15th December 1999 Archive

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Linuxcare expands globally through $32.5m investment

Dell, Sun, Oracle, Motorola inject cash -- Puffin Group acquired

Linuxcare yesterday announced a major cash injection and a raft of acquisitions to drive its plan to become the number one pure-play services company operating in the enterprise Linux arena. On the funding front, Linuxcare has raised $32.5 million from a number of VCs and technology companies, including Dell (for which it …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 10:54
Brit charged with conspiring to kill via Web

Offered $25,000 for proof of married couple's death, say police

Police yesterday charged a Portsmouth, England man with incitement to murder after he allegedly posted on the Web an offer of $25,000 for proof of the death of a Texas couple. Electronics engineer Paul Clark, 32, will appear before magistrates today, said Reuters. According to police, Clark used the Web to seek the death of …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 11:05
Despite on/off rumour, MS settlement remains unlikely

MS on Trial But it kept Wall Street busy for a bit...

A false settlement rumour sent Microsoft shares up yesterday to almost $101, but they closed at $98 11/16, having opened at just over $96. There appears to be no substance whatsoever to the rumour, with all the signs pointing to Wall Street enjoying a good lunch and thinking how a little rumour of settlement could act as a …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 11:22
Intel dismisses ‘mobile Rambus dead’ claims

Direct DRAM mobile chipset not dead, just resting...

Intel has denied that it has canned Rambus support in notebook computers -- despite claims from industry sources, cited by Electronic Buyer's News, to the contrary. According to the sources, Chipzilla's Greendale project is now dead. Greendale's remit was to develop a chipset to allow mobile PCs to use Rambus Direct DRAM. Intel …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 11:27
Consortium proposes Net acceleration standard

MS-backed Akamai sets itself against Sun-sponsored rival

Web content delivery acceleration specialist Akamai and a consortium of fellow Internet companies have proposed a standard mechanism to bring Net services closer to the user. The scheme calls for the development of a standard called the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP), to be submitted to the Internet Engineering Task …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 12:00
Motorola strokes Symbian after Palm stake purchase

Still loves EPOC, honest...

Motorola has become the latest of the Symbian founder members to play footsie with the opposition, in this case with the purchase of a minority stake in Palm, and a commitment to license Palm's OS for use in future handheld and wireless products. But at the same time Motorola issued a statement reiterating its full commitment to …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 12:07
Taiwanese OEMs lose out in Dell rejig

PC giant to claw back notebook manufacture

Dell is to make more of its own notebook PCs and cut back on the amount of outsourcing going to its Taiwanese partners. Moving away from the general trend in the industry, Dell said notebook contract orders would see just 20 per cent growth in 2000, down on the 50 per cent average over the past two years. Its two main Taiwan …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 12:10
Net funds directors charged by SFO

Fraud allegations surround ISP and telco

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged four people with fraud over fundraising for an Internet start-up. The SFO yesterday charged the four in connection with two companies, Free Dot Net, an ISP, and Discount Telecom. Two other people were also embroiled in the Discount Telecom charges. The move was the first time the SFO …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 12:50
Rambus yields only at 50 per cent

Where, oh where are those lovely RIMMs?

What a nice chap John Tu, one of the co-founders of Kingston Technology is. He wasn't at our breakfast meeting with the company this morning, but a prepared statement on the Rambus fiasco was. In the statement, Tu says the following: "The new technology today is Rambus and the yield is only in the 50 per cent range. If current …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 13:00
New challenger enters Bill Gates domain sale ring

Tongue-in-cheek (we presume) three year old cybersquatter will take £1.5 million

Following swiftly on from the weekend's ludicrously over-hyped billgates.com 'sale' (see story) Register readers were quick to point out that prestige vanity sites seem to be ten a penny, and not always of the slightest concern to the owners of the name they're using. Writes one: "My three year old son, Earl, owns the domain www …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 13:10
Willamette, Foster 870 details leak

Leak more a trickle than a treat

Sources have revealed some details about future Intel chip technologies Willamette and Foster. The former, which is IA-32 technology with large caches and clock speeds is slated to appear in the second half of next year with clock speeds greater than 1GHz. We are reliably informed that Willamette will have a 200MHz front side …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 13:11
Lebanon no longer red at Intel

Chipzalla was outside, now it's inside

Reports on a Middle East wire have reported that the Lebanese government has snapped to its senses over a ban on the importation of Intel processors into the country. According to Arabia Online, the Lebanese ministry of finance has overturned the ban on Intel products, which was imposed many years ago, because the company has a …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 13:21
Pace demos set-top box with 20 gig hard drive

It's going to know all about your habits, but it probably won't let on...

