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14th December 2005 Archive

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  • Santa raids HP and takes all its AMD-based PCs

    A very Athlon Christmas

    AMD may have pulled the ultimate coup by hiring Santa Claus as a salesman. Or so it seems by looking at HP's desktop PC online store where AMD-based products have sold out. High demand has cleared HP of 2.2GHz Athlon64-based systems and kit running on the 1.8GHz Semprons. Intel-based gear remains up for grabs across the board. …

    PCs 14 Dec 2005, 00:11

  • Compuware's CARS drive into QACentre

    I learned about these updates to Compuware's enterprise quality management products last week, but Compuware didn't want me to talk about them until the officiallaunch date on the 13th (I hate embargoes - you often end up so confused about what you may, or may not write about that you often write nothing; and, of course, if the …

    Developer 14 Dec 2005, 00:36

  • UK e-tailers 'to lose £1bn over Christmas'

    Careless. Very careless

    Poor communication is costing British online retailers up to £1bn in Christmas sales this year. Research from the Voice Commerce Group (VCG) has found that although internet shopping is experiencing unprecedented growth in 2005, retailers face losing approximately 20 per cent of their potential sales this holiday season. …

    Small Biz 14 Dec 2005, 06:02

  • Linux Quick Fix Notebook

    Book review For power users

    On the whole we're wary of books that promise instant wisdom. Generally those books that promise to make you a guru in 30 seconds fail to deliver. So we have to admit that we didn't have high hopes for Linux Quick Fix Notebook; the title is uninspiring and makes it sound like another book promising expertise without effort. …

    Developer 14 Dec 2005, 07:02

  • HP plows ahead with old strategy intact

    Hurding modesty

    HP's new strategy includes a lot of its old strategy, as the company plans to barrel ahead with its PC, printing and enterprise businesses intact. And with all systems firing, HP expects modest revenue growth in the coming years. HP is looking for fiscal 2006 revenue of $91bn, said CEO Mark Hurd, during a financial analyst …

    Financial News 14 Dec 2005, 10:30

  • Wanadoo wins 'Golden Bull' gong

    Making gobbledegook out of gibberish

    Wanadoo UK has been awarded a "Golden Bull" gong for writing absolute gibberish about its broadband service. The award was presented by the Plain English Campaign - an independent pressure group that campaigns for information to be written in plain English. Buried in the ISP's terms and conditions for its Wireless and Talk …

    Telecoms 14 Dec 2005, 10:33

  • Nvidia nabs ULi

    ATI's chip partner to be bought by its arch-rival

    Nvidia is to buy Taiwanese chipset company ULi in a stock purchase that values the acquisition at $52m. ULi is part of ALi - aka Acer Labs - and was established as a fabless chip-maker in 2002 to handle ALi's chipset development and production. It's those products that Nvidia's after, to expand its nForce line-up into the low- …

    Reg Hardware 14 Dec 2005, 10:36

  • IBM adds WSDM to tools

    Year of rollouts

    IBM has announced application development tools along with runtime product support for the emerging Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) specification. IBM's WSDM Software for Developers is an early set of tools designed to help programmers build interfaces to manage applications and network attached resources, autonomic …

    Developer 14 Dec 2005, 10:50

  • 'Napa' faster, more popular than 'Sonoma' - Intel

    'Centrino 3' better at getting dates too, apparently

    Intel's next-generation Centrino platform, codenamed 'Napa', not only consumes rather less power than its predecessor does, but is faster and has garnered a greater degree of industry support, the chip giant claimed this week. According to Keith Kressin, a marketing director within Intel's Mobility Group, Napa will form the …

    Reg Hardware 14 Dec 2005, 11:10

  • Oil terminal blast prangs New Labour site

    Party bosses now pleasingly speechless...

    New Labour's web site, labour.org.uk, has been downed by Sunday's explosion at the Buncefield oil depot in Hemel Hempstead. Like audio discount store Richer Sounds, the site was hosted by Northgate Information Solutions' data centre next to the explosion site; unlike Richer Sounds, which has now pretty much returned, at time of …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 11:15

  • Dutch piracy link site returns

    No hosting

    The controversial Dutch site Releases4U - which offered links to PCs hosted by users of the popular P2P service eDonkey - has gone live again a year after it was closed by Dutch tax and economic crime authorities. The people behind the site, which now uses the URL Releases4u.net, say that linking to pirated files isn't illegal …

