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24th January 2001 Archive

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  • Compaq hits reduced Q4 targets

    Difficult first half

    Compaq hit its (reduced) Q4 targets but warns that a rocky road lies ahead for the industry in the first half of 2001. Michael Capellas, Compaq's CEO, says the company remains comfortable with "analyst estimates of earnings per share growth in the 20-25 per cent range." The world's biggest PC maker produced operating net …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 10:14

  • Le Freeswerve says ‘bonjour’ to flat-rate Net access

    Rivals 'knocked into a cocked hat'

    Le Freeswerve - the UK's leading soon-to-be-French ISP - has launched its much hyped 24/7 unmetered Net access bringing round-the-clock flat-fee Net access to the marketplace. Freeserve AnyTime costs £12.99 a month and includes all subscription charges and telephone connection costs to the Net. What's more, it's £2 a month …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 11:21

  • Windows Woundup Fun with Windows, PowerPoint insecure

    And back off with those 'Whistler Beta 2 out' rumours...

    If you're drinking coffee right now, I suggest you put it down. Mr. Hall sent me this link with the subject, "funny Windows stuff". It's more than funny. The page says it was created with The GIMP, which is basically Adobe Photoshop for Linux (although there is a Win32 version, which is less popular), so most likely means a …

    Software 24 Jan 2001, 11:23

  • AOL Time Warner ditches 2000 jobs

    Win some, lose some

    AOL Time Warner is to ditch more than 2000 jobs in a bid to cut costs and eliminate duplication following the company's $106 billion monster merger. The job cuts are across the board affecting the giant's publishing, music and film divisions. According to Variety.com, some 700 will go at AOL's offices in Dulles, Virginia. …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 11:44

  • Microsoft confirms Web site blackout

    Updated Reg readers diagnose fault

    Microsoft has confirmed that its corporate Web sites have become unavailable due to an as yet unidentified technical problem. Since the early hours of this morning www.microsoft.com, msn.com, hotmail.com and msnbc.com have all been unavailable. A company spokeswoman said the company was working hard to resolve the issue and …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 11:47

  • White House Ws go Walkabout

    There'll be no *hite*ash at the *hite House

    It has emerged that some politicians actually have a sense of humour. The final gesture of the outgoing Democrat administration was to remove and hide the W's from the keyboards of computers in the White House. Poor old George * Bush will have to resort to spelling out his middle initial like everyone else did suring the …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 11:57

  • Porn roundup: disabled lesbian filth and Jonathan King

    We live in a sick, sick world

    Is there no end to our society's obsession with sex? No, thank God, and so we have two more porn stories to add to the list. An appalled dad of a disabled 15-year-old girl called police when he found Mpegs of "lesbian romps" on her school laptop. Apparently, young Roberta thought it had been tampered with, so her dad Jeffrey …

    Bootnotes 24 Jan 2001, 12:02

  • Intel prices to fall 20-42 per cent Sunday

    Third-parties confirm Mystic Magee predictions

    Intel will slash chip prices by up to 42 per cent next week, according to CNET sources, confirming what our own deep throats told us back in December. On Sunday, 28 January, Chipzilla will chomp 21 per cent off the price of the 1.5GHz Pentium 4, which will drop from $819 to $644 in palettes of 1000 chips. The 1.4GHz P4 will …

    Channel 24 Jan 2001, 12:09

  • Sun, MS settle – war resumes with .NET, C# vs Java

    MS Java goes into legacy mode as more eggs go into .NET basket

    Open warfare over Java resumes between Sun and Microsoft today, after the two companies folded their legal tents and agreed to disagree. Microsoft pays $20 million and gets to ship existing and beta Java product for seven years, while Sun terminates Microsoft's Java licences with immediate effect. The Sun line is that the legal …

    Software 24 Jan 2001, 12:17

  • AMD to ship 1.3GHz Athlon Monday?