Set-top boxes are supposed to be cheap, simple devices that allow you to watch TV and - at some point, Real Soon Now - interact, right? But Pace Micro Technology seems to be turning the concept around with the demonstration of a unit with a built-in 20 gigabyte hard drive. The point of integrating a hard drive into a set-top box …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 14:01
Sharky Extreme falls into Internet.com's clutches

Willingly, of course

Internet.com has bought Sharky Extreme, the US-based PC hardware review site with a gaming bent, for an undisclosed sum. Sharky Extreme increases Internet.com's traffic by ten million page impressions per month, taking the new owners aggregate total up to 90 million page impressions. It's unclear whether the numbers of pages …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 14:06
Official: Win2k to RTM today – announcement 5pm GMT

Updated Redmond prepares for the Pushing Big Red Button ceremony

Windows 2000 has finally gone gold, and the High Command has scheduled a conference call hugging ceremony for 5pm GMT, 9am Pacific today. As reported here earlier, MS has been dropping heavy hints for the past 24 hours, but now it's certain-sure enough to book the phone lines. This means that Microsoft has met its most recent …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 14:10
More Big Q money goes to Taiwan

Compaq caught not following Dell's every move

Compaq plans to increase its outsourcing from companies in Taiwan by 20 per cent in 2000. The PC vendor said it would buy $8.5 billion of product from the island, compared to last year's $7.1 billion, Taiwan's Commercial Times reported. Goods bought from local companies will include servers, peripherals and components. The move …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 14:39
HP Powerpoint present a curse in disguise

Cunning missile downs Vulture Numero Duo...

One of HP's multitude of PR companies really dropped us in it yesterday. Over at Vulture Central, an incoming Powerpoint presentation about HP's SAN announcements clogged up our email to such an extent that the pipe was well furred for a full hour. OK, we thought, we'll kill that job and pick it up at home first thing this …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 15:11
Bluntmen hack SimCity to promote the wicked weed

Why was SimCity hit? Pot luck, really...

Electronic Arts' SimCity 3000 Web site has been hacked. But for once the attempt to replace the site's front page wasn't some act of cyberterrorism -- though battling virtual brigands is one of the game's numerous challenges to would-be city planners -- but a call for the legalisation of marijuana. "Your [site] is now a …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 15:12
AMD uses nut to crack sledgehammer

Jobs galore for Athlon successor

If you're a top chip architect or designer, AMD needs you, a bit like Lord Kitchener needed troops for the ill-fated first World War of this current century. The AMD site is looking for people to join the team to work on the next generation system which Jerry Sanders III used to call the K9 (canine, geddit? Ed) five years back. …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 15:25
AMI2 offers up latest PCB reference

DRAM group promotes easy to use PC2100 guide

Advanced Memory International (AMI2) has started offering printed circuit board (PCB) reference designs for high-end PCs, workstations and servers. AMI2 is a non-profit group representing the DRAM industry and the move is an attempt to simplify DRAM design and speed its adoption. Uniform reference guides and documentation are …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 15:29
Intel will sample 800MHz Pentium IIIs next Monday

Marchitecture is a taste of things to come

Chip giant Intel will provide samples of 800MHz Pentium IIIs to its OEMs at the beginning of next week and will also announce several flavours of other of its desktop processors. The 750MHz Pentium III parts which were intended for release in January next year, will also be announced, sources close to Intel's plans have …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 15:59
Bleem to countersue Sony

Alleges unfair competition, bad faith, tons of other evil stuff

PlayStation-on-a-PC software developer Bleem has been granted leave to countersue Sony Computer Entertainment, the division within the Japanese giant that sells the PlayStation. Bleem alleges Sony unlawfully acquired, maintained and extended its monopoly in the video game market through a combination of anti-competitive …

Business 15 Dec 1999, 16:31