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11th April 2001 Archive

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  • Judge threatens ‘disgraceful’ Napster with closure – again

    And the MP3 sharing company buys Gigabeat

    Napster has acted disgracefully, US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said yesterday before going on to threaten the MP3 sharing software company's network with closure. At issue is Napster's attempt to follow Judge Patel's 5 March order that the sharing of songs nominated by the Recording Industry Association of America …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 09:45

  • Bodysnatchers! MS Research steals your face

    Weird scenes inside the boffin bank...

    Microsoft Research is stealing faces - and maybe more besides. Unabashedly describing his operation as Microsoft's Star Trek division, unabashed Trekkie Rick Rashid last week described how the group had lifted 300 faces at the recent CHI (Computer Human Interface) conference, and showed what could be done with them. MSR tracks …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 09:48

  • Motorola makes first Q1 loss in 15 years

    Chip sales slump by 22 per cent

    Motorola has made a Q1 loss - its first in 15 years. Excluding charges the loss was $206 million compared with $481 million a year earlier. Sales fell 11 per cent to $7.75 billion. Semiconductor sales fell by 22 per cent to $1.5 billion, and orders slumped by 47 per cent to $1.1 billion. The chip businesses operating loss was …

    Channel 11 Apr 2001, 10:04

  • VIA sees SIS as a threat

    Not now, but when the Pentium 4 DDR SDRAM chipsets ship

    VIA has dismissed fellow Taiwanese chipset maker Silicon Integrated System's attempts to date to make a move on its dominance of the DDR SDRAM chipset market, but is does expect SIS to impact its business later this year. Taiwan's Silicon Integrated System recently began shipping its SiS735 DDR SDRAM-based chipsets designed to …

    Channel 11 Apr 2001, 10:07

  • BT's vans up for sale

    58,000 vehicles, one owner, many drivers, MOT, fsh, c/locking, p.steering, bags of room... £1bn ono

    BT is looking to flog its fleet of vehicles and outsource its motor pool operation in a bid to help cut its £30 billion debt. The FT cites Geoffrey Almeida, head of BT Business Services, who told journalists yesterday that the outfit was looking to dispose of its vehicle fleet as part of the company's "strategy to focus on the …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 10:23

  • ARM net profits jump 16%

    Customers re-sign for chip designs

    ARM has enjoyed a 16 per cent Q1 net profit jump to £7.73 million. A year earlier it made £6.67 million, and the growth is down to selling new licences to existing customers. Turnover leaped by 52 per cent to £32.5 million, from £21.4 million. ARM's chip designs are used in 80 per cent of mobile phones. It makes 43 per cent …

    Channel 11 Apr 2001, 10:23

  • Linux games console fragged

    Indrema's money ran out, and it couldn't find any more

    So farewell, then, Indrema and its Linux-based games console-cum-set-top box, killed off through a lack of funding thanks to the depression in the hi-tech industry. Cuts have already taken place among the company's 50-odd staff, but the rest will be laid of this week, said Indrema president John Gildred, according to Video …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 10:39

  • MSN chief leaves as consumer platform efforts downscaled

    Muglia and Allchin pick up juicy bits

    Veteran Microsoft exec Brad Chase has moved into the Redmond out tray, after having his job more or less shot out from under him in last week's reorganisation. Chase, who once upon a time was general manager of MS-DOS, has resigned from his post as VP at MSN, is on holiday, and is reportedly talking to Steve Ballmer about other …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 10:57

  • Scottish minister slams Compaq ‘misleading’ job cut toll

    A job is a job is a job

    Should companies include temporary staff and contractors in their headcount when they announce redundancies? George Foulkes, the minister of state for Scotland, thinks so; he was relieved that his constituency had escaped the Compaq's round of job cuts when the firm announced last week that 700 employees at its Erskine plant, …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 11:04

  • Toshiba to spin off PlayStation 2 CPU development team

    Creates new company called ArTile

    Toshiba has set up a new company to build general-purpose CPUs based on the PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine processor - or TX79 as it's more formally known. ArTile Microsystems, which will operate out of San Jose, California, will target a variety of embedded applications for its EE-based chip line, including all the usual …

