3rd August 2001 Archive

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Consumers (lack of) blamed for Western Europe PC sales slump

Where did they go?

Western Europe witnessed the first year-on-year decline in PC sales ever in Q2 this year. And sales for all of EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) were flatter than a flat pancake. PC sales for all of EMEA were 8.38 million in Q2, 0.1 per cent up on the same period last year. Business PC shipments accounted for 6.5 million …

Personal 3 Aug 2001, 09:00
FTSE100 deletes DiData

Make way for Brambles

Dimension Data, Europe's biggest networking equipment reseller, has been kicked out of the FTSE 100 index of the UK's biggest firm. Taking its place is a company called Brambles, the newly demerged industrial services arm of GKN. DiData will also be removed from the FTSE Eurotop 300 and the FTSE CAP 100 indices. Instead it will …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 09:22
Elizabeth the Queen Mother is dead

Updated A nation mourns

The nation was today in mourning after the Yorkshire Evening Post announced the untimely demise of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. This has no doubt come as quite a shock to the Royal Family, not to mention doctors who have been treating the old dear for anaemia in the apparently mistaken assumption that she was still alive …

Bootnotes 3 Aug 2001, 10:33
Tiscali to buy Tiny Online

Step forward the UK's biggest ISP

Tiscali UK could be about to become Britain's largest ISP if reports about its imminent acquisition of Tiny Online prove accurate. The Italian ISP is said to be about to announce that it has bought the ISP for 20 billion lire (£6.4 million), the AFX newswire service reported citing an unsourced story in an Italian newspaper. …

Music and Media 3 Aug 2001, 10:35
Be takeover imminent

Buyer found, sources claim

Be has found a buyer for its operating system and the development team behind, sources close to the company have toldThe Register. The job cuts the company announced this week are an efforts to streamline the workforce to meet the conditions laid down by the buyer, who as yet remains known only to senior Be executives. At this …

Software 3 Aug 2001, 10:36
Apple defeats patent infringement claims – again

Appeal Court rules in favour of ColorSync

The US Court of Appeal has thrown out claims that Apple's ColorSync device-indpendent colour management system illegally uses technology owned by another company. The company in question is called Imatec. It's CEO, Dr Hanock Shalit, made the claim in February 1998, when he alleged that ColorSync violates device-indpendent …

Mac Channel 3 Aug 2001, 10:53
Dell ends great Linux desktop adventure

Tux quietly sidelined

Dell US has confirmed that it's to cease bundling Linux on its desktop PCs and notebooks, nine months after Michael Dell announced the initiative with great fanfare. At the time we were sceptical. It looked like a hasty piece of bandwagon-jumping: Dell's Linux machines still came with a Windows premium, and the company's spotty …

Software 3 Aug 2001, 11:21
Profits go west as Trend Micro expands from the east

Antivirus software specialist reduces sales forecast

Trend Micro, the world's fourth largest provider of anti-virus software, has cut its sales forecast as it reported results that showed it making a loss after taking a number of one-off charges into account. The Japanese firm said its operating profit for the calendar year up to June 30 was ¥3 billion ($24.3 million), up …

Malware 3 Aug 2001, 11:35
Ask Jeeves revenue and loss narrows

Will that be all, sir?

Butler-serving search engine outfit, Ask Jeeves, has warned that it might not make a profit by the end of the year. Ask Jeeves' pessimistic view comes as it reported Q2 revenues $16.7 million, down from $25.9 million for the same period last year. Net loss for Q2 2001 fell to $20.9 million - down from $42 million recorded in …

e-Business 3 Aug 2001, 11:41
Gateway to outsource manufacturing – and leave Ireland?

