16th March 2001 Archive

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Oracle can't foretell the future

But doing OK in the present

Oracle today said it hit lowered forcasts for the third quarter, with profits up 16 per cent. The US database monster reported $583 million net income, or ten cents per share, for the three months ended February 28 2001. Sales grew to $2.7 billion, from $2.5 billion for the same period the previous year. Application software …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 00:04
Verio gags EFF founder over spam

Open relay violates acceptable use

Aggressive anti-spam measures by Dallas-based ISP Verio have stripped some of the Internet's digerati of the ability to send e-mail, and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) co-founder John Gilmore is calling it censorship. Gilmore's home network includes what anti-spam crusaders call an "open relay" -- a mail server that …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 02:58
Compaq to can 5,000 workers

Also slashing costs by buying more Taiwanese kit

Compaq is to can 5,000 workers because sales have dropped off. The company is going to earn less than expected in the first quarter, and Compaq Chairman Michael Capellas has said server demand is down, especially in telecommunications. "We do remain concerned about future deterioration," he said. In January, Compaq forecast …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 08:27
Register aliens ate my forum

HWRoundup And other tales from Cyberspace

A group of readers on our Reader Forum has started a Friends of The Register SETI group. This will probably help establish whether signals emanating from pubs in Maddox Street were transmitted by intelligent life. --------------------cut here------------------- A "brahministic" site has breached the NDA on dual Athlons and has …

Hardware Roundup 16 Mar 2001, 09:46
Sega president dies

Okawa goes to the Great Arcade in the Sky

So farewell then, Isao Okawa, president of Sega, who yesterday died of heart failure at the ripe old age of 74. Okawa - as all the reports will tell you - made headlines recently by handing over to Sega staff ¥85 billion ($695.7 million) worth of shares in Sega and other companies, including CSK, Ascii and NextCom. The donation …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 10:21
Intel 1GHz Mobile PIII due Monday

PCs based on part to arrive immediately

Intel will launch its first 1GHz notebook-oriented CPU, a Mobile Pentium III, on Monday - the day AMD is expected to begin shipping its new Palomino-based Mobile Athlon. That's what industry sources have told TechWeb, and it neatly matches the Chipzilla internal roadmaps we've seen over the last few months. The latest roadmap …

Channel 16 Mar 2001, 10:25
Apple loses retail partner

Sears to drop Mac

Apple's retail partnership with US chain Sears is over. Neither company is saying why, though Apple's planned chain of own-brand retail outlets may have more than a little to do with it. "Apple and Sears have mutually agreed to part ways and will be phasing out our partnership over the remainder of 2001," is all a Sears …

Mac Channel 16 Mar 2001, 10:30
Wanted: XXX movie models

Not any more...UK e-recruitment site pulls ad

More than 250 people bent over backwards to apply for a starring role as a porn star before the job ad was pulled by prudish e-recruitment outfit, reed.co.uk. Reed.co.uk - more known for finding more sober positions for secretaries and accountants - ran the saucy £45,000-a-year job on its "free ads" section on its Web site. …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 11:15
NCR slaps patent suit on Palm, Handspring

The Cash claims it invented the PDA

NCR - aka The Cash - has sued Palm and PalmOS licensee Handspring, claiming their PDAs violate its intellectual property. Two patents are cited in the case, both of which describe a credit card-sized "portable personal terminal" used "for handling a wide variety of financial, shopping and other transactions", and were granted …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 11:29
UK ninth in Euro ADSL table

Little improvement predicted

The UK is set to trail Europe in the provision of ADSL despite the Government's stated goal that Britain will be a global broadband leader. A joint report by European research companies, Van Dusseldorp & Partners and Screen Digest, found that Germany's early adoption of DSL means that it now leads the market in Europe and that …

Telecoms 16 Mar 2001, 12:01
Comic Relief leaves BT laughing

...all the way to the bank

It's Comic Relief day* today. Subsequently, you are likely to be bombarded with daft and silly events in the hope that you will part with a few quid. As ever, one of the main fundraising tools is a premium phone line which people can call to vote for various TV clips, people etc etc. At £1 a call, this is a very good way to …

Bootnotes 16 Mar 2001, 12:03
Telecoms fraud costs $55 billion a year

Phreaking hell

Phone companies estimate that global telecommunications fraud is running at $55 billion a year. The estimates comes from a telecoms industry group the International Forum of Irregular Network Access (FIINA), whose members include fraud experts at service providers throughout the world. The figures for fraud, which FIINA admits …

Security 16 Mar 2001, 13:07
Clinton criticised for relaxing hardware export controls

