NTL customers told to 'f**k off'

NTL has launched an urgent investigation into why one of the company's recorded messages told punters to "f**k off".

Customers in the North East of England were shocked by the verbal assault when they reported faults yesterday .

The Sun managed to get a transcript of the message before it was pulled. The message said: "Hello. You are through to NTL customer services. We don't give a f**k about you. We are never here. We just will f**k you about, basically, and we are not going to handle any of your complaints. Just f**k off and leave us alone. Get a life."

At this stage it's not known if security on NTL's network was breached, or whether it was an inside job. A spokeswoman for the cableco said it was "too early to say".

"The priority yesterday was to remove the offending message," she told us.

"This is a serious matter. The message was highly offensive and we would like to apologise to our customers," she said.

Source: The Register

Game Puts Players in Kerry's Swift Boat

An upcoming video game lets players re-enact the Swift boat mission in Vietnam that won Sen. John Kerry a Silver Star award for battlefield heroism.
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The first-person shooter "Kuma War" uses a ripped-from-the-headlines approach where gamers can download and then relive actual battles, mainly from the current war in Iraq.

Beginning Sept. 30, the "John Kerry" mission will be available for download as an add-on pack for the game, made by New York-based Kuma Reality Games.

The Kerry mission is based on the Navy's records of the encounter on Feb. 28, 1969.
Playing as Lt. John Kerry, you lead three Swift boats into enemy fire on the banks of the Mekong Delta. Don't try to turn around and flee — the game is scripted, so you have no choice but to attack the enemy before they kill you.

Kerry is unaware of the game and had no comment, spokeswoman Allison Dobson told The Associated Press. She said Kerry doesn't play video games.

Source: Yahoo!

Conservative group savages anti-P2P bill

The American Conservative Union (ACU), which holds influential Republican activists and former senators on its board of directors, is running newspaper and magazine advertisements that take a humorous jab at the so-called Induce Act--and slams some conservative politicians for supporting it.

"This is the Hollywood liberals trying to crush innovation," said ACU deputy director Stacie Rumenap. "What's sad is that they've got Republicans on their side." A Senate committee vote on the bill is scheduled for Thursday.

The original version of the Induce Act said that anyone who induces any violation of copyright law could be legally responsible, a phrase that has alarmed Silicon Valley manufacturers and led Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to say he would consider less sweeping alternatives. A version that Hatch's office privately circulated on Friday afternoon, seen by CNET News.com, clarifies that a company must engage in "conscious and deliberate affirmative acts" of inducement to be found liable.

But technology companies were skeptical that it would eliminate their concerns. "The problem is that it doesn't look like they're willing to preserve the Sony Betamax standard for the cause of action of inducement," said Markham Erickson, associate general counsel for NetCoalition, which represents companies including Google, Yahoo, and CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.

Source: ZDnet

Net tool offers security alerts

Besides blocking pop-up ads and offering alerts to new e-mail, a growing number of toolbar features can enhance security, expanding on the capabilities of the ubiquitous locked-or-unlocked padlock icon that signals whether information supplied to a merchant is secure.

GeoTrust Inc. hopes the green, yellow and red indicators on its new TrustWatch tool will become just as recognizable.

Beginning today, Web surfers can download a beta test version of the tool for free at trustwatch.com - Windows and Internet Explorer users only, for now - that GeoTrust says will let users verify the authenticity of Web sites and their compliance with security standards.

The tool features green, yellow and red light icons that continuously advise about the potential for fraud. The display is updated with each move to a Web site.

The advertisement-free TrustWatch site also enables users to enter a Web address or domain name into a search box and get back a rating measuring the site's security certification and the quality of encryption it uses to safeguard communications.

"We think the industry has kind of reached a crisis point, where if consumers are going to continue buying online, they're going to demand trust," said Neal Creighton, president and chief executive of GeoTech, which says it secures about one-quarter of all Internet transactions.

Creighton said the TrustWatch toolbar device does not track users' activities.

Source: Boston Herald

Kazaa colleague sues RIAA

P2P company Altnet has instigated legal action against the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA), claiming the music trade body and other anti-piracy operatives have infringed its intellectual property.

Altnet is a joint venture of Brilliant Digital Entertainment and Joltid, the P2P software company founded by Kazaa's creators after they sold their original P2P offering to Sharman Networks. Sharman is currently being sued by the Australian equivalent of the RIAA.

In a suit filed with the Los Angeles District Court, Altnet maintains that the RIAA, Loudeye subsidiary Overpeer and a fellow anti-piracy operation, MediaDefender, have all violated a patent it holds covering the identification of files on a P2P network using digital fingerprint technology.

Altnet says it acquired the patent in 2003, and began approaching the named companies in order to seek licensing agreements. All three have used code that attempts to identify songs traded on P2P networks in order to monitor levels of piracy on such systems and to act against music sharers, the company alleges. In each case, it argues, they have used software that uses - or at least contains - technology it owns and have done so without its permission.

Source: The Register

Intel looks to fend off AMD with new 2006 chipset

"You'll see some different platforms architectures around Blackford," said Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's enterprise platforms group, in an interview. "It's our chipset for the dual-processor server market due out in 2006."

Dracott would not budge on further details, but our sources have revealed Blackford will ship with a 1066MHz front side bus.

The high-speed FSB will be just one of several adjustments Intel plans to make with its 2006ish Xeon products. The company is trying to adjust to a new threat from AMD's Opteron processor, which many analysts and customers believe has a superior with regard to memory performance and multiprocessor server designs.

Intel is currently somewhat gated by its FSB and north bridge and can only keep its processors fed with a limited amount of memory. The company, however, is now saying that it may well move to a new design to make up for these deficiencies.

"Just because we are going one route doesn't mean that we are married to that route," said Nimish Modi, VP in Intel's enterprise group. "We may come up with a different solution."
One addition Intel will make is via the use of fully buffered DIMM technology (FDB), which should improve memory performance. Intel also says that it's ahead of AMD with support for DDR2 memory because of its chipset designs.

One analyst, however, doubts that Intel will be able to make any major chipset shift until 2007, when Intel releases a common chipset for its Xeon and Itanium processors.

Source: The Register

Intel talks dual Pentium Ms

Intel fleshed out its Centrino mobile CPU roadmap today, with details of the Sonoma platform, and a promised delivery date of Q105. The company also announced its next-generation mobile platform, codenamed Napa.

In his keynote, Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel’s Mobile Platforms Group, said that Sonoma is designed to provide the basis for mobile entertainment system. He ran a demo on the platform, which he touts as the ideal technology for college students - it could also include a TV tuner, and would work with a remote control.

As well as incorporating the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG network connection Sonoma includes a new Intel Pentium M processor sporting a 533MHz front-side bus and a chipset code-named Alviso.
After Sonoma comes Napa. Napa will include a dual core processor dubbed "Yonah". This is the first mobile-optimised dual core CPU, based on Intel's new 65nm process. Napa will include the Calistoga graphics chipset, and gets its connectivity from Golan, Intel's provocatively-dubbed next-gen wireless technology. Napa is "totally optimised for mobility from the ground up, and will provide performance on-demand," Chandrasekher said.

Source: The Register