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17th October 2005 Archive

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  • BEA acquires more stack

    It’s about business not software

    It is undeniably hard for technology vendors like BEA to step outside of their comfort zone of talking technological terms, especially when they are dealing with the still-alien concept of enabling `business services’ rather than simply selling products. This is brought into relief even more sharply when it acquires businesses …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 06:02

  • Cheap DLT pitched to outpace DAT

    Can 320GB for under $1000 revive DLT's ailing image?

    Quantum makes its latest bid to keep DLT alive today, with the launch of a sub-$1000 version targeted directly at DAT. The DLT-V4 drive is a half-height version of the SDLT-320 with a Serial-ATA or Ultra160 SCSI interface, and it stores a nominal 320GB per cartridge, assuming 2:1 compression. "This is our pitch against DAT - a …

    Storage 17 Oct 2005, 06:02

  • Wanadoo toasts unbundled broadband with 8 meg service

    Le LLU est arrivé

    Wanadoo UK is to flick the switch on it new unbundled broadband service next month with the promise of speeds up to 8 meg. The ISP - which is owned by France Telecom - will start hooking up new punters to its service from next month and will also upgrade for free existing customers who are wired up to its unbundled exchanges. …

    Broadband 17 Oct 2005, 09:25

  • US looks for firmer digital TV deadline

    Auction must raise at least $5bn

    The US's television industry will have to make the switch from analogue to digital by 7 April 2009, paving the way for a spectrum auction that would have to raise at least $5bn, if draft legislation in the US comes into force. According to Reuters, the Senate Commerce Committee is set to consider the bill on Wednesday this week …

    Mobile 17 Oct 2005, 09:30

  • Murdoch closes in on Easynet

    Moving in for the kill

    Easynet - the telco that's invested heavily in providing broadband services to rival BT - has confirmed that it has been approached regarding a possible buyout. The admission follows reports that satellite operator BSkyB is lining up a bid for local loop unbundling (LLU) operator Easynet as part of a cunning plan to go head-to- …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 10:05

  • Minister's shock claim: ID scheme to check 13 biometrics

    This little piggy failed the scan test, this little piggy tried again...

    Beating off newspaper reports that biometric scans could misidentify up to one in 1,000 users, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty told Sunday's BBC Radio 4 World at One programme that the possibility of errors in one type of scan was precisely why the UK ID card system would be able to check 13 biometrics. Impressed? Confused? …

    Media 17 Oct 2005, 10:34

  • Money firms sniffing around NTL/Telewest

    Heaven scent

    Four private equity groups look set to pool resources in a bid to snap up NTL and Telewest once the UK cablecos merge next year. So reports The Sunday Times, which names the cash quartet as Blackstone Group, Cinven, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Providence Equity Partners. It seems the group is prepared to stump up £6bn …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 10:36

  • 2% of gamers are hermaphrodite: official

    Or alien, possibly

    It's official: two per cent of gamers are neither male nor female, leading us to believe that this small yet significant section of the gaming demographic is either hermaphrodite, represents a species further down the evolutionary pyramid or is perhaps of silicon-based extraterrestrial origin. That's according to the ESA ( …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 10:39

  • Regulators clear ATI chairman of insider trading

    Case slammed shut

    Canadian regulators have dismissed insider trading allegations against ATI Technologies’ chairman, his wife and other company staffers and their spouses. Ontario Securities Commission staff had charged that KY Ho and his wife, Betty, had avoided losses and maximized their charitable tax breaks by selling or donating ATI shares …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 10:42

  • Millions of UK households at risk of ID theft

    Beware the phantom bin raider

    Almost 20m UK households are opening themselves up to fraud by failing to take precautions against identity theft, according to new research marking the UK's first-ever National Identity Fraud Prevention Week. A 'bin raiding' exercise by MEL Research found that 77 per cent of household waste contained at least one or more items …

    Security 17 Oct 2005, 11:11

  • Email makes you fat

    Sport England combats electronic obesity menace

    Workers across Britain will this week celebrate "Email-Free Friday" - an initiative promoted by Sport England's Everday Sport campaign to encourage the desk-bound to get off their fat arses and circulate around their work environments with calorie-burning enthusiasm. The reason is simple: emails make you fat. Long gone are the …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 11:16

