The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

20th December 2000 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • BT strong-armed to offer wholesale leased lines

    More tough-talking from the winged watchdog

    The grinding wheels of regulatory bureaucracy have ruled today that BT must allow rival telcos to compete. Oftel has issued a draft direction that will force BT to offer wholesale leased line services to other operators. The winged watchdog was responding to a complaint made by Energis - backed by Cable & Wireless, Worldcom, …

    Data Networking 20 Dec 2000, 10:20

  • Red Hat ships 64-bit Linux beta

    First public test release

    Red Hat today released the first public beta version of its upcoming 64-bit Linux distribution for Intel's IA-64 architecture. The beta is based on an early, pre-release build of version 2.4 of the Linux kernel. It bundles some 700 "core software packages", including database management tools, utilities and server-oriented …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 10:54

  • Beenz meenz job cuts

    When you gotta go, you gotta go

    Online loyalty Web currency outfit beenz.com has axed 25 jobs in the US and is looking for a further 18 volunteers in the UK. There are now just 16 staff left in the US after workers there were given the boot last week. Following the redundancies in the UK, Beenz will still employ around 70 people. However, the dotcom is also …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 10:56

  • 3dfx staff start job hunts

    Belfast team set up resumé site

    Enterprising 3dfx staffers have already begun touting their services to potential employers through a new Web site - x3dfx.com (geddit?!?) Set up by a trio of senior 3dfxers from the company's Belfast office - one of the company's service and manufacturing centres - the site so far contains little but contact information done …

    Channel 20 Dec 2000, 10:57

  • Napster partner urged to curb Nazi song swaps

    Bertelsmann must act to ban racists, demand German authorities

    German media giant Bertelsmann has said it will co-operate with the country's Constitutional Protection Office to eliminate neo-Nazi songs from Napster - but it's not sure what it can really do to help. Yesterday, the CPO, an organisation set up to enforce German's strict anti-racism and anti-Nazi laws, warned that Napster's …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 2000, 11:19

  • Pentium 4 prices and speeds, January to June

    Roadmap Here we go again

    We must have more pints of cider with our buddies. These are the prices and the form of the runners and riders in the Intel stable of desktop performance microprocessors between January and June. The 1.5GHz P4 costs $644 on 28 January, $637 on 4 March, $594 on 15 April, and $455 in June. The 1.4GHz Pentium 4 costs $440 on 28 …

    Channel 20 Dec 2000, 11:33

  • Sega to create games for Net appliances

    JV to create network gaming core code

    Sega is looking to the emerging Internet appliance market as a new games platform as the company struggles to make its way in the PlayStation 2 era. The games company today said it has formed a new operation, Sega Access, to develop networked multi-player gaming infrastructure software for Net appliances. The new company is a …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 11:47

  • Foundry issues second profit warning

    Networking stock prices dive due to telecoms slowdown

    Shares in US networking equipment maker Foundry Networks almost halved in value yesterday after it issued a second profit warning. Foundry, which completed a highly-successful IPO in 1999, said its earnings would be well below even the lowered expectations it had set in an earlier profit warning. The firm's second revision of …

    Data Networking 20 Dec 2000, 12:02

  • AMD takeover rumour rolls again

    Yup, it's sheer speculation

    Consider this. AMD share's price closed on Wall Street last night at $15.375. Intel's share price closed on Wall Street last night at $33.3475. According to information received, AMD operates on a P/E ratio of around five, INTC at a P/E ratio of around 22 and Trancemeta? Who knows. One informed reader claims P/E is not five …

    Channel 20 Dec 2000, 12:03

  • Creative cuts sales forecast

    PC slowdown knock on

    Sound card supremo Creative Technology has lowered its Q2 sales forecast because its big PC vendor customers are buying less. For the three months to 31 December, the company expects to turnover between $410 million and $420 million. It had estimated sales could hit $460 million for the period, and it had revenues of $437 …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 12:03

