9th May 2001 Archive

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• 3DLabs extends channel embrace

  Channel Flannel

  3DLabs, the workstation graphics card designer, is opening its Wildcat Partner program to specialist system builders Previously available only to tier-one OEMs, the scheme is now open to "exclusively to system integrators and OEMs who build high-end systems for graphics-intensive fields such as computer aided design (CAD), …

  Channel 9 May 2001, 07:23

• Whitehat hacker made FBI patsy

  Sleep with dogs, wake with fleas....

  American federal officials used threats and a false promise of leniency to lure computer security researcher and admitted cyber intruder Max Butler into becoming an undercover FBI informant, according to a defense motion filed in the case Tuesday. It was only when Butler balked at covertly recording a friend and colleague, …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 08:44

• MS ‘screw Linux’ Blade tech debuts in… Transmeta servers

  'Clarity of Intellectual Property ownership'? Phew.

  Right on cue - and on a day of rolling black outs in California - Transmeta server startup RLX Technology took the wraps off its much talked-about baby. It's a superdense server fitting up to 336 Transmeta CPUs in a rack that can be populated by at most 42 CPUs using today's Intel boards. Transmeta CPUs are slower than their …

  Software 9 May 2001, 08:47

• Electorate says ‘no’ to Net voting

  'X' marks the spot

  As the UK readies itself for a month of mind-numbing electioneering it's been revealed that one in five UK voters would be happy use the Internet to exercise their democratic right, according to a poll from Forrester Research. According to our advanced calculus, that means 80 per cent of voters would not be happy to use the Net …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 09:41

• France backs Jabber IM for 3G parlez-vous

  Jeux sans frontiers

  The Instant Messaging wars could be over sooner than you think, thanks to an inspired investment by the French. The open source instant messenger project Jabber has been blessed with a major investment from a leading telco, namely France Telecom, which has agreed to fund development to the tune of $7m. France Telecom will take …

  Software 9 May 2001, 09:45

• Nat Semi to eliminate 10% of staff

  Cost-cutting move follows big dip in sales

  National Semiconductor has said it will rid itself of 1100 workers in a bid to cut costs after it emerged the chip company's Q4 2001 sales will miss the target by up to 18 per cent. The job cuts amount to ten per cent of Nat Semi's worldwide workforce. Some 800 staffers will go, through redundancies and retirements, along with …

  Business 9 May 2001, 09:54

• WinXP – burn baby, burn…

  WinXP Diaries Or not - the toasting's a little inconsistent...

  Microsoft's decision to make Windows Media Player 8 a WinXP-only product was made, the company explains, because, er, only WinXP supports cool features like CD burning. Betanews amusingly suggested that the subsequent warezing of a Win98 version of WMP8 might have been a cunning Microsoft plan to generate interest in an …

  Software 9 May 2001, 10:05

• eMachines looks for buyer

  Or any other 'strategic' way out of its hole

  eMachines, the bottom-scraping budget PC maker, is looking to put itself up for sale. The company puts things a little more cautiously. It says it has asked Credit Suisse First Boston to assist it in "evaluating strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company" but nothing may come of this. In March, eMachines …

  Business 9 May 2001, 10:16

• Infineon demands $105m damages

  Rambus vs Infineon Asks jury to throw book at Rambus

  Infineon wants $105 million from Rambus for all the trouble the memory technology developer has caused it, the company asked a jury yesterday. That's in addition to the $560,000 it wants to cover its legal expenses. The demand for damages followed the presentation of Infineon's case, presented to the jury sitting in Rambus' …

  Channel 9 May 2001, 10:16

• Sage weathers storm with 10 per cent profit increase

  Investors still not impressed though

  Accounting software group Sage has announced a 10 per cent pre-tax profit increase in its interim results. New licences have fallen thanks to a general slowdown but it has managed to tap existing customers to increase turnover by 13 per cent. The City was not too impressed however as the results came at the bottom of …

  Business 9 May 2001, 10:35

• StormLive.com axes DJs

  A Net radio station with no DJs? Whatever next?

