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21st September 2001 Archive

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  • Why Microsoft's Open HailStorm promises flatter to deceive

    Embrace and extend Pidgin Squadrons flap home to roost

    Today's Hailstorm announcement was cultivated to gain maximum favourable publicity for Microsoft, but Redmond's concessions amount to nothing it hasn't already conceded, in one form or another. In fact, seasoned watchers including Jeremy Allison - co-lead of the SAMBA project - interpret the "concessions" as extending the …

    Software 21 Sep 2001, 00:31

  • MS, DoJ wrangle jointly over schedule, size of noose

    A conclusion before 2003? Don't count on it...

    Microsoft and the Department of Justice have filed their "Joint" (but largely separate) Status Report detailing two wildly divergent plans for the future conduct of the case. From the DoJ's point of view it's all largely done and dusted, so we can move to proposed remedies by 9th November and a full evidentiary hearing on 4th …

    Software 21 Sep 2001, 08:19

  • Bush rallies Congress to war

    Not that it took much pushing

    US President George "Dubya" Bush addressed a joint session of Congress attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday night, and offered a sketchy outline of his plan to rid the world of terrorism. First on the to-do list appears to be engineering a ground war in Afghanistan. On Thursday a council of Afghani clerics …

    Assault on America 21 Sep 2001, 09:47

  • Palm's revenues rise 29.6%

    Updated But PDA shipments grew by only 7%

    Palm's attempt to revive its fortunes took a big step forward last quarter, the first of its current fiscal year (2002), but it still has a long way to go. For the three months to 31 August, the PDA pioneer achieved revenues of $214.3 million, well down (47 per cent) on the $401 million it reported this time last year, but …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 10:06

  • Palm confused over PDA sales figures

    Did it ship 750,000 PDAs last quarter - or just 300,000?

    There's a very interesting discrepancy in Palm's latest quarterly results statement, posted last night and cover the first quarter of the company's 2002 fiscal year. The release says: "During the quarter, Palm shipped approx. 750,000-Palm-branded devices, which brings cumulative shipments to more than 14 million." That sounds …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 10:26

  • EMC slashes 2,400 jobs

    Sales slump due to 'blanket of hesitation'

    EMC is to axe 10 per cent of its workforce due to a slump in sales of storage kit. The firm, best known for its high-end, proprietary Symmetrix boxes, is to show 2,400 people the door, bringing its employee headcount down from 23,400 to 21,000 in its second round of job cuts this year. Joe Tucci, EMC's president and chief …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 10:29

  • BTopenworld accused of providing two-tier Net access service

    Heavy users targeted

    BT has denied allegations that it plans to give an inferior service to thousands of heavy Internet users. According to documents leaked to the BBC's Watchdog programme, some 34,000 customers of BTopenworld Anytime - BT's 24/7 unmetered narrowband service - are being migrated to different dial-up numbers. Punters are being …

    Music and Media 21 Sep 2001, 10:32

  • Fujitsu shuts Dublin chip plant

    Sees 'no end to market slump'

    Fujitsu is shutting its Dublin chip assembly plant in November and scrapping 338 workers. It says it sees no end to the semi-conductor market slump. The plant, Shinko Microelectronics Ireland, is 49 per cent owned by Fujitsu and 51 per cent owned by Shinko Electric. Fujitsu owns 50 per cent of Shinko Electric. Shinko Electric …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 10:37

  • TSMC Q3 income to be 400% up on Q2

    Revises guidance upward

    TSMC's Q3 profit is going to be rather better than the company forecast at the end of Q2. The world's largest chip foundry's third quarter ends next week. It says income for the period will total "at least five times that of Q2". TSMC reported net income of NT$312 million ($9.46 million) last quarter, so it should see profits …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 11:19

  • BT confirms 3G building contract with Deutsche Telekom

    Saves themselves £2.5 billion

    BT and Deutsche Telekom have signed legally binding contracts over the joint construction of 3G phone networks in Europe. They reckon the deal will provide them with 30 per cent cost savings over a 10-year period - amounting to around £2.5 billion. Both companies announced their intention to build the networks together in June …

    Data Networking 21 Sep 2001, 11:34

  • Hynix bail-out plan sets Micron a-grumbling

    Mutter... state intervention... grumble... unfair competition... muttter... last man standing...

    Micron Technology is apparently rather narked about the level of help rival memory maker Hynix is getting at the moment - and has demanded that the US government investigate the matter. As issue is a key aspect of Hynix's debt recovery programme: a debt-for-equity deal valued at $2.32 billion. Under the terms of the plan, …

    Channel 21 Sep 2001, 11:51

  • Netbenefit revenue falls, losses increase

    Demand for domain registrations stabilised, company says

    Netbenefit - the Internet business services outfit that's big into domain name management and web hosting services - remains upbeat today despite reporting falling sales and increased losses. Turnover for the year to June 30 2001 slid to £6.4 million from £7.5 million the year before. Pre-tax losses for the year increased from …

    e-Business 21 Sep 2001, 12:14

  • Compaq leaves customer details open for all to see

    Hits 7.5 out of 10 on the stupidometer

    Compaq has outdone itself by leaving extensive customer details for anyone to see on the Internet. For some reason it has decided that everyone in the world ought to be able to see everyone who has bought a Pocket PC 2002 upgrade. And that means name, address, customer number, order number - it only stops short of giving credit …

    Security 21 Sep 2001, 12:16

  • Apple to score industry first with dual 1394b, USB 2 support

    Exclusive 'Apollo' gigahertz G4 lined up in case G5 not ready in time

    Apple's next Power Macs, due to be announced early next year at Macworld Expo San Francisco, will "definitely" support the USB 2.0 and 1394b connectivity specifications and the DDR SDRAM memory standard, company deep throats have told The Register. With USB 2.0 not supported by Windows XP, providing the second-generation …

    Mac Channel 21 Sep 2001, 13:31

  • Tarpit tool sticks it back to teenage mutant Nimda worm

    Stuck in the middle with you

    A tool designed to at least partially curtail the scanning activities of malicious Internet worms like Nimda has been released. The tool, called LaBrea, creates a tarpit ("sticky honeypot") by making use of unused IP addresses on a network and creates "virtual machines" that answer to connection attempts LaBrea answers those …

    Malware 21 Sep 2001, 13:46

  • Where the hell is the e-commerce minister?

