22nd February 2000 Archive

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AMD Athlon 933MHz to cost less than $850 in April

It's another Intel price massacree

Taiwanese OEMs close to AMD's plans have leaked details of the likely price cuts the firm is predicting for April, confirming once again the serious attempt it will make to topple Intel off its previously impregnable pricing tower. Yesterday we revealed that AMD will cut and slash its Athlon pricing next Monday, the 28th of …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 06:16
Intel to plunge $250 million into Infineon

Not the first DRAM investment it's made

German financial news service Handelsblatt is reporting that chip giant Intel will take a one per cent share in Infineon, a Siemens subsidiary, when the company floats on the Frankfurt Dax market. The shares are set to float on the 13th of March next, and the investment is not the first Intel has made in a semiconductor memory …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 07:05
Russian leader Putin unleashes KGB on the Web

Political blackmail industry predicted

The Internet will soon enable Russia to make a nostalgic return to its bad old days of official paranoia and general neurosis, as the state security apparatus has recently plugged itself into the Internet with a free hand to monitor virtually all electronic communications, the Moscow Times reports. Political blackmail and …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 07:15
Intel chipset roadmaps more like roadworks

You've got to be a genius to figure this little lot out

If you're currently scratching your head over whether to buy a Pentium III or an Athlon now, or wait until next week or for a couple of months when the prices drop and the performance rises, and when everything's .18 micron whatever that is, you might think you've already got problems. But your problems are as nothing compared …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 07:50
Diamond MM threatens to sue SuperRio over trademark

Little guy folds, solicits new name

Withering intimidation in the form of an e-mail from legal eagles representing Diamond Multimedia and disputing the Rio trademark has persuaded a virtual unknown to solicit new names for its portable MP3 player previously known as Super Rio. The little gizmo in question is a hard-drive based MP3 player using an ordinary 40 GB …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 08:05
Contenders pile into Brit online finance news wars

Read it in the Monday papers

The media job ads in Monday's Guardian is a great place to find out who's launching what - so let's take a peek in February 21's edition. And what do we have here: another financial news site hitting the UK. This one is called smallcapcenter.com, and it's recruiting "cutting edge" journalists in London to run its new European …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 09:46
Cash Register: 1-14 Feb, 2000

intro

14 Feb 2000 Porn sites undermine Paris brothels Softbank is joining forces with the World Bank to provide $500 million for Internet start ups in the third world.The Japanese group is forming the investment fund with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector branch. The money will be available for …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 10:22
Net banking is for Scandinavians in anoraks

...says net bank boss

Top marks to the FT's Observer column for ferreting out this Central Banking interview with Abbey National CEO Ian Harley. Last week, Harley unveiled Cahoot, the mortgage bank's new online business. Last August, he told Central Banking that "while it would be possible to offer Internet access to mount a new product and attract …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 10:31
Gates buys stake in aircraft carrier builder

MS Flight Sim claims another victim...

Bill Gates is investing personally in Newport News Shipbuilding, the US maker of nuclear aircraft carriers, through his Cascade Investment company, according to a Schedule 13G just filed with the SEC. His 2.6 million shares are worth around $69 million, making him one of the top two shareholders. Newport has been buying its own …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 11:18
MS loses Korean action over Windows trademark

Local diary maker triumphant

Microsoft has lost an attempt to get a 1980 Korean trademark for "Window" overturned in the Patent Court after the Supreme Court ordered a re-trial last May. The trademark is held by diary and stationery producer Yangji Total Stationery Co of Seoul. The company has a turnover of $36 million, is the country's largest diary …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 11:18
Want to publish your credit card details? That'll do nicely, sir

Gaping hole in etailer security

A Manchester-based computer e-tailer has failed to solve a problem on its Web site potentially jeopardising the security of hundreds of its customers. On Friday, The Register informed MicroLand Online that the financial details of transactions were openly available on its site. The personal details of some 150 people -- …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 11:35
Colour Palm IIIc ships

Spec, pricing as per leaks

Palm Computing launched its much-anticipated colour Palm IIIc this morning -- a mere two days after leaks from US retailer Best Buy said it would. As expected, the device sports a 256-colour active-matrix LCD, 8MB of memory and contains a built-in rechargeable battery. The price -- again as anticipated -- is $449 in the US. …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 11:42
Crusoe to dominate Taiwanese production, says Transmeta

But this could turn out to a little bit optimistic...

