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8th December 2005 Archive

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  • Ramesys flogs education reseller to management

    Software pure play

    The education reseller division of Ramesys has struck out for independence through an management buyout. backed by Lloyds TSB Development Capital. Terms were undisclosed. The management team under MD Bill Donoghue will retain the Ramesys name, while its former parent company is rebranding itself as RedSky IT. RedSky will …

    Channel Register 8 Dec 2005, 00:18

  • BEA to color up apps with classification Graffiti

    We meet again, IBM

    BEA Systems has become the latest Silicon Valley tech company to succumb to the Web 2.0 bug by adopting a search strategy. The Java application server and middleware vendor has announced Project Graffiti, which it billed as a "collaborative information and knowledge management system." Project Graffiti will let users classify …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 00:21

  • Overstock CEO receives honorable mention as worst exec of the year

    Letters The Big O Crap

    Just three days after our story on the oddities of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Bryne appeared, the "Biggest O" went and earned another dubious distinction. Byrne received an honorable mention in CBS MarketWatch's survey of the worst CEOs in 2005. "If you're wondering why Patrick 'Sith Lord' Byrne of Overstock wasn't even among …

    Letters 8 Dec 2005, 00:22

  • Steady as she goes, says Ingram Micro

    Same as it ever was

    Ingram Micro today updated guidance for Q4 ahead of an investor conference. All rather dull really, as the guidance is the same as issued on 27 October. But dull is what you want from a IT distributor, especially with rivals Bell Micro, Tech Data and - on a more parochial basis - Northamber delivering nasty profit shocks lately …

    Channel Register 8 Dec 2005, 01:32

  • EFF hatchet job spawns creepy reader love-in

    Letters Troll on, lads

    In response to our recent story, EFF volunteers to lose important suit over Sony 'rootkit', Aravind writes, "Oh man, this should be worth a FotW, or at least a few honourable mentions. Looking forward to today's mailbag! Hopefully spills over to Friday's as well..." Things quite didn't work out as he'd hoped. Reg readers were …

    Music and Media 8 Dec 2005, 08:32

  • UK government wastes billions, MPs warn

    That's governments for you

    Efforts to improve efficiency and value for money across government are being undermined by poor project management and leadership skills, MPs have warned. A hard-hitting report by the cross-party House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week said government departments are wasting billions of pounds of public …

    Public Sector 8 Dec 2005, 08:49

  • Learning from the past

    Comment David Norfolk has Proustian moment over IMS

    I'm sitting thinking about our new Reg Developer site and its target audience – professional IT developers who already read The Register but who might like something more targeted on their specific world – when an IMS Newsletter drops on the mat. For those who don't know it, IMS (Information Management System) was IBM's …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 08:57

  • Falling hardware sales hits ComputerLand UK

    Services revs up

    Half-year revenues fell at ComputerLand UK, the Nottingham-based reseller, on the back of lower product sales. Turnover for the six months to 31 October was down 10 per cent to £26.9m (H1 2005: £29.8m) and profit before tax was £0.8m (H1 2005: £1.1m). ComputerLand had already trailed a drop in hardware sales so the fall comes …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 09:46

  • Virgin Mobile 'unanimously rejects' NTL offer

    Update Branson says, 'another £100m and we've got a deal'

    Virgin Mobile has "unanimously rejected" an £817m offer by UK cableco NTL insisting it's just not enough. On Monday both NTL and Virgin Mobile confirmed they were holding talks that could lead to the creation of a mega media business offering punters a four-play service of TV, fixed-line phone, broadband and mobile under the …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 09:52

  • PartyGaming bets on bumper year

    Waves blackjack at punters

    PartyGaming said today that full year results will likely be ahead of expectations after punters flocked to its newly launched virtual blackjack tables. In a trading update for the two months to 30 November, the online gambling firm said “the increase in revenues following the [October] introduction of blackjack to our …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 10:39

  • World passes by UK.gov websites

    Hooliganism a bigger draw than Heritage

    Web surfers may be interested in working in the UK, but don’t give a fig about its world heritage sites, if figures wheedled out of the government by a LibDem MP are anything to go by. The Guardian’s technology section reports today that a series of questions by Brent East MP Sarah Teather has revealed that some sites were …

