17th December 1999 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

CHS gets shot of subsidiaries

Local management take control under new company

CHS Electronics has shed more of its European, US and Latin American subsidiaries. The European deal, which excludes CHS Germany, CHS Austria and Frank & Walter, will give back control of operations to a group of senior managers in Europe under the company name "Newco". The transaction, announced on Tuesday, is believed to be …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:08
Red Hat to buy Be?

So sayeth the rumour-mill -- we're not so sure, though

Even as rumours that Red Hat is about to buy Corel are moving back onto the Linux watcher's radar screen, so has a further item of tittle-tattle that the best-known open source operation is about to buy alternative OS vendor Be. Indeed, Be's shares rose 49 per cent yesterday, to $37.56, apparently on the back of the rumour. …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:15
Cisco backs CallNet0800 expansion

Capacity to double within days

World CallNet, owner of hard-pressed toll-free operator CallNet 0800, has secured a huge boost from Cisco's money arm. Cisco Capital is using lease finance to fund the expansion of World CallNet's network infrastructure. At the same time, it has brought on board Siemens Network Systems, one of Britain's biggest network resellers …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:21
Tories shortlist techie for London mayor

Promises to bring IT to politics – no chance of winning then

An IT consultant has made the shortlist to be the Tory candidate for London mayor. Andrew Boff, MD of Shoreditch-based consultancy Creative Juices, has become the main challenger to ex-philanderer Steven Norris. Boff's experience in the heady world of politics includes a spell leading Hillingdon Council. He told The Register …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:22
Santa Vulture wishes you all a Happy Christmas

Charity begins at home

This year the emails have come scudding in from PR companies, hacks and suppliers telling us that they are not sending Christmas cards. Instead, they are donating to Charity the money they would have spent on Christmas cards. Inspiring, huh? Well it works for us. So much so we thought we'd do something similar. All the money we …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:44
Hacker thwarted in newspaper plot

Express snitches after threat to scupper rivals

The Express newspaper foiled a hacker's plot to bring down its arch-rival's computer system yesterday. The man phoned the paper and offered to stop production of fellow tabloids the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday for £600,000 on 7 January. In true Good Samaritan mode, The Express alerted police, who arrested the 55-year-old …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 11:48
Sportal bags $50m for Asia/Europe roll-out

IPO around the corner

Can't be too long now before an IPO rears its beautiful head for Sportal, capitalised at $170m, after raising $50m in its latest fund raising round. The British-based sports content portal will spend the money on European and Asian roll-outs, as well as beefing up its sales and marketing operations. The roll-call of investors …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 12:12
Chinese court rejects Microsoft piracy suit

Another case of mistaken identity in the Orient

Microsoft appears to have sued the wrong company for software piracy, the Beijing Number One Intermediate Court ruled on Friday. The court remained unconvinced that the foreign mega-corporation had identified the correct defendant. Not that being a foreign corporation could possibly have influenced the decision. Microsoft made …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 12:21
Akamai to launch app delivery service

Uses company's own would-be standard. Ahem.

Just after announcing plans to devise a standard mechanism for bringing Web-based content and applications closer to the client, Net acceleration specialist Akamai added an application delivery system to its portfolio. And -- guess what -- it's based on Akamai's newly-proposed standard, Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (IDAP …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 12:45
Canadian reseller tries to sue Apple for CA$5m

Alleges Apple used dodgy Ts&Cs, entrapment

Apple Canada has been sued by a local reseller, Computer Buyer's Warehouse Direct (CBWD), for alleged antitrust actions. The suit against the Mac maker demands CA$5m in damages. CBWD's beef centres on allegations that Apple Canada set the reseller up to infringe the vendor's terms and conditions in order to have an excuse to …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:22
AllAdvantage coughs-up Register bribe

They've sent in the cash, so here's the story…

In November we challenged AllAdvantage to make a donation to charity, in exchange for a story appearing on The Register. In the true spirit of Christmas, AllAdvantage sent us a cheque made payable to Children In Need. Now we keep our half of the bargain. More than 70,000 UK Net users have signed up with AllAdvantage and are …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:26
Lycos snaps up FAST stake

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em

Lycos is buying up to 15 per cent in Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), the vastly superior search engine firm. Like Google.com, FAST concentrates on doing the boring old build a better a search engine routine. It leaves the sexy portal stuff to others. Which is where Lycos comes in. The two companies are already in cahoots - FAST …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:39
Virgin shortage hits Branson's mobile venture

There's never one around when you need one

Richard Branson's dabble with the mobile phone market is reported to be suffering from a shortage of handsets. Virgin Mobile signed up more than 75,000 customers in its first month, putting it on course to net over 100,000 phone sales by the end of 1999, and a million in its first year. According to Branson, around 20 per cent …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:41
Samsung to spend $3bn on Rambus boost

Backs up big talk with big money

Samsung Electronics is to spend $2.8 billion on a new chip plant and research facilities. The company said chip production facility Line 10 would initially make 128MB, 256MB and Rambus chips. Situated in Hwasung-gun, Kyonggi Province in Korea on a one million square metre site, it will be capable of making 32,000 eight-inch …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:48
Disney exec found guilty in pedo sting

'A bit of harmless role-playing gone terribly wrong...'

Former Disney exec and Java creator Patrick Naughton was found guilty of child porn possession at trial Thursday, but the jury hung on the more serious charge of crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. Seattle resident Naughton was arrested on 15 September in Santa Monica, California where he had arranged to meet a …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 13:52
Avnet puts staff on Y2K bug watch

We can all relax then

Avnet will lay on global Y2K 24-hour call centres over the New Year period. Business and IT staff will be on red alert for any Millennium bug problem stalking the industry from 30 December. The distributor's Year 2000 Command Centres, serving Asia, EMEA and the Americas, will monitor problems in the industry 24 hours a day, …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 15:36
Playmate wins right to use Playboy trademarks in her metas

Tags out for the lads...

Ex-Playboy Playmate of the Year Terri Welles has won the right to describe herself as such on her Web site -- and not only on the site's front end, but in the hidden code that describes the pages' content to search engines and the like. Playboy Enterprises, owner of the Playboy and Playboy Playmate of the Year trademarks …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 16:30
Thieves grab chips at gunpoint

Van driver abducted as £250k worth of kit stolen

Police are hunting armed robbers after they abducted a van driver and stole computer chips worth £250,000. The victim's ordeal began last Friday when he was forced to stop the van after being followed by a car and another van in Chessington, Surrey. He was approached by a man carrying a gun, forced out of the driver's seat, and …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 16:35
Russia cheerfully refutes Y2K anarchy predictions

US State Department sneers

Opinions vary on the question of whether Russia is to be plunged into darkness and chaos on 1 January as its computer clocks roll over to double zeroes. Russian officials have made light of the problem recently, announcing publicly, and most courageously, that they "have solved the Y2K problem." Meanwhile, a pessimistic US …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 16:58
Merced slow, slow, quick quick slow

Itanium reported to move at speed of sound

Prototype Merced systems are failing to reach satisfactory clock speeds ... and this makes Intel CEO Craig Barrett hopping mad. Or so Forbes claims. Intel's flagship 64-bit processor is failing to perform as fast as anticipated, according to the magazine The prototype machines are restricted to around 400MHz, but also need huge …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 17:01
American Y2K bugs expected to hit the poor

What a shocker

Considerable civil commotion could erupt as a result of bad Y2K planning which has placed social programmes for the poor at the end of the priorities list for many American states. Among the programmes least ready are unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, child support and child care, or, to put it another way, the …

Business 17 Dec 1999, 17:35