24th January 2000 Archive

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AMD wins further round in fierce Intel desktop price war

Updated Chips away at prices, still big shortages

The price war between AMD and Intel is on -- and with a vengeance. As predicted here two months back, both firms made big cuts on their top-of-the-range desktop processor range today. But shortages still make Slot One Intel processors hard to find, particularly at higher clock speeds, reliable sources in the channel tell The …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 07:40
Kingston, Gateway to educate us on W2k memory needs

Listen very carefully, you know it makes sense

Giant memory supplier Kingston Technology has teamed up with Gateway in a campaign to inform the general public that when Microsoft Windows 2000 is launched you will need a lot of memory. And both companies do not really care whether it is synchronous memory or Rambus RIMMs you require, although the chances are that you're going …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 09:02
Procter & Gamble grabs Net teenagers for life

Get consumers while they're young

Procter and Gamble is setting up a site for acne sufferers in partnership with Excite UK. Actually, it's a "£Multi-Million Teenage Destination site", and the whole "ground-breaking" enterprise reeks of marketing bull. The unnamed site launches later this year and is part of P&G's "continuing efforts to develop innovative and …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 10:15
TDL InfoSpace makes news with The Register

Site News UK technology news service on TDL Infospace network

Daily updated technology news is the latest service being offered by TDL InfoSpace (www.infospace.co.uk), the UK's leading provider of Internet consumer content and technology to its network of over 100 sites. The service which covers all the latest developments in computing and Internet is being provided by leading Web-based IT …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 10:59
Novell goes for MS jugular over ‘Win2k FUD’

But the company has a way to go before it masters attack marketing

Novell is conducting a surprisingly fierce and long overdue campaign against what it says is Microsoft's FUD. Since the departure of Ray Noorda - "the grandfather from hell" as Bill Gates viewed him - Novell has not been noted for being so outspoken, but it has finally taken the gloves off in its campaign to correct "Microsoft's …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 11:20
Bids roll in for domain hype auctions

cinema.com, loans.com and taxes.com etc; etc;

Punters looking to purchase some of the most valuable virtual real estate on the Web have until Friday to raise the cash and make their bid for cinema.com, loans.com and taxes.com. GreatDomains.com is flogging the Web addresses amid hype that this once-in-a-lifetime offer could be make-or-break for some e-companies and decide …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 11:46
Rousou retires from Elcom

Full-time gardening leave

Jim Rousou has retired as head of Elcom UK to dedicate more time to business investments and his garden. The 52-year-old has given up his titles of chairman of Elcom Group Ltd and senior executive VP of Elcom International after 10 years with the company and its predecessors. Rousou will stay on with Elcom on a consultancy basis …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:04
Liquid Audio to dance to Microsoft's digital music tune

MS Audio licensing deal marks major shift away from Liquid Audio's own technology

Liquid Audio tacitly accepted the failure of its own digital music format this weekend when it announced a far-reaching deal with Microsoft to support Windows Media Technologies' audio components. Not that that's how Liquid Audio is spinning the licensing agreement, of course, but that's what it means nonetheless. Liquid Audio …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:13
Compaq could be affected by Intel-Via action

FIC part of Intel ITC tariff attack...oops

Sources at Toshiba told The Register it was still firmly committed to manufacturing in both Japan and Germany last week, but if reports from Asia are true, notebook rival Compaq is set to spend even more money sourcing products from IT powerhouse Taiwan. The trade show site for the June show Computex is reporting today that …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:15
December dreary for US PC sales, but 1999 was better

HP sales up 87 per cent during year, Apple up 55 per cent. industry average 23.7 per cent

US PC retailers had a very disappointing December, with the Christmas season experiencing the lowest month-on-month growth of any month during 1999, according to the latest figures from market researcher PC Data. Last month, unit sales of desktop PCs through US retail, online and mail order channels increased just 12 per cent on …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:38
AMD gives Athlon Tyrannazilla epithet

No more Chimpzilla any more

A report on Newsbytes is claiming that chip company AMD has started branding its 800MHz Athlon processor as chuk lung. This is as a result of an online quiz amongst readers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, the wire says. This is the Chinese word for a fast and carnivorous dinosaur, the report said. This differs from our Register …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:48
US music industry sues MP3.com over ‘virtual CD player’