    Looks likely

    AMD is believed to be preparing to launch a 1.3GHz Athlon on Monday. The chip is expected some time this quarter - CEO Jerry Sanders said as much at a Q4 financials conference call this week - but a Monday launch would nicely follow Intel's price cuts, which are expected to be implemented the day before. Certainly one Register …

    Channel 24 Jan 2001, 12:30

  • MI6 spy secrets posted on Web

    Tomlinson book extracts bypass UK law

    Ex-MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson has bypassed the UK's arcane Official Secrets Act by posting extracts of his controversial book on British secret services, The Big Breach, on the Internet. The book, which charts his career in MI6 from the UK to Bosnia to Russia before being unexpectedly fired, is already freely available in …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 12:36

  • Mobile mast clampdown in Kent

    The long, the short and the tall

    Kent County Council has banned mobile phone masts from its property, adding to the pressure on the government to make all phone masts subject to the normal planning process. According to the FT, the council also asked mobile operators to voluntarily apply for planning permission for masts erected on other sites. The move has …

    Data Networking 24 Jan 2001, 12:58

  • Despair.com trademarks :-(

    And reveals unique cat patent

    Satirical Web site Despair.com claims it has trademarked the frowny emoticon - you know, :-( - and will sue any mutha that gets in its way. A press release on its site exclaims: "Despair filed suit yesterday in a US District Court in Dallas, alleging trademark infringement against over seven million individual Internet users. …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 13:19

  • AOL Flat Rate FRIACO-based Net access product

    A very short review

    History In September 2000 AOL UK launched AOL UK Flat Rate, a 24/7 unmetered Net access product for Net users in the UK. The service costs £14.99 a month and includes all subscription and Net access costs. The Techie Bit The service is based on Flat Rate Internet Access Call Origination (FRIACO) - a wholesale flat-rate …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 13:21

  • IBM settles ‘fab fumes crippled our kid’ case

    But has 200 more of them coming round the corner

    IBM has settled a rather nasty lawsuit brought by two former employees of its East Fishkill, New York chip foundry. Michael Ruffing and Faye Calton claim their 15-year-old son's congenital blindness and facial deformities - the latter causing breathing difficulties - were the direct result of their exposure to toxins while …

    Channel 24 Jan 2001, 13:56

  • Sega set to license Dreamcast to set-top box builder

    Steps up the Pace

    If Sega has indeed decided to end Dreamcast production, the console may yet live on as the basis for a new product being developed by UK set-top box maker Pace. Sega is believed to be preparing an announcement to that effect, with press and analyst briefings scheduled for Monday, 29 January. The official launch of the Pace box …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 14:25

  • 105 cybercaffs in one street!

    Wow, is that some kind of record?

    Jordan is bidding for a place in the Guinness Book of Records claiming it has the most Internet cafés in one street. Shafic Rsheidat Street is less than half a mile long yet boasts an amazing 105 cybercafés on both sides of the route, according to a reprt by AFP. In 1996, the street had just four Net cafés. Now, you can't move …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 14:53

  • Wife exacts revenge over email

    Husband has 'extremely small penis'

    A wife who suspected her husband of foul deeds has humiliated him by sending a vitriolic email from his laptop to his entire contact database. Titled "Time to 'Fess up!", the email - purporting to come from PR company boss Paul Evans - was not exactly subtle. "I, Paul Owen Evans, am a snivelling, cheating, lying, arrogant …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 15:32

  • George Dubya a dumb mofo: official

    Updated Who'd have guessed it?

    So good ole Dubya has become the 33 1/3 president of the United States, spoken of compassion and then forced young girls to live with their sexual mistakes. But what do Americans really think of him? If you really want to know what's going on in the world, you tap your query into a search engine. And what better engine than …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 16:02

  • HP distributes virus infected drivers

    Fails to stop old Funlove

    Hewlett-Packard has distributed printer drivers corrupted by a computer virus. The infected drivers were inadvertently uploaded onto the hardware giant's Web site, according to a report by Japanese news service Nikkei. The plague drivers, which were distributed between 17 and 19 December 2000, contained the Funlove virus. The …

    Software 24 Jan 2001, 16:22

  • DRAM prices carry on falling

    But buyers sit on their hands

    DRAM prices continue to fall, but the cuts are failing to bring back buyers back in sufficient quantities, according to Asiabiztech. Scarce customers means inventory overhang for many manufacturers, which in turn means financial problems, and that means consolidation, either by merger or by departure from the scene. Phew! …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 16:25

  • Celebrititis hits IT world

    We have seen the future and it's vacuous

    TV co-presenter and erstwhile science expert Carol Vorderman has hit the papers today, "lambasting" the Internet industry for "porn apathy". By that she means that "those who make their money from the Internet" should take responsibility for its content. And that means no porn. Ever again. Tut, tut, tut. Of course, the first …

