31st March 2000 Archive

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MostHateD in gaol for burglary

Giving hackers a bad name

A founding member of hacking crew gLobaL heLL recently charged with breaking into US government and corporate systems is being held in gaol on charges of burglary and car theft. gLobaL heLL member Patrick Gregory, aka MostHateD, missed an important appointment in federal court Wednesday during which he was expected to plead …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 04:27
Mitnick movie draws copyright lawsuit

Contains source material from more than one book, apparently

Jonathan Littman, author of a 1996 book about hacker legend Kevin Mitnick called The Fugitive Game, is suing the Disney and Miramax movie studios for using parts of his work for an upcoming film without his permission. The film is based on a 1996 book called Takedown by reporter John Markoff who originally covered the Mitnick …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 05:07
Stephen King e-book cracked and distributed free

Pirates save consumers a whopping $2.50

Computer enthusiasts have cracked the encryption protecting Stephen King's on-line novella Riding the Bullet, and are distributing pirated, cracked copies via the Web for free. The novella sells for US $2.50 at some of its on-line distributors; others have been giving it away as a promotional gimmick. The 16,000-word novella, …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 05:53
Viglen beds down with LineOne for ISP launch

Guess who plays mother?

UK PC builder Viglen is to start an ISP next month through a deal with LineOne. From mid-April, all Viglen PCs will come pre-loaded with the VigOnline ISP. Users of the "free Internet service" will pay call charges but no monthly fee. The two are also developing a customised portal, giving Viglen customers access to more than a …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 08:10
Tiny launches one-stop Web shop for tiny businesses

Teams up with the Sage of Newcastle

Tiny Computers is offering very small businesses a PC and Web site building package for under £1500. The UK system builder will launch it's t:BUSINESS venture on Monday. Aimed at individuals or SME cyber virgins, it will offer a Pentium III 650MHz PC with Windows 98, printer, scanner and a Web site facility from Sage for £1,199 …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 08:11
Jeanette Winterson demands return of kidnapped name

Cybersquatter regrets 'ham-fisted' approach to famous authors

A Cambridge academic who registered URLs bearing the names of 130 authors says he now regrets trying to sell the domain names. Mark Hogarth has spent around £750 on registering hundreds of domain names, including martinamis.com and jeanettewinterson.com. His plan is to set up a string of Web sites through which he can redirect …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 09:36
AMD's share price rises on positive forecast

Intel, Rambus down on day

AMD bucked the trend in high technology stocks yesterday as it saw its share price rise to $60, rising by $5.25 during the day's trading. That followed positive reports by several analysts suggesting that its quarterly results, due in April, were likely to be better than expected, as well as market research which showed AMD was …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 09:39
Michael Dell puts boot into BT ADSL plans

Makes a change from AMD

Michael Dell, the computer magnate, reckons BT is charging too much for ADSL and is taking too long to roll out its services. Join the queue. Unlike mere mortals, the Texan gazillionaire doesn't have to stand in line: he gets to meet Sir Peter Bonfield, BT chief executive, and tell it straight to his face. Bonfield and Dell met …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 09:54
Sun calls lawyers down on non-Sun Web site

Help must be official help

The legal wrath of Sun lawyers has descended on a site which was distributing what the company claims is confidential, proprietary and copyright information. Gerald Karczewski, assistant general counsel at Sun Microelectronics, has written to a site called Sunhelp, claiming that it is illegally publishing and duplicating Sun …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 09:55
Ballmer reorgs MS reorged reorg. Reorg imminent?

Reborn Maritz sells the farm...

