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18th April 2001 Archive

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  • McVeigh execution decision expected Friday

    A shot in the arm for justice

    Execution enthusiasts will have to wait until Friday at the latest to find out whether they'll be able to witness the death of Timothy McVeigh live on the Web. A Federal judge yesterday heard a petition from the Entertainment Network Inc (ENI) which is seeking to change the law so that it can broadcast the death by lethal …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 08:20

  • Intel 0.13 micron crossover – ‘not this year’

    Hayzee Fantayzee

    Intel today said the world should not expect the crossover to 0.13 micron technology to take place in 2001. Speaking during a conference call where the chip giant announced its first quarter results, Paul Otellini, exec VP and general manager of Intel's Architecture Group, described Q1 as "a tough quarter". He said demand had …

    Channel 18 Apr 2001, 08:23

  • Restyled widescreen iMac to push iMovie, MacOS X

    Mac Rumour Roundup And Apple lets slip on iPhoto

    Apple's next-generation iMac is due to be launched in July - at MacWorld Expo New York, we imagine - with widescreen monitors and touted as a MacOS X machine. That's according to AppleInsider sources, at any rate. The new machine is apparently designed as the bee's knees video editing system - an approach Apple is currently …

    Mac Channel 18 Apr 2001, 09:48

  • PDA plant to end Compaq iPaq supply woes

    Taiwanese OEM to inaugurate iPaq-only factory next week

    Taiwanese computer maker High Tech Computer will open a new factory next week and dedicate the plant to punching out Compaq iPaq handhelds. The Big Q has had a tough time of late getting anywhere near meeting the demand for iPaq, which has soared in popularity since late last year. Our sources in the handheld reseller channel …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 10:27

  • Mobo makers turn backs on Rambus development

    Eagerly awaiting DDR-based Pentium 4 chipsets

    Taiwanese motherboard makers have stopped developing Rambus RDRAM, Pentium 4-based products in preparation for a shift toward DDR SDRAM - despite Intel's vigorous April price cuts, DigiTimes has reported. At issue is a fall in Q1 sales of Socket 423 P4s. Sales of the part missed expectations by around 50 per cent. Mobo makers …

    Channel 18 Apr 2001, 10:50

  • Flights of fantasy

    We're still waiting for that flying car, gentlemen

    It seems that we may have been a little hard on Paul Moller, inventor of the M400 flying car. Despite the reservations of MIT and NASA boffins, Mr Moller's supporters insist that the vehicle is a viable proposition. Moller's flying car pedigree looks impressive - on paper at least. In 1989 he successfully flew the M200X …

    Bootnotes 18 Apr 2001, 11:07

  • Letsbuyit brands own PCs

    They'll be called Ants

    Letsbuyit.com, the group buying etailer, is launching its own brand PCs. The systems will be called Ants. PC manufacturer Centerprise is building the machines. The company already makes Advent machines for the Dixons Group, Bonsai PCs for Tempo, and Vulcan computers for John Lewis. Letsbuyit very nearly went titsup in January …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 11:10

  • HP hints Intel's Itanic is ahead of schedule

    Will use 64-bit CPU in high end servers and not 32-bit, Unisys-built boxes after all

    Hewlett-Packard reckons Intel's 64-bit Itanium CPU is sufficiently ready for market that it has canned a plan to buy and rebadge Unisys servers based on the 32-bit Pentium III Xeon and will instead offer its own IA-64-based hardware. That's according to HP's global head of marketing for its Intel-based server products, Jean- …

    Channel 18 Apr 2001, 11:42

  • Nerds are rampant sex machines…

    ...says survey

    Adult male nerds have sex more often than ordinary American blokes according to IT recruitment site JustTechJobs.com. Following a survey of more than 7,500 male nerds it concluded that this often-maligned group has sex 108 times a year compared to the average of just 79 times. The results have staggered those behind the survey …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 11:59

  • Cybercops are go!

    'Lucky' Len Hynds puts boot into Internet crime

    Home Secretary Jack Straw has officially launched the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit today at the Science Museum in London. The unit and its £25 million of funding was announced in November last year as part of Mr Straw's clampdown on cybercrime. The "lynchpin" unit will be based in London and manned with 40 specialised officers, …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 12:03

  • WinXP: product activation, updates and control freakery

    XP diaries What you have to deal with before you install...

