Week in Review: AMD boss dumped over losses

Hector Ruiz is moved on

Even for someone who’s been around as long as AMD’s Hector Ruiz, seven quarterly losses in a row does not make fantastic reading, so his replacement as chief executive following a second-quarter net loss of $1.19 billion (£600 million) is not a huge shock.

His successor, AMD’s chief operating officer Dirk Meyer, is logical as he has long been seen as a natural successor. He will have his work our for him as desktop sales decline and Intel seems to have the mobile market sewn up.

London’s Oyster cards corrupted

Thousands of London commuters needed their Oyster cards replacing this week after a server crash left them permanently corrupted.

Bus drivers were forced to offer free transport last Saturday morning as the Oyster payment infrastructure went down for over five hours. It’s fortunate for Transport for London that it happened at the weekend rather than during the week when general chaos would surely have ensued.

Government wants neutral carbon emissions from its IT

In an effort to lead by example, the government has unveiled plans to ensure that its ICT energy use is carbon neutral within four years.

The Cabinet Office will start to go green immediately but other departments will only have to report their green status from 2010.

Guidelines include switching off computers at night, printing on both sides of the paper and server virtualisation. If they don’t make in time, the government plans to use taxpayer money to buy carbon offsetting credits instead to make up the difference.

The Data Protection Act, ten years on

Is the Data Protection Act (DPA) still relevant in today’s networked world?

As the law reaches its tenth birthday, many are questioning the law’s effectiveness, as the recent spate of high profile data losses demonstrate a lack of effectiveness. Is it time to give it some teeth? IT PRO talks to the Office of the Information Commissioner.

BT to invest £1.5 billion in fast broadband

The UK could finally be crawling out of its relative broadband hole as BT announces that it will spend £1.5 billion deploying super-fast fibre optic broadband to 10 million homes over the next ten years.

BT claims it will make the fibre optic network available to rivals to remain competitive. Talk is cheap but will it deliver?

EU to cut text roaming charges

We could be looking at cheaper text messaging while abroad as the EU looks to clamp down on excessive roaming text charges.

Price caps on voice calls were introduced last year. This is to be welcomed but what of the price of data roaming when abroad? With stories of individuals being charged thousands after unwittingly using data heavily while abroad it’s time to address the issue.

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