Openreach hits the road

Today, BT is officially spinning off its local engineering business as a separate entity. The new company Openreach, will employ the company's 25,000 field engineers. BT says that the new company's 22,000 resprayed vans will become a familiar sight on Britain's roads. ...more

Adobe unwraps Creative Suite 3

Adobe has upgraded its flagship design software suite, which includes Photoshop and also accounts for more than half of the company's revenue. It is two years since the release of Creative Suite 2. The 13 stand-alone products and six suites in Creative Suite 3, as the upgraded software package is known, represent the fullest use of Flash technology to date. ...more

Spoofed spam sibling sent to slammer

Following the first trial of its kind in the US, a brother and sister have been convicted of sending hundreds of thousands of spam emails. A third defendant Richard Rutkowski was cleared of charges. Finding the two defendants guilty of three charges each of sending emails with spoofed addresses, the jury recommended that Jeremy Jaynes be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined Jessica DeGroot $7,500. ...more

Microsoft faces challenge over Linux licensing

Linux community activists are preparing to counter the recent deal between Microsoft and Novell. Microsoft signed a deal with Novell, one of the providers of Linux, in which Novell paid it a lump sum in return for a guarantee that Microsoft would not sue Novell's clients for what it calls a violation of its own patents in the Linux program. The prospect of a drawn-out legal battle with Microsoft, an experienced litigator, could push users of Linux into the hands of Novell and away from dominant Linux provider, Red Hat, which does not have such a deal with Microsoft. ...more

CompactFlash reaches 4GB

The first CompactFlash cards capable of storing up to 4GB are launched at CeBIT in Hanover this week. Commonly used in devices such as digital cameras, the cards can hold more than 4,000 high-resolution images. Alternatively more than 1,000 songs or even a full length DVD movie can be stored. ...more