A year ago: FTC won't give up on Intel

It just seems merely one week ago that we received a cock-a-hoop email from Santa Clara telling us (incorrectly) that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had given it a clean bill of health. This was to do with the famous Chips & Technologies acquisition which had been a mouldering in some federal office waiting for the go-ahead which it now seems to have... Rivals to Intel had complained that the chip giant wanted everything including the kitchen sink if that made money. And now we spot that just a couple of days after Intel's favourite government agency has given it the green light, it is quite possibly up to its tricks again. Intel has bought a 20 per cent stake in Lockheed Martin's company Real 3D and co-incidentally, that company is helping to develop Intel's famous i740 graphics chip (passim). But all is not necessarily hunky-dory as far as the US FTC is concerned, The Register is given to understand. In fact, there is still considerable head-scratching about the Intel-Digital deal last year, so famously misreported by every man and his chihuahua. And we are also given to understand that a close perusal of Intel's yearly results shows that when its famous senior VP stood up at the end of last year and said his company was going be tres aggressif about the networking market too, the Great Stan was not joking. According to our friends at Infoworld, Lockheed Martin will allow Intel to have a non-voting observer present at its board meetings. This reminds us that when Microsoft had a 19 per cent stake in SCO some years ago, it also had a non-voting member of the board but he was made to go out for a walk during critical discussions about the future of operating systems. And look what's happened to SCO... * Register HairStyleTip 213. Heads I win, tails you lose is a useful phrase which describes a one-sided relationship -- possibly a little like having your hair shorn by a stylist who wants to trim the back of your neck with a cutthroat razor.