30th April 2001 Archive

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Microsoft issues bounty for OS-less PC buyers

Rat your customer and help them be 'compliant'

Microsoft may not have succeeded in persuading OEMs and system builders to "decline politely" all perverse requests for PCs lacking a pre-installed (preferably Microsoft) OS, but it's shifted to a new approach. It's now bribing system builders to turn in anyone who bids on naked boxes, ostensibly so it can harass these poor, …

Software 30 Apr 2001, 05:31
DVD descrambler suit going to appeal

The scourge of on-line information

The Second Circuit US Court of Appeals in Manhattan will hear arguments for and against publishing and linking to a utility called DeCSS which defeats the CSS (Content Scrambling System) of DVDs on Tuesday, 1 May. Eric Corely aka Emmanuel Goldstein, publisher of hacker zine 2600, was enjoined from posting, then linking to, the …

Music and Media 30 Apr 2001, 07:21
Dotcom boom alive and kicking…

And living in someone's over-stretched imagination

Job ad seen in last week's Evening Standard newspaper: JOIN IN THE INTERNET BOOM Everyone believes there is a fortune to be made on the internet. But how? We will train you from scratch to make your fortune. Sounds mad doesn't it - it is!...and you don't need computer skills. Do these guys know something we don't? ®

Bootnotes 30 Apr 2001, 09:33
Trident spears VIA on trade secret lawsuit

Oi! Get off our staff

Trident, the US graphics technology designer, accuses VIA and VIA subsidiary S3 Graphics, and some former employees of conspiring to "misappropriate Trident's trade secrets". The company has taken extreme umbrage at attempts by VIA to 'systematically' poach its staff. It says this is an attempt to undermine its business; the …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 09:33
Intel 0.13 micron chips delayed?

CPU production kit falls behind schedule

Intel may have to put back its plans to ship 0.13 micron chips thanks because a key part of the equipment needed to make them has been delayed by its manufacturer. At issue is the ship date of SVG Lithography's Micrascan V 193nm lithography machine. The company last week admitted it will be shipping kit up to four months later …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 09:49
April is record dotcom job death month

Up 84 per cent in US to 17,554

April was a record month for dotcom job losses. In the US, 17,554 Net workers got canned this month. The previous record was back in January when 12,828 workers got shown the door. The figures come from US recruitment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. It seems to have ruled out anyone losing their job today, probably …

e-Business 30 Apr 2001, 10:16
New BT boss nervous about job

Clenched buttocks time

BT's new chairman has admitted that he will be suffering first day nerves when he starts work at the monster telco tomorrow. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph Sir Christopher Bland said: "I would be foolish if I did not feel a slight tightening. "The adrenaline is going to be flowing rapidly," he said. If that's the …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 10:18
WinXP delayed? How it could slip beyond October

It's just too easy for dumb users to break, right now

Windows XP may or may not have been delayed until October; it depends how you look at it. According to an internal schedule obtained by Robert Stein of Activewin, XP is currently intended to be in the shops in October. Apparently pouncing on the same schedule, Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group interpreted this as two months …

Software 30 Apr 2001, 10:42
AMD Palomino to debut in notebooks

Launch to feature Nvidia's Crush chipset

AMD is still on to ship its 1GHz-plus Mobile Athlon based on the Palomino core this quarter. Last week, DigiTimes reported that sources had claimed the part would ship in June, and now EBN has said Palomino will ship this quarter, just ahead of the desktop version of the part, in Q3. Information leaked to EBN shows Palomino …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 10:55
eLiza asks: what makes you say you want a self-healing server?

HA work gets grand rebranditure

IBM says it will devote a quarter of its server budget to Project eLiza: making its Unix, NT and Linux servers 'self-healing'. It claims five of its R&D centres will be working on eLiza technology, although figures were scarce in the first, reverential reports in the US trade inkies. So it's too early to say if the eLiza …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 10:55
1.4GHz AMD Athlon debuts on Web

Cropping up on price lists all over the place

AMD's 1.4GHz Athlon has started appearing in chip suppliers' price lists, suggesting the part's launch can't be that far off and may even turn up next month. Eagle-eyed Register readers tell us the 1.4GHz Athlon appeared on a UK chip sales site last week, and we now hear that it has been spotted on German supplier K&M …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 10:59
Cadac buys its way into top Autodesk slot

Acquires EDC Photonic

Cadac has bought rival Autodesk dealer EDC Photonic, consolidating its position as the UK's biggest reseller - for the CAD design software company. With EDC Photonic's 40 staff under its belt, Cadac is bulking up to address bigger companies and a wider market of what it calls 'engineering information management'. Post-merger, …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 11:18
Computerland UK issues profits warning

Contracted revenues up

Computerland UK, the Nottingham-based corporate reseller, has issued a profit warning - the company says it will make £300k PBT for its full financial year. This means it lost money in the second half of the year. Sales were up in the second half of the year to 30 April - but not as much as it had expected. Growth was slower …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 11:18
AMD cuts desktop CPU prices by up to 47.7%

