to price …

    System Builder 5 Oct 2005, 13:20

  • EU to follow Google's lead with online library

    Our heritage, but whose net?

    Google's internet library project will face competition from Yahoo!, but also from a less predictable rival: the European Commission announced its own plan on Friday. And it has an advantage: if copyright laws interfere with its plans it can change the laws. The Commission wants to put Europe’s cultural heritage on the internet …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 2005, 14:05

  • ATI finally unwraps Radeon X1000 GPU series

    Some still not shipping, though

    Yes, they're here. Well, almost. ATI today launched its 90nm Radeon X1000 series of graphics chips, though the mid-range X1600 won't be available until late October/early November. The X1300 and some X1800 configurations are available and shipping immediately, ATI said. The X1800 contains 321m transistors and contains 16 pixel …

    System Builder 5 Oct 2005, 14:48

  • £27m carrot dangling for Scots broadband

    Wot, no stick?

    Broadband providers are being invited to tender for a £27m contract to provide high speed net access to the south of Scotland. The public sector-funded project - with a majority of the cash coming from the Scottish Executive - is looking to wire-up schools, libraries and council offices with broadband services of at least 8 meg …

    Public Sector 5 Oct 2005, 14:58

  • Creationism and evolution can co-exist, says cardinal

    Darwin gets thumbs-up (again) from the Catholic church

    Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, considered a contender in the recent papal race, has apparently distanced himself from remarks he made in the New York Times in July when he said that an "unguided, unplanned process of natural selection" was not "true". His remarks were widely interpreted as a signal that the Vatican no longer …

    Science 5 Oct 2005, 15:11

  • Linux on desktop is a diverse market - really

    Move along, no monopoly here

    Don't expect hegemony from a single Linux vendor on the desktop comparable with Microsoft's Office, as rival frameworks and implementations tackle different markets. That's according to Red Hat fellow Alan Cox, who said research indicates users are adopting KDE and Gnome to serve different scenarios. He added that business …

    Software 5 Oct 2005, 15:21

  • Brit Prof will oversee Microsoft for EC

    Brussels' trustee

    A British IT security expert began work today to ensure Microsoft complies with the strictures imposed by the European Commission last year. The Commission ruled last year that Microsoft had abused its market position, ordering the company to open up its products and hitting it with a €497m fine. The decision also provided for …

    Software 5 Oct 2005, 15:44

  • FIPR warns of danger of criminalising IP breaches

    Let's keep things civil

    The British government is trying to use its presidency of the EU to push through a European directive would give police more powers to act against copyright infringers than they currently have to deal with suspected terrorists, according to the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR). The FIPR also warns that the …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 2005, 16:02

  • 'DEC hacking' trial opens

    Accused gives evidence

    Horsferry Road Magistrates Court has heard the first day of evidence against the East London man accused of hacking into a donations site for the tsunami appeal last December. Daniel James Cuthbert, 28, of Whitechapel, London, is accused of breaches of Section One of the Computer Misuse Act, 1990, on the afternoon of New Year’s …

    Enterprise Security 5 Oct 2005, 16:22

  • Read Microsoft's Linux reports, says Novell

    Get all the propaganda, er, facts

    Windows and Unix users evaluating Linux should read all studies on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), even those from Microsoft, according to Linux champion Novell. Brian Green, Novell's director of solutions management, has urged potential customers to "get the big picture" even though TCO reports sponsored by Microsoft quote …

    Operating Systems 5 Oct 2005, 18:14

  • Microsoft FAT patent rejected - again

    On a technicality

    The US Patent and Trademarks Office has thrown out two Microsoft patents on its FAT file system. The case had been raised by open source defenders who feared that Microsoft was preparing a legal offensive against Linux based on enforcement of intellectual property rights. But the Patent Office rejected the patents because of an …

    Developer 5 Oct 2005, 21:06

  • 'p2p is leagal its already bought its in the air'

    Morality lessons from today's youth

    The following letter was sent from a K12 school account in a southern US state. It illustrates the problems facing both paid legal download services, such as Apple's iTunes Music Store and Napster, and the RIAA's attempt to combat the illegal download services. We've protected their identity, for reasons which should become …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 2005, 22:38