31st August 2000 Archive

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Intel sues Via, Broadcom

Legal department goes into OverDrive

Chip giant Intel has stepped up its action against not-so-little chipset maker Via and, in an unrelated action, launched a legal broadside against its former partner Broadcom. Via first. Cnet reported yesterday evening that Intel has added two further allegations of patent infringement in its on-going legal action on chipsets. …

Channel 31 Aug 2000, 08:56
Hardware gurus in ego recall shock

Overheating threat to polar ice caps

Pressure was mounting from environmental groups today for a total recall of the egos of several leading hardware sites following an unseemly display of smugness. "Normally hardware geeks are shy retiring people, posing little threat to the environment," said a Green Party spokesman. "But in recent days, Intel's decision to pull …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 09:30
Word processor to be integrated with MSN Explorer client

MSN - where do you want to stay today?

In among the pre-launch spin supporting MSN Explorer, Microsoft consumer business chief Rick Belluzo has lobbed-in a highly significant signpost. Future version of the MSN client, he told the WSJ (which seems not to have grasped the import of the blurt) will include a word processor. We've moved on quite a bit from the point …

Software 31 Aug 2000, 09:57
MS fumbles Word privacy scare

Just turn off your cookies.

Microsoft was caught off-guard yesterday by a warning that Word documents could be tracked over the Internet without their readers' knowledge. A press release from a security consultant drew attention to the potential problem, by which embedded links to content on servers could be used to track the usage of documents as they're …

Software 31 Aug 2000, 10:00
Intel factories fail to keep up

Paper price cuts hurt more than steel

A story in Asia Biztech has highlighted difficulties Intel has with production at its factories and at the same time underlined further difficulties ahead for the chip giant. This last Monday we reported price cuts Intel had made on its CPUs, while yesterday we also reported the dearth of 1GHz Pentium III processors available …

Channel 31 Aug 2000, 10:05
Another AMD suit legs it

Lucky Bob Palmer has plenty of spares

Larry Hollatz, AMD's group vice president of the Computation Products Group, has quit Chimpzilla to 'pursue other interests'. Hector Ruiz, AMD president and chief operating officer, will stand in as acting group vice president for the business unit which produces PC processors. "Following Intel’s announcement of their recall …

Channel 31 Aug 2000, 10:35
Letsbuyit boosts sales and slashes staff

Rollout rockets operating costs

Letsbuyit.com is slashing 20 per cent of its workforce despite increasing sales by 83 per cent in Q2. Revenue for the period was E7.2 million (£4.4 million), headcount is down to 320 from 400. Gross profit margins leaped in the three months to 9.8 per cent from 2.9 per cent. The bad news for the online retailer is that …

Business 31 Aug 2000, 10:38
VNU bribes journalists into following anal dictats

Please tidy up and we'll give you some beer

Dutch IT publisher VNU is now offering the incentive of free beer in an effort to get journalists to abide by its hated "clean desk policy". A year's worth of threats, memos and active litter terrorism has had little effect on the desks of journalists. For some reason, hacks still think that having source material to hand is a …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 11:33
Dr Spinola's three laws of PR

You know it makes sense

While science fiction author Isaac Asimov is credited with coming up with the three laws of robotics, designed to govern the behaviour of artificial lifeforms, the fact is that he blatantly stole the concept from my seminal paper The three laws of PR Puffery, published back in the 1950s. Those laws in full: First Law No spin …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 11:33
Universal wants us dead – MP3.com

Don't be daft - Judge Rackoff

MP3.com's attempt to settle its copyright infringement differences with Universal, the last of the world's major record labels not to do so, got ugly yesterday when MP3.com accused Universal of trying to put it out of business. MP3.com has been talking to Universal in an attempt to win both the right to use the latter's music …

Music and Media 31 Aug 2000, 11:37
Achtung! Harry Potter copyright breakensung

People want things fast these days and they're willing to get sued over it

Impatient German fans of the Harry Potter series of books have got into hot water with the book's German publishers. The latest one in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, appeared in English about two months ago but is not due to be released in German until 14 October. This delay was too much for Potter fans, who …

Music and Media 31 Aug 2000, 11:48
MS recruits testers for first Whistler beta

October looks good for the off...

