3rd November 1999 Archive

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BT's double act with gov't is more of a double whammy

Opinion You can wipe that smile off your face, it's not big and it's not clever

They're like two old soaks staggering down the road, arm in arm, telling each other how great they are. But the sight of the government and BT reeling from side to side, all pally-pally with each other won't wash with British business or consumers. BT's extension of its Schools Internet Caller scheme offering cut-price flat-fee …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 07:49
HP unveils Y2K fly-swatter for channel

Customers and resellers can sleep easy

Hewlett-Packard will this month be sending DIY Y2K fix-it kits to its European resellers. The free CDs will go out to HP's Connect accredited resellers, aimed at getting customers and resellers to check their systems for Y2K compliance. The kits will include BIOS releases for updating HP systems and software patches, with …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 07:57
High speed links to education get gov't green light

BT must be tickled pink

The government has announced a £50 million programme to kick-start the roll out of high-speed links to the Internet in schools and other learning institutions. Education and Employment Secretary, David Blunkett, said: "There is now an opportunity for local education authorities, in partnership with other agencies, to form …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 07:59
October DRAM price round-up

Prices fall faster than they went up

DRAM prices fell steadily in October as the post-earthquake hype subsided and buyers were left holding excess stock. The first week of October in the spot market saw prices still nudging $20 per chip, around $160 for a 64MB module (PC 100), according to Dataquest. This was a drop of around 20 per cent on September's peak in the …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 08:00
TurboLinux puts its case on clustering

Suck it and see, says TurboDoc...

The keeper of the TurboLinux kernel tree, Christian 'DocWhat' Holtje has written to us clearing up the company's position to its load-balancing patch to the Linux kernel. So let the man speak: "TurboLinux is not going to fork the kernel. One little module does not fork the kernel. Lots of projects do this, including advanced …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 08:50
Goldman Sachs talks up ARM stock

Fuel to the blazing fire

Goldman Sachs has upped its target price for ARM Holdings following the chip manufacturer's deal with Texas Instruments. In a note entitled "Adding Fuel to the Blazing Fire", Goldman Sachs upgraded its value of ARM's shares to 2200 pence from 1650 pence. Yesterday Cambridge-based ARM announced it would collaborate with Texas …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 10:22
UK gov't dismisses 3G mobile phone stealth tax charge

Give us £50m now, £500m by Easter and the licence is yours

E-minister Patricia Hewitt yesterday dismissed accusations that the government is imposing a stealth tax on the telecoms industry with its auction for third-generation mobile phones operator licences. A £50 million deposit is required to even enter the game. All interested parties will then take part in an 18-day auction with …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 10:37
Nortel promises 5000 new jobs

Devon and Northern Ireland big beneficiaries

Nortel Networks will create 5000 jobs worldwide in a $400 million splurge on its optical Internet systems unit. The Canadian vendor yesterday announced plans to triple production capacity in the division in 2000, creating jobs in systems integration and testing, engineering and customer service. Many of the new jobs will be in …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 10:58
MSN eShop doors closed to IE, Netscape browsers

Fixed now, but database glitch hits launch

Some of the shine rubbed off MSN's lustrous opening of its new digital store yesterday when eager shoppers were confronted with an error message instead of a well-stocked e-mporium. MSN's eShop was launched in time to capitalise on the holiday season spending spree, predicted by Forrester Research to top $4 billion this year. …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 11:07
Teledesic raises more cash – but global broadband is still dream

Satellite of love

Teledesic has raised another $121 million from the Abu Dhabi Investment Company, owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. This raises the total invested in Teledesic to around $1.5 billion. Deputy chairman Steven Norris of Satellite Holdings, one of the investing organisations in the ADIC …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 11:15
Lycos, FAST launch multimedia search engine

It's good, our Graham says

Lycos and Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) launched a multimedia search product yesterday called Lycos RichMedia Search for finding pictures, films, streams and sound on the Web, at www.richmedia.lycos.com . Search results are grouped, or may be chosen by media category. There are 17 million files in the catalogue at present. FAST …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 11:27
Contractors: cast aside your IR 35 fears, Paymaster General says

Treasury publishes open letter on tax changes

A lot has been written about the changes we announced in the Budget to stop avoidance of tax and NICs [National Insurance Contributions] by people using personal service companies. I want to explain why we acted. The problem arises where an individual is doing a job in circumstances which would normally make him an employee of …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 11:50
Intel chipset volte face will hit Rambus hard

Analysis Amador hammer of the Dramurai

Amador City, close to the strangely named Dry Town in a wine-growing area of California, is the code name of choice for Intel's excursion into the wonderful world of SDRAM, PC-133 and double data rate (DDR) memory next year. Information we received yesterday from two separate semiconductor analysts in the US, suggest that the …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 11:55
NEC fires 80 per cent of Packard Bell staff

PB to pull out of retail, senior bosses to go

NEC has pulled the plug on Packard Bell -- at least as a retail-oriented operation, by firing 80 per cent of the subsidiary's staff, including all of its senior management. The reason? PB entirely failed to stem its losses to the extent that backers NEC and France's Groupe Bull required. A PB spokesman, quoted in today's Wall …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 12:13
KMS responds to Intel lawsuit

And we wonder about Goldsmith-like tactics

UK distributor KMS has now confirmed it has received a long brown envelope from Intel containing an accusation that is involved in patent infringement. Linda Drew, company secretary at KMS, said the firm had received a writ in the High Court from Intel, in which her company, First International Computer (FIC) and Via were also …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 12:30
Sun packs redundant processors for Web site upgrades

Neat marketing ploy or blast from the mini-computer past?

