18th October 2005 Archive
Browse by publication date, or search the site.
-
Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems
Yes it's garbage, but it's delivered so much faster!
Encouraging signs from the Wikipedia project, where co-founder and überpedian Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online work. Criticism of the project from within the inner sanctum has been very rare so far, although fellow co-founder Larry Sanger, who is no longer associated with the …
Music and Media 18 Oct 2005, 03:48
-
Sun gives Unix giants a plus
Hunting IBM
If you're in the market for a $1m server, then Sun Microsystems has a new system for you. Sun on Monday began selling its highest-end Unix servers - the E20K and E25K - with new 1.5GHz UltraSPARC IV+ chips. Customers have already been able to buy lower-end systems with the UltraSPARC IV+ chip and to replace existing UltraSPARC …
Servers 18 Oct 2005, 07:28
-
RSA hears from ex-MI5 boss
Stella performance
The sixth annual RSA Security conference was opened by the disturbing sight of David Taylor dressed in a grey, silk dressing gown brandishing a long cigarette-holder like a hirsute Noel Coward. Fortunately the business leader was not reprising the title of his book – The Naked Leader – but opening the Prohibition-themed …
Enterprise Security 18 Oct 2005, 08:27
-
IBM piles up earnings in Q3
So glad to dump the PC business
IBM slipped past expectations in its third quarter results published yesterday with the offloading of its PC business to Lenovo this year still putting a shine on its numbers. The company turned in revenues of $21.5bn for the quarter ending September 30. This was down eight per cent on the previous year. However, once the last …
Servers 18 Oct 2005, 08:27
-
Internet worries US consumers
Are security fears reducing ecommerce
Americans are more worried than Europeans about identity theft and online fraud. Overall transactions are still increasing and mid-price purchases are the most popular, but spending in some areas is shrinking. Research carried out in Germany, France, the UK and US found that almost half US consumers have little or no …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 08:32
-
Lloyds TSB tests password-generators
Begone, Phishing!
Around 30,000 customers of Lloyds TSB are being issued with a password-generating device that will add an extra layer of security when they do their online banking. But while it makes customers less vulnerable to internet fraud, the bank says its device is "not the end solution". Person using the Access Code Device at the …
Channel Register 18 Oct 2005, 08:47
-
Liferay after Plumtree
Analysis Pure play portals alive and kicking
Plumtree is being acquired by BEA. This raises two points. The first is the perennial question of integration that arises whenever a vendor buys another that has a directly competing offering: how will the two products be merged? How long will it take? Will they, in fact, be merged at all? If not, how long will the acquired …
Developer 18 Oct 2005, 08:52
-
Sage upbeat on trading
Meets expectations
Sage today said it will meet market expectations for the financial year to September 30. In a trading update, the company said revenues were up 14 per cent on last year to £777m and pre-tax profits were up 13 per cent to £204m. The accounting software giant will publish a full set of results on 30 November. Sunny as this may …
Channel Register 18 Oct 2005, 09:26
-
VeriSign aggregates Moreover
Blogosphere power play
Net infrastructure firm VeriSign yesterday acquired content aggregator Moreover Technologies in a deal valued at about $30m cash. VeriSign plans to combine Moreover's content aggregation services with its own feed technology to create a real-time aggregation platform for bloggers, publishers, enterprises and Web portals. …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 09:28
-
Pipex gobbles up Freedom 2 Surf
It's amazing what £10m will buy
Pipex has bought Freedom to Surf (F2S) for £10m, to boost its investment in local loop unbundling (LLU). With 40,000 F2S broadband subscribers under its belt, Pipex's high speed net users now total more than 250,000, giving it sufficient clusters of users in urban areas to make investment in LLU commercially viable. Pipex has …
Telecoms 18 Oct 2005, 10:15
-
CA casts light on iLumin
storage management bolt-on
Computer Associates is rounding out its BrightStor storage management software through acquisition. iLumin Software Services, bought for an undisclosed sum, brings on email and instant messaging archiving capabilities. The firm's Assentor lines supports Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and other platforms. Now …
Storage 18 Oct 2005, 10:56
-
e-gov head calls for Transformation Meditation
Another day, another public sector acronym
The head of e-government Ian Watmore has, in defiance of his own job title, called time on e-government, and asked local authority IT managers to get ready for t-government instead. The t, for those of you who can bear it, stands for "transformation", which Watmore says will be at the heart of the government's new vision and …
Public Sector 18 Oct 2005, 11:08
-
Say hello to the Skype Trojan
Malware poses as VoIP software
Virus writers are targeting Skype users with a new Trojan that poses as the latest version of the popular VoIP software. Net security firm MessageLabs has detected and blocked more than 800 copies of a new variant of the MyTob (AKA Fanbot) Trojan, which is being distributed by email. References and nicknames contained in the …
