All UK homes should have access to broadband and faster download speeds by 2012, the government has said.

An interim report on the UK’s digital future also looked at plans for public service broadcasting.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said digital technology was as important today as "roads, bridges and trains were in the 20th Century".

But the Conservatives said the report promised "no new action". The Lib Dems said it was a "complete damp squib".

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told MPs it would help Britain secure a competitive low carbon economy in the next five to 10 years, adding the country "led the world in content creation".

The report called for everyone in the UK to have access to a broadband speed of up to two megabits per second (Mbps).

This would make internet connections capable of handling much more video and sites that offer greater interactivity.

By the time of the final report, the government will know whether internet service providers (ISPs) can build next generation networks themselves or if government help will be needed.

Full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7858498.stm

Cisco Systems announced in a press release on Tuesday the launch of a three-stage plan to help IT businesses reduce their carbon emissions, through the use of their new EnergyWise technology.

Primarily designed for Cisco’s Catalyst switches, EnergyWise reports and reduces the energy consumption of devices such as mobile phones, laptops and wireless access points.

In the press release, Judy Lin, senior vice president of the Ethernet Switching technology group for Cisco said, "With EnergyWise, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help our customers gain a network wide view of energy consumption that encompasses not only device-level power, but in the future entire network efficiency, building operations and business practices across an entire organization."

The first stage of the plan, to be launched in February, will see Cisco Catalyst switches receive a free software upgrade that will make it possible for businesses to monitor and control the energy consumption of any devices connected to the network, by automatically turning off or reducing power to them when they are idle.

The next phase, due in the summer, will see support of EnergyWise expanded across the industry, to include devices such as PCs, laptops and printers.

For the final phase, in conjunction with Schneider Electric, EnergyWise will be extended to include the management of building systems, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, elevators and lights, as well as access, fire and security systems. This final stage is expected to begin in early 2010.

Jeff Ton, vice president of IT for Lauth Property Group, believes that the use of EnergyWise could lead to annual energy savings of 15 to 20 percent across their portfolio of commercial office buildings. "This could equate to energy savings of 19 to 33 cents a square foot, which over the course of a year could be thousands of dollars in energy related savings," he said.

News source: Neowin.net

A windows worm named Conficker or Downadup or Kido (as called by various anti-virus vendors) which targets unpatched networks and poor passwords has been reported to have affected 2.4 million machines to over 8.9 million during the last four days by a Finnish anti-virus maker F-Secure.

The worm spreads via a vulnerability due to RPC flaw that Microsoft patched in October 2008. Once on a machine, it sets up an HTTP server and resets a machine’s System Restore point to stop administrators deleting it.

This new worm which belongs to the usual Trojan family, downloads new files from their own malware server and generates hundreds of random domain names to scan for updates.

The numbers given by F-Secure has been criticized by many other vendors and has made F-Secure to explain its method of calculating the size of the malware’s breakup. Servers in China, Brazil and Russia seems to have been affected most.

News source: Neowin.net

Yesterday morning, thousands of previously happy Microsoft Zune 30 owners woke up to a interesting situations. Their Zunes were dead in the water.

As Neowin reported yesterday, "At exactly 2am CDT (12am PDT), the docked Zune made the ‘unplugged from USB port’ bong-noise and went to the boot-up screen with the 100% loading bar…and froze." This situation was similar if not identical for every other Zune 30 owner who had their devices turned on. Those who didn’t received the New Years Eve surprise when their turned on their device to be greeted by the Zune boot screen, and nothing else.

Microsoft acted quickly, undoubtedly after being bombarded with angry phone calls, emails, Tweets and message board posts. Shortly after 2pm PDT, Microsoft posted on their ZuneInsider blog and explained the problem and the solution.

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.

The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

Microsoft says they’ll have an updated firmware for the Zune 30 out before 2012, which is the next leap year and the next time this problem is scheduled to happen.

Rest of the editorial here: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/01/the-day-the-zunes-stood-still

According to hundreds of reports from users worldwide, 30GB Zunes are freezing and locking up due to what appears to be a new years date bug.
One poster summarized the issue on Microsoft’s support forums, "At exactly 2am CDT (12am PDT), the docked Zune made the "unplugged from USB port" bong-noise and went to the boot-up screen with the 100% loading bar…and froze. At 2:30am CDT, I decided to check the other Zune. Turned it on and…frozen at the 100% loading screen."
It appears as though only 30GB Zunes are currently affected and some reports indicate that only Zunes with the latest firmware are affected, but this hasn’t yet been confirmed.
Microsoft has not yet commented on the matter and is currently unavailable for comment due to time zone differences.

