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7th March 2001 Archive

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  • Intel P4 spade a forking shovel

    HWRoundup We whizz round the wibblesome web

    Call a spade a spade, we were always told at school, and don't use the word fork or you'll get in bovver. Good then to see that at Ace's Hardware, they're not afraid to call the Pentium 4 spade a forking shovel. There's an in depth look at branch prediction and misprediction in this piece and Johan De Gelas notes that the P4 has …

    Hardware Roundup 7 Mar 2001, 08:34

  • Amazon, despite denials, was warned about hack

    Exclusive Company 'spin' goes over the top

    A humiliating hack which resulted in four months of continuous credit-card data vulnerability for Amazon subsidiary Bibliofind, originally broken by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, appears to involve fraud on more than one level. Intruders downloaded the company's customer records, including their credit card details, names …

    Security 7 Mar 2001, 08:56

  • InterX losses up, t/o down

    More dotcom misery

    E-business consultancy InterX dished out more bad news today after it announced that turnover fell during Q2 while losses stacked up even higher. This comes on top of news that the company cut a quarter of its workforce as part of a strategic review and the swift departure of Philip Crawford as CEO. Today's Q2 results show an …

    e-Business 7 Mar 2001, 09:02

  • DSS adds content screening controls for email users

    Govt Secure Intranet can't do the job

    The UK's Department of Social Security (DSS) has deployed content screening technology to protect sensitive Government information. MailGuard SMTP, from security firm NET-TEL, is being used by the DSS to provide protection against a variety of threats including accidental and malicious leakage of sensitive material, virus …

    Security 7 Mar 2001, 09:07

  • AMD pushes 760MP into Q2

    Corporate valkyries set to ride

    Corporate chip wannabe AMD has started priming its customers about the multiprocessing version of the 760 chipset which is now likely to arrive in machines towards the end of the second quarter. The long-awaited chipset, which will, initially, allow system integrators to build dual processing systems is already ready and tested …

    Channel 7 Mar 2001, 09:27

  • Morse sales soar on back of Sun business

    Profits doing rather well

    Morse, the UK's biggest midrange reseller, has posted a strong first half, with net profits up 51 per cent to from £5.5m to £8.3m. Morse, which claims to be Europe's biggest Sun reseller - it's fairly big in France and huge in the UK, said the results were propelled by strong sales of Sun boxes and growing demand for its …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 09:52

  • Napster gets a break

    Injunction worded to their advantage

    US District Judge Marilyn Patel, who recently re-jiggered her Napster injunction on orders from the appellate court, now says that the recording industry must notify the file-sharing service of the title of any infringing musical work, the artist's name, and, most interestingly, the name of the relevant file. Napster will then …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 10:00

  • Palm buys Extended to fuel corporate push

    Acquistion prompts reorganisation

    Palm has bought corporate mobile data company Extended Systems in a stock-swap worth $264 million. Shareholders and regulators permitting, Palm will offer $22 of its own stock for each Extended share. Extended produces software and systems that hook mobile workers into corporate networks, allowing them to use network resources …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 11:10

  • SiS licenses IBM ‘design and process’ patents

    Not saying why or for what, though

    Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) tersely announced it has shaken hands with IBM on a "comprehensive" patent cross-licensing deal. It didn't say much about what technology the deal covers, beyond noting that includes "design and process-related patents". That suggests that SiS is getting hold of IBM's copper …

    Channel 7 Mar 2001, 11:21

  • AMD kicks Intel in price nuts

    HWRoundup And other vulch-like peregrinations

    As predicted here last month, last year, last century, and indeed last millennium, the never ending story of price cuts on microprocessors drags on. AMD duly cut prices on its Durons and Athlons yesterday by as much as 20 per cent, and you can find details of said axings at AMD Zone and JC's. The world and the world's dog are …

    Hardware Roundup 7 Mar 2001, 11:58

  • Early tests question 733MHz Power Mac peformance

    G4 faster than G4 Plus, just as PIII faster than P4?

