20th September 1999 Archive

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Net Finance News: 2-8 Sept 1999

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8 Sept 1999 BT Lame Brain spills 0800 beans Concentric buys ITG for £146 million Frozen food supermarket chain Iceland is to offer Net-based home shopping from October 4 in an attempt to improve its trading position. The service will be free of charge -- unlike other schemes such as Tescos which make consumers pay for …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 00:26
Net Finance News: 9-15 Sept 1999

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15 Sept 1999 Financial site Motley Fool has secured $26.5 million in VC funding -- the first in the company's five-year history according to the WSJ. Brothers Tom and David Gardner plan to use the cash to launch a major ad campaign to drive more traffic to the site. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed it's understood …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 00:29
Ellison slaps MS, praises Euro Net take-up

Another day, another PR opportunity for Mr Oracle

Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison was in London on Friday, to preach the gospel of the Internet to Europe's IT directors. He also revealed that on Tuesday, Oracle will be announcing a deal with a major US hardware supplier - at present nameless. Watch this space. The future according to Ellison, in case you didn't know of his plans, is …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 06:23
Looking for a good time? Don't consult the Oracle

Ellison is to comedy what Keith Richards is to temperance

They will not go down in history as one of the world's greatest double acts. It is more likely that the day will be recorded as having seen one of the most toe-curlingly embarrassing displays of infomercial style sales patter. Larry Ellison had spent the best part of an hour outlining his vision of electronic business, when out …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 06:25
HP says NT not robust enough for new L-boxes

It's HP/UX and maybe Linux later

The NT operating system is not suitable for HP's entry level L-Series machines, which the company introduces today. Instead, HP will use its own flavour of Unix for the L1000 and 2000 boxes, aimed at the entry level market. Speculation is mounting that HP's CEO, Carla Fiorina, will make the split official. She will host a …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 08:42
Nokia, HP sign WAP agreement

Banking online, on your mobile

HP and Nokia have signed a deal to deliver Internet facilities on mobile phones. The deal, is attractive to Nokia because of its e-services, said Gerhard Roman, VP of marketing at Nokia. Roman demonstrated two applications on mobile phones that would use HP's expertise. Those were mobile airline ticketing services and online …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 08:42
Daewoo faces foreign debt crisis

But will the PC company's recent massive wins come to the rescue?

Stricken industrial giant Daewoo has been knocked back by creditors after asking them to agree to a six month moratorium, which would have given it a much needed break from its crippling debt repayments. It had offered collateral, in the form of shares in the company, in return for the payment break, but this was rejected over …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 09:33
AMD suffers further Gateway blow

Will ditch non-Intel chips

Chip manufacturer AMD suffered a further setback over the weekend after Gateway said it would shift to an Intel-only policy. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, it will begin to phase out K6-2s and K6-IIIs from its platform. Earlier this year, Gateway declined to use AMD's Athlon K7 in its products. That is …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 10:06
ADSL gets green light from Freeserve

Broadband service to go live in November

Freeserve is to begin trialling broadband ADSL technology in November, the company said today. It will provide the high speed Net access using BT's ADSL network although the exact details of the trial have not been disclosed. The ISP said the cost of the always-on service will be published on its Web site. No one from Freeserve …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 10:23
Nasdaq hacked through MS security hole

MS Internet Information Server fingered yet again

Flaws in Microsoft's Internet Information Servers have been blamed for the hack attack on the Nasdaq and American Stock Exchange Web site last week. The weaknesses allowed hackers to breach security and trash one of the most high profile Web sites in the US. The allegation was made by London-based mi2g software which carried out …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 11:38
How MS can hold onto the market while embracing XML

Stay ahead with the client, and being 'open' doesn't matter

The sight of Microsoft enthusiastically embracing open standards, really meaning it, and being believed as well is novel, but as far as XML is concerned, it's becoming less so. Microsoft really is driving XML, Paul Maritz really (probably) means it when he says Web services architectures should be open and standards-based, and …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 11:58
Inside AppCenter – the march away from COM

The three phase plan...

With only around 10 per cent of so-called secure Web sites being created with Windows NT, Microsoft is concerned that it is at present the Web site dunce. Last week, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer made his pitch to change that. Ballmer has to pay homage to Gates in his speeches. This time it was an obeisance to what Gates had …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:03
MS IE5 XML not entirely pure, and what's this patent?