Fresh from two major reorganisations last year plus countless - and barely documented - min-reorgs, Microsoft is at it again. Is it because president and CEO Steve Ballmer likes the "continuous reinvention" sound-bite? This time around Ballmer is merging the platforms division with the developer group, with Jim Allchin keeping …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:00
Infineon pulls 12-incher out of plants

New fab for Dresden will reduce costs

Infineon, the former semiconductor wing of Siemens which was spun off earlier this month, said today it will build a 12-inch (300mm) wafer module at its existing plant in Dresden. The firm will plough over €1 billion into the plant over the next three years, and the additional fab facilities will create over 1000 additional jobs …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:12
1GHz Coppermine won't copulate

Takes two to tango but these won't

Information available publicly on the Intel Web site has confirmed that the firm's 1GHz Coppermine microprocessor cannot be used for dual processing. Yesterday, leaked documents we saw earlier in the week, said that Intel's Lancewood motherboard would support just about every flavour of Coppermine known to humankind, except for …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:35
eBay subpoenaed in DoJ commissions-fixing probe

More miracles of the 'new economy'

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has subpoenaed documents from eBay relating to an investigation of auctioneers Sotheby's and Christie's amid allegations of price-fixing of commissions, the Associated Press reports. eBay disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that the government is …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:36
Daytrader nabbed for fake Lucent BB posting

Boy, is he dumb

Enthusiasm can get you a long way - and in the case of Fred Moldofsky, a 43-year old day trader from Houston, Texas, it could take you all the way to gaol. Moldofsky has been arrested and charged with securities fraud, after allegedly engineered a fall in Lucent's share price by posting a fake press release on a Yahoo! message …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:44
Some Athlon boards crunch with Win95A

BIOS corruption with KX133 chipset

Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer Epox has issued a warning that installing a version of Windows 95 on its Athlon 7KXA motherboard which uses a Via chipset can cause BIOS corruption. But a similar problem appears to affect other Athlon mobos using the KX133 chipset too. According to this Epox page, installing the retail release …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 10:49
CCM hives off distribution in MBO

Transforms itself into an Internet cash shell

An MBO and a name change will see CCM Distribution re-invent itself as a hi-tech investment house called Fundamental e-Investments and divest itself of its current core business. CCM managing director Brent Cutler will lead the MBO of the computer components distribution arm, which will continue to operate as normal, according …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:09
S3 Sweepstake: Via edges into the lead

Taiwanese chipset challenger slides past former favourite, Nvidia

S3's suitor for its 3D graphics chip business is Via, according to a source "close to the talks" cited by Electronic Buyer's News. Neither S3 nor Via have confirmed the claim, but, as we said yesterday, Via remains one of the four most likely buyers - the rest being Nvidia, ATI and Intel - primarily because it has already mooted …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:15
Yahoo! named in FTC privacy investigation

Shareholders warned to lower expectations

Internet giant Yahoo! has become the target of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation into whether it disclosed customer data to third parties in violation of federal regulations, the Associated Press reports. The company has been ordered to turn over documents investigators hope will enable them to determine if it …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:22
IBM and Citrix kick start ASP business

Nothing to the Net in five days. Invoice to follow, presumably...

In the belief that the ASP industry is being held back by the problem of ASP-enabling existing applications, IBM and Citrix have today announced a service that is intended to make it possible for software vendors to go "from nothing to the Net" in five days, as Citrix iBusiness VP Chris Phoenix put it. IBM's ASP Prime Solution …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:30
OS-9 owner to appeal Apple MacOS 9 trademark ruling

Apple has violated our trademark, OS developer insists

Operating system supplier Microware Systems will appeal against the US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa's decision to chuck out its claim that Apple violated its trademarks. The ruling, made on 17 March, said that Apple's MacOS 9 was not a misappropriation of Microware's OS-9 trademark. OS-9 has been available …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:44
Watford Electronics turns cybersquatter on rivals for ‘a joke’

Owner of stevebennett.co.uk, dabs.org.uk

Watford Electronics has turned cybersquatter by registering URLs using the names of some of its rivals. When David Atherton, MD of Dabs Direct, went to register his name as a dotcom, he found it had already gone to an outfit called Cresta Enterprise Ltd. So had davidatherton.co.uk and dabs.org.uk. Unbeknown to Jungle.com owner …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 11:56
Sony recalls 1.25m PlayStation 2 CDs

Replacement disk prevents Region One DVD playback - so why upgrade?

As predicted, Sony will recall utility CDs shipped with all its PlayStation 2 consoles to date, the company admitted earlier today. The reason: the bug exposed by users earlier this month that allows the console to play DVDs from any region - a feature that violates Sony's DVD licence agreement. Sony has already had to asks user …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 12:07
Psion licenses Opera browser for EPOC

Hold the back page...

