3rd August 1999 Archive
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Linus Torvalds more popular than Bill Gates
Linux fan club strikes again
In a bid to discover the most influential person of the last 100 years, Time Magazine is holding a whizzo online poll to discover the Person of the Century. While the usual suspects appear -- Elvis Presley, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein and Ronald Reagan(?) -- some less obvious candidates are creeping up the most popular dude …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 10:38
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Home Internet take-up rockets in UK
Freeserve fingered as prime suspect for boosting Net use
Home Internet access in the UK has jumped from five per cent to 17 per cent in just 18 months, according to a report published by Continental Research. The report breaks the figures down into school, home and work access, as well as figures for total use. The report says that 37 per cent of the population now have access to the …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 10:43
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Mobile war spreads to supermarkets
Ruffles network operator feathers
Supermarkets were sparring over pre-paid mobile phones yesterday, after Tesco cut prices by almost 40 per cent. The supermarket chain slashed prices on four models -- Cellnet, One2One, Orange and Vodafone -- from £79.99 to £49.99. Sainsbury's said it would match the offer and Asda said it would beat it -- Asda will sell Cellnet …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 10:48
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Gates donation without foundation
PR pipers at the Gates of Dawn
How strange that the PR of the Gates' foundations, Trevor Neilson, should now claim that the Gates pere et mere have "no imminent plans to give away the entirety of their wealth". In fact the Sunday Times did not suggest this. It said that some new programmes would be announced within the next three months. It also noted that …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 11:11
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Motorola turns to Caldera for Linux push
Chip company strikes deal for embedded, desktop and server Linux distributions
Motorola will next week leap onto the Linux bandwagon through a technology partnership with Caldera. The deal with Caldera takes in both sides to the company: its role as a Linux distributor, and as a developer of Linux technology for embedded applications through its Lineo subsidiary. Motorola's interest is primarily in the …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 11:31
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EarthLink sues Microworkz to recover fees
And cut-price PC vendor promises to counter-sue ISP
US ISP EarthLink yesterday confirmed it has begun legal action against Internet appliance and ultra-cheap PC vendor Microworkz. The move follows last week's suspension of the contract between the two companies. Then, EarthLink said it had severed the deal because Microworkz had allegedly breached the terms of the contract. …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 11:46
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Yahoo! wants Excite but @Home can stay at home
And what does AT&T have to say about it?
Yahoo! could be about to buy Excite@Home. Unnamed sources close to the companies concerned said that the Net giants have been talking about a possible acquisition for the last six weeks or so. What's more, Business Week Online's snouts said that Yahoo! is prepared to pay more than $17 billion -- believed to be the market value …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 12:00
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AMD positions K7 Athlon for enterprise
A whole rash of suffixes and the K doesn't wash
A senior executive at AMD has outlined the marketing and positioning the company will use to attack Intel in the mid and high-end server markets. Robert Stead, marketing director of AMD Europe, said the company would brand the K7 the Athlon Ultra for the server and workstation market For the high performance PC market, it would …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 12:02
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Gov't e-commerce policy a shambles
Opinion But Blair's got a cool web site
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has the best Web site of all the political leaders in the European Union, it's been revealed. He can now wear his anorak with pride after his site was lauded by a bunch of academic computer experts at two universities in Holland. Still, just as you shouldn't judge a book by its cover -- or a Web …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 12:11
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Bitboys unveils embedded DRAM 3D graphics chip
Basic version offers four times the throughput of existing cards, claims developer
Finnish 3D graphics accelerator developer Bitboys yesterday took the wraps off its upcoming Glaze 3D technology, and announced two versions of the chipset, the 1200 and 2400. The company claims Glaze offers significant performance improvements over current 3D accelerators by eliminating the key bottleneck within a graphics card …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 12:18
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Free Macs for sale
ISP charges subsidise hardware costs
Another company is giving away free iMacs with a paid-for ISP subscription. FreeMac.com will dish out one million iMacs over the next two years. The company is starting its bonanza this September with 10,000 freebies to get the ball rolling. Perhaps inspired by Register story earlier this year (see More home computers to be …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 12:26
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Via-AMD finalise chipset deal
Will use south bridge chips in provo chipset
Taiwanese chipset designer VIA Technologies will formally announce a K7/Athlon chipset on 10 August, a source at the company's Taipei office said today (5.30pm Taipei time). The unnamed chipset will be announced at an AMD press conference in Taipei. According to the VIA source, AMD is already incorporating one of VIA's south …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 13:31
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Sun MAJC CPU set for Java-style public licencing
Sun exec speaks to The Register
More details of Sun's Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing (MAJC - aka 'Magic') CPU have emerged following yesterday's revelations that the company is working on a new processor aimed at the Internet appliance market. According to Sun's group marketing manager for Magic, Jeff O'Neal, the device is based on a VLIW (Very …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 13:41
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Rumours ramp about Rise guys' demise
Unconfirmed layoffs