  StormLive.com - the Internet music station backed by former BBC Radio 1 DJ, Bruno Brookes - might be pressing the mute button after admitting that it's been hit by the downturn in the new economy. On Friday last week StormLive.com made its DJ's and 'On Air' support staff redundant. StormLive.com declined to say how many staff …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 10:38

• Cisco loses $2.69 billion on declining sales

  US customers go walkabout

  Cisco Systems has posted a loss of $2.69 billion on its first ever quarterly decline in sales. The networking equipment giant's sales were down 4.2 per cent in its third quarter at $4.93 billion compared to $4.73 billion in the same quarter last year. Cisco's pro forma net income for the quarter was $230 million but …

  Business 9 May 2001, 10:45

• Roxio replies over Easy CD Creator problems

  Official response

  Below is a verbatim response from Roxio regarding our questions on version 5 of Easy CD Creator. We reported how the software was crashing significant numbers of Windows 2000 machines. Two days after our first article, Roxio posted a fix on its Web site as well as a US helpline. If you have any queries, Roxio asks that you …

  Software 9 May 2001, 10:56

• Infineon win may axe Samsung's Rambus royalty

  Rambus vs Infineon Handy clause in Samsung's DDR licence emerges

  Samsung, for one, may be eagerly looking forward to Infineon's success in its battle with Rambus. As a Rambus licensee, you'd expect Samsung to be rallying for its technology partner. However, as EBN has spotted, Samsung stands to have its royalty payments slashed if Rambus loses its patent infringement case against Infineon. …

  Channel 9 May 2001, 11:06

• E-minister bottles election debate

  Prefers to press the flesh

  The Minister for Textiles and part-time E-minister, Patricia Hewitt, has refused to take part in an online debate about e-commerce in the run-up to the general election. Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC), Chris Shaw, challenged the Minister because he believes New Labour's record on e-issues is simply not …

  Business 9 May 2001, 11:19

• America persists in militarizing space

  Orbiting weapons not ruled out

  Uncle Sam needs to consolidate and fine-tune its military forays into outer space for the good of all mankind, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters during a Washington press conference Tuesday. The US Department of Defense is "merging disparate space activities and adjusting chains of command....re-aligning …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 11:39

• Next-gen Matrox chip to launch June

  G550 or G800? G550, we reckon

  Matrox is set to unveil its next-generation 3D graphics acceleration chip next week in preparation for the part's official launch early June. The company, of course, isn't saying which chip it will be unveiling, but the G550 - the follow-up to the current G450 - has to be most likely candidate. Matrox's next major part was to …

  Channel 9 May 2001, 11:42

• EasyJet pushes 90% of ticket sales onto Web

  Discounts and not advertising phone number

  EasyJet, the budget airline, boosted online booking to 89.2 per cent of its total sales last month. A year earlier it was managing to get 64.3 per cent of ticket sales booked on the Web. Customers have been pushed to carry out online business with EasyJet by: £2.50 discounts per flight; being unable to book a month in advance …

  e-Business 9 May 2001, 12:02

• BT bashed about by City – again, again

  Killing its dividend now

  BT has seen its shares drop another six per cent on the leaked news that it will cut or even scrap its dividend in its annual results. According to numerous sources, the troubled telecoms monster is hoping to save over £1 billion by simply refusing to pay a dividend. This may please the new board hoping to cut BT's debt by £10 …

  Business 9 May 2001, 12:30

• WinXP to be best, fastest selling OS in history – by order

  MS nails colours to mast - there's no going back...

  Microsoft platforms group VP Jim Allchin is set to announce the release day for Windows XP at 8.30am PDT today, and it'll be Thursday October 25th, rather than the Friday, as we said yesterday. Still, close... Jim's alarm probably only just gone off, but already Der Tag is up on the MS WinXP site, and the droids have been …

  Software 9 May 2001, 12:52

• DoCoMo defies telecoms slump

  But a lot rests on 3G and i-Mode taking off

  NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese telecoms company, has defied the tired telecoms market by announcing a 26 per cent jump in revenues to Y4,686 billion (£27.1 billion) this year compared to last. Net profit leaped 45 per cent to Y366 billion (£2.1 billion). The focus obviously falls on the company's extremely successful i-Mode mobile …

  Data Networking 9 May 2001, 14:15

• Sun thieves get six years apiece

  Two mainboard blaggers in jail, rest of crew at large

  Two computer blaggers have been sentenced to six years each for a series of high profile thefts of boards from Sun servers last autumn. Tony Manigan, 29, and John Sheehan, 21, admitted they'd been part of a crew which stole the Sun kit to order and had scored more than £3 million worth of kit. At Southwark Crown Court last …

