5th June 2000 Archive

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'Amiga is Back and will change computing forever, again'

Who are we to argue?

Press releases on Saturday usually mean one thing: something to hide. This one, from Amiga Inc, is the exception. Under the hubristic headline "Amiga is Back and will change computing forever, again", the company announces the release of the Amiga Software Developer’s Kit. Costing $99, the SDK represents the first prop in the …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 09:51
FBI swoop hacker hauled into court

Welsh teenager charged on 12 counts

A teenage hacker accused of stealing details on 23,000 credit card accounts appeared in court yesterday. Raphael Gray was arrested in March following an FBI swoop on the Welsh village of Clynderwen. The 18-year-old allegedly hacked his way into eight banking Web sites as part of a suspected $3 million fraud. He is then alleged …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 09:52
Incoming! Intel goes launch crazy

Get ready for N-N-N-Nineteen June Intel mega launch

It'll be a busy month for Chipzilla as it launches a whole slew of new products that it doubt hopes will take the shine off the arrival of AMD's Thunderbird and Duron processors. The Solano i815 and i815E chipsets aren't even here yet and they're already getting rave reviews, albeit by being compared extremely favourably with …

Channel 5 Jun 2000, 09:52
Intel withdraws boxed Xeons, admits 933MHz CuMine problems

Intel boxes dealers, disties' ears: supply ultra-tight

Just as love goes with marriage [seen the divorce figures - Ed?], and the Moon is a balloon, so Intel's long suffering distributor and dealer channel get the thin end of the wedge when supplies of CuMines and Celerwhines are being doled out - as this internal document leaked to us by an Intel employee - proves. The highlights? …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 09:58
Cyber funerals are no laughing matter

Especially if the regulator gets its way

You can push black humour too far (well, you can with the authorities). Burymeright.com has been given the cold shoulder over its proposed advertising blitz. The company which offers you the chance to tell family and friends how you want to go, sent a script of a proposed ad to the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre for …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:10
Outlook Love Bug patch still mysteriously missing

How long does it take to pour quick-set over attachments anyway?

Users are still waiting for a fix for MS Outlook after the ravages from the ILOVEYOU, Melissa and related viruses. Microsoft is itself in a bit of a fix here; having pushed the idea of attachments, a security fix based on blocking all attachments seems like a massive climb-down. But on the other hand, what else could you do? …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:11
SAMBA team plots ‘killer appliance’

All that and single sign-on too

The SAMBA team is working on code that will lead to "killer appliances" according to author Jeremy Allison. At the very least, it could offer an opportunity to reduce the need for many of the NT servers that are deployed today. Winbind hooks into the authentication mechanism used by Linux and most commercial Unixes, and …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:18
Dilbert creator chooses most-creative expense claim

Voodoo dolls are tax deductible

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has chosen a winner in a competition to find the most creative expense claim. The award goes to an employee of a Bay Area software house who claimed the cost of two Voodoo Dolls to be used against an industry analyst who he says was antagonistic to the company. Dan Wolff claimed for two voodoo dolls …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:18
Sega teams with Motorola to build games mobile phone

Hello? I'm on the second level...

Motorola is to use Sega Dreamcast technology in a new generation of mobile phones to be launched next year, say Japanese reports. According to the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the two companies are due to announce an alliance later today (Monday). Sega has ambitions to pitch the Dreamcast as an online gaming machine, …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:19
Don't tax Net hardware either, says Intel's Grove

Funny that...

Andy Grove has been offering advice to the US government, as well as the odd maxim for individuals and businesses, at a conference on Internet and Society at Harvard. His messages were couched in coded terms, but by a massive coincidence, they'd be good for Intel as well as the government. Grove's main political theme was "Do …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 10:19
1GHz Thunderbird shipping today

Intel in trousers-down scenario as Chimpzilla delivers on time

As predicted by The Register last week, Thunderbirds are go! AMD today duly unveiled the Thunderbird variant of its Athlon processor at Computex in Taiwan earlier today. The chip comes in six flavours – 1000MHz at $990; 950MHz at $759; 900MHz at $589; 850MHz at $507; 800MHz at $359; and 750MHz at $319. An AMD Europe spokesman …

Channel 5 Jun 2000, 14:56
Via's PMA 133 chipset ‘to slaughter’ i810e

Computex 2000 And FIC, unphased by Intel, goes Socket A

The little problems that First International Corporation (FIC) is currently having with chip giant Intel are not preventing the Taiwanese firm from promoting two Socket A motherboards to support the T'Bird Athlons and Durons which use the Via chipset. FIC introduced two mobos: the AZ11 and AZ31, use the Via KT133 chipset and …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 14:56
Slap in the head for Hague domain name turkey

No bids for URL

Tory leader William Hague has been snubbed by the cybersquatting community. A Scottish entrepreneur put the domain name williamhague.co.uk up for sale on an online auction site earlier this year. He sat back and waited for the offers to start rushing in. But after two months the domain name, for sale on names123.com, has not …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 14:56
Who do you think you are kidding, AltaVista?

Brass Neck of the Week

It may only be Monday but AltaVista has already won the brass neck award for the week. It doesn't have an ISP and has refused to utter a single word about its plans since it hyped a woolly announcement in March, yet it feels eminently qualified to comment on the state of Net market in Britain and the impact its eventual service …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 14:56
Games review StarLancer

It's not half bad, if space murder's your thing

Following the popularity of a recent games story, we have decided in our wisdom to cover more gaming news. We made the mistake of telling this to a Microsoft PR man and three games arrived in the post the next day. It seems only fair then to write a review. StarLancer was the only one that didn't require us to install M$'s …

Business 5 Jun 2000, 14:57
Return of the Son of Caminogate

Souped up i820 hits the streets

Intel's revamped i820E chipset starts shipping today, a couple of weeks earlier than expected. Featuring a new ICH2 I/O controller hub supporting four USB ports, the 820E also has an integrated LAN controller, dual Ultra ATA/100 IDE controllers and Dolby surround-capable six-channel audio. The new chipset uses the same RDRAM …

Channel 5 Jun 2000, 15:26
US investment house moots $50m Iridium takeover

That's one hell of a mark-down

New York investment company Castle Harlan has admitted it is attempting to buy Iridium for $50 million and so save the cellphone satellite network from its crash and burn fate. According to an Associated Press, CH is looking to buy the satellite network, plus, we presume - CH isn't saying too much about the details of its plan …

Data Networking 5 Jun 2000, 15:26
US Supreme Court lets opt-out data sharing stand

Advertisers have rights too

The US Supreme Court today let stand a controversial lower-court ruling enabling telecomms companies to use and share information mined from customers' billing records to pitch additional services, the Associated Press reports. The Court declined to reinstate US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations previously …

Music and Media 5 Jun 2000, 17:09