  • BT named as Friends Reunited bidder

    Touching base with ex-punters

    BT has joined a gaggle of companies eager to snap up Friends Reunited, according to The Sunday Times. The paper reports that BT and commercial broadcaster ITV have slapped bids on the table for Friends Reunited. News Corp, Daily Mail & General Trust and a John Doe dotcom have already registered their interest in the web site …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 11:19

  • Of mass market telco TV

    Analysis The route to market for UK ISPs

    There are more than 300 ISPs in the UK of varying sizes, from VISP resellers to tier 1 backbone carriers – most resell BT Wholesale’s core DSL product, basing their service costs on the deals they can offer on BT Central backhaul, network bandwidth and external connectivity arrangements. They share a common destiny in that it …

    Broadband 17 Oct 2005, 11:25

  • Bored geek seeks girl for Antigua jolly

    Wanna top and tail with me? Click here

    Are you female, nice, easygoing, funny and out for a laugh? Do you fancy a four-star trip to Antigua with a bored software engineer? Are you willing to "top and tail" - and maybe more? Yes? Read on: I have a 4* all inclusive holiday to Antigua booked with flexible dates. My Ex-Girlfriend wont come with me and I didnt want to …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 11:28

  • Palm gets a grip on BlackBerry

    In brief RIM's wireless email hits Treo

    Palm has shaken hands with Research in Motion to allow the Treo 650 and future devices to link to BlackBerry Connect. The deal will mean that the 650 and other upcoming Treos will be able to access RIM’s BlackBerry Server technology, delivering amongst other things, push-based email, wireless calendar synchronization, and IT …

    Mobile 17 Oct 2005, 11:57

  • Boffin tackles toast soldier nightmare

    No more boiled-egg-based trauma

    A British engineer has ensured that the British breakfast table will no longer be the scene of early-morning trauma and despair in which sobbing children and their distraught parents struggle to tackle that most demanding of disciplines: creating the perfect toast soldier with which to bother their boiled eggs. Mike Minton, a …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 11:59

  • OFT probe could scupper C&W/Energis deal

    Caudwell presses for investigation

    Cable & Wireless' (C&W) £720m take-over of Energis could be scuppered if the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) decides it needs to take a closer look at the deal. According to reports, there's speculation that C&W might walk away from the deal if the OFT doesn't wave it through as expected later this week. Yet John Caudwell - the …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 13:02

  • Shared music abuse bug hits iTunes

    You CAN stop the music

    Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Apple's popular iTunes application which might be exploited to interfere with shared music downloads. The glitch in iTunes 6.x - involving a failure to authenticate the source of shared music lists received via multicast - is currently unpatched. So it's just as well that …

    Security 17 Oct 2005, 13:14

  • MS logo allowed in German TV election coverage

    Objections ignored

    The Linux Association of Germany has failed in its efforts to keep the Microsoft logo off TV stories about the recent elections in the country. A Hamburg District Court on Friday lifted a temporary restraining order, which the Linux Association of Germany obtained against public broadcaster ARD/NDRshortly before the recent …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 13:29

  • Missing assets prompt probe into Granville accounts

    Time/Tiny administrators said to be seeking £8m

    Administrators are trying to work out what happened to as much as £8m worth of assets at the Granville Technology Group, the company behind the Time and Tiny computer brands that went into administration in late July this year. In a letter to creditors, Grant Thornton says the investigation is centring on the brothers behind …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 14:04

  • Martian robot trundles into Gizmoville

    Tech Digest Kitastic

    Certified gadget obsessives Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny scour Gizmoville for the oddest digital goodies, while Bayraider keeps tabs on the best and worst of eBay. Shiny has also just launched two new blogs: HDTVUK – the first high definition TV news site for the UK - and PopJunkie. From OMD’s bizarre gay disco album to the …

    Peripherals 17 Oct 2005, 14:18

  • Bulldog mauls BT over 'disappointing' BB unbundling

    All's fair in LLU and war

    Bulldog has jumped on criticisms made by the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) on Friday which highlighted yet more problems with local loop unbundling (LLU) in the UK. The Cable & Wireless (C&W)-owned ISP has been dogged by it own problems culminating in the regulator launching an investigation into Bulldog after …