    Channel 11 Apr 2001, 11:11

  • GUS to sell breathe

    Sad day for modern urbanists everywhere

    Great Universal Stores (GUS) is to sell trendy ISP breathe less than four months after buying the outfit for £1.4 million. City sources told The Register that GUS has already been out pressing the flesh looking for a buyer although the outfit - which owns retailer Argos and online sales outfit Jungle.com - declined to comment …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 11:26

  • Computer dealer fined for sending virus to rival

    And it's not foot and mouth

    A Devon computer dealer escaped jail after being found guilty of sending a virus to a local rival. Paul Brogden, 27, the owner of Sure Computers in Bideford was sentenced on March 30 to 175 hours community service under the Computer Misuse Act and had his computer equipment confiscated. Brogden had got embroiled in a price war …

    Security 11 Apr 2001, 11:35

  • WinXP falls over old Cisco bug

    XP + planet's most deployed Lan switch = crash

    Major network outages at Xerox, after staff installed beta versions of Microsoft XP, have been linked to a well-known bug in Cisco's most widely deployed Lan switch. As previously reported, Xerox has warned all its 50,000 US employees not to install Windows XP beta on company computers after the firm's networks suffered three …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 11:53

  • Palm m50x line to be late for PDA price war

    Volume shipments coming 'later than planned' - inventory backlog to provoke price cuts

    Palm's next-generation top-of-the-range PDAs, the m500 and m505, may ship on time, but not in volume, the company warned yesterday - even as one analyst claimed the palmtop market is on the verge of a price war. Speaking at a meeting with Wall Street analysts, Palm CEO Carl Yankowski said of the m500 and m505, which the company …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 11:58

  • Open source BeOS clone gives Be a righteous nudge

    If anyone's listening...

    With impeccable timing, a new version of the software libre clone of BeOS, AtheOS, slipped out last week. Be Inc. itself still hasn't given any indication that it will release the source code to its much loved but moribund desktop OS, although ten days ago we reported that the company registered domain names openbeos.com, …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 13:29

  • Net betting boosts William Hill profits

    £133m bet online last year

    Bookies William Hill is healthily back in the black thanks to Internet betting. The Net operation took bets from punters in 150 countries and the business counted for seven per cent of turnover. Revenues increased from £10 million in 19999 to £133 million. For the whole company pre-tax profits rose to £46 million in the year …

    e-Business 11 Apr 2001, 13:31

  • $3.9bn Internet banking fraud busted

    Four arrests so far

    The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has today announced the successful closure of an online banking fraud worth an estimated $3.9 billion. Victims were duped by bogus get-rich-quick schemes involving fake documents before the scam was exposed. The investigation lasted six months. The fraud came to light when financial …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 14:02

  • Industry Standard calls time on Europe

    Merci et adieu

    New economy magazine The Industry Standard is to close its European publication just six months after splashing out megabucks on a glitzy launch party. Some 60 jobs are reported to be axed although a skeleton staff will be retained to supply European-based content for The Standard's US publication and Web site. Writing in his …

    e-Business 11 Apr 2001, 14:06

  • Jungle sales jump 40% in last 6 months

    King of the swingers

    Jungle.com's online sales grew 40 per cent to £16 million in the six months to 31 March. The computer etailer's trading figures were published as part of the half year trading update from parent Great Universal Stores (GUS). Ecommerce sales were over £50 million for the entire GUS group. Argos, GUS' leading retail business saw …

    e-Business 11 Apr 2001, 14:33

  • Palomino in the Gütter

    HWRoundup AMD interview

    Planet3DNow has posted an interview with AMD's Central Europe Public Relations Manager, Jan Gütter, with loads of information about Palomino. Tweakers has a lot of news news about the changes in the Intel roadmap, with some useful info on delays with some of the new cores, such as the Madison and Deerfield. Firing Squad …

    Hardware Roundup 11 Apr 2001, 15:33

  • M$ confirms WinXP won't support USB 2.0

    1394 preferred

    Microsoft has confirmed our earlier report that it will not be supporting USB 2.0 in the final release of Windows XP, preferring instead IEEE 1394 - aka FireWire, aka iLink - as the OS' high-speed peripheral bus. "USB 2.0 support will not be included in the [final] version of Windows XP due to the fact that there is not a …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 15:34

  • Alcatel under fire for ADSL security

    Merde!

