30th November 2000 Archive

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Transmeta to exchange dodgy Crusoes

300 castaways cast away

Transmeta confirmed its arrival as a major chip supplier today - by issuing its first product recall. Fewer than 300 NEC notebooks in Japan are affected by the glitch and are being "exchanged" for new parts. In a statement, Transmeta said the dodgy Crusoes "came from a limited manufacturing batch. Any remaining inventory of …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 08:22
L&H files for Chapter 11

'Very significant cash shortfall'

Belgian software outfit Lernout & Hauspie today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US. The speech technology company, which also plans to file a similar petition under Belgian law, said it would continue operating and would reorganise its business in an effort to get back into the black. Today's move also affects …

Software 30 Nov 2000, 08:25
Gateway in PC price war gloom

Thanksgiving was a turkey

Gateway issued a profits warning yesterday after failing to lift sales of PCs over the Thanksgiving weekend. It also warned of an imminent price war in the sector, pointing to high inventory as a cause. The company said it would not meet analysts' forecasts for the quarter, now expects to report revenues of $2.55 billion - a …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 10:23
Oftel backs down in BT Cellnet case

Wrong end of stick

Four months after ruling that BT Cellnet was guilty of unfair cross-subsidy, Oftel has changed its mind. Apparently, new figures from BT Cellnet show the mobile operator was doing nothing wrong. In a statement issued today the regulator said: "As a result of the information originally received from BT Cellnet, Oftel issued a …

Data Networking 30 Nov 2000, 10:24
Intel invests in Zayante – sign of support for 1394?

Noÿ

Intel's investments division has just pumped an undisclosed sum into IEEE 1394 systems developer Zayante. But is it really, as Cahners' Electronic News Online suggests, a sign of Chipzilla's support for the connectivity standard? ENO seems to think so, but it's a tenuous argument. Intel - like many wealthy hi-tech companies - …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 10:27
Apple ponders further PowerPC partners

Processor supply solution no. 473

Apple may be attempting to persuade its PowerPC partners, Motorola and IBM, to open the platform to other chip makers through a Palm-style licensing programme. The scheme is said to be described in internal Apple documents leaked to the Mac rumour site everyone loves to hate but which does come up with the goods now and then ( …

Mac Channel 30 Nov 2000, 11:11
Tech Data pumps out the profits

Channel Flannel

Tech Data, the world's number two computer products distie, delivered a record Q3, with net income up 43 per cent and sales 20 per cent higher than the same period last year. For the three months to October 31, 2000. net income was $47.2 million (1999: $33 million). Sales were $5.2bn (1999: $4.3 billion). Sales were up 31 per …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 11:13
Banned Mitnick trinket on Dutchbid.com

Two bids so far - 'Thanks, Ma'

Hacker legend Kevin Mitnick's prison ID card has finally found a home on auction site Dutchbid.com after being yanked by socially-conscious competitors eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon, who judiciously draw the line at Nazi memorabilia. eBay had gone so far as to characterise Mitnick as a "violent felon" in justifying its decision to …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 11:49
3dfx Voodoo 5 incompatible with P4 mobos

Chipzilla boards don't do that 3.3V AGP thang

3dfx's top-of-the-range Voodoo 5 5500 graphics card won't be of much use to gamers keen on getting their hands on Intel's top-of-the-range Pentium 4. While the 5500's VSA-100 3D graphics chip and its drivers are fully compatible with P4 and Screaming Sindy's second set of Extensions, the card isn't compatible with P4 mobos, …

Channel 30 Nov 2000, 12:02
Retail chain pulls HP P4s from the shelves

Faulty BIOS escapes into wild

Last week Hewlett-Packard crowed that it had sold out of Pentium 4s: it also told The Register that no machines containing a faulty BIOS supplied by Intel had escaped into the public. Today it has egg on its face, after its P4s were hauled off the shelves at Best Buy retail outlets in the US - to have BIOS upgrades which should …

