18th December 2003 Archive

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Singapore quarantines 70 after Taiwan confirms SARS case

Health authorities downplay epidemic threat

Singapore has quarantined 70 people who may have come into contact with a Taiwanese researcher who this week became the first new case of SARS since July. The victim, a 44-year-old male, is believed to have contracted the illness through his work as a researcher as Taiwan's Institute of Preventative Medicine. He had been …

Business 18 Dec 2003, 09:13
Intel Grantsdale pegged for 29 March '04 launch

Alderwood too

'Grantsdale', Intel's next generation of Pentium 4 chipset, will debut on 29 March. So will 'Alderwood', the successor to the current i875 chipset. So claims French site x86 Secret, citing numerous sources. Grantsdale is the follow up to the i865 family, and like those chipsets will be offered in discrete and integrated forms …

Channel 18 Dec 2003, 09:43
Rural broadband outfit goes bust

200 Net users hit

Some 200 broadband users in the West Midlands are without high-speed Net access after the company supplying the service went into receivership earlier this month. Independent Networks - a network provider for two Advantage West Midlands-funded rural broadband pilot projects in Leominster, Herefordshire and in the Bredon Hill …

Telecoms 18 Dec 2003, 09:49
US Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos

The case of the missing White House

Call it the case of the missing White House. Users of Mapquest's free aerial photo database recently noticed that details of several Washington D.C. government buildings were no longer discernable in overhead images of the U.S. capital. A comparison of old and new images posted on the government secrecy watchdog site Cryptome …

Security 18 Dec 2003, 10:21
Motorola seeks SEC approval for chip biz spin off

IPO next spring?

Motorola's chip business could be an independent entity as early as next spring, now that the company has officially sought the approval of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the spin-off. The necessary S-1 registration statement was made yesterday by SPS Spinco, a short-lived company formed to oversee the …

Channel 18 Dec 2003, 11:02
WorldPay service ‘currently unavailable’

Investigation under way

WorldPay - the Royal Bank of Scotland's Internet payment outfit - has launched an "urgent" investigation into why its payment and administration services are "currently unavailable". A notice on the WorldPay site reads: "We regret that our payment and administration services are currently unavailable - we are investigating with …

Small Biz 18 Dec 2003, 11:17
Microsoft unleashes legal attack dogs on spammers

Teams up with NY

Microsoft is to hold a press conference today in New York with Eliot Spitzer, the state's attorney general, to promote a joint crackdown against spam. Reuters, which heralds the news conference, has no specific details, but considering that Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street is involved, it is reasonably safe to infer that the …

Security 18 Dec 2003, 11:18
Intel chip to pave way for cheap digital TVs – report

'Liquid crystal on silicon' chips to replace mirrors, smoke

Intel will next month move into the digital TV market with a low-cost, single-chip solution to all the electronics and chippery found in today's big screen tellies. The chip giant will reveal is product at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, which opens its doors in three weeks' time, the New York Times claimed yesterday. …

Personal 18 Dec 2003, 11:26
NEC demos first next-gen DVD drive with one red, blue head

Compatible with today's DVDs

NEC has built the first optical storage drive to support not only today's DVDs but tomorrow's High Definition blue-laser technology-based discs, the company said today. The machine uses a single optical head that contains one lens fed by two semiconductor lasers: a red one for backward compatibility with current DVD technology …

Personal 18 Dec 2003, 11:58
CSC wins $1.5bn SAS outsourcing gig

The airline, not the IT firm

Computer Sciences Corp. has scooped up an IT outsourcing gig worth up to $1.5bn with Scandinavian airline group, SAS. The deal runs up to nine years, with the last four years subject to options. If SAS signs up for the duration then the CSC will hit the headlines $1.5bn revenue mark. CSC will acquire Scandinavian IT Group (SIG …

Business 18 Dec 2003, 12:00
Police in paedo porn sting

Fake site

Police have set up a fake child porn Web site in a bid to identify and catch paedophiles scouring the Net for illegal images. Officers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia are taking part in the international sting operation. At the heart of Operation Pin is a Web site which purports to contain images of child abuse. Anyone …

Music and Media 18 Dec 2003, 12:07
Lehman moves help desk out of India

Offshore backlash grows

The partial backlash against offshore IT outsourcing has gained another convert: Lehman Brothers has stopped outsourcing its IT helpdesk to Indian services giant Wipro, due to poor quality of service. The trend towards offshore outsourcing is still in full flow, but companies may start to be more skeptical of the assurances made …

Hardware 18 Dec 2003, 12:14
World Online told to pay IPO damages

Tiscali sub to appeal

Dutch Internet company World Online has to cough up approximately €100 million in damages to its former shareholders, a judge in Amsterdam ruled Wednesday. Chairwoman Nina Brink, who despite the Dutch name is Canadian born, resigned a month after the flotation of the company in 2000, as she failed to disclose the selling of most …

Business 18 Dec 2003, 13:48
A better class of shadow

Swedish academic presents new algorithm

A newly-developed algorithm can create computer generated shadows of a much better quality than ever. Shadows are extremely important in making the graphics in 3D games and Virtual Reality applications more natural. Soft shadows in real-time applications have largely been an unsolved problem, according to Ulf Assarsson, of …