    Music and Media 14 Dec 2005, 11:16

  • Kazakhs pull plug on Borat

    Sacha Baron Cohen offline in Almaty

    The powers that be in Kazakhstan have pulled the plug on Sacha Baron Cohen's www.borat.kz - home of the Brit comedian's alter ego Borat - so "he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name", as a Kazakh IT industry spokesman delicately put it to Reuters. Borat is, as UK readers know, a "boorish, sexist and racist Kazakh …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 11:23

  • GUS hands over $485m for PriceGrabber.com

    Whatever

    GUS plc - the UK-based retail and business services group that owns Argos and Experian - is forking out $485m for shopping comparison site PriceGrabber.com. The US outfit enables punters to check out the prices of thousands of different products on offer from retailers enabling them to compare items before making a purchase. …

    Financial News 14 Dec 2005, 11:24

  • MS releases IE überpatch

    Brace for impact

    Microsoft released a pair of patches on Tuesday - including a cumulative security fix for IE deemed "critical" - as part of its regular monthly patching schedule. The IE update (MS05-054) deals with four security vulnerabilities including two flaws which create a means for ne'er do wells to run hostile code on vulnerable systems …

    Enterprise Security 14 Dec 2005, 11:29

  • The 39 megapixel camera, iPod pants and more

    Gadgets and eBay goodies from the Shiny crew

    Certified gadget obsessives Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny scour Gizmoville for the oddest digital goodies, TV Scoop features all that’s cool in British telly and Propellerhead answers your PC queries. 39 megapixel camera back It was only a couple of years ago we were getting excited over the arrival of a 1.3 megapixel digital …

    Peripherals 14 Dec 2005, 11:37

  • Philippe Starck to design Virgin Galactic spaceport

    Coming soon to New Mexico

    French designer Phillipe Starck has drawn up plans for the world's first spaceport - the $225m Virgin Galactic facility coming soon to a patch of New Mexico wasteland. According to the Guardian, Virgin's Richard Branson has inked a deal with the New Mexico authorities to construct the spaceport from which Burt Rutan's …

    Science 14 Dec 2005, 11:52

  • 'BT worker' fingered for X-Factor betting scam

    Telco is investigating

    BT is investigating allegations that one of its workers is at the centre of a betting scam that made thousands of pounds from TV shows such as the X Factor. These shows - including Celebrity Fame Academy, Hell's Kitchen, and Strictly Come Dancing - involve viewers voting by phone, text or online for their favourite contestants …

    Telecoms 14 Dec 2005, 12:14

  • Swedish nymphs in hardware smut shocker

    NSFW Check the rackmount on that

    The Swedes have once again pushed back the envelope of sexual self-expression with what we believe is the world's first site for the burgeoning network equipment fetish demographic - www.hwpr0n.se. Yup, this is hot girl-on-kit action, make no mistake. Among the highlights are two fillies tonguing some rack-mount electronics, a …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 12:38

  • EC acts on patent ambushes

    New rules on IP disclosure

    The European Commission has closed an antitrust investigation into the rules used by the European Telecommunications Standardisation Institute (ETSI), after the standard-setting body changed its rules to remove the risk of “patent ambushes”. Patent ambushes occur where a participant in a standard-setting body hides the fact …

    Financial News 14 Dec 2005, 12:42

  • Cybercrims target Xmas shoppers

    Be careful out there

    'Tis the Christmas season and while consumers are surfing the net looking for the perfect gift, fraudsters are lying in wait to trip them up. This year's holiday season is widely expected to generate more online sales than ever before, with consumers flocking to the internet looking for that elusive gift. Although using the …

    ID 14 Dec 2005, 12:48

  • UK shopkeepers beating online fraud

    Open all hours

    UK retailers are beating the problem of online fraud, according to a new survey. Two in three (65 per cent) of 160 retailers surveyed by electronic payment and risk management firm CyberSource said they had seen losses from fraud either stall or fall in the last 12 months. Only 16 per cent reckon that fraud has risen as a …

    ID 14 Dec 2005, 12:59

  • Bangalore rebrands as Bengaluru

    Shouldn't that be Benda Kaal Ooru?

