7th July 2004 Archive

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Microsoft looks for $1bn savings

Ballmer memo calls for belt-tightning

Microsoft aims to cut $1bn from its expenses this year and even the company's famous free drinks policy might get the chop. In an email to staff, chief executive Steve Ballmer warned that expenses have grown faster than revenue for the last three years - and this cannot continue. Free towels have gone from company locker rooms …

Financial News 7 Jul 2004, 08:22
Nvidia roadmap said to tout AGP at high-end well into 2005

PCI Express native parts coming

Nvidia will ship native PCI Express successors to its current PCX 5900, 5750 and 5300 during the second half of the year. But it will continue to offer high-end AGP 8x parts right through Q1 2005. So says Chinese website MyHard.com, which claims to have seen the graphics chip company's internal roadmaps and based its own charts …

Channel 7 Jul 2004, 08:57
Intel 'resumes Grantsdale shipments'

Faulty South Bridges fixed

Intel began shipping its i915G, i915P and i925X chipsets this week after suspending sales and recalling shipped product late last month, Taiwanese sources have said. Shortly after the chipsets' launch on 21 June 2004, the chip giant admitted it had detected a flaw in their shared ICH6 South Bridge. The bug could cause host …

Channel 7 Jul 2004, 09:19
Symbian owners foil Nokia takeover

Shareholders increase stakes

Symbian's other shareholders have stopped Nokia from taking majority ownership of the smart phone OS developer. Symbian is expected to announce at a London press conference in London this afternoon that most shareholders have exercised their rights to buy bigger stakes in the company. Only Samsung is ducking out, according to …

Applications 7 Jul 2004, 09:44
Ebbers and chums pay $51m to settle pensions suit

Worldcom employees sue ex-CEO

Bernie Ebbers, disgraced ex-chief executive of Worldcom, and 18 other senior executives have settled a class action suit brought on behalf of employees who saw the value of their pensions disappear when the company's shares collapsed. The Worldcom pension fund owned 46m shares in the company. These collapsed from $8.27 in March …

IT Director 7 Jul 2004, 10:16
Gateway reports HP to ITC

Tit for tat

HP's patent infringement fight will rival PC maker Gateway escalated yesterday when Gateway revealed it has asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate HP. It's all getting a bit tit for tat. HP sued Gateway in March. Gateway countersued in May. That month HP complained to the ITC about Gateway. In June, the ITC …

Channel 7 Jul 2004, 11:09
Dell denounces desktop Linux dealer

Questar's announcement 'inaccurate'

Dell today distanced itself from system builder Questar's announcement yesterday that it is offering Linux-based Dell-manufactured desktop systems - and doing so with the PC giant's approval. It also branded elements of Questar's announcement - issued, it says, "without Dell input" - as "inaccurate". "Our agreement with Dell …

Channel 7 Jul 2004, 11:16
Alien smartphone lands in Netherlands

Voq comes in peace bearing radical software

The Voq isn't quite the largest smartphone around, but with its flip-open full qwerty thumpad, it must be closet to being the weirdest. And it's now shipping, for €99, through Dutch operator KPN as a "professional phone". This beast isn't just another Microsoft "Windows Mobile" device. Sierra Wireless, which designed the …

Mobile 7 Jul 2004, 11:24
VoIP hackers gut Caller ID

Numbers spoofed, ID blocking cracked

Hackers have discovered that implementation quirks in Voice over IP make it easy to spoof Caller ID, and to unmask blocked numbers. They can make their phone calls appear to be from any number they want, and even pierce the veil of Caller ID blocking to unmask an anonymous phoner's unlisted number. At root, the issue is one of …

Telecoms 7 Jul 2004, 11:25
Sybase's ASE expands

Improved database environment

Sybase has recently made a couple of new product announcements that will have a significant impact on the performance of ASE implementations. I need to be careful here: these are new products that improve the performance of the database environment, not the database itself. The two products are Sybase Dynamic Archive and Sybase …

Applications 7 Jul 2004, 11:26
In the chair: VMware's Ed Bugnion

Interview The company past, present and future

The following is an interview with Ed Bugnion, CTO and Co-founder of VMware, conducted by IT-Director.com. It offers an insight into VMware past, present and future: IT-Director.Com: What did you do prior to joining VMware? Ed Bugnion: "Before I started with VMware I was a Ph.D student at Stanford University working on a …

Servers 7 Jul 2004, 11:27
Virgin Mobile prices IPO at up to £713m

Trimming expectations

Virgin Mobile today announced a target range of 235p-285p per share for its stock market float. This values the mobile virtual network operator at £588m to £713m ($1.08bn - $1.32bn) net and is less than expected. Analysts had targeted up to £1bn for the float. The enterprise value of the business is set at £900m and £1.025bn, …

Financial News 7 Jul 2004, 11:27
MS doles cash to UK charities

Fairbridge and Leonard Cheshire boost IT skills

Microsoft is giving two British charities, Fairbridge and Leonard Cheshire, cash grants totalling £182,500 plus software and training materials to help them reduce the digital divide. Fairbridge works with disadvantaged young people between 13 and 25 not in employment or training. It is receiving £50,000 from the software giant …

Financial News 7 Jul 2004, 11:31
Software pirates cost $9.7bn in Europe - BSA

Lesson plan

The software piracy rate in the UK hit 29 per cent last year, with the rate of bootlegging in Europe also on the rise. Piracy in the EU region is running at 37 per cent, according to the Business Software Alliance's Global Piracy Study 2003, out today. This equates to a cost to software publishers of more than $9.7bn in Europe …

