13th March 2001 Archive

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AMD Roadmap Update AMD Palomino, Morgan ~~slide~~ back on schedule

AMD may not have delayed Palomino, ClawHammer and co. after all. The updated AMD desktop processor roadmap published yesterday by Germany's c't magazine doesn't appear to be quite as up-to-date as we had first supposed. That, at least, is what a presentation AMD's president and COO, Hector Ruiz, made to the Morgan Stanley Dean …

Channel 13 Mar 2001, 10:52
Infogrames losses shrink

US operation's profits counter dreary European results

French publishing behemoth Infogrames has issued a statement today claiming that its losses are down for the last six months ending 31 December because the US side of its operation has moved into profitability. The company's acquisitions in the US have included Hasbro Inc.'s interactive games unit for $100 million in January …

Games Industry 13 Mar 2001, 11:00
More UK jobs to go at Razorfish

London's the plaice to flounder

Razorfish is set to make more job cuts in the UK on top of the 43 losses announced last month. The Web consultancy won't say how many jobs will go but intends to issue a statement within the next 24 hours or so. A spokesman for the company said that it was all "a little bit hazy" at the moment. Reports suggest that the cuts …

e-Business 13 Mar 2001, 11:05
Mouse claws PC to death

HWRoundup Mobos back by unpopular demand

Well, enough of all that boring imaging equipment, digital scanners and the like. Let's get right down to the nitty gritty and look at a rodent red in tooth and claw. Yes, mice are not boring and here we have the Claw Mouse reviewed by System Logic. A nine button mouse, it will claw its way through doom-laden scenarios and the …

Hardware Roundup 13 Mar 2001, 11:09
EC to launch Net crime forum in May

Top UK cop says EU data protection laws hinder crime fighting

The European Commission is to launch an Internet crime forum in May based on the UK's model of Net crime fighting. The move has been welcomed by Britain's top cybercop Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Akerman who just last week was attacking EU data protection laws for hindering police investigations. DCS Akerman addressed …

Music and Media 13 Mar 2001, 11:18
Canadians target filtered Napster fans for profit

Clones Aimster's Pig Encoder, adds ad spam

Canadian Web site development company PulseNewMedia has followed Aimster and released code to undo Napster's attempt to block 135,000 songs from its network. Meanwhile, Aimster has updated its own PC encoder with a Mac version. PulseNewMedia's software, called NapCameBack Encoder, 'encrypts' MP3 filenames on the user's hard …

Software 13 Mar 2001, 12:17
Novell CEO steps down as it acquires consulting firm

Services will now be a third of its business

Novell's long-standing chief executive Eric Schmidt is to step aside as part of a deal by the networking software vendor to acquire IT solutions firm, Cambridge Technology. The $266m all-stock agreement to acquire Cambridge is seen by Novell as a means to expand its ability to offer consulting support to its customers and …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 12:43
e-district.net finds £1m blackhole

Discovers 'collusion' at the company

Shareholders of e-district.net were misled about the company's financial performance to the tune of £1 million according to an initial report into irregularities at the company. Although the investigation is ongoing, a preliminary report has found that there was "substantial overstatement of registered users, page impressions …

e-Business 13 Mar 2001, 12:45
USB set to tackle 1394 peer-to-peer advantage

USB On-the-Go to eliminate host PC

Universal Serial Bus will soon get the one feature that separates it from IEEE 1394: peer-to-peer operation. The specification, dubbed USB On-the-Go, apparently has the backing of Palm, Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and others, though it's primarily being driven by TransDimension, which specialises on Bluetooth and …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 13:19
UK rejects US-style software patents

And no to business process patents too

The UK government has plumped against any changes to software patent laws, argueing that business methods should remain unpatentable. It is pushing for the European Commission to take this line and reject the example of theUS which has extended patent rights in these areas. At the same time, the government say current laws are …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 13:37
Eazel releases Nautilus 1.0 on the sly

Hasn't told anyone it's there - yet

Eazel has released the first full version of its 'Linux for the rest of us' desktop user interface, Nautilus. Version 1.0 was made available for download yesterday, along with the source code, though the company has yet to make any official announcement of Nautilus' availability. The software will be launched fully later this …

Software 13 Mar 2001, 13:54
Ramblers offered a virtual walk

Foot and mouth and mouse

Ramblers frustrated that restrictions imposed due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease are curtailing their favourite pass time are been offered the chance to take a virtual walk instead. A site, Benderloch.com, which was originally intended to give disabled people the chance to browse Scottish scenery is proving a hit …

Music and Media 13 Mar 2001, 15:09
Why does BBC's Watchdog promote Apple iMacs?

