Vendor warns over Skype eavesdropping

Skype seems to have loads on its plate right now - so here's another kick in the teeth.

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Microsoft Office Open XML standard faces ratification set back

The US organisation that is a delegate to the ISO international standards body likely will vote against approving Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard next month, after the proposal failed to get enough support from members of the group's board.

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Windows update killed Skype's VoIP service

The widespread failure of Skype's Internet telephony service last week happened when millions of Windows users tried to log in to the system at the same time, after downloading a software update from Microsoft and rebooting their machines, Skype said Monday.

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Microsoft Office Open XML standard faces ratification set back

The US organisation that is a delegate to the ISO international standards body likely will vote against approving Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard next month, after the proposal failed to get enough support from members of the group's board.

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Citrix-XenSource deal could upset open-source developers

Citrix Systems' £250m acquisition of XenSource, last week along with VMware's massively successful IPO earlier this week, has further legitimatised the hot virtualisation space, but it may also be causing some disillusionment among the open-source community.

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Infected job search sites deliver 46,000 IDs to hackers

Notorious Prg Trojan strikes again...

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Police radio system coverage "can be enhanced", say authorities

Police forces can buy “special coverage enhancements” to make up for the fact that the national contract for the Airwave digital radio system does not include coverage inside buildings....

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Windows administrators find internal politics top concern

Administrators opt for more automation over pay rise.Internal politics is the topmost frustration for Windows administrators, according to an opinion poll taken during NetPro’s annual user conference.

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TK Maxx hacking attack cost £59m

Data breach clean-up costs keep on growing.TJX Companies, owner of the TJ Maxx and TK Maxx retail chains, now estimates a data theft earlier this year has cost it £59m.

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TK Maxx hacking attack cost £59m

Data breach clean-up costs keep on growing.TJX Companies, owner of the TJ Maxx and TK Maxx retail chains, now estimates a data theft earlier this year has cost it £59m.

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Bombings inquiry slams police Airwave radio contracts

A committee set up to review the response to the July 2005 London bombings has slammed the contracts for the Airwave digital radio system being rolled out by the emergency services because they did not include coverage inside buildings or underground.

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Dell customer satisfaction levels slip again

More bad news for PC maker.The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, published by the University of Michigan’s National Quality Research Centre, surveys satisfaction levels among 70,000 consumers in different industries, including the US personal computer market.

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TK Maxx hacking attack cost £59m

Data breach clean-up costs keep on growing.TJX Companies, owner of the TJ Maxx and TK Maxx retail chains, now estimates a data theft earlier this year has cost it £59m.

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Citrix buys XenSource to shake up virtualisation landscape

Deal moves it into server and desktop virtualisation markets

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Novell: 'We're not SCO and we won't sue'

Novell has promised not to sue anybody over the Unix copyrights that a US court last week ruled it owned. It had been contesting ownership with SCO which launched a series of claims against Linux users and suppliers

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Scotland wants to be home of Indian outsourcers

Indian outsourcers offered Scottish language skills....honest....

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Goldman in £1.5bn bail-out after computer models fail

A hi-tech hedge fund belonging to Goldman Sachs was so badly hit by last week’s stockmarket turbulence that it lost over $1.5bn (£750m) of its value after the computer algorithms it was using failed to deal with the unpredictable markets.

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Goldman in £1.5bn bail-out after computer models fail

A hi-tech hedge fund belonging to Goldman Sachs was so badly hit by last week’s stockmarket turbulence that it lost over $1.5bn (£750m) of its value after the computer algorithms it was using failed to deal with the unpredictable markets.

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Goldman in £1.5bn bail-out after computer models fail

A hi-tech hedge fund belonging to Goldman Sachs was so badly hit by last week’s stockmarket turbulence that it lost over $1.5bn (£750m) of its value after the computer algorithms it was using failed to deal with the unpredictable markets.

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Goldman in £1.5bn bail-out after computer models fail

A hi-tech hedge fund belonging to Goldman Sachs was so badly hit by last week’s stockmarket turbulence that it lost over $1.5bn (£750m) of its value after the computer algorithms it was using failed to deal with the unpredictable markets.

