24th July 2000 Archive

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Intel vs Hamidi e-mail case continues

Legal battle to step up a notch

Ken Hamidi, who has run a long campaign to expose what he considers to be wrong-doings by the Intel Corporation, has received further support in his fight from a US labour organisation. Hamidi was prevented by a summary court judgement from sending electronic mails to Intel employees. But Hamidi has received support in an …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 07:28
AMD Sledgehammer samples ship

Rumours grow of Intel cunning plan

Sources close to AMD have reported that first real silicon is expected for its 64-bit microprocessor, codenamed Sledgehammer, as early as next month. Engineering samples of the chip are already with large PC customers. That news is likely to horrify Intel executives who were forced to admit last week that delivery of its …

Channel 24 Jul 2000, 09:31
Intel and BAPCo ‘just good friends’

Updated 'Independent' benchmark outfit cohabiting with Chipzilla

When we asked Intel last week what they were doing to alleviate their self-professed 'difficulty' with benchmarks not showing how well Rambus really performed against PC-133 SDRAM, they told us: "We're working with the major benchmarking organisations to develop more realistic test methodologies which will show the kind of …

Business 24 Jul 2000, 09:35
Intel promotes AMD

Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery

When we popped in to see our chums in Satan Clara last week, the conversation soon turned to 'that other company', long derided by Chipzilla and officially referred to as a mere 'imitator'. We were somewhat surprised, therefore, when an Intel spin paramedic referred to AMD as a 'competitor'. Sounds like promotion to us. ®

Bootnotes 24 Jul 2000, 09:41
PC sales disappoint analysts for Q2

Chip shortages blamed

Worldwide PC shipments slipped below forecasts for the second quarter, market researchers revealed today. Shipments rose 14.5 per cent from the previous year, according to IDC, which had predicted growth would top 15 per cent. Dataquest put the figure slightly higher, at 18 per cent, but this was still below its forecast of 18. …

Business 24 Jul 2000, 10:41
Now that's what I call rubbish

UK music site lists world's ten worst songs

dotmusic, a UK music site, has just published a list of what its users voted the ten most irritating songs of all time. Topping the list of shame is the execrable 1981 classic The Birdie Song by The Tweets - which reached an unbelievable number two in the UK - closely followed by the emetic Barbie Girl by Aqua and the vile …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 10:42
Duron 600 tweaked to 900MHz

Here's how to do it...

Tweakers.net reckon they've managed to overclock a fully locked Duron 600 to 900MHz. They could get it to post at 1GHz, but it crashed during the Windows boot sequence. Go here for the English version, or here if you'd prefer to read it in the original Dutch. The Great Satan of Chips gets a grilling at GA Hardware. Probably …

Hardware Roundup 24 Jul 2000, 10:59
Bonfield pondering Cellnet float

Spanish porn also on the market

BT is looking to float its mobile phone operator Cellnet, today's Daily Mail reports. According to the tabloid, it is one of the options Sir Peter Bonfield, BT CEO, is thought to be considering to boost the company's flagging share price. Private, the Spanish purveyor of porn, is attempting to IPO its Internet and …

Business 24 Jul 2000, 11:33
Click here for smaller tits

Boob job auctioned online

A South African hospital has launched an online auction for a boob job. Bids were this morning running at R10,251 (£976) for the plastic surgery package, which includes a breast reduction op, overnight stay in a top Johannesburg hotel for the patient and their partner, a rejuvenating hamper, and a "hearty breakfast" the next …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 12:14
AOL is full of it, say M$, Excite

Instant messaging security concerns are rubbish

It's not often that The Reg finds itself in agreement with Microsoft and Excite but then the latest Nazi on the block, AOL, provides a handy meeting of minds. This, of course, is all about instant messaging and the interesting blocking/hacking around it. AOL's Instant Messenger is a pretty darn good bit of kit and since it got …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 12:58
Larry Ellison buys his way into Americas Cup team

Permission granted to pipe him aboard

Larry Ellison's belief that he is best at everything has led him to buy AmericaOne, the yacht that lost the Americas Cup last year, so he can captain the team on its next challenge for the title. That will be the first time Ellison will have participated in the race, and while he is an experience yachtsman, there are those in …

Business 24 Jul 2000, 13:29
MS Win64 bacon to be saved by Intel downplaying Itanium?

Plenty time for Redmond to get it right by McKinley, apparently

The Wintel alliance appears to be moving towards a converged story on Itanium and 64-bit Windows. Neither of them looks capable of shipping a product to spec and to schedule but - ahem - maybe neither of them cares, because it's not important after all. A Fort Redmond-related source claims that a few days ago Intel reps tipped …

Software 24 Jul 2000, 14:17
RioPort grows licensee list

Hardware, online players sign up for software, content

S3's scheme to establish its Rio system as the dominant MP3 playback platform moved a step or two forward when the company's spun off RioPort subsidiary announced a series of technology licensing deals with other digital music players. Samsung and lesser known Korean OEMs Sewon Telecom and Human Information Technology (HIT) …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 14:37
Transmeta strikes .13 micron notebook stroke

IBM helps pull power rabbit out of hat

Transmeta is likely to be first to the market with .13 micron technology available in notebooks, although sources familiar with the firm's plans have said that it is now likely to be the second half of next year before Crusoe products are widely avilable. Earlier this year, the firm was telling Taiwanese notebook manufacturers …

Channel 24 Jul 2000, 14:53
Online music sales to hit $5.4bn by 2005

But CDs sales will still overshadow downloads

The online music market is set to balloon to $5.4 billion by 2005, Net-oriented market research company Jupiter Communications bullishly predicted today. And that's just the US market. By that time, just under a quarter of all music sales in the US will be made online, up from just 2.7 per cent in 1999. Last year, the online …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 15:09
King lets fans pay after reading horror online

Misery for publishers and hackers

Horror maestro Stephen King has bypassed publishers with his second online serial novel experiment. The Plant, available from today, costs $1 for every chapter readers download from King's site. The author has committed to publishing at least the first two chapters, the rest depends on enough people coughing up the cash. The …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 15:16
G8 leaders make us sick

They all need a good slapping

There's a theory that predicts capitalism will turn into the most corrupt form of communism. It holds that due to the make-up of capitalism - which rewards money with money and power - it is inevitable that over time society will split into the elite super-rich and the rest. The tendency for monopolies to form under capitalism …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 15:45
Inland Revenue's pathetic Net effort gets worse

That's what happens when you sign with the devil

We correctly predicted that after the fiasco of five million lost tax records that people would start sniffing around the appalling effort for self-assessment online filing. But things went faster than we expected. A reader informed us of an internal Revenue memo he had seen that told of Revenue staff printing off Internet- …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 16:26
MPAA, RIAA sue Scour over copyrights

Valenti & Co eat their own

The US entertainment industry's Internet lawsuit reign of terror has lately encompassed Scour.net, a multimedia search-engine outfit ironically backed in part by Hollywood Native Son Michael Ovitz. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have filed a copyright …

Media 24 Jul 2000, 18:30