  • Meet the Warner Bros: Jekyll and Hyde

    The truth behind the Harry Potter domain bullying

    Warner Brothers' stated approach to Harry Potter fan Web sites is in direct contradiction to what is really happening. Not only that but our suspicion that it believes it has a right to any domain containing any reference to Harry Potter has been confirmed. And it doesn't even look at people's sites before firing off threatening …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 2000, 12:41

  • MPs give BT broadband thumbs up

    Monster telco let off the hook

    It was billed as the big showdown - a chance to humiliate BT publicly in front of an audience of influential parliamentarians. Rival telcos lined up in front of the trade and industry select committee yesterday to recount tales of sharp practise, dirty tricks, foot dragging and obstructive behaviour concerning local loop …

    Data Networking 20 Dec 2000, 12:43

  • Ballmer tells MS troops to work harder, spend less

    Return to the 'old days' - we must have missed them...

    Microsoft president Steve Ballmer is planning cutbacks - maybe. In a 4,000 word memo to staff leaked to CNet,* and followed up by a company-wide webcast on Tuesday, Ballmer called for a return to "the kind of cost-conscious culture that marked Microsoft's earlier years," and said investment would be scaled back from the original …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 12:56

  • US says cell phones won't kill you

    At least, not yet... probably...

    There is no link between mobile phone use and brain cancer, at least in the short term, according to a study of a group of brain cancer patients in the US. This latest version of events comes from researchers in the States who published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They said that there was …

    Data Networking 20 Dec 2000, 13:15

  • TSMC to chop chip output

    Demand is sliding

    Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) is chopping chip production in Q1 of 2001 due to slowing demand. Bloomberg quotes TSMC spokeswoman Kuo Shan-shan saying: "Production will not be 100 per cent for the quarter. The first quarter outlook is not promising." Kuo added that 2000 had been a year of record earnings and factories running at …

    Channel 20 Dec 2000, 13:19

  • Claire Swire email claims nine more victims

    FSA employees suspended for forwarding explicit communique

    Nine members of staff at the Financial Services Authority have been suspended because they forwarded the now infamous Claire Swire email. They may also lose their Christmas bonuses. The FSA has strict rules about emails being sent out of the company and the IT department is now going through all logs to find those guilty of …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 2000, 14:52

  • Le Freeswerve shares fall on lottery news

    What a balls up

    Le Freeswerve was quick out of the blocks this morning to announce it would be working with lottery operator, Camelot, as the sole provider of national lottery tickets online. News that Le Freeswerve was part of the Camelot consortium was announced backed in February - so this is hardly "new news", is it? Indeed, if Le …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 14:55

  • Gameplay loses UK MD

    Bloody careless don't you think?

    Multiplatform games outfit Gameplay has lost its UK MD and replaced him with a triumvirate of executives. No official announcement has been made yet but according to sources close to the company, Gameplay CEO Mark Bernstein told staff yesterday that Tim Coles would be leaving. Coles has already left the company and it's not …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 15:00

  • Railtrack's phone mast frenzy

    Gets in ahead of the 3G rush

    Plans to deploy over 5000 new mobile phone masts have been unveiled by Marconi and Railtrack, as part of their new joint venture, Euromast. The new company will have access to both parents' property portfolios. Railtrack will take as much as a 15 per cent stake in Ipsaris an optical network subsidiary of Marconi, in return for …

    Data Networking 20 Dec 2000, 15:21

  • OpenBSD exploit gets serious

    Gives crackers server access

    An esoteric buffer overflow bug in OpenBSD has been upgraded in importance after it was discovered that, in certain conditions, it could allow a cracker to gain remote access to a server. Users are recommended to apply a patch to fix the one-byte buffer overflow vulnerability present in an OpenBSD service called ftpd(8). The …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 15:24

  • Telewest threatens to derail unmetered Net access in UK

    Scrooge is a saint compared to these guys

    Telewest has warned it will take legal action against Oftel unless it makes changes to the introduction of the wholesale unmetered Net access product, FRIACO. It warns that FRIACO - the mechanism that allows ISPs to offer unmetered Net access in the UK by fixing telecoms costs - could harm Telewest's future profitability. In a …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 2000, 15:55

