11th February 2007 Archive

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Small biz cheapskates fail the Tech industry

Bye bye to Buy! Buy!

Another day, another silly survey, this time claiming that nearly two million UK small businesses are "putting their data and productivity at risk by using old technology to run their business". Why? because they replace their PCs rarely or never, and miss out on all sorts of good things, such as happy staff, cheaper running …

Small Biz 11 Feb 2007, 04:28
Search me, guv...

Comment The search engine - the last resort of the well-informed

I'm always a little nervous about the idea of a search engine as the solution to the tide of "unstructured data" we're all drowning in. For a start, most of it isn't really unstructured - show me an unstructured email invoice and I'll show you something that is useless because you aren't sure who it came from and what it applies …

Developer 11 Feb 2007, 07:02
The Fear biz is the computer security biz

Comment Lies, damn lies...

Scott Granneman looks at the use of fear in computer security, from misleading media reports and gross exaggeration by industry leaders to the use of fear in order to sell new computers and software. What are you afraid of? What causes you real fear, the kind that causes your heart to beat faster involuntarily, your stomach to …

Security 11 Feb 2007, 09:02
Mobile forensics turns up heat on suspects

Hunt for deleted data escalates

The latest version of the top computer forensics package will be the first to include a mobile phone component. The move signals how vital mobile data has become to many prosecutions. Police forces in the UK and worldwide already use Guidance Software's EnCase computer forensics package, most famously in the interminable cash …

Crime 11 Feb 2007, 09:02
Blog: The meaning of the meaning of meaning

A somewhat less than meaningful discussion that is full of meanings

My recent piece on search engines provoked this email comment from Tom Welsh (Reg Dev contributor and Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium): "Most people are quite unaware of the yawning gap between data and "knowledge", which is what semantics is all about. As for the term "unstructured", I concluded long ago that it is …

Developer 11 Feb 2007, 18:01
Skype snoop agent reads mobo serial numbers

'Quite normal' feature has been removed

Skype has been spying on its Windows-based users since the middle of December by secretly accessing their system bios settings and recording the motherboard serial number. A blog entry made on Skype's website assures us it's no big deal. The snooper agent is the handiwork of a third-party program called EasyBits Software, which …

Spyware 11 Feb 2007, 22:29
AMD's 'Barcelona' cuts power one core at a time

Getting coarse with Intel

AMD's elaborate and lengthy four-core processor striptease continues this week with some geeky revelations around power saving technology. At the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) in San Francisco, AMD will talk up "Enhanced PowerNow!" – the latest iteration of its power tweaking technology due to appear in …

Servers 11 Feb 2007, 23:21