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2nd June 2000 Archive

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  • MS trial: no hanging yet, but Reno says Gates is robber baron

    You win some, you lose some...

    Just when influential analysts start saying everything's going quiet in the Microsoft trial, US attorney general Janet Reno describes Bill Gates as a "robber baron." Frankly, there's no alternative explanation to what she said, and the chances of the focus shifting off Microsoft as the trial moves into the appeals phase have …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:11

  • Boo.com – it lives!

    Fashionmall.com buys site, trademark etc.

    Boo.com could soon be back in business after US e-tailer, fashionmall.com, bought the failed e-outfit for an undisclosed sum. Fashionmall.com intends to use boo.com to gain a foothold in the European marketplace. A notice on boo.com reads: "Fashionmall.com is very proud to announce our acquisition of boo.com. "We will be …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • We've found a good WAP idea!

    And of course some crap ones too

    We like Ed Dale and Pablo Campillos - director and European development bloke of mIQ respectively. Why? Because they have the same perspective of WAP as we do. Meeting up to discuss their sport-stats-on-WAP plan, the first few minutes was spent joyfully poking fun at the one million and one stupid ideas that have been spewed out …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • Compaq drives WAP deals with handheld subsidies

    HP to follow suit

    Compaq is clawing its way into the PDA market on the back of WAP. The company has stitched together cut-price hardware deals with mobile operators in Germany, and now looks set to roll out subsidised WAP/Compaq hardware bundles with operators in other European countries. Hewlett-Packard is ready to follow suit in the subsidised …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • Thunderbirds are go!

    Well they will be next week

    The much-hyped AMD Thunderbird is to bare its teeth at Chipzilla at Computex next Monday. The souped-up Athlon will launch at 750MHz and feature 256KB of on-die cache, finally allowing Chimpzilla to compete on even terms with Intel's Coppermine Pentium IIIs. But the most significant change will be in manufacturing costs – …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • Compel urges shareholders to stay put

    85 million offer taking the mickey

    Computacenter has been labelled "opportunistic" by Compel after launching a hostile bid for the reseller. "The board of Compel regards Computacenter's current proposal as opportunistic and one which significantly undervalues the company," Compel said in a statement. "Consequently, the board of Compel advises shareholders to …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • Click here for genuinely sexy geeks

    Straight up (although to be honest, a few of them are clearly deranged)

    That's right! It's not brand new or nuffin but it's the first we've heard of it - it's The Sexiest Geek Alive!. Here's the deal: You have to be a geek. You need to live in the States. Go to the site above and register yourself for the competition. There you will be thrown a few geek-type questions like who's the best Star Trek …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 10:25

  • Sony welcomes PlayStation 2 clones

    Today X-Box - tomorrow ze vorld

    Sony is planning to license its PlayStation 2 technology to third parties, if comments made by Ken Kutaragi, head of the company's video games division, are anything to go by. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kutaragi said: "The PlayStation 2 should be opened to the outside world. We hope that all of our partners will …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 11:53

  • Apple retail share rises

    But with iMac sales apparently falling, how long can it last?

    Apple appears to be moving back toward its former status as a 'top three' PC vendor, according to the latest sales figures from the US retail and mail order channels compiled by market research agency PC Data. However, the company's sales do appear to be slowing down, largely due to a tail-off of interest in the iMac, the very …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 11:53

  • Solano Mobo, more Macs, BX overview

    Sites pick up speed

    Wouldn't you just know it? You wait ages for a decent Mac site to come along and then two arrive together. Joining MacSlash which we mentioned here yesterday, comes MacTechUK, an Apple site aimed at UK Macintosh users. If you are tired of Apple concentrating on the USA or generalising the UK as "Europe" then this is site is …

    Hardware Roundup 2 Jun 2000, 11:53

  • Mirror claims credit for LibertySurf suspension

    Lone voice in the wildernes

    LibertySurf has suspended sales of its unmetered Net access software and canned its nation-wide ad campaign after the service was hit by major problems. Ever since it launched three weeks ago more and more customers have complained about the service. Their frustrations included difficulties signing up to the service, poor …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 11:53

  • ICANN world whip-round comes a cropper

    Can't pay, or Won't Pay?