Channel 30 Nov 2000, 12:29
Palm calms down to work with MyPalm.com owner

He gets the email address, Palm gets custody of Web URL

Palm has effectively settled its tussle with British Palm-oriented Web site owner Dominic Hulewicz over the ownership of MyPalm.com. Hulewicz said yesterday he and Palm had almost reached an agreement to share the domain name. The Brit will get to retain it for his email - which is what he registered it for in the first place …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 12:33
AMD tests ‘super silicon’ to beat heat problems

Pretty cool solution

When we cast doubt on AMD's abilty to produce an Athlon running at 1.7GHz that wouldn't run so hot it melted the solder on the mobo, we received the usual flood of 'you're in Intel's pocket' emails. But in among the venom lurked an interesting item: a reader claimed that, for over 12 months, AMD has been quietly producing test …

Channel 30 Nov 2000, 13:32
Athlon Palomino to include Screaming Sindy?

Next Athlon should be a real belter

AMD's new Athlon core, codenamed Palomino, is due to ship at 1.4GHz in January, 1.5GHz in Q2 and 1.7GHz in 2H 2001. Key improvements will include much improved branch prediction, cooler running (see AMD tests 'super silicon' to beat heat problems), hardware prefetch and core optimisations to improve FPU and ALU performance. But …

Channel 30 Nov 2000, 13:32
Guns disguised as mobile phones

Swiss police seize shipment

Swiss police have intercepted a cache of arms that include guns disguised as mobile phones. The phones don't actually work but contain barrels for four .22 bullets and a winding mechanism made to look like an aerial. By cranking the aerial, four high-tension springs are pulled back into the base of the phone and then each one …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 14:00
UK school gags ‘IT-minded’ pupils

We don't need no education

A reader has informed us of a worrying case of school censorship - a classic case of stamping on those kids that display elements of independent thought. Well, sort of. It made us laugh anyway. The following message was displayed on the front page of www.pyeah.com - a site designed and maintained by sixth formers at Notre-Dame …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 14:01
VIA unpacks 650, 667MHz Cyrix III CPUs

Targeting Duron, Celeron

VIA today unwrapped a pair of Cyrix III aimed at the low-end PC and information appliance markets. At 650MHz and 667MHz, the new chips aren't exactly going to beat Intel's 766MHz Celeron or AMD's 800MHz Duron. However, they do sport 133MHz front-side bus support. Intel MMX and AMD 3D Now! multimedia instruction sets are …

Channel 30 Nov 2000, 15:34
UK cars site aims for death of a salesman

Quotes promised within four hours

A UK Website has launched which claims to speed up the process of contract hiring company or fleet cars. The idea is that punters log onto car.now.com, say what kind of vehicle they are after, and receive an email with quotes from dealers within four hours - (within office hours). The West Midlands-based business also has a …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 15:48
Stephen King e-book runs out of steam

May come back later

Stephen King's foray into online publishing has come to an abrupt halt after sales of instalments of the book fell to levels his assistant said threatened the project. King decided to make the book, called The Plant, available as a free download. He left it to readers to chose whether they would pay for what they read, but said …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 16:14
Reg hack caught accepting Intel bribe

Time for a trip to the billiard room with a service revolver

Reg staffers were shocked to the core last night at Intel's Christmas party in London's throbbing West End when a senior Intel manager was spotted handing a significant cash sum to Hardware Editor Andrew Thomas. Readers had long suspected that Thomas, 49, had been in the pay of Chipzilla following the publication of stories …

Bootnotes 30 Nov 2000, 16:38
Computer engineer commits phone suicide

All over an unleashed virus apparently

Computer engineer Eugene Kapustynski, 40, blew his head off while on the phone to the emergency services a Coroner's Court heard yesterday. Eugene, who worked for telecoms company Bellwater in Basingstoke, was apparently distraught that he had stolen software from the company and infected its machines with a virus - thereby …

Software 30 Nov 2000, 17:01
LineOne definitely for sale

This time it's for real

So, the constipated wait is over - LineOne is up for sale. Joint owners, BTopenwoe and United News & Media, today confirmed that they want someone to take it off their hands. Apparently, both BT and United are "refocusing their businesses, and LineOne no longer fits with either company's plans". A BT spokesman declined to say …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 17:05
BT's chief boffin resigns

Free spirit?

