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12th September 2000 Archive

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  • Hollywood pushes violent movies, games on kids – FTC

    Amazing pre-election timing

    The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accuses the entertainment industry of targeting children with adverts for every manner of sleazy movie and bloody computer game, in a scathing report released Monday. "Companies in the entertainment industry routinely undercut their own rating restrictions by target marketing violent films …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 04:08

  • Rambus asks feds to stop Hyundai

    Pre-emptive multitasking of quill pens

    Just when you thought it was all over bar the legal cases in the Rambus wars, the intellectual property (IP) company has asked a US federal body to investigate Hyundai for alleged unlawful imports. (Actually, you knew it wasn't all over, you were just waiting for the next paradigm shift, really.) Rambus is invoking Section 337 …

    Channel 12 Sep 2000, 06:25

  • Saudi Prince doubles stake in e-bid biz to $100m

    Priceline.com gets the cash

    Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal plans to throw his money around in Web shares again. The royal investor - nephew to Saudi Arabia's King Fahd - has agreed to plough another $50 million into e-bidding company priceline.com - bringing his total investment in the company to $100 million. Under the deal, the prince will get a …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 08:34

  • IBM launches slim jim ThinkPad X

    Weighs 3.1 pounds, less than one inch thick

    IBM has launched a fresh range of skinny notebooks. Aimed at the mobile professional, the ThinkPad X Series machines weigh just 3.1 pounds and are less than an inch thick. Available from today, prices range from $2,199 to $3,099. The range uses Intel chips - either Pentium III 600MHz or Mobile Celerons at 500MHz, and machines …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 08:37

  • Official: Microsoft's C# is Cool

    Parse this, Sun

    When Microsoft rolled out its new programming language, C#, in June, a team of spin-paramedics was on hand to point out that no way, never ever was this anything to do with Microsoft's allegedly mythological "Project Cool". However, we spotted in the documentation for C# an extended attribute created by language spec co-author …

    Software 12 Sep 2000, 09:44

  • One dimensional sound waves explained

    Spinola puts the record straight again

    My colleagues' somewhat ropey grasp of physics resulted in a deluge of emails pointing out the error of our ways. But when we apologised for the error, a second torrent of mails arrived, this time from readers as bemused by all this stuff as we are, asking us to publish an explanation for one-dimensional sound waves. Eager as …

    Letters 12 Sep 2000, 09:49

  • Toshiba signs $5bn Dell supply deal

    LCD monitors, chips and storage

    Toshiba has signed a deal worth up to $5 billion to supply Dell Computer with components for three years. Under the deal, direct PC seller Dell will buy LCD monitors, chips and storage products on a worldwide basis from Toshiba America Electronics Components - a division of Japanese vendor Toshiba. The two aim to add more …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 09:54

  • F***edcompany
    .com up for sale

    Dotcom rumour mill goes for a song... and other e-rubbish

    Philip Kaplan, the founder of dotcom-busting e-journal Fuckedcompany.com put this site up for sale on eBay... because he felt like it. "I was bored this morning so I put FC on eBay," he said. The bid currently stands at $1.68 million although earlier reports suggested that people were prepared to pay as much as $10 million for …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 09:58

  • AOL, Warner, EMI fail to calm Euro merger fears

    Companies pledge not to stiffle competition for three years. Eh?

    The European Commission remains unsatisfied with attempts by AOL and Time Warner to make their proposed merger more palatable, an industry source has claimed. Last week, it emerged that the EC's competition watchdog is set to block the merger, according to a leaked preliminary judgement. Following the leak, AOL, Time Warner and …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 10:02

  • Sony Palm PDA sells out on first day

    Surprise, surprise... not

    Sony's Palm-based PDA, the Clié, managed to sell out during its first day on sale in Japan, proof if you need it, that anything with a Sony badge will just fly off the shelves, even if related products haven't proved too popular. The target of Japanese consumers' interest is the colour version of the Clié, for which demand has …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 10:34

  • HP preps Superdome service Trojan Horse

    From now on you buy only from us

    Hewlett-Packard will today unveil the replacement for its top-of-the-range V-class servers, Superdome, in a launch that company executives have been trailing as the company's biggest server roll-out in ten years. Some mistake, surely? The boxes unveiled later today constitute major, seven-figure purchases and may well at best …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 10:37

  • One copy of Windows for 200 PCs?