Service lets you play your CDs on any PC -- provided MP3.com has a copy, of course...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched its latest legal action against a company supporting the controversial MP3 digital music format. Last time, the target was Diamond Multimedia (now part of 3D graphics specialist S3) over its MP3-based Rio portable music player. On Friday, the RIAA launched a …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 12:56
Win2K pains Pete Sherriff

Review He can't find anything wrong with it

The world+dog is hardly short of stories about Windows 2000 and how such wonderments as the Active Directory will make the IT department's life so simple that even a complete idiot could get a job in tech support. But The Register thought it might be interesting to see how a regular Joe, or even Pete, got on with installing it. …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:08
STMicro puts all chips on allocation

'Explosive demand'

STMicroelectronics has put all chips on allocation after being caught with its pants down over rocketing demand. CEO Pasquale Pistorio was forced to admit that only preferred customers were getting semiconductor supplies, Electronics Weekly reported. When quizzed on chip shortages, he replied: "The question should be ‘Do you …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:34
This DVD will self-destruct in three minutes

Good news for software firms...

No it's not Mission Impossible. An American company is developing limited-play CDs and DVDs with built-in self-destruction. Spectradisc, a spin-off from Brown University Division of Engineering, says it can programme the products to expire within three days or three minutes, by applying a chemical coating in varying degrees of …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:37
Accused pedo Naughton gets a breather

But an encore in the dock is looming

Former Disney Go Network exec and Java developer Patrick Naughton's conviction on child pornography possession has been tossed by a federal judge following an appellate decision finding portions of the law under which he was convicted to be unconstitutional. The jury had originally deadlocked on whether Naughton intended to have …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:48
Out come the gadget freaks for Cellnet WAP service

Not for the price-conscious

"Our customers won't be worried about the price. It's all down to what people spend their money on," a BT Cellnet spokeswoman said at today's launch of its mobile Internet service. "Some spend it on clothes, others spend their money on the latest gadgets." The service will cost 5p per minute until June when new pricing …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:50
AMD takes legal action against Athlon overclockers

First reports appear on Web

Last week, overclocking hardware site Hard OCP reported that AMD had hired a law firm to pursue people who modify and then re-sell the chip company's Athlon microprocessor. Now it appears that the first legal actions have been taken by AMD's lawyers, Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson. Computer Nerd says it has …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 13:53
60,000 Virgin.net ‘users’ fail to change passwords

National Apathy League out in force

Almost 60,000 Virgin.net users are still without email following a security breach at the ISP earlier this month. Although some 110,000 Virgin.net users have already responded to requests to change their email passwords following the incident, a third of those affected have still to take any action to get back online. Virgin.net …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 14:13
FBI phone-snoop regs challenged by Net privacy groups

FCC dictates technical specs at DoJ's bidding, critics charge

A coalition of Internet privacy groups has filed a brief in federal court seeking to block Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations which they claim "enable the FBI to dictate the design of the nation's communication infrastructure." The rules would enable the FBI to track the physical locations of cellular phone …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 14:31
ISP denies security flaw in publishing user names

...but removes file, anyway

A British ISP has denied it has compromised the security of its customers by publishing thousands of Web addresses and usernames on its Web site. Surrey-based Portland Communications claims the information contained in an unsecure text file is useless without the relevant passwords. But an Internet security expert toldThe …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 15:48
MS cancels Neptune, consumer version of Win2k

Incredible rotating roadmap merges twin-track Win2k development back into one

Neptune, the consumer version of Win2k, has been cancelled, according to Windows-watcher Paul Thurrott. Instead, Microsoft is merging the project with Odyssey, which was intended to be the next version of Windows 2000. This effectively completes the bizarre little detour Microsoft's Windows roadmap took early last year, when …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 16:34
DeCSS temporarily banned from the Net

But 'reverse engineering' angle may keep the jury out for a while

Santa Clara County Judge William Elfving issued a preliminary injunction Friday barring Web sites from offering a DVD crack called DeCSS. The crack allows users to evade copyright protections on DVDs and save their contents to a hard disk. Last month the court denied the entertainment industry's "very broad request" for a …

Business 24 Jan 2000, 17:41