Responds to Intel

AMD has cut its desktop CPU prices following Intel's second round of Pentium 4 price reductions yesterday. AMD sliced between 24.5 and 47.7 per cent - most of them in the 38.4 per cent and up band - off the prices of Athlons and Durons. The new Athlon prices, according to German Web site Chips.de - we're still awaiting …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 11:32
CA accused of misstating sales

NYT details alleged campaign to boost new product

Computer Associates (CA) has been accused of misstating its sales results over many years in order to boost its financial results and market position. The accusations, contained in an article in the New York Times, have been denied by the enterprise software firm, which is holding a press conference today in order to defend its …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 11:50
Govt's ‘fault’ for broadband tardiness

Survey of business

British businesses - or 100 or so, at any rate - blame the government for "failing to deliver broadband to the nation". In a survey of 122 businesses, 93 per cent said British broadband tardiness was the government's fault.(See, not everyone hates BT.) All told, British businesses are unimpressed with th government's efforts …

Telecoms 30 Apr 2001, 11:58
Sony, Microsoft developing GameBoy-style handhelds

Watch out, Nintendo

Sony and Microsoft are both working on competing handheld gaming machines, each designed to complement their respective consoles, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. That, at least, is what stock market watcher Nikko Salomon Smith Barney has claimed in a new report examining the future for Nintendo. Looking ahead at the GameBoy Advance, …

Games Industry 30 Apr 2001, 12:05
Boffins create thought-controlled computer

A boon for the disabled

Boffins at the EC's Joint Research Centre have created a computer that can "read" peoples' minds and enable disabled people to write message using nothing but thoughts. The system has been tried out on a 40-year-old severely disabled man in London, the Sunday Times reports and he was ecstatic. Cathal O'Philbin, who has spinal …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 12:11
ntl and AOL hold hands

Is this the first sign of a beautiful relationship?

ntl has confirmed it is in talks with AOL Time Warner concerning "potential joint activity" but claims negotiations are at an early stage. The two companies are in talks about a possible partnership using the cableco's broadband cable network in Europe to broadcast the media company's content according to the FT. The pink …

Telecoms 30 Apr 2001, 12:14
MBO for Dan network business

Back to being called Paragon

PC assembler Dan Technology has sold its networking installation arm to managers Dan Network Solutions, bought by Dan three years ago, will call itself Paragon Communications (its former name). The MBO cost £1 million. It was led by Dan Networks MD Phil Gamble who said: "We work better as part of a separate company than as …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 12:19
PCA hackles rise over Euler Trade Indemnity

Call in the regulator?

The PC Association, the UK lobby group for systems builders, is planning to debate the existence of Euler Trade Indemnity, the dominant supplier of credit insurance to the UK channel, with over 60 per cent of the market. In an email sent last week to PC Association members, executive director Keith Warburton said: "As a …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 12:44
First MSN Messenger virus

Hello, can I give your PC the pox?

The first known virus that spreads by MSN's Messenger Service application has been discovered. W32/Hello, an Internet worm that affects Windows machines, arrives via MSN Messenger as a file called Hello.exe. If a user clicks on the file, which is actually a Visual Basic 5 application, the worm creates a shortcut, with no name …

Security 30 Apr 2001, 14:02
Dealer Credit Squeeze Part 3

Lead balloon

Part 3 Resellers and Vars have consistently taken advantage of opportunities to release cash principally through invoice discounting, factoring and where appropriate leasing and of course the traditional bank overdraft and term loans. There are costs attributable to each which have to be borne but the benefits can be …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 14:10
Dealer Credit Squeeze Part 2

Credit balloon

Part 2 There have been a number of scathing comments made particularly about ETI, the dominant supplier of credit insurance to the UK channel and some have also pointed that there needs to be more effective communication between the insurers and their policyholders. In ETI's defence it has continued to support the sector by …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 14:10
‘Intel Inside’ campaign celebrates 10th anniversary

Inside? They should be...

Intel's 'Intel Inside' marketing campaign is ten years old, the company wrote to inform us today. "It wasn't that long ago that only geeks and nerds knew or cared about microprocessors," Intel's release proudly states. They're the only ones who still do - as any fule kno - but the chip company's message is clear: that, thanks …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 14:16
Hacktivists take over BBC Web site

Nothing to do with May Day protests

A BBC Web site has been taken off line after it was defaced by a group of political hacktivists yesterday. Hacking crew Silver Lords defaced a site belonging to the broadcaster's monitoring service (monitor.bbc.co.uk) with a message protesting about the political situation in Kashmir. The defacement, which is more artistic than …

Music and Media 30 Apr 2001, 14:43
Dealer credit squeeze – why it's happening and what's to be done

Pips Squeaked

The average IT distributor selling product at a consistent 5% margin require additional sales of £1,000,000 to break-even for every bad debt of £50,000. This is why credit insurance is so prevalent within distribution. The IT sector is characterized by short product cycles, consistently high failure rates, and reductions in …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 14:50
Bastard Plan 437f

Episode 12 Faking a faint

BOFH 2001: Episode 12 So we're at the world's second-most boring meeting (First place being taken by any meeting on the best version of Windows to use) and the new Boss is rambling on about future directions of IT and where we should be going, etc. Which isn't so bad, as I'm winning at palmtop infrared battleships with The PFY …

BOFH 30 Apr 2001, 14:56
Rambus cornered by Judge, Infineon

Rambus vs Infineon Left with almost no room to move

Rambus may call it quits this after it emerged that its legal action against Infineon appears to have been limited to such a degree that the memory developer effectively has no room to manoeuvre. Rambus' lawyers told the trial judge, Robert E Payne, that his Markman ruling, which governs the extent to which a patent may be said …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 15:02
WinXP activation bug zeros testers' trial period

Grief, is that the time already?

