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5th January 2001 Archive

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  • American men ditch sex for PCs

    Playboy survey reveals all

    American males are happily ditching sex to play with their PC or mobile phone, a report claims. Eight per cent of men questioned by Youth Intelligence on behalf of Playboy magazine said they spent less time under the covers with their partner because they were too occupied with their hi-tech gadgets. The report failed to …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 09:18

  • etoys cuts 60 per cent of staff

    380 leave today

    eToys today announced plans to cut 60 per cent of staff in a bid to stem losses. The US toy e-tailor said it would get slash around 700 staff - 380 left today, with the rest due out by 31 March. It no longer expects to be profitable in its fiscal year ending 31 March 2003, according to a statement. Nor does it expect to reduce …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 09:23

  • Xmas PC sales slump: the proof

    First decline

    PC sales in the consumer sector fell 24 per cent in December compared to the previous year. Retail and direct/mail companies shifted just over one million desktop PCs last month, with December representing the fifth consecutive month of figures lagging behind 1999. Full year sales dropped 0.8 per cent on 1999 to 10.1 million, …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 09:26

  • Human rights bid to scrap mobile phone mast

    Parents turn to High Court

    A British man is using the European Human Rights Act to sue his local council and mobile phone operator Orange over the erection of a mast close to his childrens' bedroom. David Lale, a company director from the Leeds area, has filled a High Court appeal objecting to a decision by planning authorities to allow the erection of a …

    Data Networking 5 Jan 2001, 09:27

  • Capellas eyeballs McNealy in cluster bluster

    Big Q's Tru64 is entrenched, Sun systems are proprietary

    A team of executives at Compaq now takes the threat from Sun Microsystems to its own business so seriously that it spent the festive season not scoffing turkey and plum duff, but instead scoffing at Sun and calling its Cluster platform duff. The Register has seen a Compaq confidential document which it intends to show its …

    Software 5 Jan 2001, 09:28

  • Via intros retail Cyrix III box

    Ties up S3 deal

    Chipset and CPU contender Via has introduced a retail package for its Cyrix III processors aimed at PC resellers and distributors. At the same time, the firm announced that it had concluded its joint venture arrangement to use SonicBlue (formerly known as S3) technology in upcoming technology. The Cyrix III retail boxes …

    Channel 5 Jan 2001, 09:49

  • Hi-tech Titans meet privately with Dubya

    Republican whippers-in guide the pack

    US President-elect George Dubya Bush convened an economic summit in Austin, Texas this week, during which he joyously received the Big Swinging Dicks of American high technology behind closed doors. The guest list read like a who's who in IT: Michael Dell of Dell Computers; John Chambers of Cisco; Lou Gerstner of IBM; Scott …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 10:11

  • AMD calls on Transmeta to help crack Sledgehammer

    Surprise, surprise...

    AMD appears to be ready to recruit Transmeta to give its 64-bit Sledgehammer CPU a clear lead over Intel's own server-oriented processor, Itanium. The deal centres on Transmeta's code-morphing technology - software that converts chunks of object code created for processor A into chip B's native machine language. AMD's plan …

    Channel 5 Jan 2001, 11:38

  • AllAdvantage scales down European operation

    More job losses, more dotcom misery

    AllAdvantage.com is making sweeping changes to its business that will lead to job losses and a major shift in the company's direction. The California-based outfit, which pays people to view adds online, is winding down its b2c operation in favour of exploiting its technology instead. Although no decision has been made yet …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 11:49

  • Redundancies hit beleagured Breathe

    If it was a horse, they'd shoot it

    The joint administrators of not-so-bloody-trendy-now-are-you ISP Breathe.com has made a number of compulsory redundancies at the company's offices in London and Warrington. It's not known how many people lost their jobs immediately after returning from their Christmas break. An update is due later today but we won't hold our …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 11:52

  • Xbox blueprint leak too

    Interested? Course you are

    A young man, who will remain nameless, has sent us a hand-drawn blueprint that he stumbled upon on site Msxbox a few months ago. Apparently, it disappeared within minutes but he managed to find it in his cache. All the Xbox's details should be out tomorrow, but we figured you'd like to have a look. So here it is: ® Related …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 12:06

  • BT HQ hit by phone outage

    Phone companies, doncha just love 'em?

