6th June 2002 Archive

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MS denounces Hollywood DRM Jihad

About time

Microsoft has come out against the schemes and dreams of the entertainment industry with a position essay criticizing any notion of the government's mandating technical standards for content protection as Hollywood wants. The authors clearly have in mind proposed legislation by Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings (Democrat, South …

Software 6 Jun 2002, 03:08
Mozilla 1.0 released after four long years

Time crawls by

Mozilla.org has finally released version 1.0 of Mozilla, the open-source browser project that was once intended to be Netscape's cavalry in the browser wars of the late 1990s. It has taken four years and thousands of developers to get to the first major release, Kevin Murphy writes. Available now for download from Mozilla. …

Software 6 Jun 2002, 07:12
HP UX 11i Tops Unix Class

Tru64? Who needs it!

Hewlett-Packard Co's HP-UX 11i is rated the market's top Unix operating system, according to researchers DH Brown Associates Inc after a painstaking series of like-for-like functional comparisons. DH Brown managed to say some nice things too about IBM AIX 5L 5.1, Sun Solaris 8, and Compaq Tru64 Unix 5.1 in its 2002 Unix …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 07:18
HP to overhaul Middleware after admitting ‘heavy losses’

Writing on wall for J2EE app server?

The writing seems to be on the wall for Hewlett Packard Co's NetAction Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server, after the vendor confirmed it is changing its middleware strategy. Palo Alto, California-based HP told financial analysts on Tuesday it planed to "retire" some of its middleware assets in an attempt …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 07:18
Dell, Oracle join Red Hat for enterprise Linux

Not the United Linux News

Red Hat Inc, Oracle Corp and Dell Computer Corp have teamed up to provide packaged support and services for Red Hat's Linux Advanced Server operating system and Oracle's 9i Release 2 database management system. Adding some heavyweight enterprise-level backing to Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat's high-level version of …

Software 6 Jun 2002, 07:20
Korean chip vendors look to World Cup for boost

We're CPU crazy, We're CPU mad

South Korean semiconductor vendors are pinning their hopes for a business rebound on a purported "World Cup Cycle" in the chip market. The country is one of the co-hosts of the Soccer World Cup this month, along with its neighbor Japan. The tournament will no doubt give a boost to the country's economy, and provide some …

Channel 6 Jun 2002, 07:21
Apple outs Quicktime 6 – without MPEG 4 deal

Gambling on summer sign-off

Apple has let loose Quicktime 6.0 by way of free 'preview' download, without agreeing terms over the MPEG 4 digital video standard used in this streaming browser. Remember the company could have released Quicktime 6. in February, except for a tussle over per play royalty fees proposed by the MPEG-LA, the company which controls …

Personal 6 Jun 2002, 08:38
Everyone's a winner with IT-minds

Those massive discounts in full

It's hard to pick a winner this week in the Reg associate IT-minds.com offers stakes so we'll kick off with a few highlights including: Bitter Java The first major book on Java anti-patterns. It is an essential guide to any Java programmer, consultant or architect wanting to understand the most important Java server-side …

Site News 6 Jun 2002, 08:41
Panrix goes titsup -again

Liquidation this time

Panrix, has gone bust again. But this time, there's no escape hatch. The Leeds system builder has gone into Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation, calling on accountancy firm Wilson Pitts to wind up the company's affairs. Liquidator Philip Deyes who was appointed yesterday said it was too soon to estimate liabilities, creditors' …

Channel 6 Jun 2002, 09:00
Panrix goes titsup – again

Liquidation this time

Panrix, has gone bust again. But this time, there's no escape hatch. The Leeds system builder has gone into Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation, calling on accountancy firm Wilson Pitts to wind up the company's affairs. Liquidator Philip Deyes who was appointed yesterday said it was too soon to estimate liabilities, creditors' …

Channel 6 Jun 2002, 09:04
IBM fights Fast400 with OS/400 small print

Governor Buster

For months now, IBM's OS/400 systems programmers have been playing a game of cat and mouse trying to defeat the Fast400 green-screen governor buster program that helps 5250 applications get around artificial performance barriers imposed on AS/400 and iSeries hardware, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. Now IBM is hauling out …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 09:18
IBM, HP squabble over Intel servers

