IBM 'confirms job cuts`

An IBM spokesman has confirmed that the company will cut about 400 jobs, or about 1% of staff, in its software group, reports InformationWeek. The cuts include a number of sales and marketing positions at IBM software facilities.

An IBM spokesman said the cuts are part of an overall skills-rebalancing effort within the group and don`t reflect a broader cost-cutting initiative within the group. IBM`s software revenue increased 6% year-over-year to $3.5 billion in the second quarter.

Strange side-effects from VeriSign`s site, which redirects misspelled and unassigned URLs, have emerged. One such has been the case of David Fitzpatrick`s software for tracking and analysing junk e-mail, reports AP in USA Today.

When his wares didn`t work correctly, the Web designer assumed he had made programming mistakes and spent hours trying to fix them. Then he discovered it wasn`t his skills that were faulty, but the Internet that essentially broke. Elsewhere, more spam slipped through, printers misbehaved and cellphones got unusual Web traffic.

Investigators have made a second arrest in connection with the "Blaster" computer worm, and the latest suspect is another juvenile accused of creating a variant of the worm, reports eWeek.

Prosecutors refused to release any information about the suspect, not even the youth`s gender or home state. They cited confidentiality rules protecting juveniles accused of crimes. The variant the juvenile allegedly created was known as "RPCSDBOT". Prosecutors did not say how many computers they believe were infected.