BT appeals for more female engineers

BT says it will spend ?200,000 on a campaign to convince more women to join the ranks of IT engineers. The telco has announced plans, which coincided with International Women's Day, to increase the number of women in engineering roles with an apprentice attraction campaign touting the benefits of being an engineer - a job they say is 'not just for blokes'. 'BT is committed to improving the percentage of female apprentices,' said Dave Walsh, head of BT Apprenticeships. ...more

Online extortion gang gets eight years

A Russian gang thought to have extorted as much as ?2m from UK gambling sites has been jailed for eight years. A two-year joint investigation involving the Russian authorities, Interpol, the FBI and the UK National High Tech Crime Unit, traced gang members Ivan Maksakov, Alexander Petrov and Denis Stepanov. They were each sentenced to eight years in prison in Russia and fined close to ?2,000 for their part in using threats of denial of service attacks to extort money, often around key betting events in the sporting calendar. ...more

Sun bids to shut out MS Java appeal

Sun claims Microsoft appeal is part of delaying tactics to ensure Java's demise. In the light of Microsoft's appeal to stay an injunction forcing it to include Sun's version of the Java runtime environment in copies of XP and Internet Explorer, it now falls to Sun to persuade the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals not to intervene. In a 25-page filing submitted to the court yesterday, Sun claims that in allowing the injunction, Microsoft would still have plenty of time to incorporate Sun's technology, as the next shipping date for Windows falls within the 120-day period allowed - meaning Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about it until the next shipping date. ...more

Microsoft's Office Open XML hits ISO speed bump

Microsoft's bid to have its Office Open XML (OOXML) file format for Office fast tracked through the ISO standardisation process has hit a withering speed bump. Already approved by the European Computer Manufacturers' Association (ECMA), Microsoft had wanted to use the ISO's fast-track process for approving standards already ratified by other bodies to smooth the way. However, no fewer than 19 nations have now raised 'contradictions' to OOXML. ...more

Apple's 30th Birthday [part 1] - Riding the whirlwind

Thirty years ago this Saturday, 1 April, Apple Computer was founded by three some-time employees of Atari and HP: Steve Jobs, Steve 'Oz' Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. No-one seems absolutely sure of the origins of the name. It has variously been suggested that the name is a tribute to The Beatles' company Apple Corps, to Alan Turing, the father of computer science who killed himself by eating an apple laced with cyanide, or to Sir Isaac Newton, who is pictured sitting beneath an Apple tree in the very first company logo. ...more