Rain fails to douse iPhone fever, bans and bombs

Life not so sweet at Honeywell

In a world where people share music electronically, it's not unknown for IT staff to set up a bit of space on a server for people to swap tunes in order to reduce bandwidth demands. Not a good idea, of course, and illegal. As engineering firm Honeywell found out this week when police and the BPI raided the firm after a tip-off from an employee. There's more here on the first company raided for letting its staff share music.

No more cigs, no more chucking away PCs

Last Sunday saw the start of the smoking ban in the UK and the arrival of the WEEE directive which restricts how you get rid of old IT kit. The details are complicated, but one solution is getting someone like Computer Aid International to wipe your PCs clean and offer them to charities or organisations in the developing world.

BBC didn't get the best out of Siemens

More criticism of the BBC's outsourcing deal with Siemens. The Public Accounts Committee reckons the Beeb failed to get decent value for money. The Beeb told us this was old news, but didn't tell us what it'd done to fix things. There's more here on where your licence fee went.

Good week for BlackBerry

Research In Motion shifted 2.4 million of its BlackBerries in the three months ended 2 June, which brought in revenues of just over a billion dollars. The results were quite a turnaround on last year.

After a five year wait the company also learned this week that it's got permission to sell in China. Which should be good news for next year's results...

iPhone fever

In other news of devices we love to hate, the iPhone was greeted like the new messiah in the US this week. We sent a man down to buy one in San Francisco. And he quite liked it.

Elsewhere, we had iPhone security, more iPhone security, and rumours of the UK landing of the most anticipated gadget since the Segway. There was also a bit of iPhone sanity in the form of a Flame of the Week. And relax...

Chips, chips, chips

Intel celebrates one million quad chip sales and doesn't want to draw attention to AMD at all. While AMD denied delays to its Phenom chips.

Spam gets personal

The era of random scam spams might be coming to an end. Fraudsters and phishers are increasingly targeting their attacks. And by targeting we mean getting not just your name and address, but those of your immediate family too. The idea is that you might share a computer with your spouse or children and they might open that suspicious email.

Netsuite to float

Software as a service firm Netsuite is to float on the stock exchange. The company has filed its paperwork with the SEC, but the actual float could be interesting. The company will run a form of electronic auction for the shares. It worked for Google.

EU wants ban on 100mph cars

A Lib-Dem member of the European Parliament is proposing a ban on cars which can go faster than 100mph in order to reduce carbon emissions. Which shows quite an ignorance about engine efficiency and how it relates to emissions...Have a look at the comments too - this story riled almost 100 Reg readers.

ISPs you love to hate

Technology firms always disappoint customers when they over promise. But you'd think the internet service providers would be a popular lot - speeds for consumers and small businesses have changed beyond all recognition in recent years. So why do we hate ISPs so much?

Poor Bill is poor

Poor Bill Gates is poor. Well at least he's no longer the world's richest man. The Microsoft founder has been knocked off the top spot by Mexican telecoms billionaire Carlos Slim.

Doctor Who?

Also collecting a large number of comments this week was our report on Doctor Who's new assistant. Go here to see who it is, and have a look at comments to see what other readers make of it.

Brown goes all webby

Our new leader Gordon Brown suggested this week the government should pay more attention to e-petitions. Hard to ignore them more effectively than Blair did, but we're not sure this is his best idea.

We also got a new science minister this week.

On the other side of the house, David Cameron, the young Tory fella, came out with some frankly bizarre proposals for the music industry.

The Simpsons movie starts here

To hell with the iPhone, here at Vulture Towers we're much more excited about next month's release of the Simpsons film. Mobile content for the film will all be sold directly. Check out the film's website.

Six million .co.uk web addresses

This week Nominet sold the six millionth .co.uk domain name. Scouse builders took the honour.

Terrortastic

The three men accused of sending emails and posting messages in chat rooms which are likely to incite others to commit murder have changed their pleas to guilty.

Also this week, if you missed it, a piece of sanity on the attempted car bombs in London.

On a lighter note, a tribute to John Smeaton, the Glaswegian airport worker whose cigarette break was interrupted by the arrival of a flaming jeep. He waded in and helped a policeman trying to restrain the would-be bomber. Web surfers have already pledged 1,200 pints of thanks for the man. Smeaton warned future attackers: "Come to Glasgow and we'll set about ye."

Big Blue prices and nukes

IBM had a busy week, opening a nuclear consultancy in France and announcing pricing for its Power6 servers. Take a deep breath, it's not the simplest of price lists...

BT buys another ISP

BT has bought another ISP - Brightview, the company behind Madasafish, Waitrose, and others.

Red faces at Xbox

If you're an Xbox owner you may well be aware that the boxes have been failing at an alarming rate - one in three are overheating. Microsoft has bitten the pillow and is taking a $1bn hit to sort the problem out. Warranties have been extended from one year to three years.

Patch Tuesday ahoy

Before you go, don't forget about Microsoft's Patch Tuesday - this month's episode includes patches for three "critical" holes in the company's software.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading and enjoy the weekend. You never know, it might stop raining...®