    Birmingham schools software piracy revisited

    No wonder Microsoft is keen to do something about UK schools ripping them off, if the experience of one Register reader is typical of what goes on. The software giant is sending a guide to software theft to every head teacher in a bid to educate them on the issues involved. A survey, carried out for Microsoft by the British …

    Software 12 Sep 2000, 11:02

  • Olympics fingered by satirists

    It's a serious business you dope

    If satire was an Olympic event, then the Bruces and Sheilas behind Shame 2000 would win gold every time. Not content with the squeaky clean image of the Olympics, a group of journalists, designers and others have come together to expose some of the hypocrisy that surrounds the Games. Shame 2000 is hosted at unolympics.com and …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 11:12

  • Reader's Merchandise Letter: psycho wants a T-shirt

    Warning: do not click here if you have a nervous disposition

    When product manager, king of stickiness, merchandise guru and general dogsbody Lester opened the post last week, his exclamation "Jesus, look at this", brought us running. Now, we know that not all our readers are completely there, but the great thing about email is that all the text is reduced to nice, clean computer fonts. …

    Letters 12 Sep 2000, 11:16

  • Big Blue intros Net speed-up chip

    Bundles together related TCP/IP packets

    IBM has developed a chip that bundles together related data packets as they're crossing the Internet. The processor, the PowerNP, is aimed at switches and routers, and contains a tiny chunk of code - IBM calls it "bandwidth allocation technology" - that synchronises related packets. The Net's TCP/IP protocol family is designed …

    Channel 12 Sep 2000, 11:39

  • Och aye! Amazon's Highland PR stunt

    Lucky old two millionth customer: free goods and a chance to meet Amazon's UK MD!

    Amazon's has been having a bit of a rough ride recently, so while we don't approve of abusing your customers' trust by selling their information or surreptitiously fixing prices, we thought we'd run with its PR stunt - which is going on even as we speak. That's right, Valerie McCluskie is Amazon.co.uk's two millionth customer …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 11:41

  • Another WAP stumbling block in Geoworks lawsuit

    Phone.com and Sanyo sued over alleged abuse of intellectual copyright

    Geoworks has filed a US lawsuit against Phone.com and Sanyo, claiming that their WAP browser infringes a Geoworks patent. The complaint has been lodged with the US International Trade Commission and aims to block imports of the WAP phones into the US. You can hardly blame Geoworks for trying or Sanyo and Phone.com for ignoring …

    Data Networking 12 Sep 2000, 12:24

  • Despite brickbats, WAP will grow – IDC

    Not necessarily to your advantage, as Finland's police show...

    The IDC European IT Forum in Monaco has been looking at whether the mobile commerce market will take off. Gigi Wang, SVP of IDC communications and Internet research, expected a 197 per cent compound annual growth rate in the WAP-enabled phone market - but this is from a low base. It is significant that Nokia has just decided …

    Data Networking 12 Sep 2000, 13:22

  • Cape Town porn shocker is a night mayor

    Dirty bugger. And guess what - he's a minister of the Church too

    The mayor of Cape Town's council has resigned after being caught downloading porn for a future Tommy (for the benefit of our US readers this means spank the monkey). He was also seen watching porno movies in his office. Bit unfair, you say (c'mon, we've all done it). But then William Bantom is also an ordained minister and had …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 14:01

  • BT's ADSL plans crippled by oil crisis

    For once you can't blame BT or OFTEL for this

    ADSL installations have been put on hold in Britain until the fuel crisis is over. A report by ADSL UK claims that BT is likely to "suspend ADSL installations and repairs as emergency conditions kick in". A spokeswoman for BT wouldn't comment specifically on the installation schedule of ADSL. However, she said that the company …

    Data Networking 12 Sep 2000, 14:02

  • £20 boosts Intel mobo performance by 25 per cent

    Review Worth spending cash on the cache

    We've mentioned Intel's cute i815E mobo, Easton, quite a lot recently, and one of the things we liked about the board is the flexibility it offers to choose between using the on-chip 3D graphics, to improve performance with a Graphics Performance Accelerator (GPA) card which plugs into the AGP slot to provide 4MB of display …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 14:08

  • PlayStation 2 just about to sell out

    Hurry! Dixons has got about 100 left

    The UK's allocation of PlayStation 2s has almost gone - just not quite as fast as high street retailers expected. A complete sell out was anticipated for the weekend, but as of 3pm BST this afternoon Dixons' PS2 pre-order hotline still claimed to have 100 units left to allocate. Elsewhere was a different story. HMV's head of …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 14:45

  • Petrol is new dotcom currency

    Isn't life a gas?