They're the right colour

Have you ever wondered why the BBC's consumer champion Watchdog happily promotes Apple's iMac machines? Probably not. It's a familiar sight on TV and in films for set designers to use Apple products as a short hand for good taste, good design and media luvvies at work. But if there's one programme which shouldn't align itself …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 15:11
Hoojit.com weeks away from being titsup.com

£90m investor had enough

Chris Matthews - the e-ntrepreneur who reportedly made £90 million when he sold his ISP/telco, Telinco, to WorldOnline last year - has had his golden fingers burned. Matthews ploughed some £10 million into search engine/shopping portal Hoojit.com. Now he's looking for a buyer. The eleven remaining staff at the Cheshire-based …

e-Business 13 Mar 2001, 15:28
AMD to push Intel with new Athlon pricing

Discounts Durons for low end market

AMD plans to rapidly move its forthcoming 1.3GHz and 1.33GHz Athlons to the price point currently occupied by the 1.2GHz processor to continue to keep pressure on Intel in the desktop sector. The 1.3GHz and 1.33GHz Athlons, which are already on a number of price lists and available in Japan, will drop to the level of the 1.2GHz …

Channel 13 Mar 2001, 15:28
IR35 protesters enter High Court

On site report And then go down the pub...

This morning at 10.30, the Professional Contractors Group took its case to the High Court in a bid to overturn the Inland Revenue's IR35 tax legislation regarding consultants. We were there to see it kick off. It will have three days to make the case that the law is illegal as it unfairly discriminates against small businesses …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 16:07
Teacher gets two years for anti-Communist Net remark

Chinese thought police working overtime

Chinese authorities have jailed a teacher for criticising the government on the Internet. Jiang Shihua posted a note on an online bulleting board saying: "I just want to say: Down with the Communist Party," AP reports. This remark, part of an online discussion on corruption, was enough to get the 27-year-old electronics …

Music and Media 13 Mar 2001, 16:08
Tiny shows off home entertainment box

PC, TV, video etc. We've been here before

Tiny has finally got round to revealing what its big time consumer product is. This is the device that will save it from the ravages of the skinny-margin retail PC business. It's called the Tiny Takami - Takami means 'excellent idea' in Japanese - and it's a "TV, video recorder, hi-fi with jukebox, CD player, DVD player, PC, …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 16:10
Itanic Zombies check into Motel of Distinction

Chipzilla striptease continues

Intel has fleshed out its www.itanium.com page, although the website, much like the moribund processor itself, promises much more than it actually delivers. Itanium.com features the bug-eyed Blue Men Group striking a particularly un-dead pose (zombie flick auteur George Romero may have been advising on this shot, we suspect) …

Channel 13 Mar 2001, 16:12
£850m BT contract awarded to Marconi

Nortel Networks ditched from deal

Marconi has announced a major coup for its networking business after it was selected as sole supplier for a major upgrade to BT's core network. BT had previously planed to use both Marconi and Nortel Networks for the contract, which will be worth around £850 million over five years, but has now decided to source kit from …

Data Networking 13 Mar 2001, 16:14
Disk drive failure is top bugbear for IT pros

Losing 30 days of data has really cheesed off one firm

Hard drive crashes are the number one concern for systems administrators in charge of keeping storage systems up and running. That's the conclusion of a survey of 900 IT professionals, 61 per cent of which rated hard-disk failure as their most pressing concern when it came to hard drive problems. Running out of disk drive space …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 17:04
Motorola to slash 7,000 jobs

That'll be 12,000 since December

Motorola is going to slash an extra 7,000 jobs from its personal communications workforce on top of the 5,000 jobs which went in December. Motorola said the action was being taken as part of a continued effort to reduce costs in its wireless handset business while recalibrating for long-term growth. The UK's Swindon plant is …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 17:07
C&W to axe 4,000 jobs

