Ebits

Sorry, we can't help

The website of Arab satellite news channel al-Jazeera was refused assistance last week when it sought help from Akamai Technologies, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in dealing with hacking attacks and massive interest from web users.

"We think it's political pressure," said Nabil Hegazi, deputy managing editor of Al-Jazeera's English-language website.

Akamai rents out a network of 12,600 servers that help customer websites deal with unexpected traffic, hacker attacks and Internet bottlenecks.

Akamai said it "worked briefly last week with al-Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their websites", but decided not to continue the relationship.

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3 make Fonterra list

Dairy co-operative Fonterra has short-listed EDS, Hewlett Packard and Unisys as the outsourcing candidates to compete for picking up all its IT needs.

Fonterra will send them request-for-proposal documents asking for feedback by the end of May.

IBM had discussions with Fonterra, but was not on the shortlist.

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Sars alert for doctors

Health software company Intrahealth has created an alert tool for its Profile clinical system to help doctors pick up the symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).

Business development head Dr Kannan Subramaniam said the alert was sent to Profile user sites by email as a free patch.

When doctors type in symptoms such as coughing, shortness of breath or a high temperature which correspond with Sars, a pop-up screen will advise them of further questions to ask or steps to take.

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Bowing to pressure

Microsoft has agreed to tweak its Windows XP operating system after recent feedback from the US Justice Department over its antitrust settlement with the Federal Government.

Microsoft will give more prominent display to a button that allows computer users to remove the company's Internet Explorer browser.

Microsoft agreed to change the button's position in the Windows "start menu".

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Copyright lawsuits

The Recording Industry Association of America has filed lawsuits against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and against one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University.

It claims the campus networks are being used to illegally trade copies of digital music files.

The association compared the file-sharing systems - open only to students on the universities' internal networks - as miniature versions of Napster, the software and network that led to the explosion of music file swapping. The four networks were offering nearly 2.5 million files, it said.

The complaints ask for maximum damages, $150,000 per each copyright infringed.

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Pakistan blocks porn

Pakistani authorities say they've blocked 1800 websites in the first 10 days of a crackdown on internet pornography. But it's not been easy.

"Curbing porn sites is as difficult as blocking the wind," said web engineer Farhan Parpia, of the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunications company.

"You block one, and dozens more come up like mushrooms."

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Diners Club upgrade

Diners Club New Zealand has selected the PC Company, a local PC assembler, to upgrade its ageing computer network.

The installation required PC Company servers and 70 business workstations to run Diners' financial transaction system.

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Apple polishes up editing

Apple Computer has unveiled new versions of its digital film and DVD editing software in a US$999 ($1865) package.

Final Cut Pro 4 and an upgraded version of its special-effects software, Shake, allow editors to create movie titles and soundtracks.

DVD Studio Pro users can make their own customised DVDs.

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Golden parachutes

Hewlett-Packard says shareholders have approved a non-binding resolution calling for management to submit senior executives' severance packages to investors for approval.

The company says it will consider the "narrowly approved" resolution.