BT is banning its 85,000 staff from smoking in any company building or vehicle.

The majority (59 per cent) of small and medium sized businesses in the UK are failing to apply security patches in a timely manner because the process is too time consuming and hard to manage. That's according to a recent survey of 449 SME IT managers commissioned by internet security firm intY that found small businesses struggling to test patches and roll them out throughout their organisations.

Boffins have come up with a new technique to protect users against more sophisticated forms of cybercrime. Indiana University School of Informatics and affiliated start-up RavenWhite have developed an "active cookie" as a countermeasure against online scams such as pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks.

RadioShack chief executive David Edmonson resigned yesterday after failing to fight off allegations that he lied on his CV.

Expect Intel to cut the prices of its Core Duo mobile processor line-up at the end of May, the Chinese-language Commercial Times said today. According to the paper, the prices of the 65nm dual-core successors to the Pentium M will fall by up to 33.1 per cent.

CommentOfficial auditors assigned to assess the multi-billion pound National Programme for IT* might have been forgiven for thinking that this one was going to be straightforward.

Men in their thirties and forties are less sexually satisfied than those in their fifties, a study has found. In fact, the baby boom generation are the most sexually satisfied of anyone outside their twenties, according to the research in the British Journal of Urology.

During his keynote during the RSA Conference, Scott McNealy seemed almost apologetic.

Some 20m new broadband lines were wired up in Europe last year taking the total to almost 53m connections, according to a report published by the European Commission (EC).

Sony today unveiled the compact HD camcorder it hopes will bring high definition video mainstream when it goes on sale across the world in April. That's thanks to the machine's compact size, picture resolution and ability to take stills while shooting video, Sony claimed.

Scientists at IBM say they have figured out how to produce smaller and more powerful microchips than previously thought possible. It is hoped IBM's announcement at San Jose on Monday will mean the creation of miniscule microprocessors which will save the IT manufacturing sector billions of dollars.

The Royal Society has spoken out against the increasingly vocal UK creationism lobby, which it says seems to be gaining a foothold amongst university and college students.

Nikon today unveiled its latest assault on the digital compact camera market: seven new Coolpix models, including the 8.1 megapixel, shake-resistant and Wi-Fi enabled P3, and the slimline S5 and S6 with their "wave-surface design" - it's curved, in other words - and a supercharged slideshow facility.

In briefA German pothead was cuffed after reporting his dealer to cops for supplying seven ounces of "completely unenjoyable" weed.

The Corporation of the City of London has chosen The Cloud to install a Wi-Fi network to cover the Square Mile.

AOL is to launch an instant messaging (IM) service aimed at business users, the internet giant confirmed today.

California: The planned execution of convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales has been halted after two court-appointed doctors refused to participate, the BBC reports.

Police in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames have launched a burglary-reduction scheme using DNA to trap light-fingered ne'er-do-wells. Kits will be distributed later this month to allow householders to mark property with synthetic sequences that last for up to 30 years.

Nominet, the company in charge of the .uk registry, is facing a grassroots rebellion over proposed changes to company rules that will see it enter a more commercial phase.

Start-up businesses in the UK offer better investment prospects than those in the United States, a panelist from the BBC’s Dragon’s Den programme has told a London conference on innovation.

Now, we at El Reg have been known to have a go at Microsoft for not issuing patches for humanity-threatening vulnerabilities with sufficient alacrity, so we are absolutely delighted to report that Redmond has acted with panther-like speed to plug a Commonwealth Games-related doomsday scenario.

Cross-computer file searching features in the latest version of Google desktop search tool represent an "unacceptable security risk" to large enterprises, analyst Gartner warns. Google concedes the analysts' concerns are valid but argues that large firms are free to control the application of the technology.

UpdatedNEC has confirmed it is to close its Ballivor, Co. Meath semiconductor plant at the end of September with the loss of 350 jobs. The chip maker blamed the move on the plant's "high operating costs".

CommentThe Chickenhead company, Commodore, chose 3GSM to launch into the mobile games business as a distributor. So, what is a Chickenhead? It's the popular name for the Commodore logo. And why is that a "mobile media provider"? Ah, that's quite a story! - it goes like this...

Eircom is once again at the centre of a takeover bid after confirming it has received a preliminary approach from Australian investors Babcock & Brown.

BT has hooked up with Card Protection Plan Limited (CPP) to flog insurance to protect punters against ID theft.

Since I wrote my white paper (available for free download) on the problems of spreadsheets last year, a number of vendors have come up with a variety of solutions, not least Microsoft, which has substantially improved the security and auditability of Excel in Office 12, though it still lacks facilities like cell level locking. However, the best solution I have seen to-date comes from Mobius.

The Tower of London's famous ravens have been locked up in a bid to isolate them from the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza that is sweeping the world.

There might be some truth in caricatures from films such as Dick Tracy after all. Ugly teens are more likely to grow up to commit crime, according to study by a pair of US economists who tracked the life history of youngsters through to early adulthood.

Names and national identity numbers of 2,000 South Koreans have been stolen by sneak thieves who used the information to play the popular online computer game Lineage for free. Seoul-base game developer NCSoft issued a warning after getting numerous, and rising, reports of unauthorised players last week. It reckons the purloined data "leaked" from internet shopping malls, the Korea Times reports.

In BriefOnce a Sun Microsystems CFO, always a Sun Microsystems CFO. Or so seems to be the case with Mike Lehman.

Microsoft's next desktop operating system will ship in eight flavors, according to a company leak.

Microsoft has released code for developers and ISVs that continues its strategy of turning Office into the window on customers' back-end business data.