Expect more of this

ZDNet's Stephen Shankland has dug up the Battle of the Marketing Collateral between IBM and HP over their respective Intel multiprocessor Xeon servers offerings. The venerable computer firms are dissing each other big time, which is exactly what one would expect in this bright new server world of industry standard building …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 09:18
Sun cranks up entry server speeds

Waves goodbye to 750MHz flavours

Sun Microsystems Inc today announces a new member of its Sun Fire server line, the V120, and will also tweak its Netra line to include a NEBS-compliant version of the machine, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. Sun will also announce that it is supporting the 900MHz version of the UltraSparc-III processor in the Netra 20 two- …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 09:18
Server Briefing AMD Opteron tiptoes into Intel server space

AMD's recent admission that the performance of Opteron, its upcoming server-oriented processor, formerly codenamed Sledgehammer, isn't up to snuff will have pleased Intel executives. Opteron marks AMD's attempt to go beyond the 32-bit PC market and into the more lucrative 64-bit server and scientific computing arenas. Quite …

Servers 6 Jun 2002, 09:44
Carphone Warehouse increases UK market share

Revenues up a smidge

Shares in Carphone Warehouse rose this morning after the retailer published a batch of encouraging figures. Turnover for the year to the end of March rose a smidgen to £1.15 billion from £1.11 billion the year before. Pre-tax profit fell slightly to £46.8 million from £49.6 million in the previous year. Carphone Warehouse …

Mobile 6 Jun 2002, 09:45
blueyonder suffers ‘national outage’

Nearly fixed

Telewest's blueyonder Internet service is experiencing problems following a planned network upgrade last night. Punters in and around Gateshead and Gillingham are facing intermittent problems after routers went down in these areas. The upgrade was due to be completed and services up-and-running again by 6.00am this morning. …

Music and Media 6 Jun 2002, 11:27
BIND 9 DoS vuln

Upgrade on deck

A vulnerability affecting BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) servers running versions 9 to 9.2.0 can cause an abort condition which requires a re-start to restore service. Versions 4, 8 and 9.2.1 are not affected. There does not appear to be any potential for remote compromise. According to the CERT/CC advisory "the internal …

Security 6 Jun 2002, 12:00
Security through obsolescence

The old ways are best

Here's an interesting way to secure an Internet-connected computer against intruders: Make sure the operating system and software it runs are so old that current hacking tools won't work on it. This was suggested by Brian Aker, one of the programmers who works on Linux.com, NewsForge, Slashdot, and other OSDN sites; he runs …

Security 6 Jun 2002, 12:11
World Cup sites shown yellow card

Foul play

World Cup organisers are as sick as parrots after being told that their Web sites aren't up to scratch. Internet performance monitors - Keynote - showed host nations Japan and South Korea the red card after their sites' poor performances. The Japanese organising committee's official Web site, www.jawoc.or.jp seems to have …

Music and Media 6 Jun 2002, 12:12
Privacy still blights online retailers

Costly

Privacy concerns have reared their ugly head again this week with the release of a new study from Jupiter Media Metrix (JMM). It found that as many as 70% of US consumers are still worried about their online privacy rights - and JMM reckons these worries will cost online businesses as much as $25 billion by 2006. Privacy is a …

e-Business 6 Jun 2002, 12:24
HP raps exec for “premature” middleware death sentence

Guillotine hovers over Bluestone

Hewlett Packard took the unusual step of chiding one of its most senior executives yesterday, following his suggestion that HP would spin off its middleware products. Peter Blackmore, executive VP of HP's enterprise systems group - which encompasses servers, storage and software - told analysts at Tuesday's financial conference …

Hardware 6 Jun 2002, 17:00
Hotmail charges for POP email

Ouch

MSN has followed in the footsteps of Yahoo! and Lycos following its decision to start charging for its Hotmail POP Mail Retrieval service. Punters were told of the introduction of the charge - which will be introduced from July 16 - in an email. It said: "We are sorry to inform you that as of July 16, 2002, we will no longer …

Music and Media 6 Jun 2002, 17:27