Kingfisher free to buy Dixons

The DTI has announced that it is lifting the restrictions placed on Kingfisher plc that had prevented it from taking control of Dixons plc. Following a Monopolies and Mergers Commission report in 1990 the company gave undertakings were given by Kingfisher that it would not make a bid for Dixons. At the time, the company owned the rival Comet electrical retailer. ...more

AMD takes the heat out of the Opteron

The AMD Opteron chip, principally aimed at high performance workstations and servers, is to get power management tools built in. AMD says the addition of the company's PowerNow! technology - currently used in its notebook offerings - is to allow for cooler running of blade servers and other high density environments where heat is an issue. The company says that not only will adding 'power on demand' technology improve the performance per watt ratio, but will also reduce the need for expensive air conditioning and ventilation in data centres. ...more

?220mn hi-tech bank heist foiled by London police

A multi-million pound raid on the London offices of a Japanese bank has been foiled by police. But the attempted robbery did not involve vans, security guards or weapons - the theft was attempted by the electronic transfer of funds. The hacker tried to steal as much as ?220mn from accounts held at the Sumitomo Mitsui bank using keylogging software, before being intercepted by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU). ...more

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

Panasonic to ship Blu-ray drives next spring

Panasonic has announced that it will ship Blu-ray devices and media as early as Spring 2006. The subsidiary of Matasushita will introduce Blu-ray Disc (BD) drives for notebooks and desktops that will be able to write and read single- and dual-layer BDs as well as all types of recordable DVDs and CDs. The drives will be accompanied by the new non-cartridge BDs (bare disc) with storage capacities of 25 GB and 50 GB. ...more