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Network Rail signs major IT services deal with CSC

Network Rail has signed a five-year IT services contract with CSC to provide "midrange" services and Oracle ERP support.

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Taunting the CIO

The Wall Street Journal has run a special section with the headline "Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You" and then with the clear message: IT can't help you. It then goes on to say how to get round the efforts of the IT department to keep control of corporate IT. Not really very helpful or responsible....

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Internet Explorer 6 users open to attack

Internet Explorer users are at risk from the DirectX software development kit Microsoft issued in 2002, according to a Polish researcher who claims the software contains a critical vulnerability.

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Dell users face heavy premium for Vista

Research based on last week’s LinuxWorld event shows how much more expensive Vista-based machines are compared to those using an open source OS

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BBC fights back over ISPs' iPlayer objections

The BBC is seeking to diffuse the growing controversy over the BBC iPlayer’s heavy demands on the web infrastructure in the UK, claiming it’s in regular discussions with ISPs regarding the costs of downloading video.

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Police data stolen in server heist

A database containing mobile phone numbers and information about their use has been stolen from a company carrying out forensic investigations for police forces across the UK.

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Hackers deface UN website

"Hackers" defaced the United Nations website early Sunday with messages accusing the US and Israel of killing children.

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Linus Torvalds in depth: Microsoft, GPLv3 and much more

Sixteen years after the release of Linux to the public it has grown beyond the wildest imagination of Linus. This interview spells out what's gone right and what he is concerned about.

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LinuxWorld: Virtualisation is threat to Windows

Mendel Rosenblum told an audience at LinuxWorld in San Francisco yesterday that a virtual appliance, which bundles applications with only the OS code needed to make it run, can then be deployed on a virtualised server regardless of the host OS.

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MySQL accused of backtracking on open source commitment

MySQL has made it harder for developers to use the enterprise edition of its database software for free.

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LinuxWorld: Virtualisation is threat to Windows

Mendel Rosenblum told an audience at LinuxWorld in San Francisco yesterday that a virtual appliance, which bundles applications with only the OS code needed to make it run, can then be deployed on a virtualised server regardless of the host OS.

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Dell to pay £24m to ousted CEO

Smiling all the way to his next job...

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Linuxworld: 'We need more apps!'

Linux needs to develop a broader base of applications, avoid fragmentation, address data-centre needs and expand its market, according to Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian.

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Dell looks to Linux desktop virtualisation

Dell is looking to push Linux into the corporate desktop environment using virtualisation to allow alternative Linux operating systems to run more easily alongside Windows.

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Lloyds TSB axes 210 UK IT staff

Lloyds TSB, the UK’s fifth largest bank which last week reported half year profits up 15% at £2bn, is offshoring 210 UK IT jobs to India.

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Olympics organisers reject Windows Vista

Microsoft XP-based PCs prefered by organisers

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UKVisas slammed over security hole in outsourced web site

An investigation into a security bug on a website used to apply for UK visas has painted a damning picture of “organisational failures” by a government agency and its contractor.

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Microsoft may catch Apache in web server market

IIS is running 36% of all active web sites, Apache 48%

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LinuxWorld: SaaS rival to Microsoft Project goes open source

A young maker of web-based project management software is jumping headfirst into the open-source world as a way to woo users from the dominant, but possibly vulnerable, Microsoft Project.

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Unilever IT programme drives £1bn-a-year savings

Unilever is putting standardised regional business processes and streamlined IT systems at the heart of its ‘One Unilever’ programme to rationalise its operations and generate big cost savings, it has revealed.

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Are CIOs Irrelevant to Enterprise 2.0?

For the past two years, innovation has remained the #2 CEO priority (right behind the perennial #1, customer care). And over the past several years, an important new avenue for rapid innovation and value-building has been emerging: community-based collaboration.

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Half of UK financial firms not ready for compliance

More than half of all UK firms have not implemented the security processes to comply with legislative directives such as PCI and MiFID, says a report.