Software 7 Jul 2004, 13:21
Big.biz still keen to export jobs

Offshoring grows like Topsy

Most mid-sized and large companies plan to offshore some of their services between now and 2009. Software developers in retail and finished goods manufacturers and operational staff in utilities and business service companies are the most likely to see their jobs going overseas. Companies in France, Germany, the Netherlands and …

IT Director 7 Jul 2004, 13:24
Hackers' convention rolls into Vegas

It was five years ago today... 7 July 1999

Although we're not quite certain what happens when you take a load of hackers and stick 'em in the middle of a 24/7 gambling mecca for a bit of a jolly, here's Tim Richardson's analysis of the DEF CON jamboree of 1999: Hackers' convention rolls into Vegas By Tim Richardson Published Wednesday 7th July 1999 10:29 GMT A …

Enterprise Security 7 Jul 2004, 13:34
Dutch slap cuffs on race-hate rappers

Zero tolerance to Internet incitement

The Centre of Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) yesterday lodged a police complaint against the makers of a song that uses racist language against Jews, homosexuals and Amsterdam soccer team Ajax. The song, recorded by supporters of the Rotterdam football team Feyenoord under the name of Sluipschutters (Snipers), …

Music and Media 7 Jul 2004, 13:48
Computacenter hit by PC price tumble

Sales up, but revenue down

Computacenter, the largest reseller of PCs to European businesses, sold a record number of computers on the back of Microsoft XP upgrades during the first half of the year - but price declines meant that product revenue declined in its core UK market. It may now have to look towards service company acquisitions to improve its …

Channel 7 Jul 2004, 13:49
iPods are the latest security risk

Thumbs down from Gartner

Apple's trendy iPod players could be a serious security risk, Gartner claims. The analyst firm says the devices could be used to sneak out valuable corporate information or introduce computer viruses into corporate environments. Gartner expresses similar concerns about portable FireWire hard drives, such as those from LaCie or …

Mac Channel 7 Jul 2004, 13:52
World to get iPod Mini on 24 July

US demand being met?

Apple's eagerly awaited iPod Mini will ship in the UK on 24 July 2004, the Mac maker said today. Originally scheduled to ship this past April, the iPod Mini's release outside the US was last March delayed until July. Apple's reason: all the Minis it could make were needed to satisfy demand in America. That's certainly true, but …

Mobile 7 Jul 2004, 14:01
Symbian raises £50m in rights issue

Smooths over Psion stake sale

Symbian today issued £50m worth of shares in a deal which allays shareholder concerns that it was turning into a Nokia puppet. As anticipated, the smart phone operating system supplier today revealed that shareholders Panasonic, Siemens and Sony Ericsson had exercised their right to buy a portion of Psion's 31.1 per cent stake …

Financial News 7 Jul 2004, 14:27
PeopleSoft blames Oracle for losses

A bigger boy did it and ran away

PeopleSoft has warned that sales for the second quarter are worse than predicted and lost no time in blaming Oracle for the fall. Shares in the enterprise software vendor fell more than 10 per cent in before-hours trading. Peoplesoft now expects to post revenue of between $655m and $665m rather than the expected $675m for the …

Applications 7 Jul 2004, 14:47
Swansea Council IT staff threaten strike over outsourcing

Unanimous support

IT staff at Swansea Council are voting on strike action to stop the council outsourcing their jobs. Ballot papers will be sent out next week. The vote follows a meeting organised by trade union Unison which showed unanimous support for a strike. The situation came to light when the council put an advert in the European Business …

IT Director 7 Jul 2004, 15:32
MS defeated in ergo keyboard patent appeal

District Court must re-type ruling

The US Court of Appeals has told Microsoft that it should have not been successful in its attempt to have two patents detailing ergonomic keyboard designs rendered invalid. The ruling comes two years after a US District Court judged the patents, held by TypeRight Keyboard, to be void. Two years before that, in July 1998, …

Peripherals 7 Jul 2004, 15:37
E-voting security: looking good on paper?

Voter receipt more 'security blanket' than 'security measure'

A couple of weeks ago, the US League of Women Voters incurred the wrath of touch-screen ballot skeptics by indicating its acceptance of DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) ballot machines with no voter-verifiable paper trail. On 14 June, following several days of bad press, the League revised its position and adopted a resolution …

Public Sector 7 Jul 2004, 16:20
Sun outsources UK support engineers

40 unchuffed techies

Sun Microsystems is to offload 40 UK engineers from its managed services business with an outsourcing contract due to begin on 1 September. The site based engineers - who provide front-line support for Sun servers at BT, Rolls Royce and major banks like Credit Suisse - learned last week that their roles had been put out to …

IT Director 7 Jul 2004, 16:21
'Together we can defeat spam in two years'

International rallying call

Delegates at an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) spam conference this week have called for standardised, stronger worldwide anti-spam legislation. They aim control the 'modern day epidemic' of spam within two years. Regulators from 60 countries along with industry representatives called for standardised legislation …

Spam 7 Jul 2004, 17:13
Analyst warms to Sun's Q4 run

Inching out of the red

Sun Microsystems' arch-nemesis analyst Steven Milunovich issued a surprisingly positive note for the company today, saying fourth quarter revenue appears to be coming in higher than expected. Merrill Lynch's ace analyst consulted his crystal ball and saw Sun pulling in $3.13bn in the quarter, as compared to his previous …

Financial News 7 Jul 2004, 21:21