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27th July 2000 Archive

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  • Politicians unite in RIP love-in

    The Commons touch

    Charles Clarke, Home Office Minister, last night described the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) bill as "one of the most complicated pieces of legislation I've ever seen". Speaking in the House of Commons while MPs battled over last minute niggles on the government's email snooping plans, he attacked the bill's critics …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 00:06

  • Freeserve does a RedHotAnt

    21st century parlour game: Pass the Password

    Happily, handing passwords out over the phone is not exclusive to RedHotAnt. On at least one occassion, Freeserve's tech support department was equally content to hand out users password without any confirmation of identity. This is a rather more serious problem for Freeserve than RHA. RedHotAnt usernames are long numeric codes …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 00:12

  • SGI pins hopes on Bricks

    Backlog softens revenue slump

    On the eve of its launch of third generation products, has Silicon Graphics detailed its final quarter results for the fiscal year. As expected, revenue slumped by 36 per cent against the preceding quarter, down to $434m, giving a net loss of $830m for the entire year. The company said the poor quarter was down to "weakness …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 06:58

  • Napster to close on Friday

    Boies fails to swing Judge Marilyn

    A San Francisco judge has given Napster until midnight on Friday US Pacific Time to stop aiding the exchange of copyright music, or close down. In a hearing, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel accepted many of the Recording Industry Association of America's arguments, most ominously by refusing to accept Napster's proposition that …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 07:02

  • MS slams judge in Supreme Court filing

    MS on Trial Spinning to the media? Goodness...

    Microsoft has filed with the Supreme Court its view as to why the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit should first hear its appeal. The arguments are principally that the case is too big and complex for the Supremes; that there are many factual issues best resolved by a lower court; and that the trial was flawed because Judge …

    Software 27 Jul 2000, 07:24

  • Script kiddies fell Kuro5hin

    Rusty shuts the open door, prepares Mark Two...

    Vandals have forced one of the premier open source salons to shut up shop. Kuro5hin is temporarily out of action while its volunteer management finds a way of coping with a variety of denial of service attacks sustained by the site this week. Kuro5hin (pronounced "corrosion") is a treasured recent arrival, and has rapidly …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 07:28

  • The search for the perfect search engine

    Analysis There's a long road still to travel

    There are several unsolved problems with search engines: they do not index all the Web; no single engine is likely to be satisfactory for all searching purposes; and their capabilties are often over-hyped. At least the issue of completeness is improving, with Google claiming to have indexed 1.06 billion Web pages - but that's …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 08:38

  • Dinosaurs mate in embedded gulag

    Symbol and Telxon vow to bore the world... together

    Symbol and Telxon are finally to join forces in a stock-for-stock deal. The two brands are beloved by traffic wardens, ticket inspectors, fork-lift truck drivers and check-out staff the world over, providing the majority of industrial embedded handheld devices in use today. The deal is worth $465m based on Symbol's current …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 08:41

  • IBM PC division in trouble again

    Tell us something new

    Just as eggs is eggs, so IBM's PC division is pants. A story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal has disclosed that Big Blue shifted 1,000 staff at its troubled PC division sideways, in a bid to cut costs and so return the unit to profitability. Weary and regular readers of El Reg do not need to be reminded that Big Blue seems …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 09:15

  • Net in poxy scare

    When STD doesn't mean Subscriber Trunk Dialling

    The Net is being blamed for a potential rise in the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), according to the The Journal of the American Medical Association. In an article entitled Tracing a Syphilis Outbreak Through Cyberspace the report's authors detail how a recent outbreak of syphilis was linked to the …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 09:27

  • AMD's Kludgehammer we haven't accelerated it

    Publicly, that is

    PR representatives at AMD have obviously been in fevered huddles and have come out with a line on its future 64-bit processor which it codenames Sledgehammer. Yesterday, we had a telephone call from our local AMD geezer who had a line on the stories we've been running over the course of the last week. Richard Baker, marketing …

    Channel 27 Jul 2000, 09:40

  • IBM's first SOI server hits the streets

    AS/400 breaks 150,000 tpm barrier

    IBM's first silicon-on-insulator (SOI) AS/400 is the latest contender in the somewhat tacky 'mine's bigger than yours' server wars. The AS/400e Model 840 is claimed to outperform Compaq, HP and Sun in four benchmark tests, TPC-C, NotesBench, SPECjbb2000 and VolanoMark, with Big Blue saying the 24-way 840 is 3.6 times faster …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 09:52

  • BT: An Apology

    Sorry

    The Register reported yesterday that BT was misleading consumers when it said its consumer broadband ADSL service (USB) would be "launching later this summer". The Register also pointed out that this was at odds with the words of Marc Deschamps, COO of broadband at BTopenworld, who had has already gone on the record to say that …