    Internet body ICANN is having trouble persuading nations to cough up for this year's budget. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers aims to collect around $1.5 million from 250 countries by 30 June - the end of its financial year. Failure to do so may jeopardise its self-sufficiency – crucial to its proposed …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 11:53

  • Lastminute flies high with Expedia UK

    And other tales from the Bubble Economy

    07 June 2000 Logistics company Christian Salvesen is looking to roll out its SHARPnet service which will let customers track consignment movements online. The food distribution company has also set aside 100 million for a three-year acquisition plan, which will target companies in France, Italy and the Benelux countries. Four …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 11:57

  • IBM donates SOAP to Apache XML project

    Beats Microsoft to the punch

    There's a bit more to the IBM/Lotus donation of its Simple Object Access Protocol (6,000 downloads from IBM's alphaWorks site) to Apache's XML Project than meets the eye. As Robert Sutor, IBM's XML program director, put it yesterday, IBM does not want the Internet to become "a battleground of competing, vendor-specific 'control …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 12:52

  • Hoojit maflips Shoppers Search engine

    Offers Pokemon inducements

    Parents: from today you could become the most popular mum and dad in the world if you register at search engine/shopping guide hoojit.com. The site is giving away complete sets of Pokemon cards as an enticement (or if you want to teach the little brats a lesson in humility you could go for the helicopter ride or webcam). We …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 12:52

  • Bomb explodes at Microsoft SA

    No casualties

    Police are investigating a bomb attack in the early hours of this morning on Microsoft's office in South Africa. The "unidentified device" went off at 4.55am this morning in the courtyard next to the Microsoft canteen in the Johannesburg building. Only four security staff were on site at the time and no-one was injured, ITWeb …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 12:59

  • Madonna single leaked via Napster

    Fan sites in trouble, too

    Pregnant pop star Madonna has found herself in the midst of a Net piracy wrangle after an unreleased single was leaked on the Web. The single, to be Madonna's next single and the title track of her new album, Music, was due for a September or October release. But the song was apparently stolen, and large chunks can now be found …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 12:59

  • Chip sales jumped 35.6 per cent in April

    World+dog can't get enough of 'em

    The world continues to want more chips and that intense demand generated a 35.6 per cent hike in semiconductor sales in April. According to the silicon industry's trade body, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), chip sales hit $15.2 billion, up from the $11.2 billion it recorded in April 1999. Driving that growth is …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 13:59

  • AltaVista free everything ISP goes live

    Only three weeks late

    AltaVista will launch its much-hyped Net access service in Britain at the end of the month - some three weeks later than scheduled. The webco is to publish details about the service on Monday, breaking the veil of secrecy and silence that followed in the wake of the service's high-profile announcement in March. The new service …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 14:06

  • Music biz changes tune on Net threat

    All of a sudden, the Internet is an opportunity

    A music industry executive has finally gone public and revealed what business' real attitude to the Internet and music piracy. "We've far more to fear from a surplus of CD manufacturing here in Asia, where in some markets 90 per cent of CDs are bootlegged, than from the Internet," EMI senior VP Jay Samit later told Reuters. …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 14:44

  • Compaq tunes into MP3

    Digital music players comin' atchya, raps Capellas

    Compaq will hop onto the MP3 bandwagon later this year courtesy of CEO Michael "Groovin'" Capellas' pet project: the Big Q's consumer division. "We're coming out with MP3 players. The Internet will [demand] different types of devices to service different purposes," he told a gathering at Santa Clara, California's Churchill Club …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 16:09

  • BBC forces comedian to hand over bbc.uk.com

    It's not funny, he says

    A British comedian has been forced to hand over his Web address after the British Broadcasting Corporation issued a writ against him in the High Court. Funnyman Barry Paskin [Who he? Comedy Ed] said he wanted his site bbc.uk.com to become a portal devoted to the best of British comedy. But the BBC took exception to Paskin's …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 16:22

  • UK court slaps reseller for metatag squatting

    A first for Britain

    A Tyneside reseller has become the first company to be roasted by a UK court over trademark infringement in HTML 'meta' tags. Mandata was ordered to pay 15,000 damages after including trademarks belonging to its rival Road Tech Computer Systems in its meta tags. It was also accused of writing the trademarks into the front page …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 16:22

  • MS to relocate to hi-tech secret island to escape Feds

    Canada? Phooey - Billfeld's Island's the place to be...

    OK, we give in. When BBC news reported this morning that Microsoft might move to Canada in order to escape the hangman's noose, we thought: what a ludicrous story - there's no way we're reporting that. We carried on ignoring it, reasoning we could spare the hits, when Slashdot picked up on it, and as it dominoed its way through …

    Software 2 Jun 2000, 16:22

  • SiS samples single chip Athlon chipset

    It's a system on a chip minus the CPU

    Those awfully-clever SiS folks have developed a new $39 chipset for AMD's Athlon. Based on the SiS630, the SiS730S integrates the north bridge, south bridge, and a 128-bit 3D graphics accelerator (SiS300) into a single piece of silicon. It also features a 56kbps Modem, Fast Ethernet, 1/10Mb Home PNA and IDE ATA100, along with …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 16:23

  • 3dfx and Nvidia's public flame war

    And it affected company announcements too

    We've said it before, but ain't it great when you're reminded that businesses are run by real people with real prejudices and flaws? This one's a treat and was played out on Glide Underground. Nvidia and 3dfx are getting increasingly uptight with each other. They were neck and neck once, but Nvidia is now storming ahead ( …

    Business 2 Jun 2000, 16:23