Enterprise Security 18 Oct 2005, 11:32
-
HM Customs warns of e-Xmas duty
Confused? Don't be
With boffins predicting another bumper e-Xmas, officials in the UK are advising shoppers that they face import taxes and VAT if they buy pressies from overseas. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has rather thoughtfully warned e-shoppers that buying goods that originate from outside the EU could land them with more than they'd …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 11:57
-
Small.biz flocks to the web
Trading post
More small retailers than ever have a presence on the internet, according to a new study from ecommerce firm Actinic, which shows that a quarter of small and medium sized retail companies in the UK now have their own website, up from just secen per cent last year. The study also found a five per cent increase to eight per cent …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 12:06
-
3 UK lets subscribers be video stars
Popping your backside on the copier is so last century
Forget all those glossy images of high-powered financiers during due diligence and making stock trades on their 3G mobiles. Hutchison-owned operator 3 UK reckons what customers really want is to be able to download video of complete strangers making complete idiots of themselves – and to upload their own pratfalls. See Me TV …
Mobile 18 Oct 2005, 13:06
-
Cisco extends network protection
NAC gets more mates
Cisco is extending the reach of its two-year old Network Admission Control scheme to include more devices and more companies. Network Admission Control checks devices before they connect to the network. Cisco security vice president Jeff Platon said it was like security checks before boarding a plane – your passport and ticket …
Data Networking 18 Oct 2005, 14:04
-
Security pros win out in office politics
Business managers starting to listen (allegedly)
More than a quarter (25.4 per cent) of the security workforce in Europe spends most of their workday dealing with internal politics or selling security to upper management, according to early results from a new survey. The second annual workforce study from security certification and training organisation ISC(2) also found that …
IT Director 18 Oct 2005, 14:21
-
International laws for international crimes
RSA Europe, 2005 One ring to bind them all
Global cooperation on information security is still at the pipe-dream stage if a panel at the RSA Security conference this week is anything to go by. The panel, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, debated how the world can counter the international challenge of information security, but the panellists displayed little …
IT Director 18 Oct 2005, 14:22
-
ID card debates need reframing
RSA Europe 2005 Calm down dear, it's only an ID card
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, ex-chairman of Qinetiq and a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee which oversees UK security services, told the Register that international agreements on security and technology are needed for the good of the business community and wealth generation, rather than as a tool against terrorists …
ID 18 Oct 2005, 14:27
-
Unisys to decimate workforce after poor Q3
Come in number ten, your time is up
Unisys admitted a dismal third quarter yesterday and promptly promised Wall St it would dump 10 per cent of its workers over the next year. The company said hammering down its headcount would cost $250m to $300m over the course of 2006, but would result in an analyst-pleasing $250m of savings on an annual basis by the end of …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 14:56
-
Bird flu: you'll die but your IT will survive
Good news from Gartner
If the latest news from the wonderful world of Pandemia has got your organisation running around like a headless Romanian chicken, then don't fret: Gartner has released an essential guide to avian influenza, aka bird flu, aka Black Death II, which mercifully states that although you will most likely be lying dead among the …
Bootnotes 18 Oct 2005, 15:10
-
UK ID card a recipe for massive ID fraud, says Microsoft exec
National tech officer IDs systemic design flaws
Microsoft UK National Technology Officer Jerry Fishenden has warned that the UK ID card scheme could trigger "massive identity fraud on a scale beyond anything we have seen before." Writing in today's Scotsman, Fishenden says that the security implications of storing biometrics centrally are enormous. "Unlike other forms of …
Music and Media 18 Oct 2005, 15:32
-
Pearl casts 950 jobs over to Tata
A BPO deal for life... and pensions
Some 950 back office and IT jobs at UK insurance outfit Pearl Group are to be transferred to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Staff were told of the move this morning and have been told that no jobs will be lost as part of move. Some 150 of the group's current 1,100 staff will remain at Peterborough-based Pearl. As part of the …
IT Director 18 Oct 2005, 15:35
-
UK political party flogged on eBay
MP3 yours for £2k
The MP3 Party, a UK political party which aimed to simplify British government and civil administration, has put itself up for sale on eBay. The party, which was officially registered as a political party in 2002 by the UK Electoral Commission, is currently on sale on the online auction site for a starting bid of £2,000. The …
Bootnotes 18 Oct 2005, 15:41
-
Black helicopters prompt burnt toast pandemic
Letters We might have missed something there...
