Nokia rolls out faster broadband

Mobile telecoms manufacturer Nokia has introduced its D500 IP DSLAM designed to work with the emerging ADSL 2+ standard. The company says that the adoption of ADSL 2+ by ISPs can raise the bandwidth to broadband enabled homes to 20Mbit/sec and beyond. A DSLAM or Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer, is a device which takes a number of ADSL subscriber lines and concentrates these to a single ATM line. ...more

New Orleans home brew WiFi network under threat

New Orleans, still struggling to recover from the effects of Hurricane Katrina that struck last year, has come up with a way to restore Internet communications to the City. As the landline infrastructure is still devastated in parts of the city, the authorities have lashed together a 'mesh' WiFi network that is providing free 512K bandwidth to the residents. Based on a million dollars worth of donated equipment, the network uses hardware mounted on street lights. ...more

Yahoo! launches fresh Messenger beta

Yahoo! has released a new beta of its Messenger communications suite. As well as support for plug-ins - to better customise the application - Yahoo! has opened up the program interfaces (APIs) to encourage third-parties to pick up the Messenger ball and run with it. Those leading the way include Amazon and eBay. ...more

Virus writer gaoled for two years

Simon Vallor, a twenty-two year old web designer, has been sentenced to two years in gaol at Southwark Crown Court, London. His viruses - Gokar, Redesi and Admirer - had infected 27,000 PCs in 42 countries. The Redesi worm - which purported to from Microsoft warning of cyber-terrorists deleted data from infected users' hard drives while the Gokar worm attempted to overwrite the main page on the Web sites of infected companies. ...more

SCO pulls IBM's Unix licence

SCO has filed an injunction against IBM, revoking its right to use or sell its AIX Unix-based operating system. The injunction also contains an amendment that seeks damages with regard to revenues IBM earned from sales of AIX post the 100-day deadline that expired last Friday. 'IBM has chosen to continue the actions that violate our source code and distribution agreements,' said Darl McBride, President and CEO of The SCO Group. ...more