26th May 2000 Archive

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Web to rescue the British corner shop

Drop-off points

The Internet is jumping to the rescue of the corner shop. A Leamington Spa-based company plans to offer Web shoppers the chance to use their late-night opening local shop or garage as a place to collect goods, such as books or CDs, bought online. This will save punters having to worry about being at home during delivery times …

Business 26 May 2000, 09:41
Jeanette Winterson wins back kidnapped domain name

Cybersquatter given ten days to hand it over

Novelist Jeanette Winterson has won back her dotcom after it was "kidnapped" by a Cambridge academic. In March, the Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit author claimed Mark Hogarth, who had registered hundreds of URLs bearing the names of famous writers, was abusing her trademark. Writing in The Times, she accused Hogarth of …

Business 26 May 2000, 09:41
Freecom, Oneview fight ends with three dead

Oh to have been a fly on the wall

With numbers-obsessed financial reporting, you'd be forgiven for forgetting it's real people that make the decisions behind the never-ending trail of acquisitions and mergers. With Freecom.net and Oneview.net's planned merger, you weren't allowed to forget. An announcement made yesterday (24 May) after the London Stock Exchange …

Business 26 May 2000, 09:41
IBM makes NUMA Linux-friendly

And not the other way around

IBM blew some dry ice over its Unix roadmap this week, which we're only too happy to blow away again. Big Blue announced NUMA-Q E-410 servers earlier this week, updating the range it acquired along with Sequent. But that wasn't really the problem. No, it's the Linux spin which IBM feels obliged to sprinkle on all its …

Business 26 May 2000, 09:41
Cable blunder cuts off 2500 BT customers

Severance pay in prospect?

Around 2500 BT customers were left without a telephone service after a cable-cutting blunder. BT said it had been working "flat out" to repair the cable, which was severed on Wednesday afternoon, affecting users in the Milton Keynes area. It declined to reveal if the damage had been caused by a worker at a rival telecomms …

Business 26 May 2000, 09:41
Samsung to co-develop Linux Alpha supercomputer

Cluster-in-a-box, apparently

Korea's Samsung, Zion Linux Systems, and the Korea Research and Development Information Center are to co-developer a supercomputer based on the open source operating system and the Alpha CPU. The deal, according to a report in Korea's Maeil newspaper, will see Samsung provide processor and hardware technology that will be …

Business 26 May 2000, 11:56
3dfx rejigs Voodoo 5 release schedule

5500 AGP version delayed for extra testing after 'field failures'

3dfx has been forced to delay the widespread roll-out of its top end Voodoo 5 graphics accelerator, the 5500 AGP. The company said this week that the action had been taken in the light of "field failures". 3dfx reckons only a small number of configurations are affected, and even then at low levels, but it said it felt it was …

Business 26 May 2000, 12:09
Dataquest confirms PC not going out of fashion

Germans lead the way

PC shipments in Western Europe look set to grow by 47 per cent over the next five years. Research group Dataquest forecasts the sector will see a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 per cent, boosting unit shipments to more than 45 million in 2004. But this spurt will not be matched by revenues from PCs – they are expected to …

Business 26 May 2000, 15:40
VIA apologises for Nazi gaffe

No offence intended

As we predicted yesterday, AMD's Thunderbird prices are go... nearly, VIA has today confirmed that it is dropping the initials KZ from its forthcoming Socket A chipset, due to unfortunate connotations with Nazi concentration camps. The product will henceforth be known as the VIA Apollo KT133. "We have decided to rename our …

Business 26 May 2000, 15:40
Gateway doubles the AMD mix

Filling the consumer space

Gateway plans to double the amount of chips it buys from AMD due to Intel's product dearth. The announcement came during a Banc of America Securities conference call. Gateway chief financial officer John Todd said: "We'll probably double our AMD mix or better this quarter in our consumer space," CNET reported. The direct PC …

Business 26 May 2000, 15:40
Volvo lover faces jail over online blackmail allegations

No more logging on allowed

A Volvo lover may be looking at two years in jail after trying to blackmail an online publisher for one of the Swedish vehicles. Mature student Nelson Holcomb was arrested on campus at Colorado State University on Wednesday. He is accused of trying to extort cash, free downloads, and a Volvo car from a New Jersey company which …

Business 26 May 2000, 15:40
Big Blue to update non-POWER PowerPC line

Summertime launches for 700MHz G3, upgraded system-on-a-chip PPC 705

IBM is set this summer to revitalise the side of its PowerPC CPU line that's not geared towards the company's traditional server and high-end workstation markets. Leading the rejig, according to sources cited by ZDNet US, are new versions of the PowerPC 750 - aka the G3 - specifically, the 750CX and 750CXe, running between …

Business 26 May 2000, 16:08
Indie label sues MP3.com for copyright theft

Net music company seen as soft touch after RIAA verdict?

Internet music company MP3.com is once again being sued for copyright infringement, though this time the word 'copycat' is probably more appropriate than 'copyright'. Having been successfully sued by the world's well-known major recording companies under the auspices of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), MP3. …

Business 26 May 2000, 16:27
boo.com to start selling clogs?

Dutch ISP in 'exclusive negotiations'

boo.com could be falling into Dutch hands as negotiations to buy the stricken online sports gear e-tailer drag on. According to a report in today's Wall Street Journal, Dutch ISP Chello Broadband is in exclusive negotiations with Boo, with sources close to the talks claiming a deal will be announced "very soon". Liquidator …

Business 26 May 2000, 17:34
Net community goes spud crazy

Sir Walter Raleigh would have been proud

We ran a story on Thursday pointing out that the BBC, Slashdot and God knows who else had been duped into believing that 12 potatoes could run a Web server for several days at a time. BBC, Slashdot mashed by spud pranksters obviously struck a nerve and we updated the story with yet more suckered sites several hours later. Since …

Business 26 May 2000, 22:01