The government has pitched the price of a standalone ID card at a mere £30, presumably to try to encourage a buy-early-to-save-money rush on the things, if they do manage to get them through both houses of parliament. You still don't seem to like the idea of them very much, but your thoughts on the subject do seem to be tending …
Letters 18 Oct 2005, 16:06
-
IBM takes hardware route to SOA
Give us the DataPower
IBM has bought XML device specialist DataPower to improve the security, performance and integration of web services messages running on Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs). Terms are undisclosed. DataPower has brought up a family of three hardware devices that deliver wire-line performance by offloading XML traffic from …
Data Networking 18 Oct 2005, 18:01
-
PC shipments surge
Notebooks ahoy!
PC shipments are on the increase again, despite rising interest rates and spiralling oil prices. According to research firm IDC, PC shipments grew by more than 17 per cent in the third quarter, driven by low-cost and portable systems, and beating a more conservative August forecast of 13.3 per cent. International markets have …
Channel Register 18 Oct 2005, 18:08
-
Fujitsu breaks from Intel-only camp, embraces Opteron
And then there was one
AMD continues to add big names to the Opteron camp with Fujitsu today revealing plans to sell two servers based on the dual-core, 64-bit chip. Later this year, Fujitsu will roll out the Primergy RX220 rack server and the Primergy BX630 blade box. The systems will run on the latest versions of AMD's Opteron chip and sit …
Servers 18 Oct 2005, 18:55
-
MySQL destined for 'majority' market share
Developers mad for it
With MySQL experiencing a possible backlash, it seems the company can confidently flip the middle finger to certain critics with the latest market share numbers from Evans Data Corp (EDC). MySQL is fast approaching majority market share among software developers, with 44 per cent using the open source database to meet their …
Hardware 18 Oct 2005, 20:14
-
Old dog VMware learns new server partitioning tricks
Grizzled and more functional
VMware stands as a rarity in the virtualization game. It's an old timer - a grizzled veteran. Few, if any, other companies in the x86 market can claim such a diverse, virtualized customer base or say they're on the third, fourth or fifth generation of a product. VMware this week will talk up its maturity during the VMWorld user …
Servers 18 Oct 2005, 21:01
-
Legal charge mars Intel's sparkling Q3
Sales and settlements up
Intel cited broad success across all of its major product lines during a healthy third quarter FY2005. Despite record revenue, however, Intel missed earnings expectations by a penny due to a large legal charge. The chipmaker reported an 18 per cent year-over revenue rise to $9.96bn. Net income also rose 5 per cent to $2bn with …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 22:20
-
Motorola's Zndr toasts record Q3
Hello, Ed
Motorola claimed 19 per cent of the worldwide market for mobile phones, its highest share for some years in a booming third quarter. The company reported record earnings of $9.42bn, up from $7.5bn in Q3 2004, and net earnings up almost fourfold to $1.75bn from a year ago. Tumescent mobile sales accounted for most of the growth …
Financial News 18 Oct 2005, 23:05
-
Bird flu fever hits eBay
Tamiflu sales pulled
Internet auctioneer eBay has shut down sales through it service of Tamiflu, which can help reduce the severity of avian flu, amid growing concern of a potential pandemic that could kill humans. An eBay spokesperson told The Register that the company had pulled a handful of listings from its UK website, because the sales …
Music and Media 18 Oct 2005, 23:08
-
Apple and Disney's two-inch disappointment
Opinion Media lauds mouse-sized package
The AP went with "groundbreaking." Robert Iger, Disney's new chief, exclaimed, "This is the first giant step to making more content available to more people online." Such praise, however, shot well over the rather humble news last week that a video iPod arrived which will play ABC TV shows for $1.99 a pop. This isn't an anti- …
Mobile 18 Oct 2005, 23:19
