19th November 2004 Archive

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Microsoft offshores patent war - so goes the WTO?

Firing blanks?

Microsoft's decision to offshore its war against the free software movement to the World Trade Organization may save it some domestic embarrassment, but it may ultimately cause more problems for the WTO than it will for software libre. By adopting the WTO as its intellectual property enforcement proxy, Redmond believes it has a …

Software 19 Nov 2004, 01:33
'Primary vendor' turns screw on Computacenter

Shares down 15 per cent

Computacenter's UK profits are likely to fall by £9m over the next 12 months, following a renegotiation of terms and conditions with its "primary vendor", the reseller warned yesterday. Shares fell 49p, down 15 per cent, to £2.72 on the news yesterday. The supplier is unnamed but is almost certainly HP, which must keep a tight …

Channel Register 19 Nov 2004, 09:50
PlusNet sponsors Sheffield Wednesday

On me 'ead, son

PlusNet is forking out a six-figure sum to sponsor Sheffield Wednesday football club. From next June the PlusNet name will be plastered on the front of players' shirts in a two-year deal between the Sheffield-based ISP and the division League One football club. Financial details were not released but the companies say that the …

Telecoms 19 Nov 2004, 09:53
Apple eyes Bluewater, Kent for third UK retail site

Regent Street store officially launched

Apple has confirmed its third UK retail location: the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, just outside London's M25 orbital freeway. The announcement came from the Mac maker's retail chief, Ron Johnson, in London yesterday to officially launch its Regent Street store, which will open to the public tomorrow. Apple is already …

Mac Channel 19 Nov 2004, 10:17
EMI looks to digital as download sales quadruple

But look to lawsuit stick rather than iTunes carrot for the cause

The world's third largest music label, EMI, saw its revenues from digital music increase by more than 300 per cent in the six months to 30 September, the company said today. Digital's contribution to EMI Music - one half of the group; the other is EMI Music Publishing - was up almost 500 per cent in the first half of the Group' …

Music and Media 19 Nov 2004, 10:51
Stop picking on BT, says rival

Anti-BT lobby fingered

Publicity hungry telcoms companies should stop picking on BT and get on with running their businesses. So says Updata Infrastructure (UK) Ltd, an independently owned company that engages in local loop unbundling for the public sector. Updata - which has installed its kit in 20 exchanges so far and unbundled around 1,000 lines …

Telecoms 19 Nov 2004, 10:53
Intel CEO touts 'much improved' H1 '05 growth

P4 6xx, 'Sonoma' launches to boost sales?

Departing Intel CEO Craig Barrett has said he expects H1 2005 to yield better global sales figures that the first half of this year did, a forecast at odds with some market analysts. Earlier this month, Barrett said he viewed the Semiconductor Industry Association's prediction that 2005 will see negligible growth or a slight …

PCs 19 Nov 2004, 11:11
Complacent UK corporates 'easy meat' for crooks

BCS issues wake-up call

British businesses are too complacent over IT security and risk becoming easy targets for fraudsters and other would-be cyber criminals, the British Computer Society warns. The organisation says uk.plc needs to get its act together on security or risk growing cybercrime losses. The society, which seeks to raise IT standards and …

Enterprise Security 19 Nov 2004, 11:14
Ecommerce getting cheaper and easier

Actinic report shows

UK web designers are increasingly required to include ecommerce functionality in the sites they build for small business clients. According to research, published by software company Actinic, shows that etween 2003 and 2004, the percentage of sites built by web designers that included ecommerce functionality rose from 17 per …

Small Biz 19 Nov 2004, 11:25
Elpida offers 800MHz 1Gb DDR 2 chip

You want it, we can make it

Elpida has created what it claims is the world's first 800MHz DDR 2 SDRAM chip with a 1Gb capacity. The Japanese memory maker - which this month IPO'd on the Tokyo stock exchange - admits that the market is "not ready for such advanced products in applications today", but nonetheless if anyone wants 800MHz DDR 2 parts, it's …

System Builder 19 Nov 2004, 11:27
Intel prepares to kill off last few 130nm P4s

By June 2005, Northwood will be just a fond memory

So farewell, Northwood. Yes, Intel has formally announced its intention to discontinue production of its top-specification 130nm desktop Pentium 4 processors, according to documents seen by The Register. Come 19 March 2005, and OEMS, system builders and end-users will have missed by a single day their chance to order 2.8, 3.0, …

System Builder 19 Nov 2004, 11:50
Callserve WLTM partner with VoIP, GSOH etc.

