6th June 2000 Archive

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DoJ rebuts MS filing, pulls Gates up on email deletion

MS on Trial Reads like it was prepared by somebody who'd been burned once. Funny

Last week Judge Jackson called for one final encore of filings - at the Department of Justice's request - before he delivered his final verdict. The DoJ's filing is now in, and Microsoft's response is due on Wednesday, but although the DoJ ostensibly wanted to deal with legitimate issues raised by Microsoft, its filing is shot …

Software 6 Jun 2000, 10:07
‘President Gore’ to put government on line

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If elected president, Internet inventor Al Gore will "lead a second American Revolution to make our government far less costly, far more effective and far more relevant to every American," by wiring virtually all federal services to the Web by 2003, he promised during a speech delivered at North Carolina State University on …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 10:07
Napster to sue bastard Offspring

If this is what it does to its friends...

Freedom fighters/criminals (delete as appropriate) Napster may be forced to sue its long-time friend, the band Offspring, after Offspring's Web site started selling Napster merchandise including T-shirts and baseball caps without its permission. Napster is keeping schtum about possible litigation, but if it doesn't defend its …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 10:07
SETI challenge revisited

Our reference Rambus system gets to munch through some work units

In our story of a few weeks back in which we detailed our SETI competition results, we mentioned how a couple of our machines fared: "Our reference Katmai 500 box (128MB RAM) is currently averaging 8 hours 10 minutes, while a Coppermine 800 (256MB RAM) is chomping through the data in an average seven hours." Now we have our …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 10:07
New technology in old Taipei

Computex 2000 A quick scoot around the halls

Each day of Computex, we'll try to bring you a roundup of companies and products that caught our eye at the trade show. MP3 players. Some people swear by them but an awful lot of folk swear at them. We saw a couple of models which to us, at least, were new. Addonics was exhibiting its Lobo MP3 player, available to OEMs …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 10:10
Rambus misses Computex Dragonboat

Computex 2000 DDR takes the Taiwanese biscuit

It's a public holiday in old Taipei today for the Dragonboat Festival. But memtech company Rambus appears not just to have missed the dragon boats, but the trade show boat too. A quick gander round the sticky halls of the Computex trade show has revealed that while Intel might be for it, and Rambus is definitely up for it, …

Channel 6 Jun 2000, 10:10
Intel 815e bursts into early existence

Computex 2000 The 815e is now alive

The official launch date of Intel's 815e chipset is the 19th of this month but you can forget all that because at the Computex trade show there's stacks of the pesky things. And not just 815e mobos, but boards of the i820e and the i810e flavour too, over at Intel's stand arranged in a humungous wall display. According to the …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 10:12
Computex 2000

All the stories from Taiwan's biggest IT show

10 June Info appliances main thrust of Computex 9 June Acer takes Transmeta punt Is Intel at end of the chipset road? 8 June AMD Slot A death threatens stock crunch Timna mobos spotted in Taipei 7 June Spicy PC gossip from Old Taipei Willamette to have triflingly short shelf life FICkle finger points to Transmeta fete …

Register Full Coverage 6 Jun 2000, 10:14
RIP could wreck UK business, Chamber of Commerce realises

The penny drops

The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) has got so irate about the government's planned Internet controls it has sent it a letter. But, unfortunately for British industry, the letter sent by BCC head Chris Humphries to Jack Straw is too little too late. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill was introduced to the House …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
C-R-A-P.com takes the B-I-S-C-U-I-T

Hyphenated domain names for sale

A British e-commerce outfit reckons it's on to a winner by offering for sale some 300 punctuated Web addresses. Surrey-based Silicon Smart Ltd believes the sale of hyphenated domains "opens new opportunities for any business wishing to establish a successful brand online with an easy to remember, distinctive domain name". The …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
ASA probes NTL ad claims

Prompted by a massive number of complaints (actually, only 13)

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is investigating NTL amid allegations that it has misled consumers over its free Net access offer. The ASA confirmed it has received a whopping 13 complaints so far about the poor availability of the service and is looking into the matter with great urgency. But even if NTL is found to …

Data Networking 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
Software upgrade cuts off ADSL triallists

BT blames Alcatel

Two hundred ADSL users were left without Net access over the weekend after a software upgrade went wrong. According to ADSLuk, the problems started at 5am on Saturday morning and continued into Sunday. It claims the problem was compounded after Alcatel failed to inform BT of the problem. A memo to customers from BT said: "Our …

Data Networking 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
Jungle job cuts follow Software Warehouse merger

De-duplication

E-retailer Jungle.com saw a batch of redundancies last week, but says the action does not affect flotation plans. According to Jungle CEO Steve Bennett, the "handful" of employees – around 20 people – were binned when Jungle officially merged with its sister IT mail order business Software Warehouse. The two companies, both …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
Linux beats Microsoft to support superfast disks

It's Ultra ATA/100-ready before the press release ink dries

Linux support is now available for the Ultra ATA/100 bus specification, Quantum announced today. Linux is the only OS so far to support the new spec, and three of the five current controller 1chipsets - Intel, CMD and Promise - with AMD and HighPoint in the wings. As it did with ATA/33 and ATA/66, Intel withheld announcing the …

Software 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
DoJ accepts trivial MS changes, refuses all the big ones

MS on Trial But Microsoft just keeps coming...