Just when the company's making noises about openness, this sort of stuff happens...

Great emphasis is being given by Microsoft to XML, prompting the suspicion that it won't be long before we read of impure XML. Parsing Ballmer's recent comments and looking at the sub-text, when he said that software would "metamorphose", and that it could not do so "in today's environment of monolithic server code", it was …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:12
Inside AppCenter – Windows becomes the Internet platform

It's a cunning variation on what MS feared Netscape might do to it

Last week's web applications development announcements from Microsoft contain little that is really new, and it seems to be a move to snatch some media attention from announcements by HP and other vendors. The focus was on what Microsoft is calling an AppCenter Server, described as a component of Windows DNA 2000. The …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:13
BT moves to pacify Northern Irish Net users

Free PC bundle delayed by lack of contractors

Net users in Northern Ireland were outraged last week after discovering that an offer to buy a Fujitsu PC and receive toll-free weekend access to the Net via BTInternet was not available outside mainland Britain. They were so incensed that the offer didn't extend to Northern Ireland they were prepared to close their BTInternet …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:15
Tempo eases off Screaming.net distribution

Not stocking software for its own ISP until service improves

Tempo has confirmed that it could be up to a month before it starts re-stocking its stores with Screaming.net software. It means anyone hoping to join the ISP will have to wait up to six weeks to take advantage of off-peak toll-free calls to the Internet. Tempo stopped stocking the CD-ROMS a week ago and said it took the …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:50
Speedy Net access on the move

MRi claims price point breakthrough with latest kit

Microcomputer Research International (MRi) has launch a new range of mobile communications devices, for use with a laptop and mobile phone. It claims the range is the cheapest set of branded mobile comms products on the market. The MRI-56GSM modem is compatible with all major GSM handsets. For just 90 of your earth pounds, you …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 12:57
HP's curious NT tale gets curiouser

Linux isn't its flavour of the month, either

The L-boxes HP launched earlier today, and which will be available in mid-October, are intended to bridge the gap when IA-64 arrives, said Patrick Rogers, system solutions marketing manager at HP US. Rogers filled in more details about HP's strategy with its OS and confirmed that even though it will compete with its own Intel …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 14:00
Kingston upgrade kit extends life of notebooks

Good news for notebook users, bad news for notebook resellers

Kingston Technology reckons it has just extended the life expectancy of your notebook PC by one year, thanks to a hard disk upgrade kit. StrataDrive Plus is described by Kingston as a hardware and software solution for such upgrades. The product will initially be aimed at corporate users, but Maria Garcia Martin, product manager …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 14:03
Disney Web exec on kiddie porn charge

Federal agents swoop on paedophile in undercover sting

Less than 24 hours after Disney's three little pigs launched a Mickey Mouse initiative to protect children from online pervs, the FBI arrested a senior Infoseek executive for trying to solicit sex with a 13-year-old girl. Thirty four year-old Patrick Naughton, a top executive at Infoseek and the man in charge of Disney's Web …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 14:27
BT pagers still not available in Welsh

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Five month old story surfaces in national (news) paper Two cheers for the hacks at the Daily Torygraph. We spotted a News In Brief item in today's issue saying that BT has been criticised for not carrying pager messages in Welsh. Sounds familiar, we thought. And so it was, because we wrote about it on 13 April. And here it is. …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 14:41
Notebook prices will plunge – - but when?

...Sometime in 2001, when LCD famine ends

Notebook prices are set to plummet -- but only when LCD shortages end sometime in 2001. Compared to historical levels, the cost of LCD panels is now so high that notebook price reductions seem inevitable when the shortage ends. By 2001 at the latest, Mr Wang (he of little first name) of Twinhead International expects an …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:05
Seagate shakes dead chicken image

Hey little hen, when, when, when?

Why did the chicken cross the road – it's an old gag construct but it's now been given a new lease of life, courtesy of Seagate. According to Eurotrademag.com, Seagate's latest HDDs – the U8 series – are so robust they will help the company get away from the nickname its Medalist HDD range acquired -- the dead chicken -- so …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:06
BT curries SME favour with HP sauce

Big names hope to lure small businesses online

Hewlett Packard and BT are launching a range of PCs aimed at Internet novices in the SME market. The two giants will offer Web-ready HP Brio PCs to small businesses from 1 October. The machines form a package that promises to hold SMEs' hands and take them through using the Internet step by step. The five models are priced from …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:15
MS France in shock Linux availability claim

OEMs don't have to ship Windows, customers can buy Linux instead, beam me up...