Psion today announced that it is licensing the EPOC version of the Opera browser. This particular bulletin must be a strong contender for least unexpected news of the year, as Psion operatives have made no secret of the fact that the netBook will use Opera, just as soon as the coding's complete. Opera 4.0 for EPOC went into …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 12:08
US patent mess will get worse before it gets better

Analysis Little chance of arresting ludicrous land-grabs

The discredited US business patent issuing machine is being tweaked, but the signs are that it will not bring about the reform needed. The action plan of the US Patent and Trademark Office's new business methods patent initiative has words of comfort about industry outreach and quality issues, but it is failing to impress those …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 12:37
US judge upholds hyperlinks

Copyrights were never intended to promote advertising

Hyperlinking, or deep linking, where links bring surfers from one Web site past the home page of another and directly to the relevant content is perfectly legal, according to US District Judge Harry Hupp in his ruling on a case brought by Ticketmaster against rival Tickets.com. Many Webmasters object to deep linking because it …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 12:42
Corel Linux on the rise, but Red Hat still dominant

Nobody's got a monopoly though - whew...

The latest Linux US retail sales figures for February 2000 from PCData show that Corel Linux jumped from 2.3 per cent in November to 19.6 per cent in February, while Red Hat's share dropped from 58.5 per cent to 40.4 percent. Over the same period, Macmillan's share dropped marginally, but SuSE showed a tenfold leap from 0.7 per …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 12:50
Intel worker indicted for spilling Itanium secrets

Hacking the old-fashioned way

A former Intel employee was indicted in California yesterday by a US grand jury on charges of stealing trade secrets pertaining to the company's Itanium microprocessor and disclosing them to a new employer, which happens to be an Intel competitor. Malaysian Say Lye Ow faces an incredible 30 years in prison and US $1.5 million in …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 13:08
Intel worker indicted for spilling Itanium secrets

Hacking the old-fashioned way

A former employee of Intel was charged in California with stealing trade secrets relating to the firm's future IA-64 Itanium chip, Dow Jones reports Malaysian Say Lye Ow faces an incredible 30 years in prison and US $1.5 million in fines for taking documents and computer files relating to the design and testing of the Itanium 64 …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 13:10
Student spams sex email by mistake

Quits course, lands in court

An electronics student who emailed a pornographic picture to his friend accidentally sent it to everyone at his college whose surname began with 'C'. Andrew Broadbent, 19, downloaded the image - of a romping couple - from the Internet at Norwich City College. As a prank, he sent the email to his mate, Daniel Connolly, and, by …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 13:45
Bitboys misses 3D superchip debut deadline

Second delay strikes Glaze3D, by the look of it

Keenly watched Finnish 3D graphics chip company Bitboys has as near as dammit missed its self-imposed 31 March 2000 to announce its upcoming chip based on its Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture (XBA). Back in January, Bitboys unveiled XBA and promised to "introduce the final product specifications, product names and target prices of …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 13:58
Pearson snaps up one-time multimedia star Dorling Kindersley

£311m buys troubled Web content, Star Wars book purveyor

UK media conglomerate Pearson, owner of Penguin Books, the Econmist and the Financial Times, has agreed to buy troubled publisher Dorling Kindersley for $311 million. The acquisition is a straightforward cash deal, with Pearson offering 430 pence for each DK share. That's four per cent more than yesterday's closing price of 413. …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 14:26
Have Web server… will travel

UK team develops a Palm-based version of Apache... or has it?

The Silliest Server of the Week award has to go to the team at ApachePDA, part of UK company Apache Services, which has dedicated itself to porting the best-known open source Web server software, Apache, over to the... er... Palm Pilot. The software is currently in alpha testing, but it's robust enough to serve the group's Web …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 14:46
Jungle buys Software Warehouse ahead of planned IPO

One hand washes the other

Steve Bennett's Jungle.com is to buy his PC mail order business Software Warehouse. The online music and IT venture expects to complete the share swap by the end of April, giving Software Warehouse shareholders 15 per cent ownership of Jungle. Through the deal it will take Software Warehouse's mail order, warehouse and logistics …

Business 31 Mar 2000, 15:55