23rd November 1999 Archive
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New millennium will bring doom and gloom
Letter Ziggurat smoking is injurious to your health
Sirs, I am writing to complain about the lack of coverage which the press has given to the Y1K problem. The fact that the ominous portents seen in the sky and Pope Silvester's homilies on the subject have not had a public airing seems suspiciously like a cover-up. The present state of Y1K preparedness will surely lead to …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 09:17
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Mobos for 750MHz .18 micron Athlons easy peasy
It's a minor change only
Concern about whether current motherboards for the Athlon K7 will support speeds of 750MHz and above have been dissipated by sources close to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). When AMD releases its 750MHz Athlon on the 29th of this month, which will be a .18 micron part, only a minor change to motherboards and otherboards will be …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 10:09
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compaQ to spend $100 mill marketing Alphas
It's about time, isn't it?
Sources so close to Compaq that you couldn't put a cigarette paper between them and the company have confirmed the company is set to embark on a massive advertising splurge. The company will start promoting the Alpha microprocessor, its flagship chip, from the beginning of next year and will spend an estimated $100 million on an …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 10:31
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Database war breaks out between IBM and Oracle
And you thought peace was declared...
Executives at Oracle are livid after IBM staged a publicity stunt at OpenWorld last week designed to promote the benefits of the Big Blue database DB2. According to a source at Big Blue, the stunt, which involved rollerbladers carrying placards pushing IBM database software, was designed to hit back at an Oracle US ad campaign …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 10:55
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Sex in Silicon Valley
IT bachelors: rich, busy, socially inept and getting none
Geeks have overtaken lawyers, doctors and rock stars as the social group most effective at using their skills to make a truckload of money -- just look at King of the Geeks, Bill Gates -- but when it comes to social skills they have a long way to go. Successful, rich, hard-working and well-educated your IT bachelors may be, but …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:11
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Phone box freebies come to East Anglia
Free calls in return for listening to ads in call boxes
BT is offering free phone calls to East Anglian punters in return for them listening to a stream of adverts. The telecomms giant started the AdCall scheme at midday last Thursday in phone boxes in Cambridge, Ipswich, Norwich and Kings Lynn. A total of 340 phone boxes in the area have been equipped with the service. Most are …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:15
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CHS losses unveiled in full
So much red ink on the balance sheet you'd think the accountant had slit his throat
CHS Electronics recorded losses of over $200 million for the third quarter and revealed plans to offload more subsidiaries. The distributor posted $225.3 million in net losses for the quarter ended 30 September. This compared to a profit of $6.6 million for the same period in 1998 and gives an insight into the downfall of much …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:17
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Mobile phones going underground
Just don't try it near us...
A fantastic new £1.2 billion scheme will allow tragic cellphone users to tell their loved ones that they’re "on the train" from deep underground on the London tube. A consortium of leading telecommunication companies including Motorola and Racal Electronics will equip the entire network with the wonderful new system over the …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:34
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Big Blue chins channel with direct sales plan
Web site and telesales will now sell direct to customers
IBM started selling a whole host of PCs and notebooks direct through its Web site and by phone in the UK yesterday. Included in the line-up was Big Blue's ThinkPad 240 notebook for £1099, which was launched in September. Desktop PCs are included in the new line up, priced from £649. As revealed here last month, IBM is also …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:36
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Boffins pave way for 400x rise in CPU transistor count
Radical transistor design to be unveiled next month
Scientists at the University of California's Berkeley campus have developed a new transistor design that they claim could allow chip makers to increase the number of such devices on a given slice of silicon fourhundredfold. Full details of the new transistor, called FinFET, will be presented next month, but the device …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 11:54
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So how good is CallNet 0800?
Review Our man Tim goes three rounds with the latest free Net access offering
Sometimes saying the simplest things can leave you tongue-tied and lost for words. Anyone who's ever struggled with "I love you", "sorry" or "no I won't have another if it's all the same, I said I'd be back over an hour ago... oh, go on then, just a small one" will know what I mean. The same is true of trying to assess the …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 12:05
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iBook takes top slot in US retail sales
But how long will it stay there?
