17th August 1999 Archive

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Big Blue in at the dawn of the universe

Five years ago Quark gluon plasma heavy ion shock horror

From The Register No. 2, August 1994 It's not entirely clear what happened when the universe began, but IBM, with the help of a POWERparallel system at the US Brookhaven National Laboratory aims to get to the bottom of the mystery. Scientists at the lab, Big Blue said, are running simulations of collisions of atomic particles …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 06:31
Compaq exec re-org: Alpha being pushed hard

Enrico "The Cloak" Pesatori gets his way

As reported here earlier, Compaq will announce a further reorganisation in its executive ranks. We are currently on the phone waiting for the conference call to start. But in the meantime, since we wrote the story at 8.15 UK time, further salient facts have emerged, one of which is that Compaq will spend $100 million pushing the …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 07:12
CHS ‘evaluates strategic alternatives’, red inks $89.2m

For sale, one distie giant?

CHS has effectively put itself up for sale. The distie giant is to hire an investment bank to "evaluate strategic alternatives that would enhance shareholder value" -- the standard industry euphemism for "buy us". Times may be tough for distributors -- but times are tougher for CHS than most. It is paying the bills for its dash …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 07:19
HP turns in fat profit for Q3

Revenues up by 11 per cent

Hewlett-Packard said yesterday evening it had recorded a net profit increase of 37 per cent in its Q3 while revenues grew by 11 per cent, year on year. Its net profits amounted to $853 million for the quarter, compared to $621 million in Q3 1998, while revenues rose to $12.2 billion. European growth was strong, with the …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 07:27
Massacre of innocence on football thug Web site

TV researcher makes a real hash of things

Oh dear, some people are just baffled by technology, aren't they? Take the case of the TV researcher who wanted to contact self-styled football hooligan Paul Dodd in connection with a documentary about football fans and drug abuse. The researcher in question decided the best route to Dodd was via his Web site. More specifically …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 09:53
IBM workers start trade union

Man the barricades!

Our friends over at IDG Net are reporting that workers at Big Blue are in revolt over a proposed change in pension plans and are trying to organise a union. And the workers are using the Internet to coordinate their efforts. Over at IBM Union, the workers are asking that the firm start to respect individuals again. The workers …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 10:14
Microworkz moves to settle EarthLink suit

PC vendor fails to file countersuit, tries to talk its way out of it

Microworkz appears to back-tracking away from its aggressive stance against US ISP EarthLink following the latter's legal assault on the budget-priced PC maker for alleged breach of contract. Microworkz has not only yet to issue its promised countersuit against the ISP, but actually appears to be trying to settle this one …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 10:35
RegMark™ Lite® shows Celeron trashing AMD Athlon

And refinements and tweaks in progress...

Pete Sherriff has been slaving in his fab lab to produce a new RegMark™ to account for the existence of Athlon AMD processors and has come up with a formula he describes as the RegMark™ Lite®. According to Sherriff, he is unable to find a multimedia mark for the Athlon K7, so he has invented a way to use the Lite figure to …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 11:16
Commodore wannabe claims Amiga ‘fooled’ community

Iwin's new Amiga-based boxes use hardware emulation to bypass Amiga IP

Iwin -- the European software and hardware developer at the centre of a plan to buy and revive the Commodore brandname and return it to the Amiga market -- has followed up The Register's coverage of the move with a statement of its own. In a Deja.com forum posting, Iwin president Mark Steinbach confirmed the company, formed from …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 11:19
HP says it's on target for Merced next year

Confirms HP/UX, Win NT, Linux support

Hewlett Packard confirmed today it will support HP/UX, 64-bit Windows NT and Linux on Merced. It also said that it will support MPE/iX on future IA-64 systems and confirmed it would incorporate Merced into its top end server lines by the middle of next year. Hugh Jenkins, product marketing manager for HP's enterprise division, …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 12:30
Calling all e-potatoes: look at this ad and earn 30p an hour!