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Turquoise delays launch, denies rift in bank consortium

The launch of pan-European equity trading platform Turquoise, originally planned for November, has been delayed until early 2008 due to complex contract negotiations over the technology platform used to power the venture, according to a spokesperson.

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Eric Schmidt Defines Web 3.0

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was recently at the Seoul Digital Forum and he was asked to define Web 3.0 by an audience member. The answer makes interesting reading.

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LinuxWorld : Google boosts Linux support with OIN license

Google has increased its support for the open-source Linux operating system by becoming Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. Set up in 2005, OIN is an intellectual property company focused on acquiring and pooling patents to protect Linux against patent infringement attacks.

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NHS prepared to take over NHS supplier iSoft

An NHS team was put on standby to take charge of crisis-ridden software supplier iSoft and ensure delivery of a critical part of the health service’s new computer system, the government has confirmed.

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Study: Users want 50-year storage

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Data Management Forum has just reported the results of a landmark study that looked at the current state of long-term storage - that is, data stored for more than 10 years. Some disturbing results jump out of this study. They suggest that we live in a digital version of the Dark Ages.

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A question of identity

A great blog entry from the CIO in the borough hosting London's 2012 Olympics - talks about problems of identity management, why some benchmarking used in the public sector is a waste of space and why e-auctions are a dubious way of saving money.....

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Lenovo to sell £100 PC in China

Move coincides with Microsoft's cut price Vista offer

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Study: Users want 50-year storage

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Data Management Forum has just reported the results of a landmark study that looked at the current state of long-term storage - that is, data stored for more than 10 years. Some disturbing results jump out of this study. They suggest that we live in a digital version of the Dark Ages.

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Wi-Fi network and GIS prove critical in coping with Minneapolis bridge disa

A partially completed, two-month old Wi-Fi network in Minneapolis has proved vital in the city’s response to this week's collapse of its most important bridge.

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Wanted: caring and responsible employer, wages negotiable

More than a third of respondents to a survey conducted by communications group BT rated working for a caring and responsible employer as more important than the size of their salary....

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Linuxworld: Open source going mainstream

Up front cost, TCO, reliability and features drive open source as well as propriatory software adoption choices and Linux is on the way....

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RBS hails IT as profits climb

Productivity improvements on steady overheads

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Getting it right

Interesting blog from the CIO of Newham council , the London borough which will host the 2012 Olympics. The nitty gritty day to day activity of an IT leader trying to use technology to transform his community...

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Microsoft spells out open-source certification plans

Microsoft has clarified its plans to seek open-source certification for its shared-source licenses, saying it will submit for approval only the two licenses that allow source code to be used on any platform.

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Winners of open source Oscars

SourceForge.net community recognises top achievers of open-source projects

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Anti-virus 'failure' leaves 500,000 MPack crimeware victims

Poor detection of the MPack data-theft toolkit by anti-virus software has allowed it to run riot on the Internet, a new analysis from Finjan has claimed.

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Torvalds rebukes desktop critics

"Linus Torvalds, creator and maintainer of the Linux operating system kernel, has reacted angrily to suggestions that the kernel's development process is skewed in a way that prevents improvements on the desktop."

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Energy efficiency drives IBM to switch data centres to mainframes

IBM is replacing 3,900 servers in its own data centres with 30 mainframe computers to save energy and to show that the mainframe is still very much alive.

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'Nasa hacker' McKinnon wins right to Lords hearing

One last chance to appeal US extradition for the man who broke into Pentagon and Nasa systems from his home in North London...

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HSBC sees big savings from global IT as profits climb

HSBC has said that its use use of standardised IT globally is continuing to contribute strongly to group profits, with its Whirl global credit card platform in particular enabling it to cut IT costs.

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Researchers expose Microsoft Vista's kernel security

A security feature in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista can be easily circumvented with a free utility that loads unsigned drivers into the kernel, according to researchers at Symantec.

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Government wastes money by holding onto IT assets too long

At least 60% of UK government bodies are paying specialist companies to dispose of their unwanted information and communication technology (ICT) equipment, rather than taking steps to sell their ICT assets while they are still worth something, the National Audit Office has warned.