Apple's iBook went straight to number one as the best-selling notebook in US retail, online and mail-order channels last month, according to PC Data's latest figures. The upshot was a near doubling of the Mac maker's market share in the mobile arena, up to 11 per cent from 6.5 per cent in September. Not bad given the effects of …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 12:31
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Computer kit grabbed at gun-point
Thieves disguised as police hijack lorry
Armed thieves disguised as policemen made off with a lorry-load of computer games and chips on Friday afternoon. The robbery took place in Hayes, Middlesex. The driver of the seven and a half ton lorry was forced to stop when a Volvo estate displaying a flashing blue light on its dashboard pulled in front of him. Two men, …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 13:13
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Sainsbury's finds the Web
Last-off-the-blocks board thinks ecommerce is a good idea
Sainsbury's has finally got around to offering its customers online shopping. The supermarket chain -- which in recent years has lost its pole position to Tesco -- has been running a very limited delivery service for 12 months, but plans to change all that through a partnership with ISP LineOne. The chain has predicted a user …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 13:20
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Nasdaq de-lists Iridium
Satellite comms company's recovery still a long way off, then
Iridium has had its stock removed from the Nasdaq stock exchange list. The move comes almost three months to the day after the company entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection -- an action that, in turn, saw trading of Iridium stock (under the IRIQE tag) suspended. Iridium was notified of the de-listing back in October. The …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 13:21
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Dell unveils Blackberry pager
Takes on Palm, WAP in wireless comms biz
Dell launched itself against Palm Computing yesterday when it released its first non-PC product: the much-rumoured Blackberry two-way pager. Not the most obvious area to move into, you might think - pagers are ten a penny these days - but Blackberry's interest lies in the fact that it's actually more wireless organiser than …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 14:09
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Corel CEO insider trading pre-trial date set
Cowpland up before the beak on 14 January 2000
The Canadian authorities' legal action against Corel CEO Michael Cowpland will enter its pre-trial phase on 14 January 2000 to determine when and how the allegations of insider trading will be heard. According to Reuters, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Canada's financial regulator, will soon release details of its case …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 14:22
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Confidential information leaked on Net
ISP MD denies BT engineer to blame
Someone allegedly masquerading as a BT engineer has leaked confidential information about a new ISP on the Internet. The private phone numbers, ISDN lines and freephone POP (Points of Presence) number were reportedly posted on newsgroups earlier today by someone calling themselves "An [sic] BT Engineer". The posting also …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 14:31
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Caminogate IV – We have no idea what you did last summer
Be confused, be very confused
The world+dog knows that Chipzilla's chipset from Hell, Camino, has a problem counting above two when it comes to RDRAM DIMMS. Less well-known is the fact that two is -- by a remarkable coincidence -- also the maximum number of PC100 SDRAM modules that Intel's Cape Cod i820 mobo can deal with. Worse than that, if you want to mix …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 14:51
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Rising chip fab kit sales signal recovery
Book-to-bill ratio continues to rise
Chip manufacturing equipment trade organisation Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) today said orders for fabrication kit from US suppliers were generating increased revenues, putting the business on a clear road to recovery. SEMI bases its claim on the book-to-bill ratio -- the difference between the …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 14:51
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Intel brokers Russian entry into Europe
They kept that one quiet, didn't they?
While world leaders were putting their feet up and enjoy a relaxing weekend in Florence, Italy, Chipzilla's negotiators have obviously been beavering away if a map at Intel’s channel website here is to be believed. For the former Soviet Union is labelled 'Europe' with the last e a couple of hundred miles due north of …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:00
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CCTV nabs dog-flap cat burglar
Shock as builder finds Pal is not a Pedigree Chum
Builder Gary Horner got a nasty surprise when he captured his mate on camera sneaking into his house through the dog flap and stealing money. Gary, who had been best man to the thief, Neil Bolderson, had installed a number of mini-cameras around his house when money kept disappearing, according to the Daily Mail. Initially, both …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:16
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Micro$oft besieged by righteous lawyers
Consumer "advocates" smell green ink in the water
Judge Thomas Jackson's unfavourable finding of fact in the MS trial has emboldened a Lilliputian army of lawyers to file suit on behalf of gulled consumers across the USA. State and federal lawsuits have been filed so far in California, New York, Alabama and Louisiana, and more are expected. One such class-action lawsuit, filed …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:17
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PC security for the masses
B_Safe will let you, well… be safe
Burall Infosys has announced the release of B_Safe, a PC security system that allows multiple users to work on the same PC without risk. The system allows for the selective encryption of files for different users and also restricts Internet access. Burall used its expertise in Smart card technology to build the system. A card …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:20
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Aureal goes consumer
Soundcards are "big step" for firm
Aureal has announced its will go direct to consumers with its two new soundcards, the Vortex SQ1500 and Vortex2 SQ2500. The two cards are designed for mainstream computer users. The SQ1500 is for your average gamer or music fan and supports two and four speaker set-ups. The SQ2500 is for the more serious gamer and comes with …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:25
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Net breaks up families
...and other scare stories
More than a million Net users in the UK spend more time online than they do asleep, according to the latest survey from Continental Research. This soporific stat is just one of a bundle of titbits that researchers say depict online trends in Britain. Another, is that a third of Britain's regular 11.1 million Net users spend more …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:34
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Intel's Top Ten Laws of the Millennium
You read them here first
Intel is rightly famous for Moore's Law. But were you aware of the others. Here they go... 1. Moore’s Law: The power of microprocessors will double every 18 months 2. More’s Law: Intel will always make at least ten times as much money as AMD 3. Poor’s Law: AMD stockholders rarely have anything to smile about 4. Pause Law: Intel …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:51
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No Athlon from Gateway…officially
Updated Oh yes there is....unofficially...
The rumours that Gateway will introduce a machine that uses the AMD Athlon processor may well be true, but if so the European sales force doesn't seem to know about the machine due to be launched very soon indeed. A phone call to Gateway's call centre in Dublin this morning seemed to suggest that the company has no plans to …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 16:53
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More Millennium madness
Banks liquidise assets and terrorists prepare for D-Day
If you're not ill at ease over the millennium yet, if you think it's just small fry panicking unnecessarily, then perhaps you'll listen to Scotland Yard and the New York Federal Reserve. Senior UK police officers have warned there is a "genuine and real" threat of a mainland bombing campaign over the New Year holiday by a …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 17:07
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How much is that ADSL in the window?
The one with the waggeley tariff
Buckinghamshire-based ISP, Nildram Ltd, has carried out its own analysis into how much broadband ADSL access could cost when it's introduced in Britain next year. According to MD Adrian Mardlin, the question of hidden charges remains a problem for consumers. And although it's already been touted that businesses could be forced …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 17:12
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BA computer expert swindles £250,000
Airline employee enjoyed high flying lifestyle with ill-gotten gains
A British Airways computer expert conned the airline out of £250,000 over three years by transferring income from in-flight purchases into accounts held by himself and his wife. The fiddle only came to light when a passenger noticed he had been billed twice for the same item. A routine check unearthed the scam, but had not …
Business 23 Nov 1999, 17:14