Reports from Taiwan suggested that Rise had laid staff off last week. The staff no longer working there, according to a source who worked there, include the human resource and finance teams, as well as engineers. The source said that the company could now be up for sale. If true, that would mean another x86 rival to Intel has …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 13:48
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Alpha IBM copper is a blinking whopper
That's a fib, for non-boiled beef and carrot geezers
The Big Q has now confirmed that Big Blue has not shipped Alpha processors to Compaq as reported on some US wires last week. For the whole of this year, rumours have circulated that IBM was licensing bits and pieces of its technology to Big Q to help produce the fastest processor in the West. But Richard George, Alpha marketing …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:01
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From e-by-gum to e-business
Yorkshire strides into 20th Century
Yorkshire is a county split by dual economies, it has been revealed. The land where pudding is eaten first and cricket rules is seeing an ever increasing divide between rich and poor. Where certain areas like Leeds are prospering, former coalfield communities face worsening health, housing and crime issues. But a development …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:05
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Natsemi, Via ink $167 mill Cyrix deal
It's in black and white and read all over
As expected, Natsemi confirmed today it has signed a definitive agreement with Taiwanese chipset company Via to buy its Cyrix x.86 business. The sale is likely to be completed in around a month, said NatSemi, and includes the MII x.86 family and the Mojave and Gobi products up and coming. Via will pay Natsemi $167 million. …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:19
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MS master-slave ratings drop
But the overdog still gets 60 per cent approval
Fewer users have a favourable image of Microsoft than two years ago according to polls undertaken for the New York Times. These show that Microsoft's image has dropped 19 per cent, with only 60 per cent now having a favourable opinion of the company. In the latest NYT survey, 53 per cent thought that Microsoft had a monopoly, …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:35
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Fire stops (game)play entrepreneur
...escapes, but then gets trapped in lift
An entrepreneur who yesterday netted an extra £1.5 million in his company's stock market debut, was stopped from hearing the news due to a fire at his stockbrokers. Dylan Wilk, 25-year-old excecutive director at gameplay.com, turned up to the offices of Peele Hunt in Threadneedle Street, London, to watch the morning's trading. …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:44
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Big Ron joins AOL as Director of Football
Free transfer, we assume
Ron Atkinson -- one of association football's most colourful figures -- is AOL UK's new Director of Football. He will head "You're The Boss" on AOL, although the post is not thought to be full-time. "You're The Boss" is an imaginary game where people who think they know a lot about footie can immerse themselves in a fantasy …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:51
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Microsoft dishes free software to US charities
But how much is it really worth?
Microsoft today announced it is donating "more than $7.1 million in software" to 10 US charities. Well, not quite really, because that's "the software's estimated retail value" -- the cost to Microsoft is minimal, and there are several significant advantages. Not least, it's tax deductible for Microsoft. It also stops the …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 14:56
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AMD and its Dresden Sandpit: Part I
No bunny suit…whew, what a scorcha
One of the guys flying into Dresden first thing yesterday morning said to us: "Hey, is that the AMD Fab?" We looked out of the window and saw a great big facility with the AMD green and this is what alerted our travelling companion, a streetwise native New Yorker, to the possibility. But although he knew Dresden was hammered to …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 15:00
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BT bundles modems in ADSL campaign
All-in price
BT has confirmed that early adopters of its broadband technology will not have to pay for an ADSL modem on top of the monthly subscription. A spokesman said BT engineers would install the ADSL modems and that the cost would be inclusive in the tariff. ADSL users in other countries such as Canada have to buy their own ADSL modems …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 15:05
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AOL to put Net terminals into cinemas, shops
Buys into PoS kit vendor to drive 'AOL Anywhere' strategy
AOL today took a stake in Atlanta, Georgia-based Radiant Systems, a developer of point-of-sale devices. The size of AOL's investment wasn't revealed, but the company did say it will be working with Radiant on a series of Net access systems for retail environments. It described the deal as a "multi-year agreement". It's not hard …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 15:16
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FAST claims world's biggest search engine
But size isn't everything
The Norwegian boffins behind a new search engine reckon it will be able to catalogue the entire Internet by next year. They claim alltheweb.com will be capable of searching "all the Web all the time" thanks to the Dell technology powering the service. It took scientists at Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) ten years to develop …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 15:48
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Slavery returns with eBay auction
British male could be yours for $32
Time is running out in perhaps the most exciting online auction of the year. EBay is selling a British Male, Ian Harris, to the highest bidder. When we first wrote this, the bidding has reached a staggering $5.00. Surely someone out there can beat that, we said. And we were right. Last time we checked, 12 bidders had frenzied up …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 18:15
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Hackers exploit MS design flaws
It's a question of trust, you see
Bugs in Microsoft software have given rise to a new class of security problem for which antivirus software is completely ineffective. The problem arises because Microsoft decrees that IE can "trust" MS Office 97 programs and it is therefore possible for hackers to slip in something destructive through this route. This design …
Business 3 Aug 1999, 20:10