The French authorities seem to be trying to limit the reverberations of their investigation of Microsoft, which leaked out last week. The French competition and anti-fraud directorate (DNERF) of the ministry of finance's probe is in response to complaints by consumers that they do not want to have Windows pre-loaded. Just one …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:29
Overclocking – just say yes/no/maybe

Our readers write…

Well, at least we now know there’s a subject which generates as much passion as Linux out there in RegisterLand. Three days after our look at overclocking and the risks it poses (Story: Overclocking -- just say no), we have received almost 150 responses from readers. Some agree that overclocking is ill-advised; some say that …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:30
Gates' maths fails – can't count his millions

He's obviously confusing TPM with stock prices

Bill Gates has historically been presented as a boy wonder with prodigious ability at arithmetic, but The Register can expose the myth with its own superior sums. Last week, Gates said that "now we're up at over 40,000 transactions per minute" with SQL. "In the course of a day, that would be 120 million transactions," he added. …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:35
MetaStor pushes open SAN channel scheme

Looking to sign up additional resellers

MetaStor Storage Solutions, a division of Logic Storage Systems, starts its first channel scheme for open SAN solutions tomorrow. The storage company is launching its Channel Alliance Partner Programme. This will give resellers sales support, technical training and customer education on open SAN solutions – a package where …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:36
MS snared for bankrolling pro-MS ads

Academic supporters claim ignorance of source of funding

Things aren't what they purport to be in advertisements supporting Microsoft, even if they are what you'd expect. It has been confirmed that the 240 Californian academics who "supported" Microsoft in its antitrust woes by putting their names to a round robin letter pushed by the Independent Institute did not know that Microsoft …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:44
Software developed to tell if you're lying

If your cheeks don't twitch when you smile, no one will believe you

Programmers from the University of Pittsburgh claim to have developed revolutionary new software, that can actually tell if you are lying. Based on a 20 year-old system, the program analyses facial movements using electronic markers and can tell if someone is trying to conceal an emotion. Genuine expressions are more complex …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:44
Paul Allen cleared in sex harassment case

Judge kicks out claim by former business associate

The sexual harassment suit filed against Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has been dismissed by a judge in Los Angeles. The suit was filed by his former business partner (no, not Bill) Abbie Phillips. The case was dismissed with prejudice, which means it cannot be retried. Phillips claimed she had been forced out of …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 15:53
Crackers get £1m ransom from banks

Bankers get spanked by latest e-crime trend

A disturbing new trend is emerging in the world of online finance. Crackers (naughty hackers) are holding banks to ransom, threatening to cripple their systems or make public sensitive information, demanding huge sums of money. In Germany last week, Noris Verbraucherbank offered a DM10,000 (£3,000) reward to catch a cracker who …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 16:27
Intel takes on Olicom R&D team

The Danish fire sale continues

Olicom, the moribund networking equipment vendor, has sold its 220-strong R&D team to Intel for an undisclosed sum. Intel has an affinity with Denmark and networking: in 1997 it stumped up £46 million for the Danish operations of Case,(the rump of which is now called Anite) to take it into Fast Ethernet for the first time. …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 18:03
MS Softway purchase – could it unleash ‘Linux for Windows’

Microsoft may be starting to buy the components of its Linux defence strategy

On Friday Microsoft announced it had bought small San Francisco Unix developer Softway Systems, explaining that the deal was intended to strengthen Unix-Windows interoperability. But there's more to this than meets the eye - Softway had been putting its toes into the waters of open source and Linux on Windows, so despite the …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 19:07
How much of Tandem's IP does Compaq own?

Doubts grow over crown jewels

The owners of Tandem took care to ensure their intellectual property was vested in a third party company, reliable sources said. Although Compaq took over Tandem a couple of years ago, a former employee said today it was unable to buy the entire intellectual property. Tandem is trusted by people, worldwide, because of its …

Business 20 Sep 1999, 23:53