16th June 1999 Archive

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4-way Linux Alpha SMP server spotted

First of its kind?

Fervent DEC and Compaq watcher Terry Shannon, who edits Shannon knows Compaq is reporting that he saw a four way SMP AlphaServer ES40 running at DECUS. DECUS is the former DEC User group, a highly influential forum for putting pressure on the former Digital and the church of latterday Compaq (The Big Q). According to Shannon, to …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 07:20
Oracle prez in Web shopping gaffe

Remind us, Ray - what is it that the company that paid for your Porsche does?

Babbling happily to the New York Times' redoubtable John Markoff about the continuing boom in Silicon Valley, Oracle president Ray Lane tells of how he was apparently 'forced' to shop on the Internet. Oh dear. What's that thing Oracle's so keen on? Begins with 'I', doesn't it? Isn't Oracle supposed to be some kind of big noise …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 08:20
IE uninstall – the MS two browser trick explained

MS on Trial The trial transcript seems to point to another demo fiddle

The transcript of computer scientist Edward Felten's cross-examination by Steve 'Jack-in-the-Box' Holley exposes the trick that Microsoft played to get Felten's prototype IE removal program to fail. It turns out that Felten's program would not work if there were two browsers, so Microsoft chose to introduce a laptop with two …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 08:23
Intel to shuffle 750 jobs in Ireland

Assembly of PIIIs moving "elsewhere"

An Intel representative confirmed today that assembly jobs at its plant in Ireland will disappear, but said that workers were being offered redeployment in the fab plant. The representative said he could not give the number of staff affected, but the Irish Times says 750 jobs will go. Intel said: "We've got two plants in Ireland …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 09:00
Camino B1 silicon in…

Rumour But could have year end fever

A source with an interest in doing down Intel has told The Register that rev B1 of Camino i820 silicon has reached board manufacturers but it is still rather unwell. According to the source, who we know but who wishes to remain anonymous, rev B1 Camino drops dead when power is supplied to it. If this rather unremarkable problem …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 09:09
Apple to get first copper, SOI PPCs from IBM?

A tasty little come-on for Apple, in the run-up to the G4, mayhap...

IBM could deliver the first of its SOI (Silicon On Insulator) PowerPC chips with copper interconnect to Apple within the next two months, according to US reports. This would give Apple the opportunity to be the first company to ship machines using the new technology, which offers a claimed 30 per cent performance gain over non- …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 09:18
Name that K7

Athlon? Sounds like Athlete's Foot...

We've been sunning ourselves in the Italian lakes for the last few days so managed to miss Dirk Meyer's presentation on the K7 last week. Sorry about that. He told an assembled group of diners that the K7 has a SpecFP a groovy 40 per cent higher than Intel's Xeon with a full speed cache. The K7 only has a half speed cache. As we …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 09:32
IT manager fired for lunchtime Web surfing

Do not waste company resources -- or else, warns employer

An IT manager has been sacked for surfing the Web during her lunch hour. Lois Franxhi lost her tribunal in Liverpool yesterday after her employer said she used the company's resources to scour the Net in search of cheap holidays. Franxhi maintained she was sacked by Focus Management Consultants in Cheshire because she told them …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 09:33
That Amazon.co.uk statement in full…

intro

Statement by Simon Murdoch, managing director of Amazon.co.uk concerning the withdrawal of The Committee "It is the policy of Amazon.co.uk to offer our customers a full catalogue of all books legally available to be sold in the UK. This is based on our fundamental belief in the importance of free speech. We also believe strongly …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:01
Amazon.co.uk pulls ‘libellous’ book from shelves

But The Committee still available from US site

Amazon.co.uk has cleared its shelves of Sean McPhilemy's book, The Committee, after a senior Northern Irish politician sued the e-bookshop for libel. David Trimble, Northern Ireland's First Minister and a joint Nobel Peace Prizewinner, claims that the book contains defamatory allegations about his past. Despite Amazon's decision …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:10
ARM unveils MP3 decoder software

ARM CPU plus software better than ASICs, DSPs, apparently

ARM yesterday made its move on the digital audio market with the launch of software designed to play back MP3 and Dolby Digital files on a standard ARM CPU. The plan is to promote ARM processors and the new software hardwired into ROM chips as a low-cost alternative to ASIC-based decoders. The software was developed with Cirrus …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:24
Top Microsoft boffin votes for Russian Merced Killer

Gordon Bell produces facts and figures

The Elbrus E2K processor, dubbed the Merced Killer, has received unexpected endorsement from a senior Microsoft executive. Gordon Bell, who heads the Microsoft research unit, and developed DEC PDP and Vax, presented a table at this year's International Symposium on High Performance Computing which shows Merced in a poor light …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:29
3Dfx still tipped to buy S3

Speculation mounts big time despite UMC money

Sources close to 3Dfx emphasised today that the company is still interested in buying up S3, despite money the latter received yesterday from Taiwanese foundry UMC. In a tidying up operation, S3 will receive one UMC share for every one of its 252 million shares of USC stock. That places S3's capitalisation at an estimated $500 …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:41
Rio legal, rules appeals court

