Textbites

"Systems administrators should also consider updating their virus definitions daily and performing thorough scans for viruses…

"Systems administrators should also consider updating their virus definitions daily and performing thorough scans for viruses and worms or malicious code.["] - Part of a warning issued by US National Infrastructure Protection Center on New Year's Eve. They feared denial-of-service attacks "could occur over the holiday." Nothing untoward happened. Natch.

"A lot of e-commerce companies will find it hard to survive. . . You won't only see a further failure in the dotcoms but it will be very difficult to establish new ones." - Justin Urquhart-Stewart of Barclays Stockbrokers predicting that things will only get worse for dotcom entrepreneurs this year.

News monitor column compiled by Conor Pope, Computimes Editor.

The full text of Computimes reports is available on The Irish Times web site at www.ireland.com