3rd December 1999 Archive
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Hong Kong to build techno town
New town to provide base for IT start ups
The Hong Kong government is to build the country's first technology town, where up to 15,000 people are expected to live and work by 2014. Building work on the first phase of the 22 hectare science park at Pak Shek Kok will start in February. The venture aims to boost the country's technology industry, including helping to …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 09:08
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New chiefs for old at Palm
You can't beat a boardroom shuffle
3Com subsidiary Palm Computing is adding three directors to its board. The company said it was to make Carl Yankowski its next CEO. The former CEO of Reebok will join Palm on 13 December. Yankowski also worked at Sony Electronics in the US for five years, where he was president and COO. Palm also said it would make Eric Benhamou …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 09:10
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High spec games PC outfit to ship Red Hat
In response to customer demand, says GamePC
High-performance PC specialist GamePC is to offer Linux as an OS option on its machines. Initially the company will be shipping hardware with Red Hat 6.1 installed, but it says it is also considering other distributions, including Caldera and Debian. GamePC specialises in 'no-compromise' custom-built systems designed for the …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 10:50
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We know where you surfed last night – cookies and privacy
That Man Smith takes aim at the use of cookies in email
A group of privacy advocates led by security expert Richard Smith and Junkbusters president Jason Catlett is lobbying the Federal Trading Commission to force software companies to close a cookie security loophole that allows Web surfing habits to be tracked by the use of email. Smith, whose previous scalps include security ' …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 10:51
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Round one to Amazon in 1-Click fight
Barnesandnoble slapped with injunction
Amazon.com won the first round of its court case against Barnsandnoble.com over the online retailer's 1-Click technology this week. US District Court Judge Marsh Pechman granted a preliminary injunction late on Wednesday to stop rivals copying and using the technology, which is a checkout system that stores information so users …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 10:53
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DoJ appoints financial remedies advisor
MS on Trial M & A specialist firm gets upside down gig
The Department of Justice has appointed Greenhill & Co, a New York firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions, to advise it on the Microsoft case. A DoJ spokeswoman blocked questions as to whether this reflected well or badly on the mediation effort, saying that "the firm's advice will be useful in ongoing processes". No …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 10:57
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Toshiba gets China syndrome
New factory near Shanghai to open next year
Taking advantage of significantly lower capital and labour costs, Toshiba has announced it will open a factory in China. China has been identified by the colossus of the notebook world as a potential goldmine, and is moving its manufacturing facilities close to the market. The new plant will be sited near Shanghai and although …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 11:36
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DVD Video crack delays DVD Audio roll-out
Music biz all in a dither over DeCSS
The release of DVD cracking tool DeCSS last month has apparently prompted the consumer electronics industry to delay the release of DVD Audio by up to six months. According to Dow Jones, Matsushita's Panasonic and JVC divisions have both put back the release of DVD Audio systems from pre-Christmas December dates to May next year …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:02
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C2000 sees Web sales triple
Hurrah, doubles all round then
Computer 2000's online sales have tripled since it started offering free delivery on orders using its InTouch 2000 Web service. The distributor said the number of resellers asking to be registered for ordering over the Web was also up six-fold since the offer's launch in mid-November. Its online ordering business was originally …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:03
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InterX: from distie to Net VC vehicle?
We think it stacks up
So what now for InterX, the London stock market-quoted group that announced its intention this week to demerge or sell off Ideal Hardware, a British storage distributor and its main asset? A demerger -- which could take up to six months to complete -- would see InterX shareholders receive new shares in Ideal Hardware, while …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:04
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Microsoft drops J++ for XML-based alternative
But where is Cool?
Microsoft has finally dropped its Visual J++ Java development system. However, it appears to be focusing instead on XML and not the Cool tool it had originally envisaged as the successor to J++. For the time being, J++ isn't going away. While there's a strong likelihood that it will be pulled from the Visual Studio suite, …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:25
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Infineon claims hacked chip code poses no security risk
Your Geldkarte is safe, apparently...
An Infineon representative has dismissed as groundless fears that a hack of some functions of its SLE44 processor could compromise security. That follows the posting of a hexadecimal dump of some code from the SLE44 on a German bulletin board some days ago. According to Infineon, it is true that some details of the processor, …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:25
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ZD pre-announces Gateway Athlon
So that's alright then...
Earlier this week we reported that Gateway is shipping samples of PCs using the Athlon processor, and now confirmation has come from an unlikely source. ZD Net has posted a guide to buying PCs on its Web site, and a Gateway machine, called the Select, is listed as shipping with a 600MHz AMD Athlon processor and costing $2,499. …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 12:38
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Big Q sells its three millionth server
Big yawn, say rival PC vendors
Compaq has shipped its three millionth server and is claiming the lead in the race for hardware dominance. The machine, an 8-way ProLiant server, was bought by UK-based ISP Planet Online. Big Q claimed the three million figure was greater than the server shipments of rivals IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell combined. By which, we …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 13:05
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AMD likely to beat Intel, Alpha to 1GHz punch
Another coup for the smaller contender
It now seems highly unlikely that Intel will be able to produce a 1GHz chip based on its IA-32 architecture before AMD, and possibly even before Compaq rolls out a 1GHz Alpha processor next summer. According to information from a source close to AMD's plans, it can, as we have said before, produce an air-cooled Athlon K7 running …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 13:18
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Teleworking will destroy society
OECD report claims
Futurologists fall into two camps: the insanely optimistic or the suicidally depressing. Professor John Adams, of University College London, subscribes to the latter, Dystopic school of forecasting. In a report commissioned by the OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development), he conjures up a "nightmare vision of …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 14:15
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Freeserve deal lets SMS Genie out of the bottle
Updated: links to free SMS providers
Freeserve is taking SMS (short message services) to the masses with a deal which sees its customers able to receive emails on their mobile phone. Or the first 140 characters of each email, to be more precise. The company, Britain's biggest ISP, is teaming up with Genie, a mobile phone ISP/portal and BT Cellnet to deliver the …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 15:06
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Pentium III-800 benchmarks pop on Web
It's overclocked, of course
Intel's Pentium III-800 is now slated to arrive in the first quarter of next year but benchmarks, or putative benchmarks, have already appeared on the World Wide Web. The set of benchmarks compare a series of Intel Pentium III Coppermine processors with i820 and BX chipsets, and include the 800MHz part. A Chinese reader emails …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 15:36
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MS reorg downscales Millennium as focus shifts to CE
Consumer Windows Division falls to Allchin, Cole shifts to Belluzzo's Group
Microsoft president Steve Ballmer reinvented a reinvention earlier today, and Redmond-watchers can safely conclude that this latest reorganisation of Microsoft's High Command comes perilously close to winding up the Millennium consumer Windows project. Consumer Windows, it now seems likely, will be making its debut instead on …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 16:47
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Israeli lawyer mounts $120m Y2k suit against MS
Doesn't know where to put his free Y2k fix CD, apparently...
Israeli lawyer Yehuda Ressler has started a class action suit against Microsoft over a Y2K issue, and is seeking 500 million shekels (about $120 million). Ressler's claim is that he had to upgrade his hardware to be able to become Y2K compliant, and that Microsoft hadn't warned him about this. The local Microsoft chief, Arieh …
Business 3 Dec 1999, 17:01
