Dell targets Sun customers

Computer company Dell is attempting to make it easy for customers to migrate from proprietary server platforms and outdated legacy data centres to more open, flexible, standards-based technology, reports ZDNet.

In other words: Sun customers, Dell's headed your way.

Dell's ProConsult Infrastructure Consulting service is positioned to offer existing Sun customers “fast, seamless transitions” to Dell PowerEdge Linux servers from Unix-based systems. Dell believes its PowerEdge servers are a better platform for current Sun and other customers to help reduce costs and increase IT efficiency.

Fears that Britain is slipping into a surveillance society have been heightened by Brussels initiating legal action after declaring UK laws guaranteeing data protection were “structurally flawed” and well below the European standard, reports Times Online.

The criticism arose after the European Commission investigated the use of “behavioural advertising technology” by British Internet service providers, which it found was illegal under European - but not British - law.

“I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications,” said Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for information society and media.

Time Warner Cable is reportedly having trouble finding submissive test subjects for its proposed scheme of charging US customers by the gigabyte for their Internet service, says The Register.

Additional trials for the company's new "consumption-based billing" regime were scheduled to begin in several markets this summer. However, public outcry made the cable giant retreat from some of its attempts to stuff the all-you-can-eat Internet genie back in the bottle - for now.

The company originally intended to expand tests of metered billing on 13 April to Rochester, New York, Greensboro, South Carolina, and San Antonio and Austin, Texas. But all has not gone according to plan.

Microsoft confirmed on Wednesday a report that it had received a one-week extension from European Union anti-trust regulators to respond to charges that it had sought to thwart rivals by bundling its Web browser with Windows systems, says Reuters.

"Microsoft confirms that the new deadline for the company to respond to the commission's statement of objections is 28 April," a spokesperson said, referring to an unsourced reference to a new deadline reported on the Web site of the Financial Times.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said she could not immediately comment.