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5th July 2000 Archive

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  • Eurocrats take aim at IT tax breaks

    Money to be doled out on headcount basis

    Changes that the European Union has demanded on tax subsidies and breaks are threatening to put a halt to investments in the growth of IT, it has emerged. A representative of the Cote D'Azur development board, which has science park Sophia Antipolis under its wing, told The Register yesterday that the move meant individual …

    Business 5 Jul 2000, 07:23

  • Finns target Oracle ‘insecurity’ with anti-virus clustering

    High availability apps major opportunity

    Finnish security company Stonesoft has designs on the "particularly insecure" high-availability database market with a scalable clustering product for Trend Micro’s InterScan VirusWall. Cluster support for other anti-virus products are promised. CEO and president Hannu Turunen, who worked at Oracle until he started the …

    Software 5 Jul 2000, 07:45

  • French give Bluetush permission to bake

    They'll switch their nuclear missiles off

    Hey, and you thought we were joking when we wrote this story about Bluetooth technology threatening world peace, didn't you? We have just discovered that there is a "bake off" of Bluetush devices being held in Nice next week, but before the organisers could assemble their chefs, they had to have special permission from the …

    Bootnotes 5 Jul 2000, 08:14

  • Akihabara gets it first

    Readers respond to Register probe

    While AMD and Intel might be keeping schtum about why their kit tips up in the Akihabara hi-tech area yonks before the rest of the world+dog sees it, our readers have, bless you all, come up with their own ideas on this conundrum. Here's a selection of their many replies. A regular visitor to Akihabara writes: "I'm sure you've …

    Letters 5 Jul 2000, 08:37

  • SanDisk to invest $75m in Israeli Tower

    Chip fab company needs $1.5 billion

    Flash memory specialist SanDisk is to pump $75 million into troubled Israeli chip maker and former NatSemi subsidiary Tower Semiconductor. In exchange, SanDisk will gain take a ten per cent stake in Tower, with the option to take a further ten per cent, the Finacial Times reports. Tower desperately needs money to fund a $1.5 …

    Channel 5 Jul 2000, 08:49

  • Demon, World Online subscriber numbers

    Counted them all in

    World Online, the Dutch-owned ISP, has 2.2 million customers, of which 1.5 million are in the UK, according to the FT. The other 700,000 customers are scattered over another 15 countries. Wouldn't it be more cost effective to concentrate on territories where it has significant market share? Especially considering the significant …

    Business 5 Jul 2000, 10:13

  • AMD whets knife for fresh blood letting

    Surgical strike on Intel's body corporate

    AMD is set to take the whet stone to its price axe at the end of this month, and further embarrass chip giant Intel by attacking it in the business sector. Sources close to AMD's plans in Taiwan said that the price cuts are likely to be in the order of 40 per cent, with the 1GHz microprocessor processor the particular target of …

    Channel 5 Jul 2000, 11:28

  • First dekko at Abit's BX133 mobo

    And other hardware treats

    Today's pick of the crop of subjects up for discussion in Hardware land TweakPC has posted its first response to Abit's BX133 Motherboard - in translation from the original German. The two pager also includes a sneak preview picture - they claim a world exclusive, and you never know - it could be true! A discussion is underway …

    Hardware Roundup 5 Jul 2000, 11:42

  • Dotcom share give away is virtually worthless

    Themutual's £52 promise turns into £6.20

    British community site and ISP Themutual.net has fallen victim to the dot gone feeling in the City. Last July the co-operative promised shares to all members as an incentive for people to join its service. The first 1,000 to sign up were offered 10,000 shares, while the next 490,000 will get 1,000 shares. Punters were told …

    Music and Media 5 Jul 2000, 12:15

  • Orange begins its crusade, but where is Jerusalem?

    Slashes prices, buys virtual newsreader, gets a bit carried away?