Transmeta CEO Dave Ditzel and VP marketing Jim Chapman did have something new to say when they showed up in London yesterday, but history will judge whether or not it was smart. According to Chapman, Transmeta's Crusoe and Mobile Linux combo is being adopted by the entire Taiwanese IT industry for Web pad-type devices. By a …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 12:30
Excite embarrassed by kiddie porn links

Links removed, Scotland Yard alerted…

Excite.co.uk has removed a kiddie porn link from its search engine after it was reported earlier today to Scotland Yard's Computer Crime Unit. The link to "kids porno" and a "free kids porno picture gallery" was top of the list for anyone entering the simple and innocent word "kids". The other search results were harmless, …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 12:46
Psion, Nokia, Palm et al push mobile data sync standard

SyncML Initiative to leverage XML standard

Various friends of Symbian, including Nokia, Psion, Palm and Motorola, have kicked off an effort to develop an open industry spec for universal data synchronisation of remote data and personal information. Other founders are IBM and its subsidiary Lotus, and Motorola sub Starfish (whose raison d'etre is of course synchronisation …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 13:11
Linuxcare challenges MS to open Windows source

In desperate and somewhat strained bid for publicity

In a pretty blatant, partial and even desperate piece of bandwagon-jumping, Linux services outfit Linuxcare has challenged Microsoft "to deliver its Windows code to the open-source community." Linuxcare yesterday "pledged worldwide support for... Windows as open-source software code - if Microsoft is willing to make good on …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 13:38
How to hack Tesco's DVD player – Register readers write

Updated It's a doddle

Register readers are clearly a resourceful lot -- we've had stacks of email revealing just how Wharfedale's DVD player can be hacked to support DVDs from any of the regions into which the movie industry has divided the world (see Tesco slams 'unnecessary' DVD zoning). Well, Wharfedale admitted its player was "easily hackable", …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 14:15
Euro Net foundation born – a think tank too far?

EIF to address 'network society issues' and 'shape public policies'

As though there weren't enough self-appointed Internet coordinating bodies, the European Internet Foundation was born yesterday in Brussels. It is backed mostly by large consultancy and service companies (15 so far, including Anderson, BT, ICL, Siemens, Telewest...), called associates, who probably welcome the lobbying …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 14:55
No settlement, so MS and DoJ return to court

MS on Trial And zero hour draws closer...

The parties in the Microsoft trial meet again in Judge Jackson's court again today after a failure to reach a settlement during Judge Posner's mediation. Although a settlement is still possible, it is clear that the DoJ has stayed resolute and that the plaintiff states have not weakened. The deliberate leaks so far, despite …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 15:03
Capita, MS push Win2k to schools market

Deal develops new site and tackles piracy

Microsoft has signed a deal to help it flog Windows 2000 to British schools. The software giant today hooked up with outsourcing company Capita Group to offer a range of online services through an education portal. As part of the deal, Microsoft and Capita will jointly develop a site for the education market -- called education. …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 15:08
HP shows off chubby looking thin client

Intel/MS backed e-Vectra aims to simplify management

Hewlett Packard (HP) has launched the trimmed-down e-PC it started talking about last November, although it doesn't start to ship in Europe until mid-April. Rolled into the Vectra range, the snappily named e-Vectra is designed to perform in much the same way as the ill-fated NetPC thin client platform of the 90s -- easier to …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 16:11
Motorola buys network processor pioneer

C-Port acquired for $430m

Motorola is to buy network chip developer C-Port in a stock swap that values the acquisition at $430 million. Founded in 1997, C-Port's work has centred on the development of programmable processors designed to replace ASICs in high-end networking hardware: high-speed switches and routers, that kind of thing. The advantage of a …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 16:19
German students get cut price AOL rates

Ten DM gets you hour a day free

AOL Europe is offering to subsidise Net access for students in Germany as part of a major educational scheme launched today. Under the initiative, all German schools will be offered the chance to receive free AOL accounts in a bid to enhance learning. Students will also be offered the chance to secure their own access. For an …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 17:15
AMD Athlon at heart of Microsoft X-Box spec

AMD Dresden builds Gigapixel-designed chipset

Upstart graphics firm Gigapixel has beaten off S3, Nvidia, ATI and other big-name rivals to win the contract to design the graphics chipset for Microsoft's X-Box. And it in turn has awarded the contract to build the chipset to AMD. An AMD Athlon CPU, a hard drive, DVD ROM and a modified version of Windows will form the other …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 17:30
France Telecom declines to open up ADSL to rivals

Can't get the business plan together, it tells Brussels

France Telecom has given a Gallic shrug to the European Commission's notion that it should lease lines to competitors such as 9Telecom (who made the formal complaint in November), Cegetal and Siris so that they can offer higher speed Internet access. All FT will say is that it doesn't think it could come up with a business plan …

Business 22 Feb 2000, 17:37