13th January 2000 Archive

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New Intel 800MHz Xeon has no mobo support

This Copperwhopper's got Slot Zero, so far...

Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage and microprocessors and motherboards have the same relationship. Forgive the hackneyed link. So while it is with no great surprise that Intel has confirmed this morning the release of an 800MHz Coppermine Pentium Xeon processor, aimed at the workstation and low-end server …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 09:09
UK's premier tech street goes to seed

Tottenham Court Rd a shadow of former self

This time last year, we took a walk up Tottenham Court Road, London W1, to see what the IT trends on the street were. Tottenham Court Road is, or was, considered to be the closest to an IT area that the UK has. While it's never been anything of a patch on say, the Akihabara area of Tokyo, even this time last year, walking up and …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 10:28
DoJ to propose MS breakup next week

MS on Trial Yesterday's denial spawns widespread disbelief

The Department of Justice has given up on rumour-swatting, after a partial rebuttal of yesterday's claims that it was pushing for a breakup of Microsoft. The "inaccurate in several important aspects" story published in yesterday's US Today was promptly followed up by a clutch of claims that the DoJ and the states were indeed …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 10:36
The wearable mobile phone is with us

But where do you stick the battery recharger...?

Trousers that can remember what you had for lunch and an anorak replete with GPS navigation functions could be hitting the catwalks before you know it. France Telecom, the Cnet research centre and research laboratory Starlab hope to create communication clothing for the sports, leisure and business communities. The first …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:08
Blair gov offers half-price PCs to teachers

No copying the school's software now

The government has selected 19 PC vendors in the UK for a scheme to subsidise computers for teachers. Under the aptly-named Computers for Teachers scheme, teachers in UK schools can buy a half price PC from any of the recommended suppliers. Those chosen include Evesham Micros, Viglen, Tiny, Centerprise, Elonex, RM and Hi-Grade. …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:08
AOL snaps up URLs ahead of Time Warner deal

Must be feeling pretty confident of SEC approval

America Online tried to outsmart cybersquatters over its Time Warner deal, snapping up more than 20 URLs relevant to the new company ahead of the buyout announcement. AOL registered at least 21 domain names on Sunday, ranging from AOLTW.com to AmericaOnlineTimeWarner.net, Bloomberg reported. Being held to ransom by domain name …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:22
Wall St chumps lose out to chimp

Brokers go ape-shit bananas over monkey business

A chimp that chose her portfolio of Internet stocks by chucking darts at a list of companies has been hailed a financial whizz kid by her keeper. Six-year-old Raven delivered a 213 per cent gain on 1999 outperforming most of the yuppies on Wall Street. Indeed, had she been employed at a Wall Street Mutual Fund, it's claimed her …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:22
Red Hat Linux gets foot in door at us.gov

Major supplier GTSI to offer software to NASA

Major US government IT supplier Government Technology Services, Inc (GTSI) intends to add Red Hat Linux to its offerings to the federal government. According to GTSI it is currently in talks with Red Hat, and for starters intends to offer Linux software and services as part of two government contracts, one of them with NASA. The …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:26
Intel, AMD, Rambus all gain

Chip tech stocks go bonkers on Wall Street

Share prices on chip companies AMD, Intel and Rambus all showed strong gains on Wall Street yesterday following up-beat and over-heated predictions by financial analysts. But, as we point out in a separate story today, a chimp may well perform better than a financial analyst in any head-to-head guessing competition. Intel ( …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 11:46
Daily Net Finance News: Dec 1-31, 1999

intro

31 Dec 1999 Millennium Madness: eBay takes no chances with Y2K bug 30 Dec 1999 Cybersquatting: eToys softens under grassroots pressure 22 Dec 1999 Mary Meeker: Net bubble will burst in early 2000 Lawsuit: UK book minnow throws book at Amazon 21 Dec 1999 Clinton throws his weight behind online Christmas shopping 17 Dec 1999 …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 12:18
C2000 suffers Gass leak

Deputy MD exits stage left

Computer 2000 is losing its long-standing deputy MD Andy Gass to Sage Tetra. Gass will take up his role of MD for the software company by the end of February. This will mark the end of his seven-year stint at the Basingstoke distributor, where he has spent the last two years as second in command to MD Graeme Watt. The company …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 12:45
C&W coughs up to buy Euro ISPs

Look what you can pick up in the January sales

With the flu epidemic threatening to consign most of Britain to its sick bed, it's good to see that someone is coughing up something other than phlegm. Cable & Wireless (C&W) announced this morning that it had just filled the coffers of eight European Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in a bid to make its mark as a major player …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 12:48
Geekcast.com takes the floor at LinuxWorld Expo

Site News CNN for geeks

The Geekcast.com Network, Webcaster of The Linux Show, is taking up residency at next month's Linux World Expo, in New York. And it wants to interview The Register from the floor. We're honoured - how could we refuse an invite from the CNN for geeks. Geekcast wants to know what makes British geeks tick. Why don't you tell us …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 12:59
Net blamed for new Columbine High School threats

Does this sound like a feeble excuse to anybody?

