5th April 2000 Archive

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TFN author ‘Mixter’ sentenced

Soft landing in Germany will frustrate DoJ

The German author of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack tool known as Tribal Flood Network (TFN) has been convicted of unrelated hacking charges by a court in Hannover and sentenced to six months' youth probation. The young man, who uses the alias 'Mixter', was convicted of computer trespass and "data spying", but not …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 02:06
MS judge: sentence in 60 days, go straight to Supreme Court

MS on Trial How's he going to pull this one off, readers?

The judge in the Microsoft trial moved into action quickly yesterday, proposing that the remedies phase of the trial (the 'sentence,' as it were) be conducted in 60 days, and raising the possibility of fast-tracking the appeal straight to the Supreme Court. Judge Jackson also wants both sides to produce the last offers they made …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 08:00
BT mulls wireless, satellite broadband delivery

Up to a point, Lord Copper

BT is looking to develop different platforms to deliver broadband services other than across copper wires. A source within BT said the monster telco was toying with different technologies, including wireless and satellite systems. He wouldn't commit further or go into any more detail about the plans, but said that the …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 08:51
Third-party mobo offers flip-chip FICs

Mainboard Coppermine drought begins to end

The lack of motherboards for Coppermine Pentium III chips using the FC PGA flip chip packaging is beginning to ease as third party manufacturers announce products supporting the platform. First International Computer (FIC) today formally announced its FA31 board, which uses the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset and both 100MHz and …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 09:13
Rambus share price dives again

$500 forecast over-optimistic? AMD rises to new high

The share price of Rambus (RMBS) fell by a precipitous $47.9375 on Wall Street yesterday, to end the day's trading at $209. That followed a sharp decline on the share price the previous day, when the price dropped by $37.5625. Although tech stocks on Nasdaq declined in general, following the declaration that Microsoft was guilty …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 09:30
CHS seeks bankruptcy ring-fence in Web firm womb move

Messed up on distribution, time to mess up on something else

CHS Electronics has filed for bankruptcy protection whilst revealing plans to become a corporate incubator for Web businesses. The failed distributor yesterday said it had filed a voluntary petition for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code. This would give it protection while it seeks approval for …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 10:24
Oftel names the local loop breakers

Trials involve 14 telcos

Fourteen operators have been selected to start moving their kit into BT's local telephone exchanges as a precursor to unbundling the local loop (ULL), Oftel announced today. The ULL trials -- which will begin in January 2001 -- will provide a taster for what is to come when BT is finally forced to open the doors to all its …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 11:04
Embrace technology or go out of business, warns Gates

Now, what was that the judge just finished saying?

There was irony a-plenty at Microsoft's third annual Government Leaders Conference in Seattle yesterday, which Bill Gates keynoted just hours after the judge threw the book at his company. The list of attendees included an impressive cross-section of the world's police, security services and armed forces; but hadn't Microsoft …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 11:23
Microsoft takes UK TV soap offensive

Deirdre, Beal, Ken could help counter organised crime

In a bid to stamp out piracy of its operating and application software piracy, Microsoft UK is hoping to persuade TV companies to include its message in popular soap operas. Julie Philpot, anti-piracy manager at Microsoft UK, revealed the plans at a meeting of the Personal Computer Association in Elstree last night. Philpott …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 11:33
Site uncovers dull man trapped in a young woman's body

Linda Harrison is alarmed

It comes as no surprise that US site dullmen.com has struck a chord with many British men. What is unnerving is the discovery that in every fiery, hip young woman, there seems to be a dull middle-aged man trying to get out. Dullmen.com promises to free lads from the modern shackles of having to be 'in and trendy', and to "let …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 11:36
Whale meat again on the Cyrix web site

You don’t want a new CPU, you want to visit Argentina

Obviously bored with making chips and chipsets, Cyrix and VIA are now inviting visitors to their web sites to travel to Puerto Madryn in Argentina. Check out Viatech.com or Cyrix.com. It sounds like a jolly nice place. The Patagonian City of Puerto Madryn offers a pleasant climate with a maximum summer temperature of 35 degrees …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 11:38
Netscape: change your user name now!

What do you mean you can't log in?