Gloom and Doom

Gateway, the hard-pressed PC maker, may stop making PCs - certainly in Europe. According to The Irish Times, Mike Maloney, top banana at Gateway Ireland, the company is "examining the option of outsourcing all its computer manufacturing to a specialised electronics manufacturing firms". The company also hinted that it is …

Business 3 Aug 2001, 11:52
Memory madness to drive up 256Mb DRAM sales

128Mb scraping $3 level

Memory prices continued to drop last month, a trend that looks set to drive up sales of 256Mb DRAM. The price of 256Mb DRAM is half what it was six months ago, Nikkei Market Access reports. Due to falling DRAM prices, the first quarter of 2001 saw a trend of buyers moving from 64Mb to 128Mb DRAM chips. With no upturn in sight …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 12:04
VIA ready to sample second Pentium 4 chipset

But no big-name takers for the first one

VIA will soon begin sampling the successor to its first Pentium 4 chipset. The question is, will it have the same trouble being accepted by the major mobo makers? The P4M266 extends the current P4X266 chipset with integrated Savage 4 graphics technology from VIA's S3 Graphics operation. Both support the P4's 400MHz bus, PC100 …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 12:09
Haxploitation: the complete Reg guide to hackers in film

updated The first crypto-porn movie and Star Wars joins the list

Register readers have come up trumps again by pointing out the various omissions in our list of 20 films featuring hackers or hacking. You managed to come up with a list of 20 films of your own in the hacker-film sub-genre, or as Reg readers have christened it, Haxploitation flicks 2001: A Space Odyssey - OK it's more a …

Bootnotes 3 Aug 2001, 12:47
Torridon calls in liquidators

Memory Corp nearly a corpse

Torridon plc, the technology business formerly known as Memory Corp, has been put into liquidation. Backers of the business wouldn't put more funds into the operation, and the company's directors have failed to come up with any fresh investment. The Glasgow office of Kroll, Buchler, Phillips was appointed provisional …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 12:47
US man to amputate legs online

We can't believe it either but there you go

A Mississippi man is to amputate his legs using a home-made guillotine and broadcast the whole grisly operation live online. Paul Morgan is paralysed from the knees down after suffering crippling injuries in a freak accident in 1986 when he was run over by a truck pulling a boat. Financial restraints have denied him the chance …

Music and Media 3 Aug 2001, 13:15
TechExtreme has new owner

NewsFactor swallows hardware site

A couple of weeks ago, my inbox received a blizzard of emails, courtesy of the Sircam virus. Not so far behind was a stream of exhortations to read/link to stuff on Tech Extreme, an hyperactive hardware site which today celebrates its second birthday. Today it also becomes part of the Newsfactor network, a news aggregator-cum- …

Music and Media 3 Aug 2001, 13:31
NetWare 6 Beta rolls out

Portals and Gadgets in abundance

The much-anticipated release of NetWare 6.0 is almost upon us. On Wednesday, the firm started rolling out a number of beta programmes - but they came with a twist. In earlier briefings with the firm they'd kept pretty tight-lipped about certain developments and certain holes that we had noted in the solution. Most notable among …

Software 3 Aug 2001, 13:54
Sex starved virus writers go for revenge

Release worm that heaps abuse on AV expert

A well-known figure in the antivirus community has become the target of abuse by virus writers after saying they only wrote malicious code because they were spotty teenage nerds that couldn't pull. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, has become the subject of a rant contained in a worm called …

Malware 3 Aug 2001, 14:35
‘I say fry him’

Readers speak out on screensaver madness

IT worker faces jail for installing screensaver at work On the subject of David McOwen, the IT worker threatened with 15 years behind bars for installing client software on computers at the college where he worked, many readers were sympathetic. But not so John-Mark Gurney, who offered the following viewpoint: He deserves …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 14:38
Sensitive dotcommers get more birds!

Reader offers pulling 'tips'

LogoWatch MySQL swims with the dophins MySQL boss Michael "Monty" Widenius' claim that MySQL's decision to stick a frolicking dolpin in its new logo was to help save an endangered species was met with raised eyebrows by reader Chris Stehlik. And Peguins use Linux and Vultures read The Reg, so what's your point ? Word to the …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 14:40
Intel pushes for concerted i845 mobo launch

Timed to coincide with 2GHz P4 and massive cuts to other P4s' prices

Intel has been trying to persuade Taiwanese mobo makers to wait until 10 September to ship boards based on its i845 chipset, having all launched their products on 26 August. So says a "local industry source", according to the Taiwan Economic News. The i845 - aka Brookdale - hooks the Pentium 4 up to PC133 SDRAM and is expected …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 14:55
South Africa plans hardline Internet snooping legislation

