27th October 1998 Archive

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Diamond wins right to ship Rio music player

Beats off recording industry in this round of legal fight

Diamond Multimedia's $199 Rio has been cleared for shipment by a Los Angeles judge in the teeth of objections form the US music industry. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had previously been granted a temporary injunction (see earlier story) against Rio pending yesterday's hearing. Rio is a portable device …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 09:30
Microsoft has egg on face, says DoJ

Company accused of mounting 'cynical attempt to distract attention'

"Microsoft has egg on its face": so said the DoJ in a plain-spoken Response to a Microsoft motion asking for sanctions to be imposed against the government because, Microsoft alleged, the DoJ had not produced documents as required. Microsoft submitted the Motion at the beginning of proceedings in the court yesterday, and in its …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 09:38
‘Da cops set us up’ – Microsoft shock claim

The Netscape meet was all an elaborate sting to trigger a DoJ investigation, says attorney

Microsoft was the victim of a 'sting' when it met Netscape executives to discuss co-operation, the company's attorney suggested yesterday. Moving on from claiming that Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale had made it all up, John Warner suggested the meeting was a setup designed to gain evidence for a DoJ investigation. Netscape and …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 09:42
IBM-SCO Unix deal may raise question over PPC future

And it may also mean IBM's Intel AIX development was a crock...

IBM's Unix deal with SCO and Sequent, announced yesterday (See earlier story), could provide Big Blue with an escape hatch from the PowerPC adventure, as well as possibly ringing the death-knell for SCO. IBM may have just announced a rev of its Risc platform plus a roadmap that takes the line comfortably into the next century …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 09:45
Solaris goes 64 as Sun turns up screws on NT

Ed Zander is claiming a three year lead over Microsoft, but he's nearly two ahead of himself...

Sun will turn the screws on Microsoft today with the announcement of Solaris 7, the 64-bit version of Solaris, on its own Sparc and Intel's IA-64 architectures. The announcement comes a full year before NT 5.0 is now rationally expected to ship, and around 18 months ahead of the likely arrival of a version of NT 5.0 with what …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 09:50
Cyrix Comet blazes through skies

Daewoo boxes will sit inside 230 stores

Comet is to sell Cyrix-based Daewoo machines in its out-of-town stores. The £599 boxes will use the NatSemi-Cyrix MII-333 chip and come with 14in monitor, 32MB of memory, a 56Kbps modem, a 3.4GB hard drive, 4MB AGP graphics, Windows 98 and Lotus software. Comet will also offer its customers an option of buying a printer and …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 10:52
Red ink splashes Toshiba's balance sheet

But it did well selling washing machines...

Toshiba has turned in terrible financial results. Its non-consolidated results for the six months from 1 April to 30 September showed that its net sales fell by 12 per cent compared to the equivalent period last year. Turnover amounted to $11,851 million, with its recurring profit becoming a loss of $47 million. Last year it …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 12:12
MS modifies line on market splitting meeting with Netscape

'Fess up, Barksdale, you connived with the DoJ, alleges Microsoft attorney

Microsoft has changed its story about the 21 June 1995 meeting between it and Netscape at which it is alleged that illegal market splitting was proposed by Microsoft. Until yesterday, Microsoft's story had been that Netscape had fabricated the evidence, but now the story is that there is a conspiracy against Microsoft, …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 12:19
Danes develop atomic memory chip

Technique promises million-fold expansion of storage capacities

Danish researchers have developed a prototype computer chip that uses atoms to record information, according to Reuters. Data is stored on a single oscillating atom of hydrogen left to jump back and forth when two other atoms of hydrogen and an atom of silicon are removed from the hydrogen surface layer on a standard silicon …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 13:14
UK Government takes uncivil liberties with Net legislation

Big Brother peeks through the back door

Think you've had a bad week? Allow us to make it worse. DTI civil servants spelt out on Monday the details of the UK's long-awaited crypto legislation. Under the new law, Government-approved encryption authorities will be obliged to keep a copy of your private key and hand it over to the authorities when requested by a "senior …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:24
Novell awarded $25.9 million against trademark infringer