  Business 9 May 2001, 14:18

• Profanity, nein danke says Psion decency bot to Reg

  Company spinmeister cut off from foul-mouthed journos

  Are these strange symbols above the Psion logo the lord's prayer backwards in runic? Apparently not. Psion, we find, is a highly sensitive, decency-obsessed outfit. Read on. A couple of days back we noted a Psion release about a netBook in schools project, thought that the project's existence suggested that Psion just might …

  Bootnotes 9 May 2001, 14:18

• Music biz backs anti-Napster MP3 sniffer-outer

  Updated Find out who's sharing your songs

  The music industry today gave its backing to software that allows punters to do its dirty work for it. The software, called Songbird, allows users to search for songs on the Napster network (you have to be a registered Napster user to perform the search). It is aimed at copyright owners who want to see which of their songs are …

  Software 9 May 2001, 14:29

• Novell makes eDirectory freeware

  All part of the OneNet dream

  Novell is to offer its NDS eDirectory for free to developers and software vendors in the hope it can spread the software throughout the market and steal pole position from Microsoft. Software vendors have always been offered the directory for free so they could develop apps for it. However once those apps had been developed, …

  Software 9 May 2001, 15:28

• UK kids take to gambling and porn…

  Just like what adults do

  Britain's youngsters are taking a lead from their elders by visiting Web sites devoted to gambling and pornography. The latest batch of research from NetValue reports that more than a quarter of the 1.5 million UK youngsters currently estimated to be online visited gambling sites during March. One in five of under 17s visited …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 15:29

• Who is the sexiest geek alive?

  The annual competition returns for a second time

  The competition to find the sexiest geek alive is on again. We wrote about the competition last year - just catching the end of it - but this time it's bigger and better than ever. Following last year's success - where Tony Northrup won, was crowned and then did the chat-show circuit - the show will now be running heats at …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 16:03

• Panrix in administration

  Sales 'through the floor'

  Leeds based PC assembler Panrix has gone into administration. The company is not taking orders for immediate deliveries, and the sales staff answering the phone say they don't know if they'll be able to deliver in the future. The company has suffered very badly from the PC market downturn, and sales have been described as " …

  Business 9 May 2001, 16:04

• Tom Waits dogs MP3.com for $40m

  Him and Randy Newman rain on file sharer's parade

  Tom Waits, Randy Newman and the Wilson sisters from Heart are suing online music site MP3.com over its file swapping system. They want $40.5 million. How come? The old copyright breaking by allowing people to exchange songs thang. The artists want $150,000 for each song that is illegally available and that comes to a grand …

  Music and Media 9 May 2001, 16:27

• Homepage spreading faster than Kournikova worm

  Epidemic exposes AV software flaws

  The spread of the Homepage Internet worm has exposed the deficiencies of the way many firms set up their virus protection, and raised questions about the effectiveness of antivirus software. Homepage is an Internet worm written using the Visual Basic Script Worm Generator virus writing kit, which also spawned the Anna …

  Security 9 May 2001, 16:33

• Compaq iPaq Q1 sales skyrocket

  Palm still way ahead, Psion marketshare slumps

  Let no one say Compaq's iPaq isn't popular in Europe. Sales of the PDA rocketed 1017.9 per cent during the first three months of 2001 compared to the same period last year, according to figures from UK-based market watcher Canalys. By contrast, Palm's shipments grew just over 60 per cent and saw its leadership of the market …

  Business 9 May 2001, 16:56

• The Times closes Interface tech section

  Inspired by happenings in IT industry no doubt

  The Times newspaper has decided to close its IT supplement, Interface. A little peculiar, you may think, seeing as IT news has never been such a big issue in the media, but apparently this is precisely the reason behind it - the paper wants the stories for the main sections of the paper. That and the fact that hardly anyone was …

  Business 9 May 2001, 17:18

• Homepage Net worm spreading like wildfire

  Uses same tricks as Kournikova virus

  A virus that uses the same tricks as the Anna Kournikova worm is spreading like wildfire. Homepage-mm, an Internet worm written using Microsoft Visual Basic scripting language, and possibly based on the same toolkit as the Anna worm, is assaulting to email servers of European firms this afternoon. Alex Shipp, an antivirus …

  Security 9 May 2001, 17:19

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