Evil Johnny Foreigner might buy a big computer

A decision by former president Clinton to relax export controls on high technology equipment has come under fire in a government report. The report, which suggested powerful computers could be used as part of the development of nuclear weapons, was presented before a hearing of the US Congress, which is examining the issue in …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 14:58
Canadians walk on water

Bearing puffa jackets and seal hides

We're going to draw a line under our Canadian dialogue with a couple of welcome ditties. First up is PC Chef, who kindly attached a pic showing the original buffalo hide puffa jacket in typical Canadian Summer weather. I must say it looks a bit parky out... Obviously you have had the pleasure to get an Eastern Canadian opinion, …

Letters 16 Mar 2001, 14:59
Filing a what?

Back to law school for Magee

Crime fraud element enters Rambus case Poor old Mike needs to brush up on his US law it seems - according to David Browne at least: The following is possibly the worst piece of legal writing I have ever seen. Even taking into account that you are neither a lawyer nor an American, it is still rather startling. "Although Rambus …

Letters 16 Mar 2001, 15:01
Napster filter cuts downloads by half

Far fewer tracks shared, copied, says researcher

Napster's court-enforced attempt to prevent up to 135,000 songs from being shared using its software has dramatically cut the number of downloads from the service. Since the company added filtering software to its servers, there have been 50 per cent fewer downloads from the network. The average number of files offered by each …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 15:19
Denial of service warning for network security tool

Give it some stick

A security firm has issued an alert about a cracker tool which can be used to mount a denial of service attack (DoS) against its own products. Internet Security Systems is warning about 'Stick' which can reportedly reduce the performance of, or deny service to, many commercial intrusion detection products, including ISS' …

Security 16 Mar 2001, 15:57
Teenage dotcom millionaire has trouble on TV

Is this is the best of the dotcom generation?

Teenage dotcom "millionaire" Ben Cohen was the subject of a revealing Trouble at the Top TV programme last night. Ben, if you haven't heard of him before, is famous for selling the Jewish Web site he set up in his bedroom to a big media company. In return he received shares in the company and a seat on the board. The programme …

e-Business 16 Mar 2001, 16:13
Mesania.com sheds half of jobs

Well, it's Friday after all, a popular day to do it

Mesania.com - a pan-European business-to-business marketplace for professional buyers and suppliers of European gift and homeware products - shed half its workforce today. El Reg understands that 17 staff were given the bad news. In December ten workers were asked to pack their bags. Susan Arndt, a director at the London- …

e-Business 16 Mar 2001, 16:14
ICT schizophrenia needs to be debunked

You ain't kidding...

Three quarters of people believe British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, uses email. A quarter believes Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (gawd bless 'er) also uses email, according to a survey by the thinkers at the Industrial Society. Yet Mr Blair is a well-known all-fingers-and-thumbs technophobe and the Queen...well let's just …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 16:18
Transsexuals drawn to expert website

Well, that's what it says in the URL

This is a cautionary tale about what happens if you register your entire company name as a domain without first checking your spelling. No doubt Experts Exchange were highly delighted when they got webbed up. Should have looked closer at that url though lads. Any woman trapped in a man's body will be highly dissappointed when …

Bootnotes 16 Mar 2001, 16:26
Sema semen steamer

Or so it seems...

Sema aflame with vital energy Acer turns green at the gills Aaron Tucker is among many readers who thought that Sema's new logo had a distinct reproductive element: Hmm..just a stupid comment. I was staring at this logo and thought: Pervert in me: "Little blue thing = sperm. Litle orange thing = egg.." BOFH in me: "With the …

Letters 16 Mar 2001, 16:30
Sony's Memory Stick to miss sales targets

Hix nix stix, they're not dix

Sony said today shipments of its Memory Stick, used in devices such as digital cameras, would miss targets. The Japanese vendor now expects to shift seven million Sticks in the year ending March 31 2001, down on the forecast of ten million it trumpeted last October. This means a total of nine million Memory Sticks will have …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 16:37
ASP – Where’s the Value?