    A team of security researchers has highlighted security concerns involving Alcatel's ADSL modems. Alcatel's Speed Touch ADSL modem, which is used by many telcos in provisioning high-speed Internet access, is said to be afflicted with bugs which could allow a hacker to take over the device. Only the Ethernet version of the …

    Security 11 Apr 2001, 16:09

  • Modern Urbanists alive and well

    ...and working in Bermondsey

    With all the misery associated with the dotcom slump it's heartening to know that some operations still manage to hold on to the modern urbanist lifestyles so richly associated with Internet companies. Take London-based yeahlab.com - it's not enough that it tells us it's a "mobile media enabler, developing technology, tools and …

    Bootnotes 11 Apr 2001, 16:18

  • Handspring pledges Palm fealty

    Serfdom extended to 2009

    Handspring has extended its agreement to license PalmOS until 2009. The companies confirmed the deal ahead of Handspring's quarterly results, due tomorrow. Royalties were not disclosed, nor did Handspring say if the deal was exclusive. With echoes of the Apple clone saga, the renewed royalty terms are understood to be a thorny …

    Software 11 Apr 2001, 16:49

  • Intel's Barrett gets $3.8m pay packet

    12 per cent pay rise

    Intel president and CEO Craig Barrett landed a pay packet of $3.8 million last year. Barrett's total package was up 12 per cent on the previous year, and included a salary of $575,000 (up from $525,000 in 1999), and bonus of $2.8 million (compared to $2.6 million), according to a proxy statement to shareholders. Chipzilla also …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 17:14

  • Multi-million pound mobile phone fraudster goes to jail

    UK's phreaking largest telecoms fraud targeted BT Cellnet and Telewest

    A man was jailed for 30 months yesterday for his part in a multi-million pound fraud in which mobile phone SIM cards were altered to enable users to make unlimited phone calls. Electronics engineer Radomir Lukic, 41, of Loughborough, Leicestershire, had earlier pleaded guilty to defrauding BT Cellnet and Telewest of an …

    Data Networking 11 Apr 2001, 17:18

  • BOFH: The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

    Episode 10 Why are you doing this to me, Simon?

    BOFH 2001: Episode 10 So I'm testing out some Voice-Operated Computing that the previous boss signed up for in his second (and last) day of work, from some company that claims to be working on the "Space Program". Which program and which space are not (of course) mentioned. However, to be honest, it's not as bad as I thought. …

    BOFH 11 Apr 2001, 18:10

  • BOFH: my mate, automate

    Episode 9 Droid division

    BOFH 2001: Episode 9 "Remote and automatic control and recognition systems like this are invaluable in business situations where certain criteria can be predicted and reacted with," a salesdroid continues, pointing out some heavy duty production hardware in a glossy brochure. "Interesting," the new Boss fakes, eyes staring …

    BOFH 11 Apr 2001, 18:10

  • EU sanctifies copyrights à la DMCA

    This other Eden, demi-paradise....

    The European Commission has warmly congratulated the EU Council of Ministers for adopting, on 14 February, the Directive on Copyright, a Draconian, industry-accommodating law which harmonizes all EU Member States' copy regs to the constipated level preferred by multinational entertainment corporations. Like the American Digital …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 20:49

  • San Fran costliest US city for mobile users

    Move to Atlanta, it's cheaper

    San Francisco is the most expensive city in the US to own a mobile phone, a survey claims. Residents of San Fran pay an average of $43.34 per month to run one of the devices, around $7 more than in Atlanta, and almost $5 above the national average. The second most costly place to own a mobile is Cincinnati, where users pay $41 …

    Business 11 Apr 2001, 20:53

  • Cypherpunk Bell found guilty

    Incomplete verdict passes muster

    A Washington state federal jury found cypherpunk Jim Bell guilty on two of five counts of stalking government agents. US District Judge Jack Tanner dismissed the three remaining counts after jurors indicated they could not reach a unanimous verdict on them. "The [partial] verdict will be accepted," Tanner said, and scheduled …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 21:55

  • Yahoo! to cut 12% of staff, reports Q1 profit slide

    Meanwhile, another manager flees

    Yahoo! today announced plans to cut around 12 per cent of staff after seeing profits slide for the first quarter. As the Internet portal struggled with falling advertising revenue, it posted a pro-forma net income of $7.6 million for the quarter ended March 31 2001, or one cent per share. This was way down on the $60.5 million …

    Music and Media 11 Apr 2001, 22:00