    Broadband 17 Oct 2005, 14:32

  • Yahoo! latest to court AOL

    In brief More suitors than Saville Row

    Yahoo! has been fingered as the latest company to woo AOL, according to reports last Friday. Associated Press reports that the online world's most famous exclamation make is in early stage reports with Time Warner about AOL. The talks are understood to be less advanced than those Time Warner is already in with Microsoft, Google …

    Financial News 17 Oct 2005, 14:52

  • BBC launches Doctor Who spin-off

    Torchwood: laughs meet paranoia

    The BBC has announced plans to create a spin-off series from Doctor Who. Captain Jack, the maverick time traveler who guest stared in the latter episodes of the revived Doctor Who, will take centre stage in Torchwood, a "paranoid thriller" due to debut on digital channel BBC Three late next year. Created by Russell T Davies, …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 14:57

  • How Clarke is fiddling the £30 'affordable' ID card

    Analysis Home Office figures right, apart from all the numbers

    If Charles Clarke is announcing that ID cards are only going to cost £30, then the ID Cards Bill must be due back in Parliament any day now (yup, Tuesday), and Labour Party MPs must be looking for some threadbare justification for continuing to support it. And if that's not quite enough ('Isn't £30 pretty much what they said …

    Media 17 Oct 2005, 15:04

  • Text 'addict' on the mend

    'gt wll sn'

    A 19-year-old lad from Scotland is being treated for e-addiction after blowing £4,500 on text messaging over the last 12 months. The teenager, who hasn't been named, jacked in his office job after bosses discovered he also sent 8,000 emails in one month alone, reports the Beeb. Concerned at the scale of the problem, public …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 2005, 15:05

  • ESA readies Venus Express for launch

    Mission to unravel mysteries of our 'evil twin'

    The European Space Agency, undeterred by the loss of Cryosat, is pushing ahead with plans to launch its Venus Express mission, Europe's first to Venus, later this month. The spacecraft will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 26 October on a journey that will take it approximately five months. Much is still …

    Science 17 Oct 2005, 15:22

  • Swansea IT workers fear job losses

    Lustre rubs off 'golden guarantees'

    IT workers at Swansea Council - who went on strike for eight weeks last year in opposition to an outsourcing deal - fear their jobs could be put at risk once again. As part of the ambitious service@swansea egovernment scheme as many as seven in ten of the council's IT workers are to be transferred to Capgemini. The council …

    Management 17 Oct 2005, 15:29

  • Glitch afflicts critical MS patch

    Look before you leap

    Microsoft has warned enterprises of glitches involving a security update issued last week. A patch designed to fix a flaw in Windows middleware components (MS05-051.mspx) creates system instability in environments with modified Access Control List (ACL) settings. In a statement, Microsoft said it is "aware of reports of …

    Security 17 Oct 2005, 15:33

  • US ambassador nails Bulgarian mobile thief

    GPS fingers airport culprit

    A Bulgarian customs official who decided it was a bright idea to pocket a traveller's mobile phone with GPS now faces the high jump after its owner immediately pinpointed the device in the culprit's pocket, Ananova reports. US ambassador John Beyrle was en route from Varna to Hungary when he submitted his hand luggage for the …

    Mobile 17 Oct 2005, 17:50

  • Start-up promises era of grand log collection

    Honest Abe would be proud

    Talking about logs is like, well, talking about logs. Your log handling expertise isn't usually the big kicker item you want to tout to your CIO or CEO for career development. But that might be changing. US start-up LogLogic has charged itself with the task of making logs sexy. (No that isn't some feeble scat pun.) Using a …

    Storage 17 Oct 2005, 17:53

  • Web 2.0 worm downs MySpace

    Angle bracket defenses breached

    It's been a rough weekend for Tomorrow's People. A JavaScript exploit that has been called the first "Web 2.0 worm" knocked out MySpace.com - and the $500m-valued website, recently acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - was still struggling to get back on its feet two days later. The cunning JavaScript exploit added a million …

    Security 17 Oct 2005, 19:46

  • The Blooker Prize: Small Pieces, Partially Digested

    Letters Right. Who flarted?

    More than half of you who responded to our news of The Blooker Prize suggested that we'd made it all up. Surely no one could produce such drivel? Sorry, it's true - and even as I write, people are vigorously debating who should take the credit for coining the word "blook" - which is a book of a blog, and "flook" - which is a …

    Letters 17 Oct 2005, 20:30