The DoJ's last brief before the Judge Jackson's Final Judgement shows that Microsoft has lost none of its fighting spirit, and is determined to get as many proposed provisions as possible reversed. It's going to be uphill work, because the DoJ has stonewalled the best that Microsoft could offer. The changes Microsoft was seeking …

Software 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
Is Gates planning a share stake shuffle ahead of an MS split?

MS on Trial Some of the company's requests suggest that very thing

Could it be that Bill Gates has a plan to reduce his shareholding to less than five percent, so that after the divestiture, he could still have shares in both companies and be recognised as the person running both of them? Gates would not relish being identified as a pariah, and to him the most distasteful of the DoJ's proposals …

Software 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
IBM preps Transmeta notebook

The veils are almost off

IBM says it will show off a ThinkPad using Transmeta's Crusoe low-power chip at PC Expo this month, but has stopped short of committing to use the processor in its flagship notebook line. Nevertheless, it's the closest Transmeta has got to announcing an OEM manufacturer of the "all-day-on Windows notebooks", for which the …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 10:30
Windows ME to RTM next week, ship mid July

Send Jim Allchin on extended leave, and things start to ship - funny that

Microsoft is to ship the finished English language version of its new consumer OS, Windows ME, to MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) members in the second week in July. Factoring in the time taken to produce the CDs and get the mailing logistics together, this means Windows ME is likely to RTM (Release to Manufacture) early next …

Software 6 Jun 2000, 10:31
TUCOWs pawn in Internet.com domain theft

Spoof on the hoof

Internet.com, the online magazine, had its domain name nicked last week. And TUCOWS.com, Canada's answer to Andover.Net, played an unwitting but key role in the hijack. Internet.com is a big name URL, owned by a big name company. So how on earth did the person, or persons unknown, think he could get away with hijacking the …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 12:04
MTH flaw forces Intel Timna delay

Don't SOC it to me, baby

Intel is pushing back the launch of Timna, its cheap and cheerful system on a chip offering, to next year. This is intended to give it enough breathing space for sorting out a flaw causing system-freeze in the Memory Translator Hub (MTH), a component of Timna, and the culprit to blame for last month's recall of one million PIII …

Channel 6 Jun 2000, 12:04
Worm spams mobile phones

ILoveYou copycat, with a twist

A Russian company has discovered a worm virus which spams mobile phones. The Internet worm "Timofonica", said to already be wild in Spain, has been bombarding mobiles connected to Spanish operator Movistar with irritating SMS messages. The worm arrives as an email message with the subject "Timofonica" and an attached VBS file …

Data Networking 6 Jun 2000, 12:08
Cellnet GPRS broadband offering sounds strangely narrow

27Kbps? Don't all broadband at once, obviously...

Signs are emerging that BT Cellnet is well and truly on the bleeding edge of high speed mobile data. The company trumpeted its first GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) call mightily last year, but what it thought it was going to be doing then, and what it's actually doing now, are two separate things. On the way in the company …

Data Networking 6 Jun 2000, 12:08
Board makers wonder if AMD, VIA can keep up

Computex 2000 Will we have a demand-supply crunch?

Customers are crying out for Athlons based on the latest KT-133 Via chipset, but can Via pump out the volumes? Motherboard manufacturers at the Computex trade show today expressed concern with VIA's ability to match demand. AMD launched its Thunderbird Athlons on Monday, but a source at a major mobo manufacturer said today …

Business 6 Jun 2000, 13:47
The Web is the platform, says Gates – carefully

Ever get that feeling the platform's shifting from under you?

It was a subdued Bill Gates who kicked off Microsoft's TechEd meeting in Orlando yesterday. There was certainly nothing controversial, which was just as well in view of the imminence of the Final Judgement. We were told how "getting the personal computer to critical mass... has been the legacy of Microsoft's work". Software is …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 13:55
Intel gives up on SDRAM version of Caminogate

It's Rambus or nothing from now on

As we reported earlier today, MTH flaw forces Intel Timna delay Intel has moved the entry level Timna system on a chip out to Q1 2001 due to an inability to make the accursed memory translator hub (MTH) work properly. Chipzilla is now working on a new memory interface – wisely dropping the MTH nomenclature – enabling Timna to …

Channel 6 Jun 2000, 13:55
Consumer watchdogs fail the Spam Test

Can't think, won't think

Internet consumers in Europe have been cheated and let down by the very organisations established to protect them, The Register has discovered. Instead of standing up for consumers who use the Net and lobbying governments on their behalf, these so-called consumer groups have sat on their hands and effectively done nothing about …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 15:35
Which? slates online quacks

Viagra prices too high

Online quacks can kill you, Health Which? warns. Researchers for the magazine posing as patients surveyed 15 medical Web sites, and were disappointed to find some dishing out Viagra or other drugs like sweets or without proper checks. One researcher was sold the impotency drug by directresponsemarketing.co.uk after claiming to …

Media 6 Jun 2000, 15:35