7th October 1999 Archive
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Cadence ‘still committed to Scotland’
Scots parliament springs a nasty leak
Scottish hacks were yesterday celebrating one of the first leaks to come out of the new Scottish Parliament. Senior Cadence US management met Scots MPs behind closed doors a week back, but unfortunately, governmental mouths remained firmly open a few days later in unguarded conversations with the gentlemen of the McPress. A …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 09:42
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Sony to launch Playstation-based (Linux?) workstation
Emotion Engine to form base of blow-your-socks-off thunderbox
Sony is to follow up the launch of the Playstation 2 next March with a move into the business workstation market, according to this morning's Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The new line of machines will use the Playstation 2's Emotion Engine processor, and although the company doesn't seem to have said anything about the OS as yet, Linux …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 10:04
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Tailored Linux systems will supplant Windows, says Torvalds
Old standard block approach doomed
Monolithic operating systems consisting of "standard blocks" are on the way out, said Linus Torvalds yesterday, and they will be replaced by specially tailored and personalised systems. Torvalds was speaking at Internet World on the subject of Linux in business, and it appears he's now thinking about how the characteristics of …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 10:06
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QXL eight times oversubscribed
Successful IPO
QXL has struck its IPO share price at 195p -- at the top end of the indicative range -- after its offering was oversubscribed 8 times. This gives the online auction house a market cap of £263 million when shares start trading today on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The company is raising £54.6 million in new money ( …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 10:13
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DoJ's MS-busting budget a bargain – but what has MS spent?
MS on Trial Statement of costs shows great bangs per buck
The DoJ's action against Microsoft seems to have been something of a bargain. Total costs since 1989 have added up to a budget $12.6 million, or thereabouts. For the present case, in 1998 to February 99 (the period of the current action), costs were under $7 million. The sum was revealed in an answer to Senator Slade Gorton, who …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 10:31
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Nvidia goes bi-annual barmy
New AGPs to roll every six months - are they mad?
As my nan used to say, you won't get anywhere if you haven't got balls - and Nvidia has got them by the golf bag. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang promises to introduce a new and more advanced graphics processor every six months in his company's quest for worldwide PC domination. The wisdom of setting such an easily checkable roadmap will …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 11:27
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CHS canned by Intel
Major distie loses Chipzilla franchise in UK & Germany
Intel has ditched CHS Electronics as one of its UK distributors. A representative at the chip giant today confirmed: "We have terminated our distribution agreement with CHS Electronics in the UK and Germany. We will still keep our key agreements with CHS in France and Turkey." The representative refused to comment on the reasons …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 12:07
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The channel is revolting – against CTS prices
Resellers & disties complain they can't afford to make an exhibition of themselves
The channel peasants are revolting and threatening to boycott next year's Computer Trade Show because of price hikes. Around 20 top distributors and resellers have grouped together to complain about floor space costs, which they claim have shot up by around 50 per cent. One square metre of floor at CTS 2000 will cost £375 at the …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 13:45
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Microsoft's Satanic Majesty requests
Google Eyes links Microsoft with Evil
What is "more evil than Satan himself"? Well, if you put this search term in the rather interesting www.google.com search engine, you get www.microsoft.com ranked first. Fancy that. We thought we had better check the page, and what did we find? Well, Exchange 2000 Server Beta 3. Being a little frightened of matters Satanic, we …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 14:07
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Microsoft uses (some) Macs in Redmond
...says WordPerfect user Graham Lea
For some important documents, like its Annual Report, Microsoft uses Macs. Kerry Leimer Jay used Word 98 for the Mac on his G3 system, and his file - with a path name that will be familiar to Mac users - was msft:ar99:downloads:ar99.doc. The discovery was made by Richard M Smith, a MacInTouch reader. The Word version of the …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 14:13
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HP gears up to go direct
Server configuration scheme reveals hidden secret
A server configuration programme unveiled yesterday by Hewlett Packard is set to put the US giant on the road to direct selling, with its resellers left sitting on the services sidelines. With its eyes firmly fixed on the runaway success of Dell, HP is boasting that by taking NetServer configuration work away from its resellers …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 14:25
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Top exec quits BTInternet over lack of investment
Telecomms giant criticised for focus on telecomms
BTInternet has seen its second senior exec walk out over frustration at the company's lack of investment in the Web. John Swingewood was head of BT's Internet division and was said to have quit the telecomms giant following "differences at the top". One source told today's Daily Mail: "It's because BT is less than fully …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 14:45
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Taiwan quake sees PC vendors bin product launches
Component shortages start to make themselves known
PC manufacturers have had to revise production and marketing plans for the Christmas rush because of a lack of components following the Taiwanese earthquake. NEC has shifted production to other sites and new product announcements from both Fujitsu and IBM have been put back. Taiwan is a key production centre for PCs and …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 14:56
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Nokia ambushes rivals with flashy, lightweight 8210
Column Tero waxes lyrical on Nokia's pincer movement
Nokia's weakest point in the handset market this winter has been the narrow selection of under-100 gram models. Currently the only entry is the 8810, which works in just GSM-900 and had no truly advanced features like voice-dialling. GSM-900/1800 dual-band competition from Motorola and Ericsson has given the competition …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 15:45
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Athlon Powers turns AMD loss into not-as-big AMD loss
Blames quake for sales slip, but beats analysts' expectations anyway
AMD didn't lose quite as much money in its third quarter as had been expected, turning last Q3's profit of a tad more than $1 million into a loss of $105.6 million. In Q2 of this year, it recorded a loss of $162 million, excluding exceptional items. During Q3 sales dipped by 3.4 per cent from $686 million to $662 million. The …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 15:50
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SGI Cray C90 – blazingly fast, momentarily
Brother, can you spare a Cray?
It's official, the Cray C90 supercomputer really smokes. Well, it's worse than that actually - we're talking seriously hot technology here. The US National Centers for Environmental Prediction published a sad note to field operatives today concluding that the C90, which caught fire on September 27th, is most definitely a write- …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 16:23
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Online Jewish bun-fight erupts
Community divided over who best serves the community
A fight seems to have broken out among the Jewish community in the UK. This has nothing to do with Talmud writings or kosher food, but is a war over who has the best Web site. First it was Benjamin Cohen, the teen entrepreneur who was rumoured to be worth around £5 million thanks to his Jewishnet site. Then Kosheronline jumped …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 16:53
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Linux for credit cards ships
Or more properly, credit cards for Linux...
You could say it had to happen, but actually, it didn't really have to, did it? The Linux Fund has launched a Linux affinity credit card, issued by MBNA and resplendent with cartoon penguin on the front. Each time you use the card, you'll be making a contribution (unspecified, as far as we can make out) to The Linux Fund, which …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 17:38
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Philips cans Velo, bows out of WinCE
Bound to flee to Symbian - but will it be welcome?
Philips is dumping Windows CE along with its Nino handheld because of poor sales and tough competition from Palm. Philips says the market was smaller than expected, but that's a question of market definition. Palm sales are healthy enough, so perhaps it's the CE market that is too small and highly competitive at that, what with …
Business 7 Oct 1999, 17:39
