26th August 2003 Archive

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Mac OpenOffice ‘delay’ debunked

Get coding

Repeat anything for long enough in the echo chamber, and people start to believe it. A fortnight after Sun published a community roadmap for OpenOffice it has been widely reported that the Mac version will be delayed, even though the 'delay' no longer than it is for version 1.x. However the project could really use some help. …

Mac Channel 26 Aug 2003, 00:33
California Supremes issue DVD crack setback

Both Hollywood, EFF claim victory

In the United Kingdom, cracked DVD players are widely available and openly advertised. In California it has just got harder to post cracks which allow copies of DVDs to be made to be posted the Internet. The state's Supreme Court ruling [PDF, 244 kb] has ruled that lower courts may block the posting of the cracks. The case …

Personal 26 Aug 2003, 00:37
Intel prunes Celeron prices

Back to school

Intel trimmed the prices of most of its Celeron desktop chip range this weekend, as anticipated. The 2.6GHz part saw is price fall the most - 14 per cent - while the others fell by six or seven per cent. The price of the 2.3GHz part remained unchanged at $79. Prices, as always, are per-processor sold in batches of 1000. …

Channel 26 Aug 2003, 10:26
GUS sniffs around PowerHouse

Currys issues 'open invitation' to PH staff

GUS, parent of retailers such as Argos and Homebase, is reportedly sniffing around what's left of PowerHouse after the electrical retailer went tits up last week. The Sunday Telegraph this past weekend reported that GUS has been in talk with receivers Deloitte & Touche to acquire some or all of the 130 stores across the country …

Channel 26 Aug 2003, 11:32
Sobig second wave attack fails to strike

Worm still spreading like crazy

The Internet community succeeded in cutting off the links that would have allowed the prolific Sobig-F worm to phone home last weekend. This action prevented the worm downloading new and potentially even more malevolent code onto infected PCs. However, the worm itself is continuing to spread. As we reported on Friday, Sobig-F …

Anti-Virus 26 Aug 2003, 11:40
PS2 nuts play Getaway for real

Game action re-enacted on London's streets

Many of the Web's finest moments have been created by people with a little too much time on their hands and an overactive imagination. And The Real Getaway Tour is no exception. Daniel Hansson and friend, known collectively as The Geeky Boys, grew tired of the realistic rendering of their home town London in the PlayStation 2 …

Music and Media 26 Aug 2003, 11:41
Email gossips put employers at risk

Harrassment case ends in £10,000 payout

Gossiping or slating colleagues behind their backs might be a common, if unfortunate, workplace occurrence but doing it on email could have serious repercussions, as one employer found out last week. A woman who discovered nine of her colleagues had circulated offensive emails about her has received £10,000 compensation after …

Small Biz 26 Aug 2003, 11:50
Google heals the sick

Don't dial an ambulance, visit a search engine

A fine essay in this month's Harper's blames our problems on the public education system. Writer and former teacher John Taylor Gatto notes that the rise of formalised education in the US coincided with the discovery of marketing. Choices suddenly abounded. But rules were then established that ensured that children remain in a …

Music and Media 26 Aug 2003, 12:05
Lik-Sang settles mod chip case out of court

Appeal dismissed, compensation paid, promise made to be good in future

Former online retailer Lik-Sang International has settled a case brought by Sony out of court, undertaking to cease trade in any copyright circumvention devices and paying an undisclosed compensation sum. The company, which formerly operated the popular online game retail site Lik-Sang.com (now under new ownership and unaffected …

Personal 26 Aug 2003, 12:16
Viral opportunity

Amusing sideshows to the SoBig - Blaster circus.

I love the smell of computer virus in the morning. It smells like opportunity! But not victory. Opportunity in the sense that it gives me an opening to heckle anti-virus services over another idiot's 'solution': a notification that a forged message not from you contained a virus. "The e-mail message you sent to [Bloor@ …

Security 26 Aug 2003, 12:27
South Korea asks WTO to overturn EU Hynix levy

Official complaint

The South Korean government has formally complained to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about the European Union's treatment of Hynix - specifically the EU's imposition of a 34.8 per cent duty on imports of Hynix DRAM. The move, reported by the Associated Press agency, follows an EU vote earlier this month in favour of the …

Channel 26 Aug 2003, 13:46
‘Major upheaval’ forecast for recovering router biz

'Interesting' times, 'disruptive' pricing

The enterprise router market is set to undergo a shake-up over the next three years with second-tier vendors beginning to chip away at Cisco's dominance, particularly for lower-end products. That's according to a study by Infonetics Research which last week predicted that the worldwide enterprise router revenue will grow 14 per …

Hardware 26 Aug 2003, 13:56
IBM goes turbo with midrange storage

Cache happy

IBM is prepping a "turbo" option for its midrange FastT 600 storage system that could boost the box's overall performance between 40 and 70 percent. IBM will make the turbo add-on generally available in September, adding a host of improvements to the FastT kit. The turbo option gives customers a 2GB cache, a large boost in I/O …

Storage 26 Aug 2003, 17:32
BT to trial 1Mb ADSL in October

Said it would

BT Wholesale is to begin a six-week trial of a new 1 Mb ADSL service aimed at home users, the monster telco confirmed today. IPStream Home1000 - as it's called - could give ISPs the chance to take on speedier services offered by cablecos NTL and Telewest. Then again... The trial starts on October 6 following internal tests …

Telecoms 26 Aug 2003, 18:07
Vietnam cuts cyber dissident's jail term

Not good enough, say campaigners

A Vietnamese writer jailed for ten years in June for publishing an essay about democracy on the Internet has had his sentence halved. The Supreme Court of Appeal in Hanoi cut 35 year-old Pham Hong Son's jail term following pressure from the international community including Governments and human rights groups. Despite this …

Music and Media 26 Aug 2003, 18:09
SGI shivers ahead of storm

Cuts, debt restructuring

SGI has launched a pre-emptive strike to outline its strategy in advance of what is likely to be some tough news. The company is "restructuring", although it wouldn't say how many jobs would be lost, rescheduling its 2004 debt, and moving into the smaller of its two complexes in Mountain View. SGI will also sell a manufacturing …

Servers 26 Aug 2003, 21:25
Apple issues G5 benchmarks

Nippy floats

Apple has issued SPEC benchmarks for its new 2GHz Dual CPU workstation, pitting it against a two-way Dell Xeon and a 3Ghz Pentium 4 machine. The results are in line with Intel's historically strong performance in integer performance and PowerPC's equally strong floating point results. But according to Apple the gcc compiler …

Mac Channel 26 Aug 2003, 23:52