    The phones in BT's main offices in central London are on the blink leaving the monster telco cut-off from the outside world. It's not known exactly how long one of the world's largest telecommunications companies has been out of action - we can't get to speak to anyone there at the moment 'cos their phones are down. Nor do we …

    Bootnotes 5 Jan 2001, 12:23

  • Royal & Sun Alliance sacks ten over obscene emails

    And so the email cull continues

    Insurance company Royal & Sun Alliance has sacked ten members of staff for distributing "lewd" Bart Simpson cartoons. The decision follows the announcement in December that 41 staff had been suspended over the emails. Between then and now, this figure has increased to 77. The company is clearly taking this very seriously. It …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 12:32

  • Linux 2.4 kernel released

    Torvalds tells developers to have fun

    The long-awaited Linus 2.4 kernel has been released by Linus Torvalds. Considered to be a major milestone in the development of open source software, the latest version of the Linux kernel features enhanced support for symmetrical multiprocessing. This means Linux will work effectively with, say, 16 or 32 processors instead of …

    Software 5 Jan 2001, 12:33

  • Apple upgrades open source-style licence

    Addresses free software world's concerns, apparently

    Apple has finally decided to follow the spirit of the open source development model fully, and modified its own Apple Public Source Licence to eliminate many of the restrictions that so annoyed the open source community. The Mac maker yesterday updated APSL to version 1.2. The previous version, 1.1, was described by free …

    Mac Channel 5 Jan 2001, 12:53

  • Floater, Orange, not flash in the pan

    Cash Register

    Orange is to float on 12 February, according to media reports. Following France Telecom's take-over of the mobile phone company and the acrimony building up to Hans Snook's departure, 15 per cent of the company will be floated for a hoped-for £9.5 billion. Following on from the dismal failure of News Corporation's online …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 12:57

  • XFree86 fixed to run alongside MacOS X's Aqua

    The Joy of X

    MacOS X users keen to run X Window applications under the next-generation Apple OS' own GUI, Aqua, are now a major step closer to being able to do so. A version of the open source X Window server XFree86 was released for Apple's open source OS core, Darwin, just last month. Essentially, it gives Darwin a free GUI of its own. …

    Mac Channel 5 Jan 2001, 13:23

  • Turn off the console, Fat Boy

    Ain't so slim

    The number of fat kids in the UK has officially doubled, and the finger of blame is pointing squarely at computer games. A study, released today by researchers at King's College London, looked at kids between four and eleven over a twenty year period, and found that the number of girls classed as overweight had gone up by 50 …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 14:13

  • 3G trigger pulled on mobile phone firms

    The Big Squeeze

    Even though the World+Dog now has a mobile and millions are getting onto the Net, the average revenue per person from a mobile phone is set to fall and mobile companies will see operating profits slump. This will lead to forced consolidation of European companies and in seven years there will be only five companies in the market …

    Data Networking 5 Jan 2001, 14:18

  • Seattle's black monolith is swiped

    Turns up in bird sanctuary

    Seattle's black monolith, which called to mind a similar structure from Stanley Kubrick's seminal film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has been removed just as mysteriously as it first appeared. Only a hole remains where the 9 foot-tall steel construction used to sit, on a hill in Seattle's Magnuson Park. The Seattle Times reports …

    Bootnotes 5 Jan 2001, 15:36

  • BT offices engulfed in tiny blaze

    Staff evacuated, no casualties

    BT's flagship office complex opposite St Pauls Cathedral in central London was hit by fire this morning, wiping out power and phones. Staff - including chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield and board members - were evacuated from the property at ten o'clock this morning. The building is home to some 2,000 employees. By lunchtime …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 15:37

  • Transmeta finds new OEM partner

    Little things

    Transmeta has got itself a new OEM partner in the shape of Taiwan's ICP Electronics, one of the country's biggest industrial computer manufacturers. ICP is to sell the new board, Wafer, embedded with a 400MHz Crusoe TM3200. The board, runs 128MB of memory, is comparable in size to a 3.5-inch hard drive, the company said. It …

    Channel 5 Jan 2001, 15:37

  • Palm, Sprint dash for CDMA mobile Net access

    Perfect partners

    US cellphone company Sprint PCS yesterday chose the Palm OS as its mobile Internet platform of choice for next-generation CDMA networks. It's a marriage made in heaven. Sprint has a high-speed digital network, and it wants to encourage subscribers to sign up for mobile Internet access. Palm has a portable Net access tool, but …

    Data Networking 5 Jan 2001, 16:35

  • LibertySurf speculation ‘load of bollocks’

