Restructuring and refinancing for BT

BT looks to restructuring and refinancing for a way out from under the burden of its billion pounds of debt. The debt was incurred, of course, through its bid for 3G licences and European expansion plans. In terms of restructuring, BT is going to split off its Wireless division as a separate, publicly-listed company, with its core business of fixed-line telecommunications being renamed as Future BT. ...more

European virus writer sentenced to prison

A 39-year-old man has been sentenced to 14 months in a Milan court and fined €3,000 for writing the Voltan virus. Considering that the accused is thought to have made €104,000 from the premium rate numbers that infected computers made, the sentence may be considered light. The author, who lives in Venezuela, does not have a criminal record. ...more

The UK marks National Work from Home Day

Today is the second annual National Work from Home Day, where employers are encouraged to transform their homes into offices for the day. In addition to making employees happier and therefore more productive through aiding the work/life balance, the ability to work away from the office - even occasionally - lessens the burden on our roads and public transport networks, believes Work Wise UK. 'Although some would suggest this could be an excuse to skive, or to extend the weekend, it has been demonstrated that enabling staff to work from home, even occasionally, increases productivity,' said Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, the not-for-profit organisation behind National Work from Home Day and Work Wise Week, which kicked off on Wednesday and runs until next Tuesday. ...more

Xserve goes G5

Apple has given its Xserve 1U server line-up a full scale overhaul, with G5 processors, an upgraded RAID system and a new Xgrid computational clustering technology. Xserve G5 gives, says Apple, a 60 per cent performance improvement over the G4 version and is built around a new system controller with up to 8GB of PC3200 ECC (error correcting code) memory, three hot-pluggable Serial ATA drives to provide up to 750GB of storage, two 133MHz PCI-X slots and two Gigabit Ethernet connections. It is available in single and dual 2GHz processor configurations for ?2. ...more

Researchers crack biometric security with Play-Doh

Using fake fingerprints, researchers in New York State have managed to break nearly all the biometric identification systems they tested. Headed by Clarkson University associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Stephanie C Schuckers, they used fake fingers made by taking casts of live fingers and using the molds to create copies in Play-Doh. The 60 fake fingers were then tested and were successfully authenticated by the combination of the fingerprint readers and their accompanying software in nine out of every ten attempts. ...more