    Is the 733MHz Power Mac G4 no better than the 533MHz version? Some benchmarks posted on the Web this week suggest it isn't, others that it should be. And while Apple remains silent on the issue, confusion reigns supreme. The claim emerged at the weekend when benchmarks run on a new 733MHz Power Mac and what was said to be a …

    Mac Channel 7 Mar 2001, 12:04

  • Naked Wife virus outbreak contained

    Does she like photography? Wink, wink

    An email-borne virus which touts itself as a picture of someone's "Naked Wife", but instead delivers a payload which can cripple a Windows PC, is doing the rounds. However spread of the Naked Wife worm, which is written in Visual Basic, has so far been contained, and the signs are that although some US firms have been infected …

    Security 7 Mar 2001, 12:17

  • Adaptive tries to tempt Sage VARs

    Channel flannel

    Adaptive Accounting has started a scheme to poach VARs from rival software company Sage. It will offer resellers £7,500 worth of products for the bargain price of £1,500 until July 31, according to this week's Computer Reseller News. The company is aiming the offer at SMEs, but said it did not want to put Sage out of business …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 12:19

  • New MS protection tech did go live in latest WinXP beta

    Previous MS statements published in error, crackers put thinking caps on

    Despite earlier claims to the contrary made by, er, Microsoft in its beta newsgroup, the registry hack that allows testers to circumvent Product Activation has been removed from the latest external build of Windows XP, 2446. It appears that Microsoft initially posted the wrong rev of the release notes, and our informants tell us …

    Software 7 Mar 2001, 12:25

  • Putin ‘bares all’ in first Russian president Webcast

    Loves Internet and mushrooms

    Vladimir Putin took part in the first Webcast of a Russian president yesterday. The ex-KGB agent sat with three journalists, each with a laptop, and answered questions live as they were filtered through. Anyone in the world was welcome to email a question and "no subject is out of bounds" although not many tough ones got through …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 12:28

  • London computer crime ring smashed

    Scotland Yard on office blagger offensive

    Scotland Yard has warned office workers in London to be more vigilant after smashing a major computer theft ring in the city. Hi-tech kit worth more than £200,000 was seized during raids in the East End, The Evening Standard reported, including photocopiers, hard drives, laptops and monitors. The gang is also believed to be …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 13:03

  • World's first Webcam coffee pot to be scrapped

    A piece of Net history dies

    The world famous coffee pot in the Trojan Room of the Computer Science Department of Cambridge University is to be chucked away as the department moves to new premises. The coffee pot holds a unique position in Internet history as it was the star of the first ever Webcam way back in 1993. The story started back in 1991, when …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 13:05

  • 90% of people don't believe what they read on the Web

    Read the story anyway

    More than 90 per cent of people don't believe what they read on the Web. That's the shocking revelation that's emerged from an independent survey conducted by pollsters MORI on behalf of content outfit eSubstance. The research found that only 9 per cent of 1973 people surveyed believed what they read online. Newspapers did …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 13:16

  • France Telecom launches largest ever bond for £11.2bn

    The French solution to telecoms troubles

    France Telecom has launched the largest ever corporate bond to help it out of its current quagmire. The bond is expected to raise £11.2 billion, which will help it deal with its £38 billion debt. The size of the bond was double what was expected and beats the previous record, held by competing telecoms company Deutsche Telekom …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 13:18

  • Sun acquires firm to develop P2P search technology

    Project Juxtapose on the nose

    Sun Microsystems has fleshed out its strategy for developing peer-to-peer technology by acquiring InfraSearch, a search engine start-up, for a undisclosed amount in an all stock deal. InfraSearch is using a Napster-like approach to allow people to post and share product catalogues, stock indexes, or other non-HTML data on the …

    Software 7 Mar 2001, 13:25

  • MS to lose $2bn on Xbox – analyst

    Consoles to be sold at a loss! Shock! Horror!

    Merrill Lynch has come to the shock conclusion that Microsoft is going to lose a lot of money on Xbox. The console could drain up to $2 billion from the Beast of Redmond's coffers before break-even. As the world+dog knows, consoles are sold at a loss in the early days, as manufacturers subsidise the low price points needed to …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 13:53

  • Nvidia extends GeForce 2 MX line

    Variants to appeal to OEM market

    Nvidia took the wraps off two remodelled versions of its GeForce 2 MX graphics accelerator yesterday. The GeForce 2 MX 200 and MX 400 target specific memory types. So, while the original MX supported 64-bit SDRAM, 128-bit SDRAM and 64-bit DDR memory, the MX 200 supports only the former, while the MX 400 supports 128-bit SDRAM …

    Channel 7 Mar 2001, 14:14

  • Toboggan compo results in full

    Funny people showered with goodies

    It's time to announce the results of our Microsoft toboggan competition. The whole thing kicked off when we noted that MS Canada was bundling a free toboggan with copies of Office. A smart marketing move, but sadly not available elsewhere. Well, MS PR company August One shared our dismay at this oversight and immediately …

