19th June 2001 Archive

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MS confronts another IIS system-level hole

Urgent, etc....

Microsoft IIS is open to total exploitation by an attacker who can establish a Web session and execute a buffer overrun against an ISAPI (Internet Server Application Programming Interface) extension which contains an unbounded buffer. The result would be system-level access, enabling an attacker to run arbitrary code against the …

Software 19 Jun 2001, 08:18
Apple offers six months' interest-free credit on iMacs

Old ones, that it - not the new ones coming next month

Apple UK's offer of interest-free credit for buyers of the current generation of iMac isn't quite as good a deal as it's cracked up to be. First up, all anyone who takes up the offer is doing is helping Apple UK rid itself of old iMacs while the company prepares itself to roll out new models next month. Second, while the loan …

Mac Channel 19 Jun 2001, 09:18
2001 worst year for DRAM demand in history of world… ever

Elpida exec worries about profitability

Never before has the world's demand for memory chips been as low as it will be this year. So says senior Elpida executive Hidemori Inukai, VP and general manager of the memory maker's technical marketing division, interviewed by Japanese paper Nikkei Microdevices under the headline: 'Demand in 2001 likely to be lowest in …

Channel 19 Jun 2001, 09:54
Intel 0.13 micron server Tualatin is go

Today's 'launch' confirmed

Intel will indeed release server-oriented 0.13 micron Pentium III processors today, one of the Great Satan's spokesimps has confirmed. The chips - better known by their codename, Tualatin - will be branded as Pentium III. Despite being intended for server applications, they won't be marked as Xeon parts. As we reported …

Channel 19 Jun 2001, 10:53
Computacenter suffers slow Q2

Same sales as last year

Computacenter has issued a statement saying Q2 sales have been weaker than those in the first quarter. The company doesn't expect its revenues for the period to be any different from those it reported for Q2 2000. The company will announce its results for the six months to 30 June on 15 August. It has said that these will be …

Channel 19 Jun 2001, 10:56
'CRM – the little black dress of IT'

No 392 in an occasional series exposing PR guff

El Reg is indebted to Johnson King Public Relations of Weston Street, London for blending fashion and IT in its bid to make CRM more sexy. Inviting journalists to a press conference on behalf of its client, Detica, it pouts: "CRM - the little black dress of IT." No longer sexy and sophisticated, the LBD is now a byword for …

Bootnotes 19 Jun 2001, 10:58
MI6 spy Tomlinson duped by the Russians?

More questions arise over his Web site

Ex-MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson may well have been duped by Russian intelligence in the publication of his book on Britain's secret services, The Big Breach. Both Web sites that were used to promote his book - bigbreach.com and tomlinson.ru - are now pointing at a Russian music site at Zvuki.ru. The .com is owned by Sokolov- …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2001, 11:11
WSJ takes the rap for MSNBC snafu

BSD and Solaris refs were added in final draft

A cock-up and not a conspiracy appears to be the reason for MSNBC running a Wall Street Journal story about Microsoft that omitted references to the Beast's competitors. Differences between the two were spotted late last week, with MSNBC amending its earlier version of Lee Gomes' WSJ copy to reinstate the references to BSD and …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2001, 11:35
Oracle sees tech gloom lifting

But database sales slip 1%

Oracle claims that the worst of the slowdown in technology spending is now over. Chief financial officer Jeff Henley made the sunny statement when he announced Oracle's Q4 earnings, which had beaten lowered expectations. Although Oracle's revenue for its fourth quarter dropped to $3.26 billion from $3.37 billion a year ago, …

Software 19 Jun 2001, 11:46
ORBS now split into three

Along comes ORDB

First there was ORBS and now there is ORBZ, ORBL and ORDB. We covered the first two yesterday, but Thomas Jensen has been in touch to say he has set up ORDB, standing for Open Relay Database. It should go public later today at http://ordb.org. We look on with interest and at some point we'll try to piece together what each site …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2001, 11:49
Mass Market Scanners: Maturation or Saturation?