    The Indian IT hub of Bangalore is about to be rebranded as Bengaluru in recognition of the original name of Benda Kaal Ooru - that's "boiled beans town" in the local Kannada lingo. According to the Beeb, this rather unsavoury name came about when a king named Vira Ballala lost his way on a hunting expedition and was eventually …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 13:17

  • Hayabusa homecoming delayed three years

    JAXA attempts to revive ailing probe

    Japan's Hayabusa probe will have to spend the next three years in space while scientists attempt to revive the ailing asteroid-sampler, Reuters reports. Only in 2010 will it be in the correct position to adopt an orbit for a return to its home planet - assuming the Japanese space agency JAXA can indeed revive Hayabusa. The …

    Science 14 Dec 2005, 14:12

  • The problems with IBM's SOA message

    Comment 'Horrendously complicated'

    This is the fourth and final set of my observations based on IBM's recent analyst conference from its Software Group. As I have discussed in my previous articles, SOA (service-oriented architecture) now pervades all of IBM's software offerings. Is this a good thing? Yes. Are there unanswered problems? Yes. I have discussed the …

    Developer 14 Dec 2005, 15:19

  • IT firm MD called worker 'fat bitch', tribunal hears

    Unfair dismissal claim

    A Bristol unfair dismissal tribunal has heard how the MD of a Wiltshire IT firm allegedly subjected a female telesales worker to "daily sexual torment", UK tabloid the Mirror reports. Maria Maniglia, 40, claimed that Robert Clarke of Fokus Systems, based in Box, called her a "fat, fiery Sicilian bitch", "buried his head in …

    IT Director 14 Dec 2005, 15:34

  • Sapphire Radeon X800GTO²

    Review The best worst-kept secret in the graphics market right now?

    Nvidia's GeForce 6800 GS chip is a respin of the 6800 GT. It's built on a 110nm process enabling it to offer higher clock speeds and, as such it has taken a lead over the cards based on ATI's X800 GTO. However, Sapphire is exclusively offering a part called the X800GTO². The 'squared' refers to the fact that this card's GPU has …

    Reviews 14 Dec 2005, 15:34

  • Public sector could save billions through shared services

    That's 15 hospitals, 30 secondary schools, 50 primary ...

    The government could save up to £40bn over the next decade by sharing services across public sector human resources and finance functions, researchers claims. The BuyIT Best Practice Network, which has been working with the government on take-up of shared services, makes the estimate in a best practice guide published this week …

    Public Sector 14 Dec 2005, 15:40

  • Consumers to get better deal, says Ofcom

    Outlines key priorities for 2006

    Ofcom has launched a far-reaching consultation into the regulatory work it plans to carry out next year. The draft annual plan covers a wide range of areas including broadcasting, telecoms, consumer protection and the availability of digital services. Part of the consultation, though, deals with the key issue of tasking the …

    Networks 14 Dec 2005, 15:49

  • MEPs vote for mandatory data retention

    Costs, scope still unclear

    The European Parliament has approved proposals on data retention that would compel telecom firms to keep customer email logs, details of internet usage and phone call records for between six months to two years. The plan - designed to assist law enforcement in the fight against terrorism and serious crime - leaves it up to …

    Music and Media 14 Dec 2005, 16:10

  • MusicGremlin touts PC-free wireless music player

    Download tracks direct to the device

    MusicGremlin's upcoming digital music player will support direct-to-device song downloads, the company said today as it begins to pitch technology licences to device manufacturers. The company will next month launch a Wi-Fi enabled player that has enough web access smarts on board to tune into MusicGremlin's own online store …

    Peripherals 14 Dec 2005, 16:13

  • Nude teacher mobile snap wows Cyprus

    Police called in operation 'Charlotta Kyrchiopolos'

    Cypriot police are probing the case of a female Limassol schoolteacher who rather inadvisedly left her mobile phone - complete with snap of her in a "state of undress" - unattended by her desk. We all know what comes next: the Charlotte Church effect kicks in and within a few hours every kid at the school is leering over miss's …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 16:18

  • Ireland to get 600 Google jobs

    Top of the rankings to you

    Google plans to create more than 600 jobs in Dublin over the next two or three years as it expands its European HQ in Ireland. The company has also signed a lease for a further 100,000 square feet of office space beside its current European HQ as it prepares to recruit a range of new staff including sales, engineering, legal, …

    Financial News 14 Dec 2005, 16:35

  • Stalker-turned-burglar fixed love target's PC

    Chinese court takes pity on bra-snaffling perv

    A Chinese stalker-turned-burglar fixed his neighbour's computer during one unsanctioned visit into her home, a Chinese court heard. A court in Harbin, in north-eastern China, dismissed harassment charges against Jin Bo after hearing how his unrequited love drove him into breaking into the unnamed woman's home five times between …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 2005, 17:08

  • IMS grows small

    Comment Now everyone can manage

    It may seem something of a contradiction in terms, but for any business to be agile and effective these days, it also has to have a high degree of control in place. It is vital for the IT function to know exactly what it happening in the hardware and software infrastructure, down to the smallest detail, if it is to be able to …

    IT Director 14 Dec 2005, 19:37