    Hans Snook, fresh from winning his fight to keep managing Orange his way, has gone on a crazy crusade to take over the world. Two days ago Orange was boasting about the number of new subscribers it has won. Yesterday, it announced price cuts with the tagline "this could be the end of the fixed line phone". Today, it announced …

    Data Networking 5 Jul 2000, 12:48

  • M'Soft to offer fresh concessions in Telewest bid

    Gates' men confident of success

    Microsoft is gearing up to offer fresh concessions to the European Commission in regard to its bid for a stake in UK cable operator, Telewest. The software giant is due to submit its renewed offer today, and Microsoft officials were said to be confident they would get clearance to go ahead with the deal, the FT reported. …

    Business 5 Jul 2000, 12:54

  • Dixons shares tumble despite profit surge

    Keeping mum about Freeserve

    Dixons saw its share price fall today despite topping profit forecasts. The PC retailer's share price fell six pence in morning trading to 274 pence after it failed to reveal details of trading for the current financial year or any fresh information on the Freeserve situation. Pre-tax profit rose 104 per cent to £472.1 million …

    Business 5 Jul 2000, 14:01

  • Toys for free! Get in quick

    You'd think Yahoo! would know better

    In the battle for market share, Yahoo's ToyZone appears to have got a little carried away. In what must be the sale of the century, everything in the site's stock is available at the bargain share price of £0.00. And orders are coming back with email confirmation. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. We doubt very much whether these …

    Music and Media 5 Jul 2000, 14:02

  • Porn mongers WAP off online

    Too much wireless wandering and you'll go blind

    It was inevitable but not necessarily practical. That's right, you can now relieve your sordid fantasies using a WAP phone. No, not the kinky pics where the inquisitive python has been replaced by new-millennial wireless equipment, we are talking porn WAP sites. Pics of naked people in unusual poses and pages of filthy writing …

    Music and Media 5 Jul 2000, 15:56

  • Microsoft IIS security hole persists despite available patch

    You can lead a horse to water...

    An old and subsequently well-publicised flaw in Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), which allows anyone with a Web browser to gain admin-level access to a server, continues to plague many sites in spite of the availability patches to correct it. The flaw first became news just over a year ago with a flurry of …

    Music and Media 5 Jul 2000, 16:07

  • Modems to get one last upgrade before death by DSL

    v.92 boosts upload speeds - but not by very much

    The analog modem has been given a reprieve from extinction at the hands of DSL, courtesy of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The Geneva-based telecoms standards body has ratified a new modem standard, v.92, that promises to boost upload speeds by 40 per cent. The first products are due in Q4. Sounds good, but …

    Business 5 Jul 2000, 16:17

  • Reg readers exhume OmniView

    'Dem bones, 'dem bones...

    Many thanks to readers who responded to our request to shed light on OmniView. The great lost task-switcher was mentioned in a brief bio of Michael Toutonghi, who received one of Microsoft's Distinguished Engineer awards last week. However, a metaphorical flick of Vulture guano goes to various off-mark suggestions alluding to …

    Software 5 Jul 2000, 16:24

  • Common worldwide mobile coverage aims to make a Mint

    This is a grand idea but how big's the market?

    An English friend who spent a few days in Spain was amazed to discover text messages on his mobile sent by the local Spanish mobile network to welcome him to Barcelona. Talk to anyone in the world in the mobile industry and they will tell you (like it's the first time you've heard it) that Europe is ahead in mobile technology …

    Data Networking 5 Jul 2000, 16:46

  • AltaVista in give away mood

    Everyone's a winner baby..

    AltaVista has become unusually generous. It seems a fault crept into the company's online rewards scheme that has a daily prize of 500,000 free points for the winning subscriber. However, it seems that anyone who refreshed the page received a notification that they were the day's lucky winner. The problem appears to be …

    Music and Media 5 Jul 2000, 17:01

  • Big Q's TPC benchmarks disqualified

    Expelled from the TPC teepee

    Compaq has been ousted from its pole position in the TPC-C transaction processing benchmarks in slightly humiliating fashion. A spokesperson for the TPC in San Jose told The Register that two Q entries had been disqualified for failing condition 1.6.3 of the benchmark. This is one of the data transparency conditions which …

    Software 5 Jul 2000, 17:10