Good grief, now we have to be paid to watch banner ads

A British Internet start-up is to offer Net users cash in return for looking at ads. SurfMILES plans to take on other similar schemes including Sharkhunt.com (see earlier story) and the US-based company Alladvantage which recently announced its entry into Britain and Canada. Net users will, in effect, be paid 30 pence an hour to …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 13:06
Drop the Bomb Dot Com

Bids start at $95K

An explosive Web site is up for sale. Bomb.com is being auctioned on e-Bay and has already attracted a bid of $95,000. Whether it's a genuine bid or not has yet to be established but the one-time offer is certainly kosher. Bomb.com was registered by the publishers of Game Zero Magazine in 1994 but now they're looking to get shot …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 13:21
Home PC sales soar in China

Locals account for six out of 10 top vendors

The home PC is driving growth in the PC market in China, according to a preliminary report from research company IDC. Over 2.2 million units were shipped in the first half of 1999, representing a 19.6 per cent increase on the same period last year. Local manufacturers account for six of the top ten vendors in China for the first …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 14:18
Craft guilds answer to techno-exploitation

But will it happen?

The Internet could see workers scurrying to Medieval-style guilds for protection, according to Government-appointed crystal ball gazers. The Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI) Future Unit outlines two possible scenarios on the effect that technology will have on workers. First up, is the Wired World, a Utopian vision where …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 14:40
Compaq's server strategy still cloaked in mystery

When is an industry standard not an industry standard?

Enrico Pesatori, a senior VP at Compaq, said today that the company's relationship with Microsoft was of critical importance to the future of the company. And the potential of its Non Stop Computing e-business strategy was as much as $750 billion, said Pesatori in a conference call from New York, New York. He said that Microsoft …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 15:04
Principal goes under as creditors take a hit

KPMG warns money unlikely to come back

Creditors of Principal Distribution are unlikely to get any cash back, receivers KPMG have warned. The Macintosh distributor, based in Broughton near Manchester, went into receivership last week owing around £1 million. Just five out of the 35 staff have been kept on to help sell the name, goodwill and around £400,000 of stock. …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 15:55
Energis tests viability of 0800 services

Kicks off scheme with ISP minnow to see if it’s worth beefing up

Energis -- which reportedly carries 50 percent of all the UK national Internet traffic -- is to offer toll-free dial-up access to the Internet to see whether such a scheme would be commercially viable, The Register can reveal. It has teamed up with Shetland Isle-based ZetNet to provide 0800 access at weekends for the ISP's seven …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 15:58
BOL locked in online book price war

Latest price promotion goes live

Online bookseller BOL is stepping up its aggressive sales campaign by offering cut-price books. The new titles include Point of Origin by Patricia Cornwell, Sebastian Faulks' Charlotte Grey and Blast from the Past by Ben Elton. Part of BOL's Summer Reading promotion the books will be priced at either £2 or £3. ® Daily Net …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 16:11
Watch your typing – it could affect your credit rating

Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) retracted one of the computer companies named on its "danger list" yesterday. D&B had sent out its regular list of companies with dubious credit ratings, which is designed to act as an early warning system for other businesses. One of the companies listed was distributor Enta Technologies. But on closer …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 16:14
Tiny bins free PC offer

Great British Public want to pay for their PCs

Tiny Computers has binned its "free" PC offer due to a lack of interest. The company introduced the deal a month ago to wide media speculation . Users had to sign up to its telco service TinyTelecom for 12 months and spend a minimum of £25 per month on call charges. In return they got a low-end PC without a monitor. According to …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 17:20
Mobile phones are a real pain in the neck

The technical term is spondylitis

The horror stories: A woman blocked her neck arteries after a half hour phone conversation while doing the ironing, and a man lost the use of his arm for a month after holding the phone in the crook of his neck, damaging a nerve. Holding your telephone the wrong way can kill you. Well, not quite, but physiotherapists are saying …

Business 17 Aug 1999, 17:27