    Bootnotes 24 Jan 2001, 16:28

  • Anand's Super7 upgrade orgy

    HWRoundup and a SDRAM lowdown

    Sharky has posted a roundup of the SDRAM memory on the market - a guide to performance that should help you navigate through the infamous memory bottleneck. Not meant to be overly technical, this guide is something like an "All you ever wanted to know about SDRAM but were afraid to ask." For those of you daydreaming about …

    Hardware Roundup 24 Jan 2001, 16:41

  • Royal & SunAlliance sacks 10, reinstates 3

    And all because Bart Simpson got a blow job

    Royal & SunAlliance's internal investigation into staff fired because off distribution of smutty Bart Simpson cartoons finally drew to a close last night (four days later than expected) with three staff reinstated and ten dismissed. All of those sacked are members of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union (MSF) and MSF …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 16:50

  • Microsoft brings web sites back into play

    Cock-up not crackers behind web site outage, say MS

    Microsoft has confirmed that problems with its domain name servers were behind the outage of all its main Web sites today, and said that the problem had been fixed making the sites available. From the early hours of this morning until late afternoon www.microsoft.com, msn.com, expedia.co.uk and msnbc.com were all unavailable. …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 16:56

  • Nine-year-old boy sees Net dreams go down plughole

    Updated Betachance MD admits using kid for PR was 'flawed'

    A story of Internet woe for you. Nine-year-old Joseph Allen had a grand Net idea while in the bath three years ago. He wanted to place a bet on the Grand National over the Internet - presumably because it would be illegal for him to do so in a betting office (even a false moustache couldn't hide the fact that he was 4ft tall). …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 16:57

  • ZD story attacks CMGI – on CMGI's own portal

    Updated Content deals, eh? Tch.

    Here's a good one. The latest UK tech news from ZDNet UK, featured on AltaVista, currently includes a story laying into CMGI. Unfortunately, AltaVista is owned by CMGI. The story roundly criticises CMGI and its sordid share price and asks why Compaq let its stake the company drag down its results. "Why didn't Compaq just sell …

    Bootnotes 24 Jan 2001, 17:11

  • Linux people petition Alcatel for USB ADSL drivers

    Give us SpeedTouch modem support or give us death

    UK Linux users are demanding Alcatel release drivers to allow its SpeedTouch USB ADSL modem to work with the open source operating system. That, they claim, shouldn't be too hard: Alcatel already has Linux drivers but is refusing to release either binaries or source code. Support for Alcatel's SpeedTouch USB is essential …

    Software 24 Jan 2001, 17:16

  • Dell and Unisys settle $2bn services love-in

    Selling each others servers

    Dell and Unisys have completed their super-duper services deal, revealing the agreement is worth $1 billion to both companies over a three-year-period. Under the terms of the global deal, which the two IT giants initially shook hands on last month, Dell will essentially swap its PowerEdge servers for Unisys' 16-and 32-chip …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 17:58

  • Car makers Web sites defaced

    Latest Windows attack

    The UK web sites of car makers Mitsubishi and Fiat are the latest to fall victim to a vandal who exploits vulnerabilities with Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). Like Microsoft's New Zealand site, which fell victim to defacement yesterday, the car sites were defaced by Prime Suspectz with a message mocking the …

    Music and Media 24 Jan 2001, 18:05

  • EasyNet coughs up to Battersea first

    Is that it then?

    EasyNet Group has become the first operator in mainland Britain to unbundle a local loop of copper wire from BT's monster telco network and provide its own broadband service over it. The Internet group did it yesterday from BT's telephone exchange in Battersea, London. BT confirmed as much but refused to name the operator …

    Data Networking 24 Jan 2001, 18:07

  • More tales of PC market woe

    In the bleak midwinter indeed

    Analysts have predicted a poor start to 2001 for the PC market suggesting that the sector maybe stuck in the doldrums until the second half of the year. In the US, ING Barings forecast full year growth of 10 per cent, a view that met with little dissent on this side of the pond. IDC analyst Andrew Brown commented: "At IDC we …

    Business 24 Jan 2001, 18:48

  • More on the $10 paper mobile phone

    Oh ye of little faith...

    Telling the world you plan to be the next Bill Gates is bound to get someone's back up. Last week we reported that $10 mobile phones made of paper were scheduled to launch themselves onto the US market in the third quarter of 2001. New Jersey inventor Randice-Lisa Altschul revealed she had an armload of patents on the Super …

    Data Networking 24 Jan 2001, 22:37