14th December 2000 Archive

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AT&T porn channel challenged by religious investors

Ain't democracy wonderful?

The US Supreme Court may have relaxed regulations restricting porn on cable TV this year, but that can't prevent dissatisfied shareholders from leveraging the Almighty Greenback against purveyors of filth in a free market. Eight US investment bodies with religious ties have this week filed a resolution ordering telecomms …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 05:57
EMI digital music licensee list grows

Signs up My.MP3.com clone

Musicbank has become the latest company to license EMI's digital music archive in return for cash and warrants to buy an equity stake in the online business. San Francisco-based Musicbank will join the likes of Liquid Audio, Supertracks, the Tornado Group, On Demand Distribution and Digital Distribution Domain (Dx3), all of …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 10:34
Palm creator ‘calls’ Symbian boss in OS' defence

PalmSource Merry Prankster Hawkins plays it for laughs

The creator of the Palm and co-founder of Handspring, Jeff Hawkins, defended the platform's technical deficiencies a knockabout session at PalmSource yesterday. Hawkins said problems with multitasking, memory management, processing power and communications attributed to PalmOS were exaggerated. He demonstrated a three-way …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 10:42
MEP slams Net purchase tax

Don't we all dear, don't we all

A European politician wants purchase tax to be scrapped on all goods delivered over the Net. Speaking last night, Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis called for the European Parliament to back her bid to encourage e-commerce. The European Commission has published proposals to impose VAT (Value Added Tax) on goods delivered …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 10:46
RM shuns £300m Northern Ireland contract

Penalty clauses

RM, the UK's biggest IT supplier for schools, has walked away from a ten-year £300 million contract to supply all the IT for Northern Ireland schools. RM, with JV partner ICL, was the only company negotiating for the deal, which would have been Britain's biggest ever education contract, but said it could not accept onerous …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 10:47
Hard cases for hardcases: Palm debuts Bluetooth kits

PalmSource Talk to the hand

With only five 16-bit fishes, and two not-quite-multitasking loaves of bread, Palm fed its multitude of developers some Bluetooth technology yesterday. At the PalmSource Developer Conference in Santa Clara, Palm became the first OS vendor to distribute Bluetooth developer kits to a wide community base. Making a grab for a …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 10:48
Metallica sues ~~Napster~~ perfume producer

Master of Pipettes

Litigious thrash band Metallica has taken to law again, this time in pursuit of a perfumier. Purveyor of pretty pongs Guerlain apparently has a perfume called Metallica. That, claims the band, is a flagrant - indeed, fragrant - violation of its trademark. It's also - in the words of the band's lawyer, Jill Pietrini, according …

Bootnotes 14 Dec 2000, 11:00
Self censoring site rating system surfaces

Would the porn sites please form an orderly queue

A new rating system for Web sites, designed to protect kids surfing the Net and their nervous parents, was unveiled yesterday. It's been a long time coming: The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA)has worked on a labelling system since 1994. It proposes a voluntary code of practice where sites register at the ICRA.org …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 11:41
Intel stock price cheap? You must be joking

Equals historic high

Intel share price equals its historic high, standing at a price/earnings ratio of 30, a tech analyst claims. In a letter to today's Financial Times, Marshall Auerback, of David W.Tice & Associates, a Dallas-based fund adviser and manager, criticises the newspaper's Lex column for asserting that Intel trades at just over 20 …

Channel 14 Dec 2000, 11:50
Nintendo sets 24m target for next-gen GameBoy

Component shortages must be easing

Nintendo has promised to produce 24 million GameBoy Advance handheld game consoles during the product's first year on sale - with one million of them flying through shop doors in the first ten days. That's three times as many PlayStation 2s as Sony said it would ship in that machine's first year - and well ahead of the ten …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 11:55
Dotcom Entrepreneur of the Year sacks quarter of workforce

