3rd February 2003 Archive

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Nintendo brings free Cube game offer to Europe

Limited time offer

Following in the footsteps of a similar offer in the USA, European consumers will be able to pick up a free game when they purchase a GameCube in Europe from February 3rd until March 20th. Unlike the US offer, however, the European deal is a bit more stingy with its software, offering a wider range of choice but fewer AAA …

Personal 3 Feb 2003, 08:04
Out of the Slammer

Opinion Something needs to change

With the Slammer worm network security becomes literally a matter of life and death. Where do we go from here, asks Tim Mullen? Three hundred and seventy-six bytes. That's all there was to "Slammer," 376 bytes. When you think about it, it's amazing that a piece of code could have wreaked such havoc on the Internet and caused …

Anti-Virus 3 Feb 2003, 08:15
PCCW mulls Energis bid – report

Overseas Chinese

PCCW is interested in buying the UK's Energis, the Sunday Times reports. The Hong Kong dotcom VC-turned telco also wants to buy the Macau bit of Cable & Wireless. In this case it might a willing/nay forced seller, considering the financial depths to which C&W has sunk. Energis too has been in the mire. The Leeds-based telecoms …

Business 3 Feb 2003, 08:37
We're cheaper than BT – Carphone

Retailer promises 30% savings

Carphone Warehouse, the UK's biggest mobile phone retailer, is to start flogging fixed line services from its shops. Calls to mobile phones from the new talktalk service will be 25 per cent less than BT, and prices overall will be as much as 30 per cent cheaper, CPW claims today in a Regulatory News Statement. Last year the …

Data Networking 3 Feb 2003, 08:53
Planet Recruit has new owner

Bought for £3m shares

PlanetR ecruit, a leading UK jobs site, has a new owner, the hotgroup, which is buying the company for £3m in shares, the trade publication Online Recruitment reports today. The hotgroup, formerly known as RexOnline, reckons the enlarged company is the UK's fifth biggest online recruitment business. Planet Recruit posts IT …

Music and Media 3 Feb 2003, 09:22
Slammer fails to make January AV charts

AV software isn't cure for prolific worm

The Slammer worm fails to make it into the monthly charts of AV firms this month - despite becoming arguably the most damaging Internet worm ever. The Avril worm topped the list of calls to antivirus firm Sophos, while email filtering firm MessageLabs again reports that Klez-H topped its nuisance list. The company blocked Klez- …

Anti-Virus 3 Feb 2003, 09:42
Energis pooh-pooh's PCCW approach

Announces Tesco deal instead

Energis has dismissed a weekend report that PCCW - the Hong Kong dotcom VC-turned telco - is interested in buying the UK telco. A spokeswoman for the company said the report was "pure speculation" that "appeared from nowhere". Indeed, Energis' rebuttal coincided with its own news that it had won a three-year contract with …

Data Networking 3 Feb 2003, 12:23
Ebay shuts down Columbia auctions

21st Century Reliquary

Just hours after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas, Web site Ebay closed down a number of on-line auctions where debris was on sale. Despite warnings from NASA and other US federal authorities not to touch shuttle debris due to the possible presence of toxic substances, Web users claiming to have collected …

Music and Media 3 Feb 2003, 13:14
Tiscali buys Vodafone's Spanish ISP

Paper deal

Tiscali has coughed up €8.86m in shares to buy Vodafone's fixed line Spanish ISP Airtelnet. The giant Italy-based ISP says the acquisition will strengthen its position in the Spanish market and will help accelerate its bid to improve the company's profitability. As part of the deal Tiscali will not take on board any of …

Music and Media 3 Feb 2003, 14:43
Cyber attacks down, but vulns soar

Symantec survey

The level of cyber attacks decreased for the first time in the second half of 2002, dropping six per cent. That's according to Symantec's Internet Threat Report, published today, which bring together data gleaned from the security firm's acquisition of SecurityFocus and RipTech with its other sources for the first time. The …

Security 3 Feb 2003, 14:46
For Sale: Web Dev platform going cheap

Liquidator's fire sale

In September 2002, a UK software developer called RemoteApps went bust, after the VCs pulled the plug. RemoteApps was the developer of a Web dev architecture called Xyrian, $5m and two years in the making. Now the liquidators, McTear Williams & Wood, have put it up for sale, placing an ad last week in the knacker's yard section …

Hardware 3 Feb 2003, 15:05
Vodafone pulls the plugs on Vizzavi email service

Portal now totalled?

Some skiploads of money later, Vodafone seems approximately back where it was prior to embarking on the Vizzavi portal adventure with France's SFR. A couple of months back Vodafone bought SFR's stake for very little money indeed, and today users of the Vizzavi email system received a message informing them that "the Vizzavi …

Mobile 3 Feb 2003, 15:16
Sex.com case heralds end of Internet – NSI

Court filing reveals doomsday scenario

Network Solutions - the Internet's biggest domain name registrar and the owner of the .com domain - has heralded the end of the Internet in court filings to the Californian Supreme Court. It warns that if a forthcoming decision by the court goes the wrong way it "would cripple the Internet and jeopardize the national economic …

Music and Media 3 Feb 2003, 15:34
StorageTek cuts L-series prices

Shortie

In Brief StorageTek today cut UK reseller prices by an average of 17 per cent for its L-series Performance Tape libraries and associated hardware. The enterprise storage company is also throwing in 12 months next business day on site support. And, err, that's about it. ®

Storage 3 Feb 2003, 15:46
UK gets used to e-tax filing

Not millions. but not tens either.

Slowly, slowly, the UK's self-employed, small business people, higher rate tax payers and whoever takes the government's fancy, are getting used to filing their returns online. This year's January 31 deadline saw 324,710 send in their returns by way of the Inland Revenue web site, a hefty 425 per cent up on the previous year. …

Music and Media 3 Feb 2003, 17:24
Crucial pitches for server biz

Intel play

Crucial, the online retail arm of memory maker Micron is beginning a push for more Intel server business in Europe. It's set up a localised server memory configuration web site, the grandly-named Server Solutions Centre. Prices and transaction ability are of course included. Server memory, traditionally, costs a lot more than …

Servers 3 Feb 2003, 19:19