Bill would ban communications that can't be bugged

Protest is growing in South Africa about the country's plan to introduce legislation that closely parallels the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. South Africa's Interception and Monitoring Bill aims to "regulate the monitoring of communications" and even advocates banning forms of communications that can't be bugged …

Music and Media 3 Aug 2001, 14:56
Netcraft's July 2001 Web Survey

.Net is here and spreading fast

The Netcraft Web Server Survey is a survey of Web Server software usage on Internet connected computers. We collect and collate as many hostnames providing an http service as we can find, and systematically poll each one with an HTTP request for the server name. In the July 2001 survey we received responses from 31,299,592 …

Music and Media 3 Aug 2001, 14:59
Reg reader quits in quest for ‘journalistic truth’

Thomas C. Greene to blame, apparently

Code Red Tribulation is nigh, Steve Gibson warns Newly married US Reg hack Thomas C. Greene has attracted more than his fair share of criticism over his rants regarding Steve Gibson. And his latest article is no exception. Reader Brian L Johnson seems to have reached the end of his tether on this one: I am cancelling my …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 15:00
Kyocera Mita FS-1000+

Review Monochrome laser printer

The Kyocera Mita is not a familiar name, but the printer manufacturer has been around for some time. Its experience shines through in the FS-1000+ to win our Recommended award. While this printer isn't the cheapest in the chart, its performance is comparable to that of a more expensive model. It only offers a parallel connection …

Personal 3 Aug 2001, 15:15
Tiscali confirms Tiny Online buy-out

Another one bites the dust

Tiscali has acquired Tiny Online Ltd - the ISP of Tiny Computers - for E13 million (£8 million) in cash, the Italian giant confirmed this afternoon. There was speculation that a deal was imminent following an Italian newspaper report earlier today. As part of the deal Tiny Computers and Tiscali have inked a long-term …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 15:25
FOTW 'The design sucks, you suck, the whole frikin' site sucks'

Register's 'unique' design slammed

Ever wondered why so many Register readers wear glasses? Reader "Marvin tph" enlightens us... To the Editor: What is with the design on the main page? Granted the 3 incredibly narrow columns even on on a high rez screen is certainly a "unique" design. Of course it also makes the headings hard to read as names and such are …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 15:34
WorldCom loses two VPs

To lose one is careless, but two?

Two senior executives have left WorldCom fuelling speculation that the upheaval at the company has yet to be concluded. Vice President of Sales for EMEA, Liam Strong, and Vice President International Human Resources, David Anderson, have both left the monster organisation. At this stage it's not known why they departed or what …

Business 3 Aug 2001, 16:08
IE 6 to launch on 15 August

P3P in, Smart Tags out - WinXP to shake it all about

Internet Explorer 6 is due to go gold next week and will be released on August 15 as a standalone program, according to software development sites. BetaNews reports that Microsoft has sent an email to beta testers thanking them for their support and suggesting, barring last minute hiccups, that build 2530.1 of IE6 will go gold …

Software 3 Aug 2001, 16:19
Stripper story leaves techies confused

Birds and bees shocker

IBM's pay drove me to start stripping The story of Kitten Natividad, who quit her job with IBM to become a stripper (and subsequently to star in many a Russ Meyer film), should have brought the site hits rushing in from red-blooded Reg readers. But for some readers - like Thomas Venieris - the kinky headline proved a mite …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 16:37
Readers' Letters ‘Antrocentric’ Haines gets dolphin death threat

'Chicken of the Sea' not happy

LogoWatch MySQL swims with the dolphins It seems that Lester Haines has offended some of the more marine-sensitive members of the Register readership with his comments on the shortcomings of dolphins. One reader, who asked to be identified only as "Chicken of the Sea", took it upon himself to gently point this out: You IDIOT …

Letters 3 Aug 2001, 16:50
UltraSPARC V wears extreme threads

Information Overdribble

Sun is looking at multithreading techniques for its next-but-one generation of RISC processor UltraSPARC V, the EE Times reports. Sun already uses the techniques in its MAJC processor. Multithreading or SMT is the trick of making the processor appear to be several 'virtual processors'. The technique will be unveiled for the …

Channel 3 Aug 2001, 17:48