A Florida teenager was suffering from 'Internet intoxication' when he allegedly threatened a Columbine High School student online, his lawyer claimed yesterday. The teenager, 18-year-old Michael Campbell, is accused of sending a message via AOL threatening to 'finish what begun' at the Colorado high school last April, when a …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 13:00
Red Hat founder quits management role

Marc Ewing passes on CTO baton to Cygnus' Michael Tiemann

Red Hat's founders continue to distance themselves from all that tedious day-to-day running a business stuff, this time thanks to last year's acquisition of software development tool maker Cygnus. We've already had Bob Young pass on operational control of Red Hat to president and CEO Matthew Szulik in order to sit on the board …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 13:00
Taiwan semi firms left with no easy options

And SiS says merger with UMC impossible

After a recent flurry of expansion, Taiwan's chip makers have no easy options left as they try to increase capacity, analysts say. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) are the world's largest contract chip manufacturers. Despite a steady expansion programme, a booming …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 13:21
Vietnam ISP targets US

Wants 14 offices worldwide in five years

Vietnam's biggest ISP is opening an office in Silicon Valley as part of a five-year push into the US, Europe and Japan. The Vietnamese Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT) will offer services in banking technology, telecomms, the Web, ecommerce and business IT from its California office. It has plans to open …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 14:16
Viglen checks out Sainsbury's schools deal

Sees off RM to win sole supply contract

Viglen has netted a contract to be sole supplier of PCs for Sainsbury's School Scheme for 2000. The London-based systems builder, yesterday named one of the government's chosen few for its Computers for Teachers programme, will be part of Sainsbury's scheme to give free kit to schools. It poached the deal - which has given away …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 14:49
Microsoft Mac man exposes Apple iTools security hole

Core browser plug-in sends passwords as plain text. Oh dear...

Apple's new iTools Web enhancements for Mac owners contain a major security flaw which exposes users' passwords, according to a member of Microsoft's Mac development team writing on MacInTouch. iTools offloads what are usually server-based operations onto client Macs via a Web browser plug-in that each user must download to use …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 16:51
Analysts warn of DRAM drought

It's gonna get choppy in the chip channel

The IT industry is about to see a DRAM drought spanning two years, according to the voices of doom and gloom at Dataquest. Average selling prices firmed up last year as the industry started to recover from years of slump which saw yearly sales plummet from $42 billion in 1995 to $15 billion in 1998. For 1999 worldwide DRAM …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 17:14
Third-party ad servers can undermine Web-site security

And sell stuff you paid for, too

A Web site's privacy policies can be undermined easily and secretly by any third-party ad service provider, thus leaving site operators open to legal action on privacy issues over which they have no control, Realmedia Chief Technology Officer Gil Beyda warned at a London press conference today. An opportunity for "privacy …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 17:59
ATI Q1 2000 profits, revenues up on rising Rage sales

DRAM price raises hit costs, though

An increase in the demand for ATI's Rage 128 and Rage Mobility chips boosted the 3D graphics specialist's first quarter 2000 earnings by 15.3 per cent, despite product line rejigs and increased costs. Driving that profit gain was 26 per cent sales growth, reaching $413.5 million from the $327.4 million the company --the world's …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 17:59
Gates foresees ‘new pricing models’ for software sales

It's code for rental. From him.

The IEEE Computer Society has just knocked a giant hole in its street cred by fawning to a certain William H Gates, whom it describes as the person "who enabled [sic] Internet use on a mass scale through software tools that turned PCs into Internet hosts". That's an interesting leap over Mosaic and Netscape, but the IEEE caps it …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 18:34
Corel takes strategic stake in Linux connectivity startup

We knew Cowpland would eventually get all the way to Omega...

Corel has taken what it describes as a "strategic ownership stake" in Newlix, an Ottawa-based Linux start-up headed by John Hansen, who had 14 years at Intel, finishing up as technical sales manager for Canada and central USA. Newlix's first product is Omega, a Linux-based system for small-to-medium sized businesses for …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 20:15
Intel performs well in Q4, ramps up .18 micron

And predicts 50 per cent growth in networks this year

Intel turned in good gains for its financial quarter to the end of its fourth quarter, with revenues rising by eight per cent to $8.2 billion, compared to $7.61 billion for the equivalent quarter last year. Net profit for the quarter amounted to $2.11 billion, compared to $2.06 billion for the equivalent period in the last …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 22:25
Gates steps down as Microsoft CEO

News Flash Steve Ballmer steps up

Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates is handing over one of his jobs to Steve Ballmer, president and chief henchman. Ballmer now gets to occupy the CEO seat while His Billness takes on a new job-title, Chief Software Architect. This reflects his new company role which will see him "dedicate all of his time to helping drive the …

Business 13 Jan 2000, 23:08