  • Vivendi staff get free PC through PeoplePC deal

    US ISP breaks into Euro corporate market

    Vivendi is to stick a PC with Internet access into every employee's home through a deal with US ISP PeoplePC. Between them, Vivendi Universal and Vivendi Environment have more than 250,000 staff worldwide. The scheme will kick off in France in the New Year - where staff will be asked to pay three Euros a month over a period of …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 2000, 16:43

  • Tualatin a big B-step for Intelkind

    Roadmap Celerons and the universal mobo

    One slide of the lastest Intel roadmap the mole showed us before he scurried off into the streets of the West End yesterday, told tales of Tualatin. This will extend the frequency of Intel's PIII processor in the third quarter of next year, and volume is likely to increase as the .13 micron process begins its ramp. The 815 B- …

    Channel 20 Dec 2000, 17:16

  • More pumped up P4 posting

    HWRoundup Some 3DFX motion blur

    Well, we thought they'd stopped coming in, but One2Surf has posted a review of the P4. It couldn't go by without a mention, so if you want to get yet more info on Chipzilla's fourth P, go here. PC Mech has taken the Mushkin Rev2 Cas2 PC-133 SDRAM and given it a little competition in the form of some quality PC-100. So if you …

    Hardware Roundup 20 Dec 2000, 18:24

  • Security patch distribution – it's trojan time

    Crackers could turn cure into disease

    The way operating system vendors issue security patches is insecure, in many cases, and could let crackers exploit this to trick users into loading trojan horses onto their systems. Security firm BindView, whose Razor team of security researchers completed the research, questioned 27 different vendors of commonly used products …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 18:39

  • Reg Xmas curry cracker

    A night to remember

    Vulture Central yesterday celebrated a cracking year in the traditional style - papadoms, beer and good cheer. Witty conversation and revelry were the order of the night as delirious hacks worked their way through an enormous quantity of pilau rice and Kingfisher lager. Naturally, our very own Paparazzi O'Leery was on hand to …

    Bootnotes 20 Dec 2000, 18:44

  • Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive

    Exclusive And buggers backups, imaging and RAID

    Hastening a rapid demise for the free copying of digital media, the next generation of hard disks is likely to come with copyright protection countermeasures built in. Technical committees of NCTIS, the ANSI-blessed standards body, have been discussing the incorporation of content protection currently used for removable media …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 19:52

  • How many MS OSes does it take to change a lightbulb?

    Why anti-piracy lockdowns doth make pirates of us all...

    In Microsoft's vision, the PCs of the future are easier to use, harder to break, and their software is difficult (preferably impossible) to pirate. One of the problems with this, from the user's point of view, is that these PCs will tend to be much more constrained environments, achieving Microsoft's notion of simple (Windows) …

    Software 20 Dec 2000, 19:53

  • Notebook slump hits America

    Vendor panic

    Notebook PC makers could be in for an even worse time than their desktop PC counterparts. Dealer and distributor sources tell CNET that November was the first month in about a year and a half that inventory levels were higher than unit sales - and the situation has worsened through December as notebook makers continue to cut …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 21:39

  • eMachines to miss sales targets

    Lingering doom and gloom

    eMachines has joined the barrage of revenue warnings spewing from the IT industry this festive season. The Korean-owned, US-operated PC maker today said it expected sales of between $120 million and $130 million for the fourth quarter ending December 30 - below those of the previous year's Q4. It also warned that losses would …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 21:41

  • Palm laughs in face of PC panic

    Slump! What Slump?

    Palm gloated over its fourth straight quarter of triple digit sales growth today. The Californian handheld maker recorded $20.3 million net income, after goodwill, for its fiscal Q2 ended December 1. This compares with $12.9 million for the same period last year. Sales were a record $522.2 million, up 102 per cent from last …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 22:42

  • Micron shares tumble

    Meets lower targets

    Micron Electronics met lowered estimates for its first fiscal quarter today, while its share price tumbled. The Idaho-based company reported sales up 14.5 per cent to $404 million for the period ended November 30. Net income dropped to $2 million from $15 million. Falling DRAM memory prices hit Micron's gross margins hard - …

    Business 20 Dec 2000, 22:46