Some traffic from the Microsoft WinXP beta news groups forwarded to The Register indicates that the company may be in deep doo-doo as regards the operation of Product Activation. It's fragile, it's triggering the termination of testers' eval periods, and Microsoft doesn't know why. Given Microsoft's recent habit of sprinkling …

Software 30 Apr 2001, 15:32
Buyers sniffing round Gameplay

Shouldn't be too long now

Gameplay reckons it's got a buyer for its business, the multi-platform games outfit said today. News of the possible buyout helped lift the troubled company's share price by a whopping 25 per cent earlier today - or about 4 pence a share. The company said that it had received "indicative and conditional offers from third …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 15:54
7m extra surfers log onto World Wide Web in March

Yahoo! has! most! users!

Cyberspace added another seven million home surfers to its ranks in March. This brought the total number of people logging onto the Net from home to 379 million during the month, with active Net usage growing four per cent from the previous month to 211 million surfers. South Koreans were the keenest surfers in the 21 …

Music and Media 30 Apr 2001, 16:25
MS insists upon passwords of 18,000+ characters

That way they can rule the world - broahahahahaha

Incredibly as it may sound, Microsoft appears to be insisting that people have hundreds of thousands of five-digit passwords if they are to access its sites. How else can you explain this error message from the Beast of Redmond's support site: "Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any …

Bootnotes 30 Apr 2001, 16:34
Hijacked domain returned to rightful owner

Portfolio Metrica happy

The case of the dropped domain and the PR company that we covered last week has been sorted out - with it returning to the original owners. Last Monday, we revealed how Portfolio Metrica were aghast when their company Web site disappeared to be replaced with an American site offering free ISP access. We spoke to the site's new …

Music and Media 30 Apr 2001, 16:37
US China cyberwar is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Defacement site Attrition slates media for motivating s'kiddies

The Web site of the White House Historical Association has been plastered with Chinese flags by an anonymous hacker during a pair of apparently political motivated attacks of prestige US Web sites. Along with today's defacement of the White House Historical Association site, which placed a Chinese flag above the White House …

Music and Media 30 Apr 2001, 16:42
Firedup.com snuffed out

Oh well

FiredUp.com - the entertainment auction site from Rupert Murdoch's News International - has shut down. A notice on its site reads: "End of an Era "Unfortunately the candle has burnt out on FiredUp.com Thank you for all of your support in the past." The short note is signed by the "FiredUp Team". What's left of them. Apart …

e-Business 30 Apr 2001, 16:43
Kevin Warwick wanders into Reg territory

Captain Cyborg eyes Vulture's Perch

Captain Cyborg aka Kevin Warwick, the media-hungry professor of cybernetics at Reading University, is to pay The Reg a visit. Not that he knows it yet. We have been following Kev and his various pronouncements for well over a year now. We were there when he claimed he had become a cyborg by putting a reed switch under several …

Bootnotes 30 Apr 2001, 17:10
AMD 64-bit Hammer delayed

Knocked back to make room for silicon-on-insulator

AMD has confirmed the Hammer family of 64-bit CPUs have been knocked back six months to Q3 2002. The reason? To allow AMD to use silicon-on-insulator chip technology to make Hammers run faster and consume less power. Intel's second-generation 64-bit CPU, McKinley, is due to go into pilot production in Q4 this year. Like the …

Channel 30 Apr 2001, 17:53
ProComp fires duds in MS Media Player broadside

Bigger fish than Real are getting fried

The latest broadside from ProComp, or the Project to Promote Competition and Innovation in the Digital Age - the lobby group backed by Microsoft competitors - will make depressing reading for its sponsors. ProComp has contrived to sail through a closely packed convoy, all guns firing, without hitting anything. The lobby group's …

Software 30 Apr 2001, 19:01
Compaq accused of bullying customers over warranties

Two more class-action lawsuits

No sooner has it got rid of one class-action lawsuit than Compaq gets hit with another two. This time they involve allegations of warranty bullying tactics. The suits, filed in state court in Beaumont, Texas, by the law offices of Wayne Reaud, concern the PC maker's iPaq Pocket PC handhelds and iPac and Presario computers. …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 21:16
Dell becoming ‘the 800lb gorilla’ of the server market

Sells more servers in US than Big Q during Q1

Dell saw almost 50 per cent growth in worldwide server shipments during the first quarter, and overtook Compaq as the top server seller in the US. Big Q remains the world's biggest supplier of Intel platform servers. S hipments rose 13 per cent to 234,000 units, giving it 29 per cent of the market in Q1, according to Gartner …

Business 30 Apr 2001, 23:09