Update: Microsoft’s official response so far is "Thank you for your inquiry. We’re looking into the situation and will update you as soon as possible." Microsoft has also updated its Zune support service page, "Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!". Microsoft’s Zune insider twitter page has the following, "Hey all. Yes it looks to be quite a day. Thanks for all the heads up. we are on it working to isolate the issue and I will keep you posted." More as it follows.
Update 2: Microsoft has now additionally stated that the Zune Social "might be slow or inaccessible."
Update 3: On the ZuneInsider Twitter, Microsoft says they are making progress and close to being able to ID the issue. Hopefully for the many users being hit with this bug, that means a fix is forthcoming.

The Zune freezes as pictured below:

Image courtesy of Gizmodo
Thanks to QuietStorm21A for the news tip.

Source: Neowin.net

Note: I can confirm this has also bricked the Zune I gave to my mother as well. What a pile of crap it’s proved to be.

Virgin Media is expected to unveil its 50Mbps broadband service at a press briefing this morning.
It will be the fastest domestic connection available to UK web surfers. Early reports suggest the XXL service will be priced at £52 per month with upload speeds capped to 1.75Mbit, increasing to 2.5Mbit in 2009.

According to a report in the FT, Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett was quoted as saying "It will be premium-priced," at an investors conference in New York last week. "I see no reason to go in cheap" he added.

Earlier this year Virgin was slapped on the wrist by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading adverts regarding its speed packages. Virgin media controversially began throttling users internet connections in May 2007 during peak times (4pm till midnight) for customers who downloaded a certain amount of data in that given time. It is unclear whether Virgin will apply these restrictions to the XXL service.

News source: Neowin.net

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been urged to halt the extradition to the US of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, faces up to 70 years in prison if found guilty in the US of breaking into military computers.

Supporters held a vigil and delivered a letter to Downing Street calling for him to be tried in the UK instead.

Campaigners said the fact that Mr McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome should be taken into account.

Decision due

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon trespassed on networks owned by Nasa, the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defense in 2001 and 2002.

Despite taking his appeal to the House of Lords last year, he lost a six-year legal battle to avoid extradition.

The European Court of Human Rights also declined to back Mr McKinnon’s case against extradition.

A decision on his proposed extradition is expected at a High Court hearing on 20 January.

Article continues here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768394.stm

Virgin Media looks set to launch its 50Mb broadband on December 15 after inviting journalists to a mystery event.

Although the company has thus far declined to give a firm date for the launch of its 50Mb service, it has always maintained that it would be before the end of the year.

Now, journalists have been told to ‘hold the date’ on December 15 – where the company will almost certainly show off the fastest broadband in the UK.

Preparation

The fibre optic service will speed past everything currently available – and Virgin Media has been working towards the launch for months.

The company has already publicised the failure of online speed testers to cope with the speed of ultra-fast broadband in the run up to the launch, after public trials of the service in Kent showed up major discrepancies.

The 50Mb modem has already been unveiled, with TechRadar bringing you the first pictures, and we’ll make sure that you are updated as the service launches across the UK.

Unsuprisingly, a spokesperson for the company refused to comment on our speculation.

By Patrick Goss

News source: TechRadar.com

Note: Look’s like Patrick can’t spell.

YouTube rolled out an exciting change to all of its users today, by expanding the width of their videos to widescreen (16:9), from the previous standard format (4:3), making the player 960 pixels wide.

A post, in the YouTube Blog, confirmed that all previous 4:3 aspect ratio videos will all still be watchable, and play just fine. This highly anticipated update to go widescreen comes as a surprise to many, as some dislike the change to the player going widescreen, where most think the change was needed to the aging player. This update could be the start of more changes to come, after YouTube announced it will be selling keyword searches to users and businesses.

News source: Neowin.net

Virgin Media will double the number of hours it throttles the bandwidth of customers who hammer its network day and night, changes to its traffic management policy have revealed.

The tightened regime means that between 10am and 3pm subscribers to its “M”, “L” and “XL” packages will have their connection throttled for five hours if they download more than their full speed ration.

The decision follows recent regional testing of extended restrictions in London and the North West. Previously the brakes were only slammed on for five hours if limits were exceeded at any point between 4pm and 9pm.

Now, “M” customers who bust 900MB during the day will have their theoretical maximum download halved from 2Mbit/s to 1Mbit/s. “L” and “XL” users’ usual headline speeds of 10MBit/s and 20MBit/s will be slowed by three quarters if they break daytime download limits of 2400MB and 6000MB respectively.

Full article and traffic management policy here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/