UK VoIP outfit in acquisitive mood

UK-based internet telephony outfit - Callserve Communications - is on the hunt for other VoIP companies it can snap up in a bid to swell its operation. The company - which has cash of its own and the financial backing of independent investors - says it is keen to snap up other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) businesses that …

Telecoms 19 Nov 2004, 11:56
Greenpeace blockades HP with great wall of PCs

Utrecht protest against toxic material

Greenpeace Netherlands this morning blocked the entrance to the Dutch office of Hewlett Packard in Utrecht with a wall of over a thousand old HP computers. The campaigning organisation says HP still uses flame-retardant TBBA (aka tetrabromobisphenol-A), in printed circuit boards and covers for components. While other …

PCs 19 Nov 2004, 12:23
From Indymedia to the Moon: your musings in full

Letters An eclectic postbag

It is Friday, so we'll kick off with a little more about the Indymedia server seizures, then get gradually dafter as the page progresses. Earlier this week, we ran some correspondence from readers complaining that we were taking the whole thing too seriously, and should have more faith in the judgement of the FBI. Today's …

Letters 19 Nov 2004, 12:40
The Register is band full of s**t

FoTW AV specialist throws wobbler

The question of whether software companies ought to hire known virus writers is a contentious one at best. When they specifically hire them to write anti-virus software, it is at the very least legitimate to question the decision. Or so we thought, anyway. Others clearly disagree, but since the writer seems to think we are a …

Letters 19 Nov 2004, 12:44
Digital music download coin-op to offer 'all formats, all DRMs'

Analysis Inspired thinks big but lacks the content

Inspired Broadcast Networks (IBN) CEO Norman Crowley has pledged to support all DRM-protected music formats, including Apple's FairPlay, when his company rolls out its fleet of pound-a-download digital music vending machines. However, he admitted that it may take some time before the company is able to sell songs to passing …

Music and Media 19 Nov 2004, 12:51
RAF fighters intercept 'silent' Jumbo

Major security alert over Manchester-bound flight

Two RAF fighters last Friday intercepted a Manchester-bound Boeing 747 after it failed to respond to air traffic controllers, the BBC reports. Pakistan Airlines flight PK 709 - carrying 81 passengers plus crew - should have made contact with controllers as it entered UK airspace. Air traffic controllers in Maastricht lost touch …

Science 19 Nov 2004, 13:08
MS predicts stampede for Hotmail.co.uk

Get yer Brit email addys while stocks last

MSN Hotmail today announced the lauch of Hotmail.co.uk, which will for the the first time allow hotmail addresses ending with '.co.uk'. The new email addresses will be compatible with Microsoft's MSN Messenger, and Microsoft expects demand to be huge. Jason Keane of MSN Hotmail enthused: "People have wanted a Hotmail.co.uk …

Telecoms 19 Nov 2004, 13:19
UK looks at 'integrating' ID card with health care

To 'maximise benefits for patients', of course...

The question of whether or not the UK national ID card will be required for access to health care is a fascinating one because, although the answer is almost certainly yes, nobody in government is prepared to say so at this juncture and risk general outcry. Instead we have a drip, drip of hints, suggestions and signals that will …

Music and Media 19 Nov 2004, 13:27
3G battle centres on consumers

End of the phoney war

The phoney war is over and the battle for 3G supremacy in Europe will begin in earnest next year as consumers adopt the technology in wider numbers. Analyst group Gartner predicts that European consumers will be spoilt for choice as operators vie with rivals to build market share. Until now existing third-generation mobile …

Mobile 19 Nov 2004, 14:28
Gov delays new extended warranty rules

One more Xmas of rip-offs

The government's new rules on extended warranties will not become law before Christmas this year. The new rules call for retailers to give consumers better information about the warranty products, but retailers warned the changes had been brought in too fast. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) published plans for the …

Channel Register 19 Nov 2004, 14:34
BT and O2 finalise divorce

Who gets the Phil Collins CD collection?

BT' relationship with its former mobile division - O2 - came to an end today after Vodafone took over the job of supplying mobile services to BT's corporate customers. Three years after BT spun off its mobile division to help raise cash to pay off a chunk of it debt mountain, BT has begun a new relationship with one-time rival …

Mobile 19 Nov 2004, 14:38
Nvidia signs Intel bus licence deal

nForce 4 for Pentium 4 ahoy!