    Data Networking 27 Jul 2000, 10:04

  • Voodoo 5 for Mac gets the once over

    And a gourmet selection of hardware nibbits

    As they say in Monty Python, "...and now for something completely different..." Well, Sharky's has got a preview of the Voodoo5 5500 for the Mac (that is the different bit). The card has been totally redesigned for the Mac, so get over there and see what you think of the review. More on the Athlon processor with another set …

    Hardware Roundup 27 Jul 2000, 10:26

  • BT profits slump

    And other online financials

    BT's Q1 profits have taken a hammering following increased interest payments, the telco said today. Total turnover rose to £6.79 billion, up from £4.99 billion during the same period last year. Profit after taxation fell to £368 million down from £537 million during the same period last year. In a statement, Sir Iain Vallance …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 11:36

  • Stephen King's online book sales wilt

    But not a horror story yet

    Demand for Stephen King's online book seems to be wilting, with the horrormeister taking the step of banning the release of further reader figures until next week. The Plant, which King is flogging at $1 per chapter, attracted just 41,000 customers at its cyber-debut on Monday. King said he would not be giving out any more …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 13:48

  • HP director quits for reseller cartel

    But still flogging HP kit

    One of Hewlett Packard's UK directors has quit to become king of a reseller cartel. Bill Hill, HP small and medium business director, left this month after around 15 years with the vendor. He is off to head up Office Centre Central - a start-up company formed by a group of SME HP resellers, a source at HP told The Register. …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 13:51

  • Oftel signs own death warrant

    Well, someone had to

    Oftel wants to become a digital watchdog encompassing TV and the Net, the quango said today. The proposal for a new regulatory framework encompassing the converging Communications sectors are set out in a report, Communications Regulation in the UK published today. In it, the winged watchdog claims that the convergence of …

    Data Networking 27 Jul 2000, 14:30

  • Internet could be 500 times bigger than we think

    And very easy to kick over

    The true extent of the Internet is not widely known, and according to a study published this week, it could be more than 500 times larger than we think. The authors claim that as much as 7500TB of data exist in places on the Web that no search engine has mapped, as compared to the 19TB on the familiar "surface" Web. The …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 14:51

  • LineOne replies to ISPA

    But it's private and confidential, so keep your nose out

    LineOne has replied to criticisms from the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) that it is in breach of the organisation's code of conduct following its decision to ditch unmetered Net access. Martin Jackson, a spokesman for LineOne, confirmed that the ISP has replied formally to ISPA but that it was not prepared to …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 15:05

  • More Bluetooth hype…

    It's gonna be big someday

    Bluetooth chips, the central part of the much hyped and little seen wireless communications technology, could reach production volumes of 1.4 billion units by 2005. A report released today by Cahners In-Stat Group also estimates that by the same time the market for Bluetooth enabled products will be worth $5 billion. The …

    Data Networking 27 Jul 2000, 15:49

  • Energis out to steal streaming market

    It's good, but Real and Microsoft may beg to differ

    Energis Squared invited The Reg on a jolly to Amsterdam to tell us how it was going to take over the streaming market - you know, the transmission and reception of sounds and pictures over the Internet. As you may well be aware, there's already a few big boys in this market. Ever heard of Real Networks, Microsoft or Apple? We …

    Software 27 Jul 2000, 16:01

  • Small Business Server 2000 beta global launch

    A rare old treat for MS resellers

    Microsoft has released the beta version of Small Business Server 2000 to its resellers worldwide. The latest version of this BackOffice software is aimed at small to medium businesses with a maximum of 50 PCs. It is based on the Windows 2000 OS - which upgrades the NT Server 4.0 operating system used in the existing Small …

    Business 27 Jul 2000, 16:11

  • Iraq's first Internet café opens up the world

    Of course it doesn't, you're not allowed to see anything

    Iraq has seen its first ever Internet café open. Set up by the enterprising Ba'athist government - which is headed of course by the West's best friend and man of the people Saddam Hussein - the café is another great example of how the Internet can bring us all together, make us more tolerant of other people's views and cultures …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 16:15

  • breathe rallies Modern Urbanists

    All for one...

    breathe - which recently took action to suffocate some of its heavy breathers - is calling on the better nature of "Modern Urbanists" to ensure that the service does not choke on overuse. In the "Dear Customer" (shouldn't that be "Fellow Modern Urbanist"?) email issued today the ISP justified its decision to expel 500 people …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 2000, 16:40

  • Reg backs fine young filly

    No horseplay here

    Hotelgenie Dot Com - a two-year-old filly that won in its first outing earlier this month - is running at the 3.15 at Sandown Park today. Funny enough, its owner, Peter Clee, has a business called hotelgenie.com, which lets users book hotels. He's also got another dotcom business, londonnet.com and, you guessed it, a horse …

    Bootnotes 27 Jul 2000, 16:47