21st August 2000 Archive

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Pentium 4 platform renamed

Thought it was the Itanic? Marchitecture rules.

Sources said Intel has briefed senior US journalists about where it wants to place its Pentium 4 (Willamette) against offerings from AMD and the other. The answer seems (to us) to have been cooked up by a marchitecture meister or meisteress in spin-engineering, obviously dictated to by Intel powers. There are two key words and …

Channel 21 Aug 2000, 08:14
Crap products: a reader's plea

Anyone gotta monitor for an OPD?

Reader Charlie Stross reminds us that the ICL One-Per-Desk (OPD) which featured in Dr Spinola's Crap Products Hall of Fame last week was also available in a rebadged variant from BT. In a bid to have an even stupider name than the OPD, the Telcomms behmoth chose the moniker 'Tonto', for reasons best known to themselves. Charlie …

Bootnotes 21 Aug 2000, 08:38
Readers letters Naught for Nautilus

From our San Francisco postbag: no Windows clones, please...

[Away from the fervour of the LinuxExpo show floor Andy Hertzfeld tooks us through Nautilus the open source file manager that's the flagship of his new company Eazel.] Hertzfeld spills all about Eazel Andy Hertzfeld Part II - Microsoft, Aqua and greed Two steps forward.... Hate to rain on the Eazel lovefest, but if there's …

Letters 21 Aug 2000, 09:07
IBM Unix hit by false Falco

But Caldera left holding the baby

Since IBM has been referring to its Monterey development project in the past tense for a few weeks now, we were surprised to see that this stole a few headlines in the trades last week. Whether Monterey is alive or dead depends on whether you want to distinguish marketing news from technical news - there's quite an important …

Software 21 Aug 2000, 09:10
Net flirting guide from fash mag hacks

What the Elle is going on

We can confirm that the Internet is now officially trendy, following the appearance of a guide to "E-Flirting" in UK fashion mag, Elle. Be warned that in the upper echelons of style, smilies have had it. The magazine warns that too many of the little faces made of dots are the electronic equivalent of drawing a flower around …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 09:14
NetStore delighted with £5m loss

And other flatulence from the bubble economy

ASP e-outfit NetStore has reported an operating loss of £5 million in its maiden preliminary results for the year. Turnover was £1.4 million - up from £800,000 on the previous year - with outstanding contract revenues reportedly at £4.8 million. NetStore CEO Gary Smith said he was delighted that the company was "continuing to …

Business 21 Aug 2000, 10:03
Napster goes on offensive

Launches attempt to get Appeals Court to block injunction completely

Napster on Friday asked the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to completely overturn the injunction granted against it by the US District Court under Judge Marilyn Patel. That injunction was subsequently temporarily lifted by the Appeals court pending the commencement of the Recording Industry Association of America's copyright …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 10:21
AltaVista mystery ends today

Updated ISP will prove service exists

AltaVista is to issue a statement later today confirming it has been rolling out its unmetered service since June 30 and that it has, indeed, signed up tens of thousands of users. Andy Mitchell, MD of AltaVista in the UK and Ireland and the only person authorised to speak about his company, is back at his desk today. According …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 10:25
3dfx commits to proprietary Mac monitor port

Only non-OEM supplier to back Apple Display Connector

Graphics accelerator specialist 3dfx has confirmed it will support Apple's controversial Apple Display Connector (ADC) in "future products". Bryan Speece, 3dfx's director of Mac business development, said: "We look forward to supporting this connection standard in our future products." ADC provides a single cable through which …

Mac Channel 21 Aug 2000, 10:54
Love Bug suspect released

If he didn't do it, then who did?

Authorities in the Philippines have dropped all the charges against Onel de Guzman, the man suspected of unleashing the love bug virus earlier this year. According to Reuters, chief state prosecutor, Jovencito Zuno, told reporters that he signed a resolution dropping charges against de Guzman. At this stage it's not why the …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 11:03
Amstrad denies E-M@iler technical problems

And there's no supply trouble either

Amstrad has flatly denied allegations in The Mail on Sunday that its E-M@iler is experiencing technical difficulties and that the company has been having supply problems. Alan Sugar's company issued a statement this morning in which it claims that deliveries and sales were "going well" with increased supply volumes "scheduled …

Business 21 Aug 2000, 11:06
Cherie Blair's name used in online erotic tease

But it seems to be a worthy cause

The Observer has been getting excited over its discovery that Cherie Blair's name had been hijacked to create a Web site hosting erotica The site www.cherieblair.org originally had a graphic poem about Adam and Eve having a shag, but sadlyThe Reg didn't get to see that. But since the word about the site got out the man behind …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 11:35
Net kills English

The latest in an occasional series of scare stories

The Net is sucking the very lifeblood out of the English language and creating a new lingua franca of its own. According to research published by British marketing consultancy, Fourth Room, Weblish - not is the new Net-enabled language. The basic rules of this new language are : * The apostrophe is dead. Its no longer needed …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 11:43
Hard driven Quantum's Atlas-V and IBM's Deskstar

Tin inspection and chip dissection

Quantum's Atlas-V hard drive goes under the metaphorical microscope at Insane Hardware. All round glowing reports were to follow, particularly for use in video editing and graphic design. More hard drives from Dr Tom's today, as IBM's Deskstar family of drives gets a thorough seeing to. Ooer missus. Click here to read about …