Gentle decline

A third of all PC-owning households in the US own a scanner - this is bad news for scanner makers. The US accounts for 40 per cent of all mass market scanner sales and Western Europe soaks up another 40 per cent. With both markets reaching maturity, scanner sales will fall next year from this year's projected worldwide revenues …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 12:02
Compaq Alpha box steals 9i benchmark laurels

Squeaks in ahead of Fujitsu

Compaq is first out of the blocks with a barnstorming midrange benchmark for a system running Oracle 9i. If you've got $13 million to spare - which is a lot for a midrange system, quite frankly - you can get a 32-way AlphaServer GS320 to run 230,533 Benchmark C transactions per minute using Oracle 9i. That works out as $56.62 …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 12:02
UK wants broadband, says survey

Well who'd have thought it

There's reassuring news for broadband providers today after a survey found that four out of ten Net users want hi-speed Net access. More still would be keen to use broadband or cable services if they were aware of what they are, according to the latest annual Internet survey from Which? Online. The survey also claims that …

Telecoms 19 Jun 2001, 12:05
EMC reveals price cuts, almost

Competition no slouch

After the monster revelation that EMC isn't actually the impenetrable beast that everyone thought it was, it seems that the company may have given its head a bit of a shake. It seems to be getting all liberal, wishy-washy even. The storage power-house with the reputation for being the single most expensive piece of technology …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 12:18
BT and One2One back in court over 3G

They want £85 million off Gordon Brown

BT and Deutsche Telekom-owned One2One were back in court yesterday asking the government for £85 million a piece from 3G licence payments. When the Treasury asked for its first payment on the licences for next-generation phones, BT and One2One coughed up on time. However, Vodafone and Orange were given three months longer to …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 12:48
Matrox unveils Millennium G550

Cheap, supports lots of monitors, animates... er... faces

Matrox has today announced its latest graphics chip, the G550, as we predicted a month or so back. The G550, a cut-down version of Matrox's ill-fated feature-rich G800 chip, does indeed skip full DirectX 8 programmable vertex and pixel shading systems to focus on the API's matrix skinning functionality, implemented as the …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 13:05
FujiFilm FinePix 6800 Zoom

Review Digital camera

It has taken a year for us to find a camera to beat our old Best Buy model, the FinePix 4700 Zoom, and it took the same manufacturer, Fuji, to come up with the goods. And the FinePix 6800 Zoom beats its predecessor for style, substance and value for money. Its Porsche-designed, aluminum-magnesium alloy body mimics the sleek …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 13:05
If you fancy a shag – turn your webcam off

Updated American Pie style antics

If you fancy getting naked and sweaty with your girlfriend, it might be a good idea to turn your webcam off. Or at least turn it away from the action, or hang your underpants over the lens. Unless of course you're faking the whole accident thing, and you really want to get your girlfriend into Readers Wives. Anyway, a young …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2001, 13:31
Tiscali/LineOne shafts its customers

First employees, then celebrities, now punters

LineOne - Tiscali UK's consumer ISP - is threatening to evict 103 users from its unmetered service accusing them of "abnormally high" usage. In an email sent to users of LineOne's SurfTime service (a product which provides fixed-rate unmetered access to the Net during evening and weekends) the Tiscali UK-owned ISP threatened to …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2001, 14:16
Chip gloom deepens – sales may now fall 28% this year

Don't panic! Don't panic!

As Dad's Army's Private Fraser so aptly put it, "We're doomed. We're all doomed." 'We', in this case, are the world's semiconductor companies, and the doomsayer is market researcher Gartner Dataquest analyst Bryan Lewis. It's pretty much what fellow chip analyst company IC Insights is saying too. Lewis reckons 2001's total …

Channel 19 Jun 2001, 14:41
Maplin Electronics sold

Get your soldering irons out

Maplin Electronics, the electronics mecca for UK soldering iron geeks, has been sold by one private equity firm to another for £42m. Maplin sells components through catalogue, 59 shop and the Internet. Turnover last year was £52.5m. The selling company was Saltire and the buyer is a new company backed by Graphite Capital and …

Channel 19 Jun 2001, 15:43
PSINet is the Alexander McQueen trousers of the Net market

The crack is showing

Business decision makers are feeling a "renewed sense of optimism in the beleaguered technology sector", according to a straw poll conducted by PSINet UK at a recent Internet exhibition. By eck, what would PSINet Inc in the US - which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - give for such an upbeat assessment? It …

Business 19 Jun 2001, 16:14