BT's chief technologist, Peter Cochrane, has resigned after earlier complaining of the "constraints" involved in working for the telco. Professor Cochrane, who headed BT's research efforts, has left to set up the UK arm of investment company, Concept Labs. However he will still retain links with BT and work with them on …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 17:06
Conductivity? that's super!

HWRoundup

The Abit Siluro GeForce-2 MX goes under the microscope at Sysopt today. Encouraging results from overclocking attempts - even with fairly basic cooling methods. All in all, a good deal for the price. More gaming: Hexus has a stated mission to investigate all the GeForce cards on the market, starting with Elsa's offering. The …

Hardware Roundup 30 Nov 2000, 17:13
Intel gags on Reg condom deal

Chipzilla pulls out at last minute

Intel PR manager Graham Palmer last night declined an offer from Vulture Central to market joint Intel/Reg prophylactics. The so-called 'Blue Head' condom was to feature a sculpted vulture tickler and the latest technology which, sensing the climactic moment, would play Intel's dum dum dum dum jingle. Our dissapointment was …

Bootnotes 30 Nov 2000, 17:40
Smut Napster caught on the wrong side of the law

Updated Leechnet fails to restrict child porn pics

Yesterday we wrote about the porn Napster site Leechnet and, strangely, it proved one of the most popular stories for that day. However, we were soon contacted by a reader appalled at some child pornography he had found on Leechnet's servers (posted after we wrote our original story, and possibly posted there - because we wrote …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 17:42
Ralph Lauren threatens village saddlery

Horsey, Horsey don't you trot

An English village saddlery has become the latest victim of domain name paranoia in the corporate world. The Woldingham Saddlery & Harness Centre in Surrey has been in the horse business for over a decade, and its owner decided to register its domain name earlier this year. Nothing wrong with that, woldinghamsaddlery.com was …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 17:49
Buying a Linux ThinkPad: IBM's mission impossible

Available, but only sort of?

Does IBM ship ThinkPads with Linux preinstalled or not? In the US it certainly seems to, but the position in Europe seems a tad murkier - after hours of research The Reg's phantom buyer is still no closer to extracting price, spec, availability or even model number out of the loves at the UK branch of Shop IBM. You'll recall …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 17:57
Boston man forgets $4m of EMC stock

Picked shares up at 'a buck-fifty'

A Boston salesman has netted $4 million in EMC stock he forgot he owned. The 62-year-old yesterday sported sunglasses, a baseball cap and puffy parka to hide his identity when he turned up at the State Treasurer's office to collect the shares. The lucky investor, who refused to reveal his name to reporters at the building, …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 21:00
Viruses prey on porn lovers

Think with that organ above the shoulders

We are our own worst enemies when it comes to infection with computer viruses, but lessons do seem to be being learned. The most frequently reported type of virus is the script virus, such as the Lovebug and Kakworm. In fact, Kakworm was the most reported virus this year, outstripping the infamous Lovebug. Script viruses only …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 22:15
Web anonymity affirmed by NJ judge

John Does keep their shirts

New Jersey Superior Court Judge Kenneth MacKenzie on Tuesday affirmed the anonymity of four 'John Doe' defendants accused of publishing unkind and false statements about the company for which they work. Morristown-NJ sales consultancy outfit Dendrite International had sought the true identities from Internet portal Yahoo! of …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2000, 22:15
PC Association slams firm for logo misuse

What's in a name?

The PC Association is warning the public of the misuse of its logo by the firm which bought the names of two troubled PC builders, Carrera Technology and Sight & Sound Computers. Despite requests from the Association not to use the PCA Member logo in its advertisements, the company, Digital Network plc, trading as Carrera SSC, …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 22:16
HP says US PC sales worse than expected

While 36 per cent wiped off Gateway share price

Hewlett-Packard today said Americans were buying fewer of its PCs than expected, but it was still on course to hit financial targets for the year. "Unlike some of our competitors, HP is far more than a US-centric consumer PC company, with less than ten percent of our business in this segment," Carly Fiorina, HP CEO and Chairman …

Business 30 Nov 2000, 22:16