29th December 1998 Archive

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Intel in 1999 – Mother Shipton beckons

Future will see pricing graph drop and clock graph rise

There’s a Sanskrit word called samsara, highjacked by perfume company Guerlain for smelly stuff, which is richly expressive of the nature of chip giant Intel. The word is made up of two parts, sam which means “together” and sara which means flowing, so expressing the idea of this world being a ceaseless round of movement. At The …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 12:08
Ellison's Sayonara wins boat race

But six dead

Larry Ellison's yacht Sayonara has won the Sydney to Hobart yacht race after storms which cost six other sailors their lives. And Ellison told reporters that the race, which Sayonara won for the second time, was life-threatening and dangerous, with his only goal to get him and his crew back in one piece. He is unlikely to …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 12:23
Toshiba unveils ultra-portable PC hard drives

New HDDs slim and sexy. Apparently

Toshiba has developed a pair of 2.5in hard disk drives for slimline notebook PCs. The first offers 10GB of storage space and is 12.5mm thick. The second is slimmer (8.45mm) but can hold only 6.4GB of data. Both drives will begin shipping to OEMs next month. Pricing to non-Japanese PC vendors has yet to be confirmed, but pricing …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 16:48
US Commerce Dept to issue lighter crypto rules

New regulations ease export of 56-bit and greater encryption software

The US Department of Commerce is this week at last set to issue new, relaxed regulations covering the export of powerful encryption software. The regulations will be based on the US government's latest policy on data encryption, which was announced back in September. The new regulations will permit the export of 56-bit …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 16:50
Record label pulls artist-sanctioned MP3 tracks

Capitol demands Billy Idol, Beastie Boys remove CD quality downloads

US record label Capitol, a division of British-owned industry giant EMI, forced two of its artists to remove free music tracks encoded in the MP3 format from the Web this weekend. However, despite the music industry's ongoing paranoia over the MP3 format, Capitol's move seems to be more about its relationship with the musicians …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 16:54
Norway legalises hacking

If you want your system on the Net, you have to live with the risks, says Supreme Viking Court

Norway's supreme court has ruled that remotely exploring computers connected to the Internet is not a crime. The ruling sets a precedent that any system connected to the Internet (at least those in Norway) can be legally probed for security leaks. The ruling follows a case brought by the University of Oslo against a private …

Business 29 Dec 1998, 16:57