    A week or so ago Microsoft finally plied The Register with a small stack of state of the art XP code. We now have the official WinXP beta 2, a Corporate Preview Program CD of Office XP, and a production Office XP CD as well. All of this seems to work, which is more than can be said for the snazzy Office XP wristwatch we …

    Software 18 Apr 2001, 12:03

  • Police raid ‘major reseller’ in Oman

    Channel Flannel

    Omani police have seized 20,000 bootlegged software programs in a raid on a 'major reseller' in the gulf Arab state, Reuters reports. There were no arrests, according to the Business Software Alliance, which announced the raid on Sunday (although it didn't say when it took place - or who the reseller is ) If this was a first …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 13:25

  • Motion Picture Ass. launches Gnutella offensive

    Cease and desist

    The Motion Picture Association Of America has begun targeting Gnutella users, having successfully seen off Scour. The Ass. has started contacting US ISPs and university network administrators to warn them that some of their users are illegally sharing copyright movie material. And in response to such pressure from the MPAA, …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 13:38

  • BBC to develop Weakest Link game

    Good buy?

    A computer game based on the hit TV game show the Weakest Link is being developed. The BBC is working with games publisher, Activision (which distributes Quake), to create a version of the show for PC and console gamers. According to BBC Multimedia, versions of the game for the PC CD-ROM, PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 by …

    Games Industry 18 Apr 2001, 14:13

  • Apple lawyers attack MacOS 8.x skinning code

    Wants open source project closed down

    Apple has demanded the open source Mac Themes Project remove its MacOS theme editor from public servers. The Mac maker alleges the code contributes to infringement of its intellectual property by allowing users to improperly copy its trademarks and copyrights. In Apple's words, it "enables third parties to create themes that …

    Mac Channel 18 Apr 2001, 14:14

  • Reg cancer busters crack on

    Onward and upward for Vulture Central II

    We have some excellent news regarding Vulture Central II - our team in the Intel/Oxford cancerbusting project. Having only been in existence for a week, Vulture Central II has returned over 5200 'work units'. This means that the 1166 team members have been processing for a combined total of 11 years. To put this in …

    Bootnotes 18 Apr 2001, 14:15

  • Dead Chinese fighter pilot footage

    Holding up email address to spyplane crew

    Footage of the dead Chinese fighter pilot Wang Wei has been released by the US government in a bid to put pressure back on the Chinese regarding the spy plane debacle. It was taken with a camcorder on another one of the US' spyplanes in January and shows Wang Wei flying incredibly close to the plane, holding up and pointing to …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 14:18

  • Microsoft promises it won't meddle with digital TV market

    And we all believe it

    The European Commission's investigation into the negative effect Microsoft can have on the digital TV market (thanks to its giant share holdings) has concluded that everything can be left as is because Microsoft has "agreed not to influence" the market and future technology. Which is a weight off everyone's mind. Digital TV …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 14:42

  • Consumer slowdown forces HP to axe 3,000 jobs

    Weak sales starting to affect Europe

    Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to axe 3,000 management jobs as part of a plan to cut its costs in the face of declining PC and printer sales. News of the job cuts came when HP today issued its second profit warning this year, which stated that a decline in consumer spending means revenues for its second quarter will be …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 15:04

  • Updated Samba one less reason for buying Windows

    Makes MS Client Access Licenses redundant

    One of the cornerstones of free software, Samba, took another leap forward project leads Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell announced yesterday. Unglamorous but hugely important, the new version of the Windows file and print services substitute, now at version 2.2.0, adds a bundle of goodies. As before, it continues to enhance …

    Software 18 Apr 2001, 15:10

  • ISPs claim victory over BT

    Time to par-tay

    A Basingstoke-based ISP is claiming a victory for small service providers following BT's decision to launch a wholesale unmetered Internet access service geared specifically to meet their needs. Available next month, WebPort24 is a "fully managed dial-up unmetered Internet access service that enables service providers to …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 15:13

  • US lawyer and pals indicted for shill bidding on eBay

    $450,000 scam scuppered

    Two men in the US, one of them a lawyer, have agreed to pay back $100,000 after pleading guilty to bidding for their own products on eBay's online auction site. In what is believed to be the first indictment for such cyber-behaviour, Kenneth Walton and Scott Beach pleaded guilty in federal court in Sacramento to a total of 11 …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 15:37

  • MS ditches Service Packs for Windows NT 4.0

    Gimme that hot fix

    Microsoft has cancelled Service Pack 7 and any further development of service packs for the Windows NT 4.0 platform. The news will be announced to the channel first and then all Microsoft customers this week. Service Pack 7 was originally due to be released at the end of last year, but was then delayed until Q3, 2001. Now it …

    Software 18 Apr 2001, 15:44

  • BAPCo releases SYSmark 2001

    Real world benchmarks for Windows systems

    BAPCo, or in full The Business Applications Performance Corporation, today releases SYSmark 2001. This is designed around real world benchmarking, as opposed to simply raw megahertz power. SYSmark 2001 is a "robust set of 14 application benchmarks covering a wide range of Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 16:36

  • My God! Someone's actually made a cyborg!