Guest Comment Hostest with the Mostest

Despite the immense market optimism and analyst hype surrounding the ASP model the reality has been far more of a revelation for the IT world than a revolution for the business world. Last year, all the analyst groups and most of the major players in the IT industry and the IT press were positioning the ASP model as the major …

e-Business 16 Mar 2001, 16:39
BT's Comic Relief – financial

More on those premium lines

Following on from our story this morning that BT was taking 36p in every £1 call made to Comic Relief's premium charity lines, we have learned that the situation may be worse than we imagined. If the 36p charge is down to line rental and setting up the network, how come it manages to run Big Brother's lines at just 25p a call? …

Bootnotes 16 Mar 2001, 16:45
Wham, bam, thank you RAM

Reg reader on the job

AMD and Intel - who said what? We're obliged to Charlie Demerjian for this mini-thesis on RDRAM vs DDRRAM. I suggest you make a nice cup of tea before wading in: I assume you already know this, but in case you have ANY doubts, here is the answer for the reader who wrote in about the RDRAM vs DDRRAM. Anyways, lets go on to the …

Letters 16 Mar 2001, 17:19
Praise be to our screensaver deities

SA team are Reg Gods for a Day

When we announced the results of our screensaver competition, we stated that Mat Bowden was to be Reg God for a Day. It turns out that we're going to have to get a bit more pantheistic. We have now learned that our winning entry was the work of a team of South African likely lads, pictured above. They are (l-r): Matthew Green, …

Bootnotes 16 Mar 2001, 17:20
Web cache hardware launches DoS attacks, site claims

Bad engineering or bug blackmail?

California computer equipment reseller Altima Solutions believes that Web caching equipment by Cacheflow often malfunctions so as to inadvertently attack their site and bring it down. The reported defect, curiously, affects only e-commerce sites running Intershop sales software, Altima says. The Cacheflow bug, one imagines, …

Data Networking 16 Mar 2001, 17:27
Claire Field wins Harry Potter Web site case

Warner Brothers backs down

Warner Brothers has backed down on its legal threats against 15-year-old Claire Field - owner of the Web site www.harrypotterguide.co.uk. In a fax sent to Claire's lawyer, Matthew Rippon of Prettys Solicitors, Warner Brothers said that in view of the facts that Claire had registered the URL in good faith and was not using it …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 17:27
WorldOnline to fight legal action by shareholders

Did you honestly expect anything else?

WorldOnline is to contest a claim for damages brought by disgruntled shareholders following its IPO last year. Earlier this week VEB - an association of private shareholders from Holland - began formal legal proceedings against the ISP claiming that WorldOnline withheld vital information ahead of the E2.9 billion float. …

e-Business 16 Mar 2001, 17:30
Burglars pinch PC with EastEnders plots

BBC says who shot Phil mystery is still safe

The BBC has denied that the secret of who shot EastEnders' Phil Mitchell could leak out after the computer of a script writer for the soap was stolen. Computer equipment and a hard disk containing storylines was taken during a burglary of the writer's Clapham, London home. A spokesman for the BBC said the broadcaster took " …

Security 16 Mar 2001, 17:48
Novell UK services business cuts staff and offices

Cambridge Technology to lay off 30

Services group Cambridge Technology Partners is laying off up to 30 staff in the UK and shutting its Reading and Manchester offices. MD Adrian Carr said he "didn't have enough business" to keep them in work. The company's sole remaining office is in Richmond, Surrey. Carr believes half of the redundancies will be voluntary. …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 18:05
Readers' Letters Duff logo a-go-go

Sema provokes mirth and merriment

Sema aflame with vital energy Acer turns green at the gills Our ongoing LogoWatch campaign, dedicated to exposing to ridicule and lambastation the worst excesses of corporate makeovers, has found favour with Reg readers. The latest company to benefit from our attention is Sema. Its new incarnation has provoked several …

Letters 16 Mar 2001, 18:29
Slashdot caves in to Scientology loonies

Chief Rob Bended-Knee wants your sympathy

Geek paradise Slashdot has taken the unprecedented step of removing a post which contained text allegedly copyrighted by the 'Church' of Scientology, after receiving threats from Hubbard Space Command shysters citing the dreaded Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). "Our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 20:23
Tiny to tout WAP phones in US amid PC drought

Puts plans for New York stores on hold

Tiny Computers plans to start selling broadband Net packages in the US, and aims to have WAP phones in stores by summer. Patrick Chan, executive director of Tiny USA and Tiny Pacific, said the PC assembler was "definitely not" shutting any of its US stores or thinking of pulling out of the US market. But Chan did admit that …

Business 16 Mar 2001, 20:39
Deutsche Telekom let off flat-fee Net access hook

German ISPs back to paying by the minute

Deutsche Telekom no longer has to offer flat rate Internet fees to ISPs, a German court ruled today. The decision overturns an order by Germany's telecoms watchdog last year, which forced Deutsche Telekom to let ISPs use its lines for a flat fee. At the time ISPs were offering surfers flat-rate Net access, but were still being …

Music and Media 16 Mar 2001, 22:05