Backup? What backup!

<font size="3">Backup? What backup!</font>


Thousands of UK small firms are teetering on the brink of disaster because they are ignoring simple backup procedures needed to safeguard their critical business data, a survey released yesterday has claimed.

According to the online poll, which was conducted by Microsoft, over a quarter of small companies cannot be bothered to back up data at all, while 40 per cent admitted that they only get around to doing back ups less than once a month.

The software giant went on to warn that the danger from shoddy backup procedures will be compounded by what it predicts will be sharp increases in the number of laptops being damaged or stolen. The company cited statistics suggesting that 100,000 laptops will be damaged and nearly 67,000 stolen next year, adding that with figures like these, insurers are advising businesses to incorporate the cost of hardware theft into...

VeriSign's redirection will resume

<font size="3">VeriSign's redirection will resume</font>
The domain administrator's controversial Site Finder service will be switched back on, though with one or two months' notice

VeriSign will give between 30 and 60 days' notice before resuming a controversial and temporarily suspended feature that redirected many .com and .net domains, company representatives said on Wednesday.

Speaking before an unusual gathering of technical experts in Washington, D.C., VeriSign said its own re-evaluation of its Site Finder redirection service found "no identified security or stability problems." When it was active, Site Finder added a "wild card" for .com and .net domains that snared queries to nonexistent Internet sites and forwarded them to VeriSign's own servers.

That confused some anti-spam filters and other network utilities, a side effect that VeriSign downplayed on Wednesday by...

Hundreds of exchanges fail BT trigger test

<font size="3">Hundreds of exchanges fail BT trigger test </font>
The telco is breaking the bad news to areas where it says there just aren't enough residents to justify ADSL rollout

BT said this week that it cannot set achievable broadband trigger levels for 332 local telephone exchanges across rural Britain.

After examining these local exchanges and assessing the cost of ADSL-enabling them, the telco has calculated that there aren't enough potential broadband users in each area to justify the expense of an upgrade.

BT insists that it isn't saying that these local exchanges are permanently unviable for broadband, and that it may award trigger levels in the future. It's possible, though, that community activists may step into the breach to help provide broadband in the areas affected.

Trigger levels are a measure of how many people in one area must want to get broadband before BT...

MSN Chat Closes, Subscription Only

<font size="3">MSN Chat Closes, Subscription Only</font>

MSN's Free chatrooms are shutting down today in the UK &amp; Europe and other countries across the world.

Microsoft made it clear in September that these changes would begin on October the 14th. The idea is to protect children from known chat paedophiles. However, MSN kept the whole idea of "Subscription Based" Chat very quiet at the time but now we have reached the deadline (14th October) all users wanting to use MSN Chat will now require a subscription to MSN 8/9 accordingly.

If you don't have an MSN 8/9 subscription then you can buy a subscription to MSN Chat for $19.95 a year which includes Hotmail extra storage. As far as we know MSN 8/9 customers have the Chat bundle in their MSN 8/9 subscription.

View: msn.com

Desktop Tech Cert Sees Light of Day

<font size="3">Desktop Tech Cert Sees Light of Day </font>
Microsoft introduces new certification, MCDST, and two new exams aimed at help desk and desktop support experts.

Microsoft has released a new title, Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician, aimed at desktop support personnel whose main job role is to troubleshoot user desktop machines. The MCDST requires the passage of two new exams:

• 70-271, Supporting Users and Troubleshooting Windows Desktop Operating Systems
• 70-272, Supporting Users and Troubleshooting Applications on a Windows Desktop Operating System Platform

Microsoft has yet to release any details about the exams, but the requirements guide (click here) provides clues to Microsoft Learning courses and self-study training kits that will be available for them. Microsoft was unable to...

Apple powers college supercomputer

<font size="3">Apple powers college supercomputer</font>

Everyone would love a supercomputer but with a price tag of around $100m each they are not easy to come by.

But in the United States staff and students at Virginia Tech have built one of the world's most powerful supercomputers for just $5m by plugging together hundreds of the latest computers from Apple.

The project involved placing 1,100 brand new Apple G5 towers side by side, making it the world's most powerful "homebuilt" system.

It is capable of 17.6 trillion floating point operations per second, with a combined storage capacity of 176 terabytes.

"Each individual G5 is a dual processor, 2GHZ machine with 4GB of memory. So it's extremely fast," said Pat Arvin, Project Coordinator at Virginia Tech.

The network is linked using 2,900 cables and runs at about 100 times faster than an average corporate network.

News source:...

The Netherlands: DSL Heaven or Hell?

<font size="3">The Netherlands: DSL Heaven or Hell?</font>


In a matter of weeks the Netherlands have turned into DSL heaven, with prices dropping as low as &#8364;14.95 a month. DSL users were used to &#8364;40 and &#8364;50 plans just two months ago. Now providers and, more surprising, customers, are complaining.

In August Versatel offshoot Zon introduced its &#8364;14.95 DSL service; Wanadoo, Het Net and Tiscali soon followed with similar offers. (By compairions Tiscali UK cut-price DSL product, announced Thursday, is a meagre 150 Kbps 'broadband' package for £15.99 - &#8364;22 - a month.)

This week Dutch company Speedlinq joined the fray with Europe's first "go as you please service". There is no subscription. Users buy five gigabytes for just &#8364;22.50 and they can use that amount whenever they want.

Although providers are slashing prices, few are happy. Wanadoo Benelux director Jean Jacques...

11,000 IP addresses found on accused hacker's PC

<font size="3">11,000 IP addresses found on accused hacker's PC</font>

Police found a file containing more than 11,000 vulnerable servers on the PC owned by a teenager accused of attacking a US port with a massive DDoS attack, a court heard today

More than 11,000 IP addresses of vulnerable servers were found on the computer of a UK teenager that has been accused of launching a DDoS attack responsible for knocking out IT systems at the Port of Houston in Texas, Southwark Crown Court was told on Wednesday.

Aaron Caffrey, whose father is a software engineer and mother is a lecturer in IT, allegedly used a well-known 'Unicode' exploit to take advantage of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's IIS Web server software. His defence counsel has argued that unpatched security holes in Windows enabled someone to use Caffrey's computer to launch the attack.

Southwark Crown Court heard on Wednesday that on Caffrey's...

UK law: Two years for file swapping?

<font size="3">UK law: Two years for file swapping?
</font>
UK file swappers face up to two years' imprisonment under new copyright regulations under the provisions of a European directive, that are expected to take effect in the UK this month.

The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 was laid before Parliament on Friday after nearly a year's delay. It is expected to be passed in time to come into force by the end of October, according to legal experts.

The Copyright Directorate, a Patent Office department, had a deadline of 22 December last year to implement the European Copyright Directive of 2001 (known as EUCD), but delayed doing so several times under pressure from groups representing copyright holder interests as well as civil liberties and consumer rights organizations.

The EUCD is intended to aid copyright holders in cracking down on counterfeiting and piracy, but organizations such as...

BMG album copy protection is thwarted with the shift key?

<font size="3">BMG album copy protection is thwarted with the shift key? </font>

According to this report from P2P.net , the much ballyhooed copy protected BMG album "Comin' Where I'm From" is a hit on P2P, but not because folks want to listen to the latest from BMG. Supposedly, within hours of its release, tracks were available ad nauseum on file sharing networks because the protected cd was cracked. Especially embarrassing to Sunncomm that conducted an "external testing phase" prior to the release, "with the intention of determining compliance with the official test procedures and guidelines for protected content recently outlined by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPA)," They should have added "it's no fair if you push the shift key when you insert the album".The challenge to say you can't copy this album was more than most...