Virus Bulletin Conference: Industry unveils unified naming for virus threats

A new initiative set up to dispel confusion over virus-naming, the Common Malware Enumeration (CME), was launched on Wednesday. The industry group, backed by a string of global security companies, aims to provide a common name for high profile threats in the hope that customers will be able to protect their computers from malware attacks more effectively. The need for a more uniform approach to virus-naming has been a long-standing issue for users. ...more

BT caught out by festive phone frenzy

BT Cellnet was caught out by the huge numbers of people who received mobile phones over Christmas, the company has revealed. BT's mobile division admitted it hadn't bargained for the number of people who would be trying to activate their pay-as-you-go phones and the computer systems couldn't cope. This is despite the fact that according to BT, staffing levels were doubled over the Christmas period. ...more

Palm settles Graffiti dispute with Xerox

The long-running legal battle between Palm and Xerox has been settled, with the two companies agreeing to end the patent dispute. Dating back to 1997, it involved the use of Graffiti handwriting recognition software, which translates particular strokes into alphabetic characters. Xerox alleged that the system infringed patents for its own Unistrokes handwriting software. ...more

HP claims PC top spot

Last year's HP-Compaq merger took the new company to the top of the PC sales league for 2002, according to Gartner Dataquest. Despite selling 9.3 per cent fewer computers than the two separate companies managed in 2001, HP claimed 16. ...more

Nildram offers free ISP switching and broadband upgrades

Nildram is waiving the charge for customers of any other ISP who wish to switch to Nildram, though this only applies on a like-to-like basis. If you wish to convert from an engineer-installed to a self-installed service or change the connection speed, you have to migrate your existing service to Nildram first, before applying to re-grade their connection speed. However, the ISP is also offering its existing customers free upgrades to a faster ADSL connection, though 'free' of course does not inlcude the higher monthly rental for the faster services. ...more