Snuffer sniffed at Nuffer's number, but judge awarded it anyway

Novell's three-year trademark infringement case against software developer Network Trade Center (NTC) has come to a conclusion following the judge's ruling that NTC must cough up $25.9 million in damages. The case centred on allegations that NTC had resold Netware upgrades to new users as full versions of the network operating …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:27
Taiwan hits back at Micron legal tactics

Meanwhile Mosel claims Micron has assumed TI's legalistic mantel

Reports from Asia said that Taiwan is sick of being lumbered with the dumping tag. The Taiwanese government is responding to an anti-dumping case brought by US DRAM company Micron last Friday. According to government agency the Ministry of Economic Affairs, output from the fabs on the island only account for two per cent of the …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:32
Context predicts rosy 1998 for European PC sales

And 1999 could be even better

Market research company Context has predicted continued strong growth for PC sales in Western Europe following the release of its Q3 sales figures. Throughout the quarter, sales rose 22.4 per cent year-on-year to 5.25 million machines. The growth was fuelled by increased corporate expenditure on IT as part of Euro and Y2K roll- …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:43
Old and New Worlds clash over e-privacy legislation

We came here to get away from that sort of thing, claims Land of the Free

US and European cultural divisions are emerging in the governance of the Internet and electronic trading. Broadly speaking, the US favours protection of business over consumer rights, but the EU’s new regulations to protect private data across the Union’s 15 member countries runs contrary to routine business practices of US …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:48
MBO moves Earth for Scottish seismic software specialist

Register writes story for blatant headline joke opportunity -- shock

Concept Software, Scotland’s groundbreaking seismic software company, is being bought out by the management in a £36 million deal. The MBO is funded partly by £12 million of equity from the London-based venture capitalists, 3i, and The Royal Bank of Scotland is providing £17.5 million of senior debt and mezzanine facilities. …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:53
Intel takes share in anti-walkabout software

For some reason PCs keep disappearing from firms

A company which has software allowing PCs which have been mislaid or stolen to be found has had an injection of equity from chip giant Intel. The company, Absolute Software, has a piece of software equity called Computrace. Intel has for many years researched the problem of PCs, or even processors, that have been mislaid, stolen …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:55
HP, Wave tout hardware-based e-security system

Cheaply takes security provision from server to clients

Hewlett-Packard and Wave Systems are touting a new chip-based 'trusted client' system as a cheap and effective method for ensuring secure PC-based internet and e-commerce transactions. The two companies have been collaborating on the new systems over the past six months, integrating HP's VerSecure security management framework …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 15:57
Our tariff

Money can buy us

This is The Register tariff We are the corruptibles… For £15,000 we will remove any story from our site For £15,000 we will write any story you like on our site For £500 we will attend a press conference as long as it is in London and we don't have to write about it For another £500 we will write about it as well If the press …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 16:22
Paul Lloyd quits SCC

Tom Barrett homes in on national sales directorship

Longterm national sales director Paul Lloyd has departed Specialist Computer Centres (SCC), to be replaced by Tom Barrett, formerly Scottish manager, and Ian Scott is appointed manager of the southern region. In April, Paul Simkin, managing director of ETC, SCC's distribution arm, announced he was leaving the company to join …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 16:37
A warranty is not just for Christmas – it's for life

What happens to me when you go bust

The PC Association has developed a scheme that will enable its members to sell-on insured warranties to their customers and take the angst out of the question, "what happens to me when you go bust?". While high street retailers have been slammed for making more money on expensive extended warranties, the PCA is providing its …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 16:51
Korean MICE says non-DRAM NICE

Wons galore for non memory chips

MICE, South Korea’s Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Energy said tomorrow (today our time) that the domestic semi-conductor industry will see the ratio of memory and non-memory semi-conductor production change from 81:19 to 75:25 by 2003. MICE and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) are concerned about Korea’s over- …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 17:09
Multi-coloured, multi-currency swap shop, Quarterdeck style

Built by Infobank

Who needs the Euro? PC utilities firm Quarterdeck has broken down European language and currency barriers by setting-up a European Internet store where Internet users can buy and download products in the language and currency of their choice. The store was developed by Infobank subsidiary TrustMarque, who will continue to …

Business 27 Oct 1998, 17:41