Hardware Roundup 21 Aug 2000, 11:51
It's oh so quiet

Review At last a way to silence Sheena Easton

When we mentioned in passing that we were having problems getting our hands on a fan for our 800MHz FC-PGA Pentium III last week, the nice folks at Quiet PC took pity on us and sent us one of their new extra-quiet radial fin heatsinks to try. Because the heatsink's fins have a very large surface area, less air needs to be …

Business 21 Aug 2000, 12:20
Post Office ready for digital signatures

The old PO really seems to be on the ball in recent months

The Post Office (UK) is on the verge of signing a digital signature deal - just one of a slew of Net-based plans it has thrown out recently. The deal will almost certainly be with its partner of old, VeriSign. Digital signatures were given a legal foundation with the Electronic Communications Act earlier this year. For those of …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 12:26
3Com ends patent talks with Xircom

Decides to sue instead

Negotiations between 3Com and Xircom aimed at resolving the two comms companies' argument over patent ownership and infringement have broken down, Xircom admitted today. 3Com launched legal action against Xircom back in May, alleging the latter had infringed two sets of its patents. Rather than filing the suit, 3Com used it to …

Business 21 Aug 2000, 12:43
Dead authors write to Amazon

It's a grave situation

The fact that anyone can post bogus author comments on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk doesn't seem to come as much of a surprise to Reg readers - a lot of you seem to have enjoyed the feature for quite some time. And 2600: The Hacker Quarterly apparently revealed the hole more than six months ago. But Steve Frazier, MD of Amazon. …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 13:39
Kingston starts DDR memory shipments to OEMs

Final death knell for Rambus draws ever nearer

Kingston Technology has started shipping DDR memory modules to its OEM customers for testing, in preparation for the market introduction of DDR technology during Q4 of 2000. New server, workstation, desktop and mobile platforms should start to appear in Q4 of this year, utilising 200 MHz and 266MHz DDR DIMM memory modules which …

Channel 21 Aug 2000, 14:02
Freeswerve in USB ADSL launch

Hip-hip - hooray, hip-hip - hooray

Freeserve is to start offering its BT-enabled ADSL product early next month - eight weeks before BT claims it will be able to offer a comparable service. FreeservePlus is available from September 4 and will cost £39.99 a month, plus a one-off fee of £150 for installation. But in a fit of generosity, Britain's top ISP will also …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 14:16
80GB hard drives get into PCs

First machines due in a fortnight

Maxtor has confirmed that its 80GB hard drive, the DiamondMax 80, is shipping out to distributors now and is expected in the shops by September. The company says that retail is not part of the current strategy, but that it hasn't been completely ruled out. But the specialist outlets will be able to supply it to keen consumers. …

Business 21 Aug 2000, 14:34
What the hell… is going on with the US and mobile phones

DoCoMo, protocols, 3G, TV companies - what a mess

DoCoMo is to launch in the US. Well, it's taking a minority stake in a joint wireless venture with SBC Communications and Bell-South. The move is reckoned to put the group in a stronger position to win licences off the FCC in the next auction of bandwidth. And along with this news has come yet more blinkered press thinking …

Data Networking 21 Aug 2000, 14:38
Freeserve pushes drugs

They know how to get you wired

Freeserve dispensed with email today and biked round press kits alerting hacks to its new broadband service, Freeserve Plus. The ISP claims it's "Fast, powerful and always on" - much like the packet of caffeine-based stimulants, PROPLUS, which were included as part of the kit. Nice touch. Trudging through Freeserve press …

Bootnotes 21 Aug 2000, 15:19
Competition The Winner of the bullet riddled mobo

You knew we'd get round to it eventually...

The Register ran a competition for a reader to win the mobo which Kay Buena shot to pieces. We are pleased to announce that Julian. J. Jones has won. His entry read: I deserve to win Kay Buena's motherboard because... no one else does. Let me qualify that statement by explaining that only child or a moron would actually want …

Bootnotes 21 Aug 2000, 16:06
MP3 and the Net: stars give their views

Top bands and industry insiders tell us what they think

While at the V2000 music festival this weekend, we took the opportunity to ask a few bands what they thought about the Internet and MP3s. The Internet has certainly had a significant impact on the music industry in the past year. The most physical representation of this is the appearance of hundreds more music journalists, …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 16:10
FTC trouble nobbling AOL's instant messaging

Time Warner purchase looks safe, FCC still in the wings though

The Federal Trade Commission looks as though it will be unable to force AOL to open blocks to its instant messaging system - even if it wanted to. The FTC is investigating the proposed merger between AOL and Time Warner and had been asked to look at possible anti-competitive behaviour by AOL in the IM market. AOL owns 80 per …

Music and Media 21 Aug 2000, 16:25
Caldera's Love rails at Monterey ‘misinformation’

There ain't no Sanity Cruz

Caldera CEO Ransom Love has blamed inaccurate press reports for the confusion for muddying the waters of Project Monterey. "You've seen some misinformation about that. There's an opportunity for Project Monterey's scalability on IA-64," said Love. "Officially, Project Monterey is going to continue and is going to continue in …

Software 21 Aug 2000, 18:25