Could be worse...they could work for Motorola

Cable and Wireless share price went into free-fall this afternoon after it announced that the economic downturn in the US and Japan would hit revenues. The telco said it would cut 4,000 jobs globally over the next 12 months in a bid to reduce overheads - 2,500 of which will go in the UK. Cable & Wireless said that revenue has …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 17:13
Intel boxes clever on mobiles, desktop chipsets

Roadmap Channel gets Chipzilla flannel

The Celeron can't be long for this world, can it? Customers, oh yes, are important to Chipzilla, but the lumpen proletariat to Intel is its distributor and dealer channel, which is almost the last to know what the company is up to. (The last to know is usually the press or possibly the end user who after all only pays through …

Channel 13 Mar 2001, 17:17
Transmeta ships, renames Mobile Linux

Midori, anyone?

Transmeta's Linux-on-Crusoe project, Mobile Linux, has been renamed and handed over to the open source world. Of course, Transmeta was always obliged to release Midori's source code, as per the terms of the GNU Public Licence, which determines how Linux and derived code may be released. Mobile Linux, announced back in January …

Software 13 Mar 2001, 17:18
Intel kicks off worldwide ASP marketing scheme

By buying ASP custom

Intel has kicked off a scheme aimed at snaring the world's Application Service Providers. The Intel Online Services ASP Accelerator Program is aimed at ASPs that want some help with their marketing. In return for ASPs hosting their applications on Intel's AppChoice Managed Hosting Service, they get marketing tools, such as …

e-Business 13 Mar 2001, 17:48
Tiny C code bests seven-line DVD decoder

Smaller, way faster

Coder Charles M Hannum has created the smallest program capable of decoding a Content Scrambling System (CSS) DVD file, beating last week's seven-line Perl shell script 442 bytes to 472 (excluding newline bytes). Hannum's C program, called efdtt, is no slouch, either. The programmer claims it can "descramble in excess of 21. …

Software 13 Mar 2001, 18:05
New SubSeven Trojan unleashed

Porn lover's nightmare

A new version of a Trojan horse program popular with computer intruders was publicly released on the web Friday, and quickly put to use by an eager underground. Nearly thirty disguised copies of the newly-released SubSeven 2.2 were already tempting Netizens Monday afternoon, cloaked in filenames promising sexually explicit …

Security 13 Mar 2001, 18:05
Health industry warns of ‘sinister’ govt legislation

What do you mean you don't want everyone to know your medical details?

Health professionals, academics, politicians and privacy specialists have all come out in opposition to "sinister" government legislation which threatens to wreck the basic premise of doctor/patient confidentiality. Legislation currently passing through the House of Lords gives the Secretary of State for Health extraordinary …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 18:07
Future to axe 75% of Daily Radar staff

'Restructure' of UK Net operation

We have it on good authority that Future Publishing is to lay off 75 per cent of staff working on its Daily Radar UK content operation as part of an "Internet restructuring". Eight people including the editor are believed to be on the way to a P45, although it is unknown why Future is scaling back the portal operation quite so …

Games Industry 13 Mar 2001, 18:13
Taiwan mobo makers in February salesfest

Record revenues expected

Taiwan's motherboard makers should be celebrating this month after a bumper stack of orders. The country's biggest mobo manufacturers, Asustek Computer and Elitegroup Computer Systems, expect to post record sales for February - more than NT$7.6 billion and NT$2 billion respectively, Taiwan's Commercial Times reports. This …

Business 13 Mar 2001, 22:38
We've got the solution. Where's the problem?

Anti-virus software for handhelds

Firms selling antivirus software for mobile platforms are "selling insurance for something that doesn't exist" - an antivirus software firm claims. And worse, the development of antivirus software for PDAs and other handheld devices could give virus writers ideas for malicious code that they might not otherwise have thought of …

Security 13 Mar 2001, 22:57
CMGI plunges deeper into the Red Ink Sea

$2.5bn net loss

CMGI, the dotcom investor/conglomerate, saw losses top $2.5bn for its second quarter - and it forecasts a sales slowdown for the next few months. The Massachusetts-based company recorded a net loss of $2.56bn, or $7.86 per share, for the period ended January 31 2001, compared to a loss of $186 million, or 74 cents per share, …

e-Business 13 Mar 2001, 23:03