    It turns toward light and not much else

    After years of sci-fi nuts and phoney professors claiming they have built a cyborg - part machine, part living tissue - it would appear that someone has actually done it. It can't do very much and it's incredible inefficient but it actually does use biological material to communicate with machinery to some practical end. What …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 16:37

  • Gassee on open source BeOS

    'Non sanglant probable'

    Jean Louis Gassee has given a brief interview to Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, in which he discusses the possibility of Be Inc releasing its jewel of an OS as source form. Last year Be registered the openbeos.com. .net and .org domains, although whether the intent was to really to free the source, or simply to pre- …

    Software 18 Apr 2001, 16:49

  • Canadian Tire fights for right to be called ‘crap’

    Just another day in the WIPO madhouse

    Tyre retailer Canadian Tire is taking compatriot Mick Mcfadden to WIPO over his Web site, which the corporation feels infringes on its trademark. Nothing new there - if the Web site even contains a majority of the letters of the company name, WIPO will find a way of making Mick hand over the domain. Except that Mick owns www. …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 2001, 16:52

  • TSMC touts ‘reasonably good’ 0.13 micron yield

    0.10 micron developments continuing apace too

    Not content with boasting about its 0.15 micron process, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was today claiming significant successes with 0.13 and 0.10 micron technology. TSMC's 0.13 micron efforts must be doing well - the company announced it had achieved "reasonably good" yields on its 0.13 micron 4Mb SRAM test …

    Channel 18 Apr 2001, 16:55

  • Sun cuts prices of UltraSPARC II servers

    Europe gets 5% slash, US prices drop by up to 16%

    Sun Microsystems has announced price cuts for its older mid-range Unix servers as it begins rolling out kit based on its faster UltraSPARC III microprocessors. Prices on mid-range UltraSPARC II systems, including the Enterprise 3500, 4500, 5500 6500 machines, has been cut by between 8 to 16 per cent. Top of the range E10000 …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 17:02

  • AOL-Time Warner Net business doing nicely

    More users, online for longer, and splashing out

    AOL-Time Warner saw earnings rise for the first quarter, with its number of Net users growing by 16 per cent. The media and Net monster, seemingly unaware that the dotcom economy was in the grips of a downturn, reported cash earnings per share of 23 cents, excluding charges, for the quarter ended March 31, 2001. This compared …

    e-Business 18 Apr 2001, 17:33

  • Labour Party in Web security gaffe

    Launches hi-tech crime unit, tells people to email credit card details

    The yolk was on the Labour Party when it fell fowl on the most basic laws of common sense and Internet security in a jokey piece on its site attacking the Tories "eggstreme" right-wing policies. An item on New Labour's site called "Tory egg cups expose the Tories' hard-boiled policies" invited supporters to order a range of …

    Election 2001 18 Apr 2001, 17:38

  • Netimperative.com extends begging bowl to readers

    Save our Service

    Netimperative.com, the online news service for British dotcom types, is asking readers to pledge money for subscriptions. The inference is, from the press release it issued today is that the doors will close for good - at least to a daily service, unless it raises enough cash. netimperative.com wants readers to pay £50 for …

    e-Business 18 Apr 2001, 18:11

  • Internet .com kills the dotcom

    It's the end of an earpiece

    It's official - the dot.com era is over. The owner of the most emblematic dotcom brand of all, internet.com Incorporated is proposing changing its name to the "INTMedia Group Incorporated". And in suitably anti-climatic fashion, the directors propose the change in a turgid SEC filing almost designed not to be read:- "The …

    e-Business 18 Apr 2001, 22:27

  • Kill all the managers! (Let's start with HP)

    But who'll sign the expense claims?

    Hewlett-Packard is to "eliminate" 3,000 managers to cope with a small downturn in business. The company says Q2 sales will be 2-4 per cent lower than Q1, as well as the same period last year. This is the company's second profit warning in just a few weeks - it says it had only "limited visibility" last time around. American …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 23:03

  • AMD sales up in soft market

    But what about Q2?

    AMD saw profits drop in the first quarter, but still managed to beat analysts' expectations. The No.2 chipmeister, which released its Q1 figures a day after chief rival Intel, saw net income fall 34 per cent to $124.8 million, or 37 cents per diluted share, for the quarter ended April 1 2001. Analysts had expected 33 cents per …

    Channel 18 Apr 2001, 23:10

  • Elonex wins power saving, money making patent claim

    Mag Technology succumbs, who's to follow?

    For a short time, in the very early 1990s, Elonex was the UK's biggest PC maker. The north London-based firm rode the direct marketing boom better than anyone esle. And unlike most of its rivals, the company actually designed its own technology, even making its own mobos. This industriousness paid off with a clutch of …

    Business 18 Apr 2001, 23:52