Portable MP3 player not a recording device -- official

Diamond Multimedia was feeling very pleased with itself yesterday when the US Appeals Court ruled that the company's Rio MP3 player is not a digital audio recording device. In turn, that means Rio doesn't need to ship with a copy-protection mechanism, as required by the US Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The original case …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 10:49
AMD K7 yields to no-one, especially not Intel

Engineers tip us the wink about .12 micron etching and more

A couple of years ago, The Register was down Satan Clara way and bumped into the P7 engineers in a bar. They got tipsy and tipped us the wink on future Intel marchitectures. Now, it appears, AMD engineers enjoy a tipple or two, too. A source who got drinking in an Austin bar with some AMD engineers a few weeks ago gleaned some …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:19
Magex to trial online music sales

Trail to go live in August, but first find your music providers

Magex, the e-commerce subsidiary of UK high street bank NatWest, yesterday kicked off its attempt to win the support of online content providers with the launch of a pilot digital music publishing programme. Called CranberryGrove, the scheme will begin offering music to the public around the middle of August. Right now, the …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:23
AMD copper techniques emerge

There's aluminium in them thar hills

Chip company AMD has been awarded a patent for a method of fabricating copper and aluminium metallisation. The patent number is 5,913,147, granted today and applied for on 21 Jan 1997. The inventors are Valery Dubin and Chiu Ting. The patent is a method for fabricating copper aluminium metallisation using the technique of …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:36
Oracle cuts jobs in Internet rejig

Soaring sales

Oracle is slashing 325 jobs, around one per cent of its workforce, in a rejig to focus on the Internet. The company's quarterly profits easily beat market expectations yesterday, thanks to a boost in database sales. The software maker saw profit jump 31 per cent to $527.4 million, or 36 cents a share, for the fourth quarter …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:42
Net needs to heighten hype – Cisco

We're not shouting loud enough about the new industrial revolution. Apparently

If you already thought the Internet had been blown out of all proportion -- think again. Apparently, there's not enough hoop-la and hyperbole spoken about the Internet. That's just one of the conclusions from a new report by Cisco Systems which claims that the Net is set to be as influential as the Industrial Revolution in the …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:48
Dirk Meyer spills K7 beanz

Old News Angst at Chipzilla Central sure to follow

Several of our readers wondered why we didn't cover AMD's Dirk Meyer's speech last Thursday. Thanks, those who emailed. The answer is as follows: we were at a wedding in Italy, near Lake Orta, and didn't take our ThinkPad or any other technology with us, apart from our mobile phone. And by the way, a black mark for Al Italia, …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 11:55
MS fails to list Intel CPUs as Win98 SE compatible

So don't they work then? Or is it just a childish squabble?

An alert (you may call him sad, we couldn't possibly comment) reader tips us off to the non-existence of Intel CPUs in Microsoft's Windows 98 SE compatibility list. All the other major-to-middling chip companies are there, and Intel products have a whole five pages to themselves in the list, but CPUs? Nope. Check it out yourself …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 12:03
BeOS 4.5 out next week?

Supplier's shelf-clearing suggests it will be

BeOS 4.5, the next major release of the self-styled MediaOS, could ship as early as Monday 21 June. Alternative OS-based hardware supplier SupremeGS is this week giving away free copies of the current BeOS release, version 4.0. The giveaway ends Friday, suggesting this is an exercise in clearing the shelves in preparation for …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 12:08
Texan pirate banged up in German jail

Member of £40 million bootlegging ring

An American received Germany's first prison sentence for software piracy yesterday. The Texan, identified only as John S, was sentenced to four years without probation. The German regional court of Aachen found the 39-year-old guilty of importing illegally copied Microsoft computer programs. The landmark case was the first time …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 12:20
Intel Linux site running on NT….

Oops, there goes another kilowatt plant...

Remember the briefie story we wrote about Intel sponsoring a site for Linux developers a week or so back? Well, one of our kindly readers has pointed out that www.udigwg.org is actually running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98. Ahem... ®

Business 16 Jun 1999, 12:21
Could theft explain expensive Intel chips?