The official beta of Microsoft's follow-up to Win2k, Whistler, looks set to start in October. BetaNews reports that the company's past and current beta testers have received an email inviting them to apply for the "Windows Whistler Technical Beta," the deadline for applications being September 15th. Microsoft is not however …

Software 31 Aug 2000, 11:58
Scoot's sales are down and losses up

365 doing nicely

Scoot.com reported a 38 per cent downturn in revenues to £8.2 million for the nine months ending June 30. For the same period last year it enjoyed sales of £13.3 million. Group operating losses increased by 56 per cent from £10.6 million to £16.6 million for the nine months. The subscriber base grew by 16 per cent over Q2. The …

Business 31 Aug 2000, 14:03
Computer Weakly caught in porn scandal

Do you want Windows98 to run faster or watch some barely legal teens?

Helicopter-obsessed IT publication Computer Weakly made a bit of a boob in its last issue when Microsoft loving journo Jack Schofield (no relation to Phil, we think) recommended a porn site rather than one which supplies software to speed up Windows98. That's right, if you were to follow Jack up the beanstalk of www.98lite.com …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 14:39
Robot domination just a few headlines away

Actually, this is pretty interesting. If flawed.

Boffins claim to have produced the first computer that is capable of producing other robots from first principles. Two computer scientists from Brandeis University in Massachusettes connected an intelligent design computer to a fully automated build machine and then gave it the task of making a robot that can move along the …

Business 31 Aug 2000, 14:55
Gigabyte's 7ZX mobo under the microscope

Upgrade a Palm m100

OCWorkbench has been having a look at the Gigabyte 7ZX mobo, the brother of the 7ZM. Both are based on the Via KT133, but the review damns it with faint praise - "nice...but does not really shine." OCWorkbench also takes you through installing the Gigabyte @BIOS program here If you want to jack up the memory on your Palm …

Hardware Roundup 31 Aug 2000, 15:10
First Win ME bug discovered?

Blimey, it's not even in the shops yet

Much as we like Windows ME, we've discovered a rather annoying, erm, "feature" of the new OS. We've been running ME (retail build 3000) on three different machines (PIII 500MHz and two different PIII 1GHz boxes) for some time now and all of them exhibit the same annoying trait. Around 75 per cent of the time, our ME boxes …

Software 31 Aug 2000, 15:30
Mr Legoland Windsor sued over his Web site

It's all seemed like a good idea at the time, says hungover Mr Windsor

The piss artist formerly known as Craig Cottrell has found himself on the end Danish toy company Lego's ire. It all started over a few beers with his mate. Inebriated, both of them decided to change their names by deed poll for a bet. Craig's chosen new name was to be Legoland Windsor. His mate's, Cadbury's Chocolate. In the …

Music and Media 31 Aug 2000, 15:36
Your life is at risk. Straight up

Warning: there is no IT angle. Just humour

Following on from the siege of a female doctor by mindless thugs who daubed her house with paint believing she was a paedophile - she was a paediatrician - we felt it was our duty to warn other readers who may find themselves under attack by illiterate scum. Paedodontists and paedobaptists are obviously the most at risk. But …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 16:11
Rambus-Micron suit revealed

Knee bone connected to lawyer bone

The site that tracks Rambus, unsurprisingly called Rambus Site, has now posted the Micron complaint against the intellectual property company based in Mountain View, CA. There's quite a bit of it to read, but none of it is particularly boring unless you're totally disinterested in the politics of memory. Micron wants the judge …

Channel 31 Aug 2000, 16:19
Orange beats Cellnet in lift and death situation

Vnunet labs run stuck lift benchtest

Vnunet's pan European super labs has bench tested Cellnet and Orange mobile networks under 999 emergency conditions. The result - you can trust your life with Orange. Under clean room conditions deputy news editor Jo Ticehurst and reporter Claire Woffenden got stuck in the lift at VNU's annexe building in Wardour Street. A …

Bootnotes 31 Aug 2000, 16:46
How much of the Internet economy is fake?

We hear of a very disturbing setup that is all too real

There is little doubt that the Internet is a very different beast to other media, and so different, innovative business models have been implemented in order to squeeze whatever cash is available. Paying per referral, charging per click, making valuations according to traffic etc etc. However, we have heard of a scam that …

Music and Media 31 Aug 2000, 16:48
Spot Register

Intel continues oversupply at low end

Marco Fumagalli continues to deliver the up to date beans with his weekly report on spot pricing. Memory The week ends with slight decreases on the memory market, especially for lower tier brands. 64MB PC-133 OEM modules are now offered at around $58.00, while 128MB are mostly quoted at $115/117. On the contrary, 8Mx8 original …

Spot Register 31 Aug 2000, 23:00