Laptop theft hits Met police staff

Thieves stole three laptops containing details of the Metropolitan Police payroll, Scotland Yard confirmed. The laptops were stolen last Thursday from the offices of LogicaCMG, the company responsible the Met's pay and pension services. The computers contained the pay details of half the Met's staff. ...more

Doubts cast over Apple G5 speed claims

Apple CEO Jobs launched the new Power Mac G5 this week hailing it as 'the world's fastest personal computer', a claim that is being challenged by one Mac user. The company's website similarly claims that, 'The new Power Mac G5 throttles past both the fastest Pentium 4 and a dual-processor Xeon workstation when tested using industry standard SPEC CPU 2000 benchmarks.' However doubts have been cast about Apple's figures by a Mac user on his SPL's soapbox site. ...more

Intel unwraps Core 2 Duo

Intel has officially taken the wraps off its Core 2 Duo processor, the dual-core version of its Core microarchitecture-based chip. Pricing ranges from $183 for the Core 2 Duo E6300 (a bottom-end part with only 2MB Level 2 cache, 1066MHz FSB and a 1.86GHz clock speed) and rises up to $999 for the Extreme Edition X6800 (which boasts a 2. ...more

Lynchpin of Internet traffic files for bankruptcy

KPNQwest - the pan-European data communications company and the largest carrier of IP traffic in Europe - has filed for bankruptcy. The company, which was already under administration, has issued a formal statement: 'The efforts to try and sell certain non-critical assets in order to secure sufficient cash proceeds to meet the ongoing obligations of the company have not been successful. This situation is not expected to change over the next 24 hours. ...more

IEEE sets standard for USB drive authentication

The IEEE has approved a new standard for the authentication of USB flash drives and other personal storage devices. The standard, IEEE 1667 'Standard Protocol for Authentication in Host Attachments of Transient Storage Devices', was developed to address information security concerns. Specifically, defining uniform authentication methods to validate devices when they are connected to a computer. ...more