Sun Microsystems is offering hard-pressed ecommerce sites an hardware upgrade path that's so smooth the hardware remains the same. It works like this: buy a 24-processor E10000 server but pay for only the processors you use. And when you need extra capacity -- just turn the tap on. Typically, swamped e-commerce sites have had to …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 13:03
BT signs up for world's biggest NDS for NT contract

90K licences

Novell has landed the biggest NDS for NT contract in the world from BT, with 50,000 licences for immediate deployment, and a further 40,000 licences by May next year. BT is a bit of a Novell shop. In May, Novell received its biggest contract outside the US when BT renewed its licence agreement to upgrade its NetWare installation …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 13:28
Action to ditch paper for Net

Another nail in the coffin for the Post Office

Action Computer Supplies is ditching mail order for online sales with the launch of a new Web site today. The reseller, which last month saw its proposed buyout by US giant Insight Enterprises fall through, plans to phase out its paper catalogues and sell entirely online. This move is part of a wider cost-cutting exercise, …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 13:37
Sun touts pre-launch Solaris 8 for $20

Early access release

Sun Microsystems is offering early-access releases of both the Sparc and Intel versions of Solaris 8, now due in February, for the knockdown price of $20 (to cover materials and documentation). It is wooing Linux users with the inclusion of Perl and GNU development tools in Solaris 8. With the new release, the Solaris kernel is …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 15:00
IR35 protesters march on Parliament

Battle hots up as Commons tries again to push through proposals

Angry protesters outside the House of Commons today have slammed Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo's open letter on IR35 proposals, accusing her of running to the press rather than meeting concerned representatives. Primarolo claimed in the letter -- released yesterday in time for a Commons debate today -- that all parties had …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 15:02
Buy UK gov't-approved torture guns on the Web

This time the Blair Net Project goes too far

With more oppressive regimes going online every day, it seems only natural that Britain, The E-commerce Nation,(speak to Tony) will make the most of it. So if you're shopping for electric stun guns -- particularly good for torture -- then go no further than the DTI's TradeUK Web site. With machetes sent to Rhodesia and Hawk jets …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 15:51
Big Q hits back at Gartner Alpha report

Not credible it will dump EV platforms for IA-64

Compaq has repudiated suggestions from marketing research firm the Gartner Group that the Alpha programme is in any sort of danger. A report on the Gartner Group's home page gives probability figures for the Alpha platform continuing and discusses its involvement in the Monterey project, as well as commenting on the demise of …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 15:58
LinuxOne unveils Linux-on-Windows LinuxLite

Updated Runs right off a Windows partition

Controversial Linux distributor LinuxOne has announced the release of LinuxOne Lite, a cut-down version of the open source OS that will run straight out of a user's Windows installation. It's not the first time a Linux distribution that works from within another OS' hard drive partition has been offered -- that honour goes to …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:01
HP pushed Intel down Merced DDR memory route

Delivered an ultimatum on Rambus-Merced

Chip company Intel is under pressure on a number of fronts and has all sorts of deals to make with all sorts of people. It's the keystone that cops all sorts of trouble when things go awry. But now it has emerged from a source close to its plans that it was Hewlett Packard which persuaded Intel to adopt a non-Rambus chipset for …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:13
Japan child porn law comes into force

Online paedophile haven shut down

New laws outlawing child pornography in Japan came into force in Japan on Monday and could eventually lead to a net reduction in the sexual exploitation of children on the Web. Before Monday, the whole area of child porn was untouched by legislation, effectively making Japan an offshore haven for the global trafficking in …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:18
MS Halloween Linux report author surfaces at onebox.com

Not a Linux outfit at all - Web site runs on Solaris

The author of Microsoft's 'Halloween' Linux documents has indeed left the company for a start-up, but it's not a Linux one, nor was his departure anything to do with the leaking of his reports a year ago. That, at any rate, is what Vinod Valloppillil said to Dow Jones Newswire, which tracked him down to onebox.com. Sniffily, …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:19
Japanese overclockers turn PIIIs into supercharged tomatoes

A 450MHz PIII suddenly runs at 750MHz with a 165MHz bus

Technicians in Japan have transformed Intel 450MHz Pentium IIIs into 750MHz Pentium IIIs and have encouraged the system bus to go like the clappers at 165MHz. The site, Tomato Overclockers, describes a method of transforming what is now a singularly cheap chip into something that bests the up-and-coming Coppermines in …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:30
Cooked Athlon 800MHz, 900MHz up for sale in USA

But they can't be the real thing,AMD confirms

An American site is offering Athlon 800MHz and 900MHz for sale, many months before the chips are likely to be available. That has led AMD to the conclusion that the chips must be cryogenically cooled, although the Web site is not clear on this point. They're not cheap. If you turn to Shop USA, the site is offering 800MHz and …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 16:31
Chipzilla chops chip

... hardly anyone told 450MHz part sent to the chip gulag

The first Pentium III to die has quietly shuffled off this mortal coil. The 450MHz part has been consigned to the chip gulag in the usual low-key manner -- no official announcement, it just stops being mentioned in despatches. The untimely death -- the poor little thing was only launched at the end of February -- was caused by …

Business 3 Nov 1999, 18:46