banking

Troubled financial IT staff ease their stress by making Star Wars movie

It's not easy being a bank employee these days. You don't know what your bank will be tomorrow. Perhaps it will be a different kind of bank. Or even a former bank.

So perhaps it is unsurprising that Geoff Harmer, an IT chap at Barclays Bank in Basingstoke, England (a little like the nice parts of New Jersey), decided to invest $90 and his artistic talent into making a Star Wars movie.

The opus is entitled Overtime and the action takes place around the bank cubicles, in an elevator (where the protagonists encounter a tall bald man who … Read more

Bank of America site goes down

The Web site for Bank of America was down on Monday for some customers, a spokeswoman for the bank said.

Tara Burke cited "temporary systems issues" and declined to say what the cause was or whether it was related to Bank of America's proposed purchase of Merrill Lynch or other recent turmoil on Wall Street.

"We've had sporadic interruption of online banking service. It doesn't impact customer information, just the ability to access it," she said. "We are continuing to correct the error. The site should return shortly."

The site had … Read more

In acquiring Merrill Lynch, must Bank of America open source its software?

Lost in the rubble of the teetering titans of finance is an open question: what will happen to the open-source software that they have heavily modified and upon which many have built core business applications?

It's a nontrivial question. Bank of America just acquired Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch was a heavy adopter of and modifier of open-source software. Because it never distributed that software, it was able to keep its modifications private.

Does acquisition by an outside party constitute a distribution? In conversations I've had with enterprise CTOs and the Free Software Foundation, the answer is an unequivocal "maybe."… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 773: Spam on the lam

UPDATE: We just learned that the escaped Eddie Davidson, the "spam king," was found dead after having apparently murdered his family. Obviously, we did not know this at the time we recorded our podcast, and we apologize for any insensitivity that could be inferred from our remarks. We will definitely address this horrible turn of events in tomorrow's show.

The recently imprisoned "Spam King" goes straight-up mint jelly and escapes from federal prison (check your barns and garages, Coloradoans), Yahoo Music makes the MSN Music mistake with the benefit of hindsight, and Walt Mossberg slams … Read more

Studies: Banking Web sites, corporate computers are insecure

A new study about security problems with financial Web sites may have you thinking twice about doing online banking.

And a separate study found widespread security problems in corporate computers across numerous industries.

More than 75 percent of the Web sites of more than 200 financial institutions were found to have at least one design flaw that could put customer data at risk, according to a study released this week from the University of Michigan.

Atul Prakash, a professor in the university's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and two doctoral students examined the Web sites of 214 … Read more

Bank of America may finally embrace Firefox

The largest bank in the United States has officially ignored the second most popular Web browser--until recently.

A tipster for Networkworld.com pointed out recently that Bank of America's Web site did not list the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox as a "supported browser," even though Firefox now commands almost 20 percent of the browser market. The bank's site lists Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Netscape as acceptable browsers.

Netscape? Even AOL, Netscape's former owner, doesn't support Netscape Navigator anymore.

Of course, Firefox, which was released in 2004 and recently set a Guiness record for downloads … Read more

World Bank: Biofuels lift food prices 75 percent

Demand for biofuels in Europe and the United States has forced up food prices 75 percent around the world, according to a World Bank report that was leaked and published in The Guardian newspaper on Friday.

The number stands in sharp contrast to the 3 percent contribution to higher food pricing estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, a study commissioned by food manufacturers pegs the contribution of biofuels on food prices at between 25 percent and 35 percent. (Click here for PDF).

The reports will surely heat up the debate on biofuels policy one week before the … Read more

Disgo Media Bank: Scart? What a joke

Are you looking for a way of recording television or watching video you've downloaded from the Internet? Disgo thinks it's got the ideal product for you, the Media Bank. There's only one problem: it's standard definition, and that upsets us.

So, what does the Disgo Media Bank do? Well, first off, you can connect it to your computer over USB2 and copy files to its built-in 500GB hard drive. That's a handy feature if you download stuff off the Web and want to watch it on your TV, but there's no network socket, so … Read more

Bank of New York Mellon says customer data exposed

The Bank of New York Mellon says sensitive data of more than 4 million people owning shares in public companies was exposed after a box of back-up data storage tapes went missing in February. The data included names, addresses, and Social Security numbers.

In a separate incident in April, a back-up data storage tape containing images of scanned checks and other documents relating to payments made to nearly 50 institutional clients went missing.

In both instances, the tapes were being transported by outside vendors, a company spokesman told CNET News.com on Wednesday.

An unnamed national courier was transporting one … Read more

Apple's iPhone coming to Japan

The iPhone will make its official debut in Japan later this year on SoftBank's mobile network, the company announced Wednesday.

SoftBank is the third largest carrier in Japan, behind NTT DoCoMo and KDDI. But DoCoMo and KDDI have has built networks based on the CDMA family of standards (used by Sprint and Verizon in the U.S.), while SoftBank's network is based on the GSM family of standards currently used by the iPhone. Apple is expected to unveil a next-generation iPhone next week, but few expect the company to have a CDMA-version ready at this point in … Read more