    Bootnotes 7 Mar 2001, 15:00

  • Aimster tells Napster file filter to ‘pig off’

    And threatens legal action if Napster tries to block the un-blocker

    Aimster, the Napster-across-Instant Messenger software developer, has released what it reckons is the solution to Napster's filename filtering system. Napster now monitors the names of shared files in order to block songs for which it hasn't been given permission to allow to be shared on its network. The move is part of the …

    Software 7 Mar 2001, 15:05

  • WIPO ruling a victory for commonsense

    One that slipped through the Net

    It's fairly rare, but WIPO has made a decision regarding www.yourmove.com that we (and normal people everywhere) agree with. It decided that Scottish businessman Irving Remocker is fully entitled to the domain name and can do with it what he wishes. The case against was brought by insurance giant CGU that claimed Mr Remocker …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 15:38

  • Hackers redirect Hamas site to serve up porn

    Islamic militants blame Mossad for Apache attack

    Crackers have successfully compromised the Web servers of Islamic militants in order to redirect surfers to a site serving up Internet porn. Surfers trying to access Hamas.org, will instead visit pay-per view site www.hotmotel.com, which offers a menu featuring items ranging from "sinful hardcore" to "beaver palace". We couldn' …

    Security 7 Mar 2001, 15:40

  • Online fraud rife in the US

    You can't move for it

    The US is a hotbed of online fraud according to a report just published by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NWCCC). The report claims a staggering 94.1 per cent of all online fraud complaints reported to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center concern the US with California top of the swindles list for both Net …

    e-Business 7 Mar 2001, 16:16

  • Yahoo! shares! suspended!

    Uh! oh!

    Yahoo! shares have been suspended on Nasdaq pending an announcement by the yodelling dotcom. Before the shares were suspended earlier today they fell some 6.3 per cent to just under $21 - their lowest level for two years. Speculation as to why Yahoo! took such drastic action is rife. It's possible it's about to announce that' …

    e-Business 7 Mar 2001, 16:21

  • Prodigy founder buys former Aryan Nations compound

    Plans to rid Idaho of White Supremacists

    Greg Carr, founder of ISP Prodigy, has stepped in to rid Idaho of white supremacists. The dotcom millionaire has bought the site of the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake in the wilds of Idaho, the New York Times reports. The 20-acre site, which at one time had a "church" that sported a silver bust of Hitler and stained …

    Music and Media 7 Mar 2001, 16:33

  • Canada – the hideous truth

    Reg reader's damning photographic evidence

    Regular visitors to the Vulture Central Mailbag will be aware of our current verbal war with the land of the puffa jacket and baseball bat. That's right, the French Canadians are sabre-rattling against our facetious jibes at their culturally-rich homeland. Anyone not au fait with the argy-bargy may be entertained by the two …

    Bootnotes 7 Mar 2001, 16:36

  • Telewest sacks employee

    For saying what he thinks

    Telewest has sacked one of its technical advisor for posting "inappropriate comments" on its blueyonder newsgroups. On Monday, under the subject "complaining bores", Shaun Pears wrote: "Why oh Why I constantly see Complaints regarding the NewsGroups?? I thought that the Newsgroups were supplied free by an ISP. I don't think …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 17:12

  • 3G phones fund the UK's future

    Budget special Well, at least something good has come of them

    Well, Gordon Brown has played it fairly careful. However, he did have two main thrusts in the Budget today. One, people with young kids to have it easier. And two - which is of greater interest to The Reg in a professional capacity - encouraging small businesses and in particular the "new economy". But before we get there, the …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 17:37

  • Sun suffers UltraSparc II cache crash headache

    So do users

    Sun Microsystems is advising support staff not to let on to clients that problems they have with its kit might be due to a wider year-old technical problem. The surprising advice from the hardware giant covers problems involving a processor fault that can cause certain Sun servers, particularly those with 400MHz UltraSparc IIs …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 18:19

  • The open PC is dead – start praying, says HD guru

    A view from the trenches

    Apologies in advance if the following mailing list posting ruins your next meal. It ruined ours too, but since we believe in equality of indigestion here, we feel obliged to share it with you. Hale Landis maintains the ata-atapi.com website, and has been working for open standards for 25 years. He has been a participant in the …

    Business 7 Mar 2001, 20:01