Nvidia has finally won a frontside bus licence from Intel, paving the way at long last for the graphics chip specialist to release versions of its nForce chipset family for Pentium 4 processors. Intel's permission comes on the back of a "broad, multi-year patent cross-license agreement spanning multiple product lines and …

PCs 19 Nov 2004, 14:40
Operators wake up to mobile enterprise needs

Analysis Starmap points the way forward

Cellular operators have been notoriously poor at packaging and marketing their services in an attractive manner for enterprises. This has left them largely outside the inner circle of corporate communications decision making, providing the bit pipe for wireless traffic while integrators and device makers create the systems and …

Mobile 19 Nov 2004, 14:54
Sigourney Weaver books flight with Virgin Galactic

Alien star turns space tourist

Sigourney Weaver has asked Virgin supremo Richard Branson if she can be one of the first passengers aboard his Virgin Galactic space tourism jaunts, UK tabloid the Sun reports. Weaver, 55, told aides to contact the company and book her a £115,000 seat on Virgin's "VSS Enterprise" craft, based on Burt Rutan's X-Prize winning …

Bootnotes 19 Nov 2004, 15:13
Gigabit Wi-Fi looms large

But 'Gi-Fi' pointless without robust security

Among the factors that have held back enterprise uptake of wireless LANs outside greenfield sites have been security fears and lack of performance compared to wireline Ethernet. The past week has brought little reassurance on the first point, but has highlighted developments pointing to the creation of Gigabit Wi-Fi. A few days …

Wireless 19 Nov 2004, 15:54
Voq Pro smart phone

Reg review A great idea - just a year too late?

It's the $64m question for smart-phone designers: where do you put the keyboard? Some, like Nokia, have dispensed with it altogether, falling back on the standard texting-centric numeric pad - or fitted it laterally inside the casing, a la the Communicator. Others have stretched their devices to accommodate a larger QWERTY pad, …

Reviews 19 Nov 2004, 16:16
AMD's Opteron loses ground where it kind of counts

Not in my HPC cluster

The last couple of weeks have been full of AMD buzz. Analysts have upped their price targets for the company's share price. Executives have bragged about better than expected future performance. The rumors about Dell picking up Opteron have kicked into full gear once again. Despite all this glory, AMD recently fell well short …

Servers 19 Nov 2004, 17:21
UK boffins sniff for Higgs boson

Large Hadron Collider hits CERN

Particle physicists in the UK have finished building a key component of ATLAS, one of the four major experiments that will run on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The kit in question is the first barrel of a semi conductor tracker, or SCT, and it is the eyes of the ATLAS experiment. The Large Hadron Collider will …

Science 19 Nov 2004, 18:01
Sober worm speaks with forked tongue

Bilingual Windows virus attack

A new variant of the Sober email worm is spreading rapidly across the internet today. Sober-I (AKA Sober-J) worm is mass mailing worm which sends itself to email addresses harvested from an infected computer. It uses variety of subject lines, message bodies and file attachment names, both in English and in German. There are 150 …

Anti-Virus 19 Nov 2004, 18:06
Linux set for ERP ascendency

Windows and Unix on the back foot

Linux will continue to increase its share of the valuable Enterprise Resource Planning market at the expense of both Microsoft and other Unix vendors, according to a Peerstone Research study. Peerstone's probe, promoted by IBM, estimates the global installed base for the big three vendors - SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle - is …

Applications 19 Nov 2004, 18:26
Oracle moves to quarterly patch cycle

Extended delivery

Oracle yesterday announced plans to adopt a quarterly security patch cycle. The enterprise software giant says that adopting a fixed delivery schedule will make it easier for customers to plan updates and thereby help them reduce costs. The updates are scheduled to be issued to customers simultaneously via Oracle's support Web …

Enterprise Security 19 Nov 2004, 18:30
Introducing the big, bad BOFH polo shirt

Cash'n'Carrion Essential kit for the marauding sysdamin

Those BOFH fans who have long admired our BOFH logo t-shirt - but rather wished that there was a piece of apparel with a slightly more discreet logo - can now avail themselves of the latest apparel for the marauding sysadmins: the all-new BOFH logo polo shirt. As you'd expect, this is a top-quality, 100 per cent cotton shirt …

Site News 19 Nov 2004, 18:37
Business leaders respect Gates (true)

More than Jesus

Microsoft again came second only to General Electric as the world's most respected company among chief executives. Bill Gates is considered the world's most respected business leader, for the third year, among business leaders surveyed in the latest edition of the Financial Times/PricewaterhouseCoopers World's Most Respected …

IT Director 19 Nov 2004, 20:14
Intel is killing Itanium one comment at a time

It's for mainframes only now

Intel's erstwhile high-volume enterprise chip - Itanium - is now being positioned for the lowest-volume market of them all - the mainframe. In one of his first public interviews since being tapped as Intel's next CEO, Paul Otellini shafted the multi-billion dollar baby by declaring that Itanic's future lies with the dinosaurs. …

Servers 19 Nov 2004, 21:08