    Bootnotes 8 Dec 2005, 11:18

  • VIA preps C7-oriented 'mini PC' chipset

    Low-power part for SFF systems

    VIA is set to ship the latest chipset for its low-power x86-compatible C7 processor - aka 'Esther' - next quarter, the company said today. It will pitch the part at small form-factor PC makers and consumer electronics companies keen to break into the media centre market. The CN700 IGP incorporates a UniChrome Pro graphics …

    Reg Hardware 8 Dec 2005, 11:21

  • BBC tunes into BT's IPTV service

    Gogglebox-tastic

    BT's broadband TV service isn't due to be switched on until next autumn but already the UK's dominant fixed line telco is making a song and dance about hooking up with three content partners. The telco has signed up BBC Worldwide, Paramount and Warner Music Group enabling punters to access film, music and TV programmes "on …

    Networks 8 Dec 2005, 11:26

  • Ex-Warner Home Video boss blasts Sony

    Blu-ray vs HD DVD = PS3 vs Xbox 360

    The battle between the next-generation games consoles will determine the winner of the fight between the next-generation optical disc formats. So claimed the former president of Warner Home Video, Warren Lieberfarb, this week, as he slammed Sony's strategy to help Blu-ray Disc (BD) to beat HD DVD. Ironically, Warner itself is …

    Peripherals 8 Dec 2005, 11:31

  • SQL Server and Scalability

    Is SQL Server 2005 truly scalable? Can it really run big databases?

    Well, I’m convinced. The enterprise edition can, within the constraints of the operating system, run databases of unlimited size than use unlimited RAM on any number of CPUs. It supports 64-bit operation, partitioning and parallel index operations. Still smarting under its history, Microsoft has put together a range of …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 11:45

  • Programmability of SQL Server 2005

    The programmibility of a database is often what matters most to developers

    T-SQL is Microsoft’s own version of SQL. Like most database companies, Microsoft supports most of the standards and extends the standards where it feels there is a lack. So, SQL Server 2005 supports almost all of the ANSI 99 and 2003 SQL standards. As Euan Garden, product unit manager for SQL Server Tools, said back in 2004: " …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 11:55

  • Six Apart chief's 'nice' speech ends in name-calling

    Les Blogs From blogfest to slugfest

    The second LesBlogs geekfest in Paris saw Six Apart’s oh-so-nice president, Mena Trott, taking bloggers to task for incivility. Having let the genie out of the bottle by providing over ten million people with the tools to blog, she now appeared to be trying to stuff it back in again. She admitted to being nervous about …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 12:07

  • High Availability with SQL Server

    Resilience and robustness are key characteristics of Enterprise databases

    High availability can be provided in various ways – SQL Server 2005 supports mirroring, fail-over clustering and backup log shipping. Backup log shipping is the simplest and cheapest high availability system and appears in the workgroup edition of SQL Server 2005 and above. Essentially, it means the shipping of the transaction …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 12:10

  • SQL Server History

    Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it (Hegel)

    Normally, the history of software is about as alluring as last night’s curry but in this case, it’s relevant because it is precisely this history that is at the root of SQL Server’s main problem. The product was originally Sybase by any other name; Microsoft simply bought the source code and re-badged it. Sadly, even in its …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 12:25

  • Mail Group buys property site

    It's a Primelocation.com

    The owner of the Daily Mail newspaper group is splashing out £48m to acquire property website primelocation.com Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) said its decision to take-over Fastcrop (which owns primelocation.com) is part of the publisher's plans to cash in from growing sales in online advertising. Primelocation.com is an …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 12:37

  • Music giant stamps on song lyric search app

    pearLyrics picked off

    The developer of a song-lyric search utility has been forced to kill the application after being threatened with legal action by UK music publishing giant Warner/Chappell. Walter Ritter, creator of the Mac OS X-based pearLyrics, was this week sent a cease and desist letter by the publisher. The company claims pearLyrics " …

    Music and Media 8 Dec 2005, 13:13

  • Yahoo! targets! Skype! with! improved! VoIP! offer!

    Fab! tastic!

    Yahoo! is adding more features to its existing VoIP service in a bid to gain a bigger of the rapidly growing broadband telephony market. A new version of Yahoo!'s Messenger service is due to be released soon that will enable users to make broadband calls that are reportedly cheaper than those on offer by VoIP giant Skype. The …

    VoIP 8 Dec 2005, 13:31

  • SleepyCat releases Berkeley DB 4.4

    Loadsa new features

    SleepyCat Software has launched Berkeley DB 4.4 the latest upgrade of its free-to-cheap database software. V4.4 has a long list of new features and efficiency enhancements, published on this press release. The company claims 200 million deployments of Berkeley DB, a “massive user base”, which as Mike Olsen, Sleepycat Software’s …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 13:55

  • Hey, Korea - unbundle this!