Personal 18 Dec 2003, 13:49
Mobile broadband everywhere

Land, air and sea

An agreement signed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Inmarsat brings the reality of reliable mobile broadband communications services a step closer, the ESA says. Global mobile broadband services will be available for those at sea, in the air or on land with the new Broadband Global Area Network System (BGAN), to be …

Telecoms 18 Dec 2003, 13:49
PalmOne makes Q1 loss

Mergers, demergers muddy waters

PalmOne's first quarter as a entirely separate entity from PalmSource and as the owner of Handspring yielded sales of $271.2 million, up five per cent on the same Q last year. It produced a net loss of $4.1m Of course, PalmOne's numbers are muddied by the loss of PalmSource and the arrival of Handspring. Income from its own …

Mobile 18 Dec 2003, 13:55
Scots police in £10m bootleg raid

'Colossal success' - ELSPA

More than £10 million worth of counterfeit goods was seized at Ingleston Market, Edinburgh, last weekend in what is being described as one of the biggest counterfeiting raids of recent years. The operation exposed six stalls selling illegal gear including computer games, music CDs, films, and business software discs. One stall …

Channel 18 Dec 2003, 14:02
A Quantum Theory of Internet Value

Google does books

Although word leaked out early, Google will today press ahead with a launch of what it describes as a "print" version of the Internet. Google Print apes Amazon's "Search Inside The Book" feature, where you can sorta, kinda, give yourself the illusion that you're in a real library. A search term pops up references to the term in …

Music and Media 18 Dec 2003, 14:16
Long goodbye begins for Win2k Server

Focus time for 2003 holdouts

Microsoft will begin tightening the squeeze on Windows 2000 Server users from April of next year, at which point the product will cease to be available via retail or volume licensing. This is a fairly standard first step for the phase-out of Microsoft operating systems, and is more of an inconvenience for holdouts than …

Software 18 Dec 2003, 14:32
Evesham slapped for spamming

Tut, tut

Evesham Technology has been given a right old ticking off for bombarding people with unwanted junk email. The UK's advertising watchdog received 22 complaints from people who received spam from Evesham flogging all sorts of computer gear including "PC components and peripherals" and "Introducing Microsoft Windows XP Center …

Channel 18 Dec 2003, 14:35
OpenOffice CDs live for lending in Scottish libraries

Stocking stuff you're supposed to copy? There's a pitch to attract librarians...

OpenOffice CDs are becoming available for lending at 415 out of 507 public libraries in Scotland, and the activist responsible, Bob Kerr, is busily packing up more CDs to send to what he estimates represents around 60 per cent of libraries in the UK as a whole. But it's the process rather than the coup itself that is most …

Software 18 Dec 2003, 16:04
Tests confirm Atheros' Super G degrades rival WLANs

But Broadcom has nothing to smile about...

Broadcom's allegation that 802.11g Wi-Fi products based on chips developed by its rival, Atheros, will degrade the performance of nearby wireless networks appears to have been verified by independent tests. Tim Higgins of web site Small Net Builder carried out a comprehensive series of tests to see if Atheros' Super G …

Wireless 18 Dec 2003, 16:39
Sun drives the final nail in Cobalt's coffin

Swallowing a $2.1 billion chunk of pride

$2.1 billion does not go as far these days as it used to - just ask Sun Microsystems. Sun's massive 2001 purchase price for server appliance maker Cobalt Networks seems a tad silly with the entire product line being sent out to pasture. Thanks to a tip, The Reg has uncovered Sun's decision to end-of-life every Cobalt product, …

Servers 18 Dec 2003, 19:16
Linux 2.6 kernel released from detox

Penguins are go

With this posting, Linus Torvalds has officially sent the Linux 2.6 kernel on its way. The previous major milestone was released back in the days when open source barely registered as a competitive threat on Redmond's radar (three years ago, in January 2001 to be precise) Important parts of the 2.6 kernel have been …

Software 18 Dec 2003, 22:12
Multicore Itanic: Call me Tukwila

Musicians force Intel into Tanglewood name change

It's with some sadness that we received word from Intel today that the upcoming Tanglewood processor will no longer be known by its given name. Instead, Intel has sent out a mandate, calling for all processor fiends to call the chip Tukwila. In the land of Itanic, things seem to happen for strange reasons. Otherwise competent …

Servers 18 Dec 2003, 22:15
Red Hat sweetens Q3 with Sistina buy

Clustered ambitions

Red Hat continued to chug along in its third quarter, upping both revenue and subscriptions. In addition, the company announced plans to acquire Sistina Software - an upstart in the storage software market. The Linux maker churned out $33.1 million in revenue for the quarter, which marks a 36 percent year-on-year increase. Red …

Software 18 Dec 2003, 23:18
Real sues Microsoft, seeks $1bn damages

Once more round the Antitrust wheel

Emboldened by its reception before the European Commission in Brussels last month, RealNetworks is to sue Microsoft for alleged anti-competitive behavior. "We believe our business would be substantially larger today if Microsoft were playing by the rules," said Real's founder and former Microsoft executive Rob Glaser in a …

Software 18 Dec 2003, 23:36