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Security not a benefit of virtualisation, study finds

Security has been touted as one of the benign by-products of virtualisation – but according to a recent study that’s no longer the case.

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Ofcom spectrum auction to spark UK mobile WiMax scramble

It's expected that BT Group and Vodafone Group, as well as wireless Internet service providers, will be among those interested in buying licenses for part of the spectrum

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Failed electronic application system cost Identity and Passport Service £5m

The Identity and Passport Service has been forced to write off £5.5m of software development costs after the failed launch of its EPA2 electronic passport application system last year.

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Blackhat conference: US immigration refuses entry to presenter

A German security expert has been turned away at the US border by immigration officials while on his way to present at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

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Newcastle council did not disclose data breach for a week

Newcastle city council says it waited a week before advising the public that personal data and payment card details of thousands of local residents had been stolen because it did not want to hamper investigation of the incident.

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NHS Choose and Book system fails to meet half target uptake

Flagship IT project for Britain's National Health Service is still in trouble

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First iPhone compatible enterprise apps announced

CRM and ERP vendors Netsuite and Etelos have begun porting their applications to the iPhone, despite warnings from analysts that the Apple product is not enterprise-ready.

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Spying scandal uncovers first phone switch rootkit

A highly sophisticated spying operation that tapped into the mobile phones of Greece's prime minister and other top government officials has highlighted weaknesses in telecommunications systems that still use decades-old computer code.

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Creaking systems means 5m 'may be paying wrong tax'

Up to five million people in the UK may be paying the wrong income tax because HM Revenue and Customs’ computer systems are “no longer well suited” to handling the tax, the National Audit Office has warned.

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Huge PDF spam spike reported

Spammers dump images, pump stocks with Adobe documents

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Microsoft Open Office XML spec 'dangerously flawed'

Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format specification is flawed with many functions associated with spreadsheets riddled with careless errors, according to a critic.

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IT problems cost UK businesses billions

Mid-sized and large businesses lose an average of £500,000 a year due to application performance problems, a survey has found. One in 10 such businesses loses around £2m a year.

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Sacked chief executive explains IT fiasco over farm payments

Rural Agency former chief executive says it was always a ‘high risk affair’

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Sun patch strategy 'leaves Java users vulnerable'

Sun Microsystems is putting millions of Java users at risk of attack by staggering the release of security patches, according to security researchers at eEye.

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Samba developers switch to GPLv3

Samba developers have definitively switched future versions of the software to the GPL v3 licence, which could have a serious impact on companies maintaining software patent covenants.

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FIX Protocol riddled with security holes, say security firm

Financial firms well used protocol is riddled with vulnerabilities, which could leave apps open to denial of service attacks.

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Firefox 3.0 Beta delayed in sudden backtrack

Last week we were told it was on time, now it is slipping. Should we be worried?

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Government left IT costs out of London Olympic bid

The government failed to include IT systems for its Olympic Delivery Authority in its costing for the 2012 Olympics – and did not budget for them until 16 months after the games were awarded to London.

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Novell promises protection to Linux users worried by Microsoft’s GPLv3 stan

Novell will continue to ship the complete version of its Linux enterprise server even though Microsoft is attempting to distance itself legally from the new General Public License (GPL) v3 open source license.

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Dell will sell Linux on PCs outside the US

More details will be revealed shortly, according toLionel Menchaca, digital media manager for Dell on a company blog

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Richard Granger: National Audit Office ‘singled me out for special treatment

NHS IT chief Richard Granger has claimed the costs of his National Programme for IT (NPfIT) have been inflated and the £12.4bn price tag now attached to the scheme is a figure he agreed to under “significant pressure” from the National Audit Office.

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Linux official lines up with Microsoft against GPLv3

The new GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 is not a fit for Linux because switching would require permission from the kernel's thousands of de-facto owners, a leading developer said, while at the same time Microsoft said it had no responsibilities under GPLv3, despite its tie-up with Novell

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Tax error hits one million people

Believe it or not, IT systems are making things better according to government auditor

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Security firm launches online auction site for hackers

Free market in software vulnerabilites could prove dangerous ....