Rubus boss adds scalps to gong-laden mantelpiece

British dotcom consultancy, Rubus - voted CBI Most Promising New Company 1999 - has axed 75 people from it staff. Those given the chop include people across all disciplines. With Christmas just around the corner staff are hacked off with the timing - and the way they've been treated by Rubus. The company is also closing its …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 12:27
US DSL market slows

Only 1.85 million units shipped in Q3

The DSL modem market slowed a little in the last quarter as subscription rates were damaged by a strike at Verizon. However, despite this, the introduction of the DOCSIS certification bolstered the cable modem market enough that shipments increased. All in all, ADSL modem shipments for Q3 topped 1.85 million units according to …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 12:43
Bill Gates shot in mock documentary

Microsoft chairman not really dead but Linux still implicated

An independent film that follows a conspiracy surrounding the fictional death of Bill Gates is scheduled to appear on the festival circuit early next year. MacArthur Park, a new feature-length independent documentary, examines the questions about the Gates 'assassination' and chronicles a year of campaigning by Citizens for …

Bootnotes 14 Dec 2000, 12:47
Tech firms' top brass work round low pay

Big fat share options

Senior staffers at technology companies earn much less than their old economy counterparts, but jack up their remuneration with very generous share option schemes. No big surprise there, but pay packet consultancy New Bridge Street Consultants has quantified the situation. But before we get to the details there are a couple of …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 14:37
Ofcom: It's about broadband, stupid

Analysis And don't let anyone tell you any different

So the Government has become the proud single parent of a bouncing new super communications regulatory agency, Ofcom, writes Tom Steinberg. Of course, the focus in the mainstream media has been on what this Christmas birth means for the BBC and other TV companies. But this is akin to concentrating on the content of the child's …

Data Networking 14 Dec 2000, 15:07
Compaq to OEM TurboLinux

Bundling distro on Japan-bound ProLiants

Compaq is to bundle TurboLinux's version of the open source operating system with its Intel-based ProLiant, and perhaps AlphaServer and AlphaStation systems, the company said today - just weeks after touting Red Hat's Red Hat Linux 7 on its Alpha machines. TurboLinux - in which Compaq invested at the beginning of the year - …

Software 14 Dec 2000, 15:14
IBM ships revamped mainframe

Zzzzz series coming at ya

IBM is to begin shipment of its first G7 mainframe, today, as well as an enhanced storage system. Big Blue hopes the revamped products will reinvigorate mainframe sales and improve its position in the market against Sun and storage rival EMC. As previously reported, IBM announced a number of improved technical features to …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 15:28
ISP Freecall kicks off 1000 ‘abusers’

Blames everyone but itself

Unmetered ISP 24/7 Freecall has axed 1000 users from its service because it claims they "abused" the service. An email telling them that were being dropped was sent out yesterday - hours before Freecall pulled the plug. Freecall also said it would not accept any new customers. This latest episode comes a little over a month …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 15:37
Women like HP more than men do

And we like anything better than statistics

Women and men have different brand loyalties when it comes to buying computers, and someone's done the research to prove it. What we can't work out is what it all means. A survey of 69,000 Net heads, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that when the woman of the house is involved in the purchase of a new PC HP's share goes …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 16:14
VultureFone™ goes international

Site news Vulturise your mobile phone - wherever you are

The Register's completely pointless yet totally fun Christmas prezzy just got better! Thanks to jolly ole' WapMX, we can now extend our VutureFone™ service to many of our overseas readers! All you need is a Nokia cellular phone capable of receiving SMS messages and hooked up to one of 264 international mobile phone networks. …

Site News 14 Dec 2000, 16:27
AMD, Alliance patch up differences

Flash, ahh hah

AMD and Alliance Semiconductor have agreed settlement terms for AMD's patent infringement lawsuit filed in 1996. Alliance and AMD will drop their claims and counterclaims against each other and Alliance will pay AMD an undisclosed sum for past damages. AMD had originally claimed that Alliance's flash memory devices infringed …

Channel 14 Dec 2000, 16:56
BT launches US hyperlinks legal action

Prodigy to face test case

BT - which owns the patent to hypertext links - has begun its legal fight to claim back millions of dollars in licensing revenue from US ISPs. Intellectual property attorneys, Kenyon & Kenyon yesterday filed a case on behalf of BT against Prodigy Communications Corp in New York State. The legal challenge asserts BT's patented …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 17:39
Acer to ditch OEM PC business?

