New BBC services under scrutiny

Ofcom has published the outline of its investigation of the market impact of new BBC services. The Terms of Reference for the Market Impact Assessment (MIA) will examine the likely market impact of four BBC new on-demand services, including the BBC iPlayer, which lets consumers view live and recent BBC television programmes over the Internet and download audio content. The Government's Charter and Agreement on the future of the BBC proposed that all new or substantially changed BBC services should be subject to a Public Value Test (PVT) by the BBC Trust. ...more

Goodbye Savastore, hello Saverstore

Electronics retailer Savastore.com has risen from the ashes - in the subtly disguised form of Saverstore.com. ...more

SCO DOS attack verified

Despite doubts that the denial of service attack on SCO's web-facing servers was genuine, new analysis reveals the attack was very much the real McCoy. Researchers at CAIDA, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, showed that the attacks on SCO's Web and FTP servers registered more than 50,000 packets per second at their peak, on Thursday morning of last week. SCO later removed those servers from the Internet for a period, while its ISP filtered out traffic directed at them until they were put back online. ...more

Dasher virus targets unpatched Windows systems

Security firms have been warning of a new virus over the weekend that took advantage of a problematic patch released by Microsoft in October. The critical flaw in Microsoft Windows Distributed Transaction Coordinator affects Windows systems with the potential for remote code execution, but the patch proved troublesome for Windows 2000 systems as it changed the way access permissions were applied. This could result in the failure of key system services to start or be recognised. ...more

AOL overhauls AIM services

AOL has begun testing a new version of its AIM instant messaging software that will include voice calls, streaming video and media file transfers. A full release is expected later this year, based on a completely new code base and architecture. It includes a new, tabbed interface for managing multiple messages 'It's a brand new world out there, and we needed a much more advanced communications environment,' a spokeswoman said. ...more