    The Rotting Dog Blog Suck on Media Player, commie scum

    Korea December 5, 2005 - 07:17 am This Korea versus Microsoft punch-up has got the blogosphere all a-buzz this morning. Seems the Reds have slapped a $32m fine on Bill Gates for not pulling messaging and Media Player from its OS in breach of local antitrust laws. This seems a bit rich coming as it does from a one-party state …

    Bootnotes 8 Dec 2005, 13:56

  • Sober worm plans 5 January attack

    Nazi party anniversary

    Security outfit iDefense is reporting that the next Sober worm attack will take place on 5 January - the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. The information has been gleaned from breaking encrypted code in the latest version of Sober which dominated the November anti-virus ratings. According to iDefense, "the …

    Malware 8 Dec 2005, 14:47

  • No free Xbox 360 for Ballmer's kids

    Dad will just have to buy one

    Pity if you will Steve Ballmer's kids - if they want an Xbox for Xmas dad will just have to go out and buy one like the crazed plebs who are as we speak fighting each other with knives just to get within striking distance of MS's new console. According to Reuters, Ballmer "quipped" to a technology industry executive love-in: " …

    Consoles 8 Dec 2005, 14:52

  • Finding lights under bushels

    Comment HP has more news than it thinks

    It is true that there was not a great deal of hot news lying around at HP’s annual bash, Software Universe, held this year in Nice. Even the departure last week of VP of the software division, Norah Denzil, caused only quizzical speculation as to why someone should depart having just delivered on a corporate objective to bring …

    Developer 8 Dec 2005, 15:23

  • Creative Zen Vision:M music, video player

    First Look Watch out, Apple

    Creative went ahead with its Zen Vision:M launch today, despite the player's appearance on the company's Japanese website yesterday. Cock-up or conspiracy? We'll leave that to others to decide, but we can say the Vision:M itself is no cock-up - it's an impressively engineered top-of-the-line music and movie player. A glance at …

    Reviews 8 Dec 2005, 15:40

  • eBayer pays £470 for photo of Xbox 360

    Box of tricks

    Here's one hot off the press: an unwary eBayer appears to have just paid £470 for what he or she obviously thought was an "XBOX 360 PREMIUM PACKAGE": All well and good, as is most of the extensive blurb accompanying this tempting offer. It's worth reading right to the end, though: Yup, we sincerely hope it's a really nice …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 16:07

  • Mobile WiMax spec becomes a standard

    IEEE approves 802.16e

    The IEEE this week formally ratified the mobile version of the WiMax wireless broadband system as a standard. Known as 802.16e, the mobile standard now officially extends the already ratified 802.16-2004 - aka 802.11d - specification, which details connections between fixed locations. The 802.16e standard allows a base-station …

    Mobile 8 Dec 2005, 16:25

  • Cut software piracy, boost UK economy

    So says the BSA

    A 10 per cent reduction in the UK's software piracy rate would result in 34,000 new jobs, £11bn of economic growth and a £2.8bn increase in tax revenues, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance. The study – a global assessment of the IT sector’s economic impact, carried out by International Data …

    Software 8 Dec 2005, 16:48

  • Dr. Strangepackets or: How distributed systems foiled nuclear strikes

    Into the Valley Precious digital signals

    Poor Paul Baran has been forced to recount the motivations behind his work developing distributed networks and packet switching time and again. Such is the curse of a successful inventor, and to Baran's credit, he's as patient as ever when telling his story. In case you've missed it, the tale goes like this. In 1961, with the …

    Data Networking 8 Dec 2005, 21:21

  • Intel puts the squeeze on Q4 forecast

    Somewhere in the middle

    Intel today refined its fourth quarter revenue guidance, revealing that it would not likely reach the high-end of a previous forecast. This update failed to impress investors, who sent Intel's shares slightly lower in after-hours trading. Intel now expects fourth quarter revenue of between $10.4bn and $10.6bn. That range leaves …

    Financial News 8 Dec 2005, 22:55