Netscape WebMail boasts an impressive six million plus account holders. Slightly less impressive is the fact that 480,000 of them are being forced to change their usernames following "improvements" to the service. Netscape is combining the CompuServe, AOL and Netscape databases and almost half a million users have been notified …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:03
3dfx licenses Intel's Real3D patents

Drops lawsuit in exchange

3D graphics chip pioneer 3dfx has entered into a pact with Chipzilla to secure access to the chip giant's extensive 3D graphics patent pool. Intel acquired the IP last year when it bought up the mortal remains of failed graphics hardware developer Real3D. Unfortunately, in the process, it also picked up Real3D's pending …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:10
Intel's Timna to have triple mobo support

Leak Central More details from our Intel mole

The low-end system on a chip processor which Intel will introduce in the third quarter of this year will be supported by three motherboard platforms, The Register can reveal. The chip, codenamed Timna, is intended to displace the Celeron microprocessor from its position as an entry-level product, and will target ultra- …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:19
Intel's Garibaldi takes the Rambus biscuit

Leak Central Willamette's secret RIMM mobo

Although the word on the street is that chipset manufacturers are scurrying to produce a motherboard for Intel's up-and-coming Willamette IA-32 processor, the firm's own offering will, as promised, support Rambus and its RIMMs. The boxed motherboard, codenamed Garibaldi, is slated to ship towards the end of this year and, …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:36
SGI to enable 64-way Linux multiprocessing with ccNUMA

You'll have to do it on Intel Itanium chips, though

SGI is to port a version of its ccNUMA shared-memory multiprocessing technology to Linux to boost efforts centred on solve the open source OS' inability to operate efficiently on machines with eight or more processors. SGI's contribution will focus on improving Linux installations that will run on Intel's upcoming 64-bit Itanium …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:43
Get ready for the Net-ready photo booth

So, how many people can you cram into an e-photo booth?

With the ubiquitous chant of 'if people touch it, connect it to the Net', it was only a matter of time before photo booths got wired. Sounds like a daft idea - who's gonna sit in a curtained light box to surf the Net? - but PhotoPlanet is on to a winner here. Don't expect to see many of the e-booths (1000 countrywide by the end …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 12:59
AP spills VIP contact details on Lycos.de

'NOT FOR PUBLICATION ON ANY WIRE'

Hats off to the Vienna bureau of the Associated Press. Hard working hacks there published a list of VIP telephone number on the Web by mistake yesterday in what can only be describe as a 24 carat gaffe. Names included far right Austrian politician Joerg Haider and the direct line of supreme NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. Of course, …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 13:45
Nintendo Gameboy delay confirms Palm profit fears

LCD shortage may hit next Gameboy release, will hit Palm income

Palm Computing's warning that its Q4 income will be hit by a component shortage induced sales shortfall was brought home today when Nintendo rang a similar alarm. The problem identified by Palm and announced last week when company bosses reported Palm's Q3 results is an industry-wide shortage of small form-factor LCD units and …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 13:50
Galaxy spins round AOL class action

Anti-competitive lawsuits mount

AOL has been slapped with another lawsuit alleging that its AOL 5.0 software meddles with PCs and blocks attempts by users to subscribe to other Internet service providers (ISPs). This latest legal action was filed by ISP Galaxy Internet Services Inc of Newton, Massachusetts in the federal court in Boston. Like all the other …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 14:05
AMD to bust $1 billion quarterly barrier

Share price: ready, steady, go

AMD will produce revenues of over $1 billion in Q1, the first time it's turned over a ten-figure sum in a single financial quarter. Speaking in Japan, CEO Jerry Sanders III said the firm will show a ten per cent growth in revenues over its previous quarter, when it reports its results on 12 April. Growth in sales of AMD Athlon …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 14:07
Gates and Ballmer vow to continue fight at appeal

MS on Trial But the quest for a settlement goes on

Microsoft has published an open letter from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to "customers, partners and shareholders" reiterating the company's intention to appeal against Judge Jackson's verdict, but stressing that "we will continue to look for new opportunities to resolve [the case] without further litigation." They "respectful …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 14:47
MS spinmeister offline till November, cites ‘hardware’ fault

Trial period run out?

David Gregory, formerly Microsoft UK's enforcer and anti-piracy Tsar and now head of spin to the hapless local press, is clearly a switched-off kind of guy. How do we know? Well, we presume he's an avid (if sometimes would-be) reader of The Register Daily Update. He's certainly on the mailing list, because every now and again we …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 18:26
Cyber Patrol ban list published on the Web

Handy links to all your favourite sites

Anyone eager to know which Usenet newsgroups and Web URLs are blacklisted by Mattel's Cyber Patrol censorware application, but too lazy to compile and run the cphack utility which decrypts the list, is welcome to visit the Cyber Patrol Block List Web site. The site exhaustively lists all of the 64,523 IPs named in the Cyber …

Business 5 Apr 2000, 18:51