    A British Net company is enticing new customers with the lure of two gallons of unleaded petrol. Such is the panic caused by the great British fuel crisis, anyone who buys a PC from Surrey-based Intronets or signs up to its ISP before midnight, Thursday 14 September, will be entered into a draw. The lucky five drawn from the …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 14:48

  • Reg to back gangster flick

    Fag, Guv? Shut up, George

    Flushed with success - and cash - after its latest marketing assault, Register Merchandising has announced that it will jump on the British gangster movie bandwagon. Vulture Central has pledged an enormous wedge of reddies to the producers of Geezer No. 1 an ultra-violent black comedy musical. The film charts the inexorable rise …

    Bootnotes 12 Sep 2000, 15:03

  • Hardware Roundup Wristwatch Macintosh revealed

    Dual-booting demystified, cheapo mobos and more

    We haven't mentioned MacSlash for a while, but there's a rather interesting link to a story on the iWatch - a wristwatch running MacOS on a Transmeta chip. Or is there? If you like cut out 'n' keep guides, then pop over to ArsTechnica where you'll find everything you ever wanted to know about multiple booting Microsoft …

    Hardware Roundup 12 Sep 2000, 15:25

  • Most Brit businesses publish old info on the Web

    Including the business behind the survey

    British companies have lost control of information on their Web sites, according to new research published today by NOP. The shock news was contained in a survey published today, which found that 77 per cent of companies publish out of date information on the Web. What's more, four out of ten companies believed that …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 15:54

  • Congress slams US Govt net security, privacy

    Easy pickings for the malicious or the criminal

    Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), is proving to be a thorn in the side of US government information administrators, having the audacity to go out and actually test federal agencies' network security and Web site privacy controls. The vast majority of federal Web sites fail to achieve Federal …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 16:32

  • Apple MacOS X beta more NeXT than Mac – sources

    But what else was it ever going to be?

    Apple's public beta of MacOS X, due to be announced and released tomorrow at Apple Expo Paris, may not be as near the final version as users might have expected of a close-to-completion test release, according to an early look at the software. The problem? According to Daniel Drew Turner of ZDNet (but don't hold that against …

    Mac Channel 12 Sep 2000, 16:36

  • AMD takes aim at biz markets

    Workstations first brick in the wall

    Chip firm AMD appears to have taken its first steps to attack Intel where it hurts, in the workstation and server markets. A report on AMD Zone suggests that the first major OEM deal is already signed, sealed and delivered, using 760 chipset based Mustang for the mid-range, and Palomino for entry-level workstations. Although …

    Channel 12 Sep 2000, 16:54

  • Scoot claims it's victim of dirty tricks campaign

    And its very cross

    Scoot, an online Yellow Pages (but officially that's yell.com), has continued its policy of jumping up and down on anyone that gets in its way. It has now prepared a legal dossier over a dirty tricks campaign it claims to have been subjected to. It is certainly true that Scoot has been beset by leaks and rumours, widely …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 17:00

  • Radiohead new album pops up on Napster

    The love/hate relationship between the world's best band and the Internet

    According to a variety of sources, Radiohead's eagerly awaited new album Kid A is available in its entirety on Napster. Quite a feat considering the intense security that had been put around the album. Radiohead are arguably the greatest band on the planet at the moment - if you have ever seen them play live, you'll know why (I …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 17:08

  • HP wants to spank you with its Superdome

    Does it think we need discipline?

    Hewlett Packard wants to do more than impress you with its latest server launch, it wants to spank you with it - hard. The US vendor unveiled its Superdome 9000 server in New York today - promising 'the world's most powerful, flexible and available UNIX computing platform'. At a swanky Wall Street hotel, members of the press …

    Business 12 Sep 2000, 17:28

  • Nuke hacker had by Feds

    Hey-ho

    A Minnesota man has been arrested in connection with the alleged hack attack on a US nuclear weapons outfit almost a year ago. Twenty-one-year old Benjamin Breuninger was arrested at home on Monday charged with breaking into a computer last November at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, operated by the University of …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 2000, 18:08

  • Megahurtz, memory wars exercise in futility

    Comment Bitter battles blight technology firms

    Marketing disputes between chip firms like Intel and AMD and memory companies like Rambus and Micron may be interesting for industry watchers but are certain to throw doubt into the minds of people buying PCs. This year, Intel and AMD have fought a continuing battle with only one clear benefit for the consumer – a drop in …

    Channel 12 Sep 2000, 19:25