    Can't argue with that

    The MD of LibertySurf in the UK has slammed reports that the European ISP may close its operations outside of France. French business newspaper Les Echos did not cite sources but claimed LibertySurf was contemplating pulling out of Spain, Sweden and the UK in a bid to cut costs and make the business more attractive to potential …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 16:38

  • Reader sends in secret Xbox specs

    And makes us laugh a great deal

    Well then, hats off to reader Alex Powell for making our laugh heartily here at Vulture Central. Following the feeding frenzy for Xbox info, we have put up scans of a mag that has pics and a hand-drawn pic of the box, not to the mention the line diagram of another 'blueprint' that we posted way back when. Alex was not to be …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 16:40

  • See the moon turn blood red

    Lunar eclipse to be Webcast

    On 9 January there will be a full lunar eclipse, and a group of space nuts are planning to video the whole thing and stream it live over the Net. Their video of the event is likely to be quite spectacular - weather permitting - since they will be viewing it at dawn when the rays of the sun can make the moon appear red. There …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 16:41

  • Teenage dotcom millionaire: Reg gets facts wrong

    Right to Reply Ben Cohen responds to our stories

    Re. The teenage dotcom millionaire and his ever increasing page impressions and Fishy porn search engine launched by teenage dotcom millionaire. As ever the Register has got its facts wrong, Durlacher did not buy JewishNet, nor did any company relating to my father. JewishNet/SoJewish.com was sold to AIM-quoted Totally plc, …

    Letters 5 Jan 2001, 16:46

  • Cyrix III fails to impress at Anandtech

    HWRoundup A sorry tale...

    Anand has posted a peek at the "world's first" .15 micron x86 - the VIA Cyrix III. The review is fairly damning: "The additional 64KB of L2 cache and the shrink to the .15 micron process do not seem to be not enough to save the Cyrix III from going the way of the dodo." Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Read the whole sorry story here …

    Hardware Roundup 5 Jan 2001, 17:31

  • L&H lays off 1200 staff

    Founder faces money laundering allegations

    Lernout & Hauspie is to lay off 1200 staff, while one of its founders faces a probe over alleged money laundering. The speech recognition software maker today said it would bin 20 per cent of its workforce in a bid to cut costs. "Unfortunately, after an extensive and careful analysis of L&H's existing resources, we were unable …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 17:41

  • Sony splashes out $3m on UK bluetooth chip firm

    Hints of further collaboration

    Cambridge Silicon Radio, the UK chip manufacturer, has managed to raise $45 million in its latest round of funding, with more than $3million from electronics giant, Sony. CSR, an unlisted company, has not disclosed the full details of the contribution. However, according to The Guardian, it said that it was part of a final wave …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 18:05

  • Bill Clinton creates counter-intelligence Czar

    Meet 'Little Brother'

    Lame duck US President Bill Clinton has spent his final days in office appointing as many federal bureaucrats as he can and drafting Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs) which, if he were facing a long political haul ahead, he would not risk doing. Friday it was revealed that the Gigolo-in-Chief has established a cabinet- …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 18:12

  • Cyber Virus Mutant Terrorists get Hip to the Trip

    My God - they're everywhere!

    Cyber terrorist activity and fresh delivery techniques for the transmission of mutated viruses will menace corporate and government security this year, according to a study by network infrastructure consulting firm Predictive Systems. Among the trends forecast by Predictive, whose clients include Bear Stearns, Cisco Systems, …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 18:32

  • Zy.com up for sale

    But what the hell is going on behind the scenes?

    We were surprised to see an ad in the FT today announcing that Zy.com was up for sale. The site is part of a whole Zy conglomerate, run by young man Charles Moir, who co-founded it with Nova Fisher, having made a fortune out of Acorn a coupla years ago. We thought that Zy.com - a site that allows people to build good-quality …

    Business 5 Jan 2001, 18:35

  • HomeChoice in DDOS blitz

    Back to normal

    Broadband ISP and video-on-demand outfit HomeChoice has admitted it suffered a denial of service attack yesterday from hackers which disrupted its service to customers. Details of what happened are still somewhat sketchy but a spokesman for HomeChoice said: "We had a denial of service attack, and this slowed the system down. We …

    Media 5 Jan 2001, 19:27

  • First PHP virus found

    More likely

    The first virus to use PHP scripting language to infect computers has been identified by anti-virus security firm Central Command. PHP.NewWorld is spread to a system when executing an infected script. However the virus is not able to spread out from an infected system, which means its effects are far less damaging than might …

    Software 5 Jan 2001, 19:28