Head for the hills...

Acer Inc. is considering dumping its OEM PC business. The Taiwanese technology star is suffering along with the rest of the industry from the slump in consumer spending on computers, and is thinking of stopping making PCs for other people in a bid to streamline. An Acer senior VP, Philip Peng, said the move had been suggested …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 17:40
Asus P4 mobo pees on Intel board

HWRoundup It's got the midas touch

Motherboards, Intel and Asus. It can only be the P4T i850 motherboard, from Asus, for the P4. Sharky checks it out here. He reckons Asus has the Midas touch, so its bound to be scorcher. Gadget combining is proving to be a popular pastime in R&D labs these days. If you like a two-for-one gizmo then have a look at Tech-Review' …

Hardware Roundup 14 Dec 2000, 17:49
BAA.com domain battle settled out of court

The sheep-loving former owner couldn't afford the legal fees

The legal battle over the ownership of www.baa.com has been settled out of court after its owner, Tom Bourke, was no longer able to afford the heavy legal fees. Software consultant Tom decided to make a stand against corporate bullying by refusing to give into the British Airports Authority - better known as BAA - which is the …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 17:51
3G's rubbish

And will be for another seven years

We all knew that it was going to be a wait for 3G mobile phones, but according to projections shown to us today by Citrix, it may be a longer one than anyone thought. Displaying a lovely multi-coloured map of the world, the VP of product development Keith Turnbull, was drawing attention to the expansion of 3G over time. The …

Data Networking 14 Dec 2000, 18:06
FTC blesses AOL/Time Warner nuptials

One more regulatory hurdle left

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday finally approved the proposed $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner after reaching a settlement purportedly requiring the vast, resulting media combo to keep its broadband pipes open to competing ISPs. Numerous consumer groups and competitors believed the …

Media 14 Dec 2000, 18:36
Yummy Claire: we try to clear up this mess

The email cc saga salted, sorry, sorted

Well, good lord, the Great Claire Debate of 2000 (see: Is this the greatest ever email hoax?). We spent most of yesterday trying to get to the bottom of the whole affair while being continually bombarded with sightings, extra "info", outright lies and accusations of stupidity. You, the readers, provided us with just over 400 …

Bootnotes 14 Dec 2000, 21:41
Compromise sought in Windows bug copyright saga

Microsoft to review format

The moderator of a security mailing list BugTraq has won the backing of its readers in insisting that Microsoft, and another vendor, @Stake, allow him to post advisories on security problems in full. Microsoft and @Stake changed the format of their advisories so that they provided a brief summary of a particular flaw and …

Software 14 Dec 2000, 21:54
Xmas panic means PC fire sales

New York stores can't give them away

IT giants are virtually giving away products in the scramble to fill American Christmas stockings. Sony has decided to hand out wireless modems to boost interest in its Vaio notebooks. Punters buying one of the notebooks between now and July 1 are being promised a free GoAmerica modem worth $480. In order to grab the freebie, …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 21:56
Mighty Microsoft to miss sales targets

Five per cent under

Mighty Microsoft today cut earnings and revenue forecast for its fiscal second quarter by five to six per cent. It also lowered estimates for full fiscal 2001 by a similar amount. Sales for the quarter ending 31 December are now forecast at between $6.4 billion and $6.5 billion. Full year revenue is expected to hit $25.2 …

Business 14 Dec 2000, 22:53