Thought police fail to stop top chip blagger

A story in local newspaper The Arizona Republic has revealed that local cops have nabbed a thief who has robbed over $1 million worth of chips from Intel fabs, worldwide. According to the newspaper, suspect Christopher Michael Lovato, used to work for Intel but was able to use his old badge to shimmy into fabs and pocket shiny …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 12:31
CUT slams Government Net complacency

Self contradictory statements, pressure group claims

The Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT) has written to the British government to express its disappointment at last week's debate on the cost of Net access in the UK. In an open letter to DTI minister Michael Wills, CUT accuses the Minister for Communications of making "self-contradictory statements on the floor of …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 14:47
Merced samples may make Intel Fall

It might as well rain until September

Compaq analyst Terry Shannon is reporting in the latest edition of his newsletter Shannon knows Compaq that Merced samples are not now expected until September. The latest take on the plagued processor is that the taping out has taken longer than thought, Shannon reports. This confirms reports throughout the year that Intel is …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 14:47
Porn site operator bids high for Caesar's casinos

Bizarre offer

A porn site that reportedly makes $225 million a year now wants to get in to the gambling business. The company behind sex.com, Ocean Fund International, has issued a statement saying it had offered $3.6 billion to acquire a number of Caesar's casinos. This is despite reports the another company has already reached an agreement …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 15:00
Amazon takes $45 million stake in Sotheby's

Updated Buys in name auction house for respectability - but how respectable is Sotheby's?

Amazon.com has spent $45 million on a 1.7 per cent stake in auction house Sotheby's to secure its help in beating online auctioneer eBay at its own game and add a little bit of respectability to its own service. What respectability, we ask? According to Peter Watson's 1997 book Sotheby's: The Inside Story, the prestigious …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 15:01
Compaq stressed out by low prices

How low can a share price go?

US wires are reporting that major PC vendor Compaq is continuing to cut prices on its system units, whichever chip is used. But that could cause things to redound in Compaq's face, after ex-CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer warned earlier this year that Free PCs were the way of the future. Compaq's triumvirate, headed by Ben Rosen, has still …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 15:25
Piracy turns directors into criminals

So prosecute them, then

Almost a third of software in Britain is illegal, according to a report out this week. Over 200 companies took part in the survey by FAST (Federation Against Software Theft) and KPMG. It claims that 29 per cent of all software in use in the UK is illegal. Previous statistics suggested the country’s businesses were riddled with …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 15:39
Distributors in turmoil

End of the road

A couple of weeks is a long time in the IT industry and you really notice it when you go away. I’ve returned to find a distribution sector in even more turmoil. Profit warnings, resignations and job cuts at the once almighty Ideal Hardware, profit warnings at Datrontech and at Northamber, and more job losses at Ingram Micro. …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 15:54
News on prizes from The Reg

That Seattle mo-board and that Network Show

First the bad news. The guy offering the Seattle Mobo from Intel (Pete Sherriff) has still to adjudicate on your answers to proxy servers. Please email him herePete Sherriff and remind him that he has to make a decision, and that decadence is not enough. (BTW, Pete Sherriff and Lucy Sherriff are entirely different creatures). …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 16:20
MS ‘hit team’ head takes on geeks in Linux-NT challenge

And from the sound of it, things could get pretty messy in there...

They're off again - and this time it's personal. The latest round of the Linux versus NT grudge benchmarks kicked off at PC Week Labs in Foster City, California at the beginning of this week, and the results should be out in around a week's time. A couple of press were apparently invited to the opening skirmishes on Monday …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 16:22
Distributors in turmoil: the Ideal answer

Turn on to the IT Network

Simon Meredith is a leading UK channel journalist</> In the statements he has made to the press over the last few days, Ideal’s new MD, Ian French, has more or less said that the old model of distribution is redundant and that the group would now derive more income from its Unisolve services business and the product-comparing on …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 16:36
Distributors in turmoil: what about the little guys?

Credit lines reined in

The current sorry-state of most distribution businesses in the UK may be of little significance to the majority of end users and to many resellers – particularly those with big spending power i.e. the corporate resellers. But to the smaller resellers it’s pretty awful news. Most small resellers are already sick to the back teeth …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 16:47
Distributors in turmoil: the winners and the losers

Simon Meredith reads the form card

Distribution is moving in two opposite directions – one is taking the big companies into a high-volume model with highly automated ordering and delivery systems, the other to a high value specialised model and one that will closely align with the reseller community. This does not mean that all the distributors in the middle who …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 16:54
UK disties: the winners and the losers

Four-part report by Simon Meredith

Simon Meredith writes... Simon is one of the most well-known and well-established channel journalists in the UK. This week he assesses the prospects of the UK's biggest IT distributors. More information about Simon’s work can be found at his Web site. Distributors in turmoil The Ideal answer What about the little guys? Winners …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 17:02
Nortel ties itself in knots over mental health ‘slur’

You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps

Nortel Networks has got its wrists slapped for using a man in a straitjacket in a magazine advertisement. The Carers and Users Support Enterprise for Mental Health objected to Nortel’s recruitment advert in the Belfast Telegraph. Headed "We’re coming to take you away", it featured a wide-eyed man with a manic grin, in a …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 17:42
The Gateway expandable PC that isn't

Future proofing

Gateway 2000 has earned itself a ticking off from the UK advertising regulator for claiming its G6-350 computer is "expandable". Gateway said the model’s 64MB 100MHz SDRAM was expandable to 768MB. However, the 256MB memory chips that were needed for this upgrade were not available in the UK. The Advertising Standards Authority …

Business 16 Jun 1999, 19:54