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Child Support Agency IT will cost £320m to fix say MPs

A scathing report on the failed agency by the powerful Commons public accounts committee says reforms to the child support system have already cost more than £539m since 2000, but the IT system introduced to implement them has “never fully supported” the objective of processing maintenance applications accurately and quickly.

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Linux guru calls for coordinated drive on open source desktop

Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth is urging the three large desktop projects of KDE, GNOME, and OpenOffice.org to agree on a common and regular release cycle.

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Pensions chief to oversee government IT

Alexis Cleveland, chief executive of the Pension Service, is expected to be appointed to a top delivery role at the Cabinet Office that will include overseeing the government’s IT efforts. It is understood that government chief information officer John Suffolk is likely to report to Cleveland in her new role.

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Developer angers open source community over code release

Open-source developer Parallels finally released the source code for the Wine software used by Parallels Desktop 3.0 - but only after weeks of prodding by Wine developers and negative publicity on the IT forum Slashdot.

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Windows loses ground to Linux on desktop

Skill sets of developers changing, as Linux and open source grows in popularity

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Apple making 100% mark-up on iPhone manufacturing costs

Hackers are not the only people to take apart Apple's new phone. iSuppli analysts have disassembled the 8GB iPhone since its Friday debut in the US The analysts dissected the components used to create the device and furnished estimates of the likely cost of the parts used.

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IT systems slammed in FSA insider trading report

City watchdog highlights best and worst IT practice

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SAP admits to 'some inappropriate downloads' in Oracle case

Not quite 'corporate theft on a grand scale' that Oracle claims, says SAP CEO

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Are top Linux developers losing the will to code?

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

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Hackers target executives and their families

Hackers appear to have stepped up their efforts to trick corporate executives into downloading malicious software programs that can steal company data over the past year, according to new data released today.

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Rising wages drive search firm out of India

Image search firm Riya is to pull its research and engineering operations out of India to consolidate in the US due to rising wages in Bangalore.

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Hackers 'don't time exploits for maximum impact'

The belief that cybercriminals stockpile exploits, then time their release to do the most damage gives them too much credit, according ro security researchers.

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Microsoft UK site hacked

Microsoft UK site has been hit by SQL injection attack, defaced with image of child waving Saudi flag

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Red Hat admits to secret patent talks with Microsoft

Red Hat's chief executive has revealed that the company held talks with Microsoft last year over a possible patent agreement like the software giant's controversial deal with Novell.

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BMA doctors demand public inquiry into NHS computer project

Medics stop short of total boycott, but will refuse to cooperate on patient record database

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BMA doctors debate withdrawal of co-operation from NHS computer project

Britain’s doctors will today hear calls to withdraw all co-operation from the £12.4bn NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

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Prince Charles' personal data and the missing laptop

"...a frisson of excitement ran through the office at the news that the bank details of Prince Charles were on a stolen laptop..."

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Cadbury admits IT problems taking chunk out of performance

Cadbury Schweppes has admitted that its performance is still being hit by problems with a huge IT implementation in 2005.



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Questions raised over ID cards as Gordon Brown moves in

The government has delayed procurement for its controversial £5.3bn ID card scheme as Gordon Brown prepares to take over as prime minister.



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Pentagon shuts down systems after cyber attack

The US Department of Defence took an estimated 1,500 computers offline on Wednesday after a security breach within the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD). US defence secretary Robert Gates said he was not sure why the 1,500 users were removed temporarily from the system.



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Torex Retail sold to amidst 'breathtaking corporate governance issues'

Private equity firm rescues supplier to top UK retailers brought down by what chief exec calls "breathtaking corporate governance and finance issues"...



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Microsoft's Linux patent threats dismissed as baseless

The Linux faithful might appear to be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts but at the Linux Foundation Summit earlier this month there was little fear expressed.



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Microsoft forced to make 'significant changes' to Windows Vista

Microsoft has agreed to make "significant changes" in its new Vista operating system to stay in compliance with a US court agreement in Microsoft's antitrust case, according to California Attorney General Jerry Brown.



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