    Opinion This is getting beyond a joke

    When Labour won its second term in power, the previous e-commerce minister Patricia Hewitt was moved to Trade Secretary, leaving the position open. This was soon filled by the inexperienced boots of one Douglas Alexander, a young lawyer and a close member of Gordon Brown's election team. We gave Mr Alexander a hard time, …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 13:54

  • Tiscali acquires Austrian ISP

    European expansion continues

    Tiscali has continued its European expansion plans with the acquisition of Austrian-based B-2-B ISP, planetONE, for E2 million (£1.26 million) in cash. The company said that the transaction was "in line with [its] current consolidating strategy in the B2B market". planetONE provides a number of business services including …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 14:12

  • 'We're not all rednecks and warmongers…'

    Americans disown hate mail

    Reg's 'Dickless Armchair Warriors' go to battle They're speaking out their arse. Always an education to read the Outrage of the Ignorant and Flag-Wrapped. The Register's coverage has been excellent. I'm no particular fan of Cockburn, but it's very hard to find ANYONE who doesn't kneel and kiss the establishment ring. Best …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 14:26

  • This week's SirCams

    Hi! How are you?

    This is the first in an occasional series rounding up the week's best SirCam virus emails. We're not going to reveal their contents, but merely want to illustrate the strange poetry that SirCam continues to generate. Oh, and if you recognise your name amongst them, could you please get disinfected? Cameron Andrew - "France …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 14:38

  • My cat is a dog! The twisted logic of ZDNet's DOS FAT FUD

    Drive-Letter Letter-Time

    Many, many, many of you wrote in about Befuddled by file systems, browsers, computer history? Here's a selection. I suffer this phenomena for years. Everytime when someone wrote crap in a mag, friends of mine who read that believe the stuff and try to tell me I'm stupid. Tom Servo You were much to kind to David B. …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 14:56

  • LG FL563LE

    Review Flat-panel monitor

    The flat-panel market has traditionally been out of bounds to the consumer. But while individuals with bottomless bank accounts will continue to set their sights on the larger 17in and 18in models, a basic 15in flat-panel can now be snapped up for the same price as a quality 19in CRT monitor. Or even less perhaps - pound for …

    Personal 21 Sep 2001, 15:03

  • Leifur Eiriksson is ours – Iceland

    It's grim up North

    Norway - is it part of Europe or what? I have a son who just started in high school. He is taking an advanced course in history. One of the first items discussed in his class was the importance of taking the time to do the proper research on any topic he will investigate this year. I will show him your article to demonstrate …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 15:04

  • Security ‘complacency’ knocked by terror attacks

    But threats haven't changed

    Last week's terrorist outrage had significantly changed the IT security landscape - firms need to take account of the possibility of catastrophic attacks, as well as the more limited hacker assaults we've all grown used to. That's the feeling we got from the representatives of financial institutions and government organisations …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 15:28

  • Microsoft to miss first-day Xbox shipments by half – analysts

    Games publisher suggests as much too

    Microsoft isn't going to sell as many Xboxes on 8 November - the day of the console's launch - as it thinks it will. The plan is to ship 600,000-800,000 machines on the first day, but analysts put the figure at around half that. Microsoft, of course, isn't saying anything, and it's lack of denial can perhaps be seen as evidence …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 15:33

  • Oftel's Edmonds says LLU ‘not been a success’

    A 'painful and miserable process'

    The head of Oftel has said that local loop unbundling has "not been a success" and that the practicalities surrounding opening up BT's network to competition has been a "painful and often miserable process". Interviewed on the online business video service, Cantos.com David Edmonds explained that LLU had been one of the "most …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 15:36

  • Remembering Sun's Phil Rosenzweig

    WTC bombing victim

    An addendum to your story "Sun WTC staff are all alive", you might mention that Phil Rosenzweig, director of horizontal scaling in the Solaris software organization, was on board American flight 11. He joined Sun in January 1991 - I was his CTO at that time - and managed a number of networking software groups. He …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 15:42

  • So, what shall we ban next?

    John Keegan

    Bomb the ISPs - Daily Telegraph Surely this mean that we should ban shortwave radio? Ham radio? These are also methods of communicating securely when combined with that all time favourite a pen, pad and codebook! Ban biros - they can be used for cryptography. Oh, and we'll have to ban going for walks, these can be used for …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 15:42

  • Norway back in Europe – official

    Cash'n'Carrion embraces sons of Oslo

    In response to our piece yesterday which condemned Norway to e-commerce oblivion somewhere up near the Arctic Circle, we are pleased to announce that the country is now officially back in Europe. To recap, Norwegians visiting our Cash'n'Carrion Register shop were outraged to discover that their country was listed under 'Rest of …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 15:46

  • US ecommerce on the up, up, up

    $156bn by 2005 apparently

    Business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce revenues in the US are predicted to rise sharply in the next couple of years, according to analysts at eMarketer. In its latest eCommerce:B2C Report - which aggregates and analyses data from more than 100 sources - eMarketer claims that last year US consumers spent $38.5 billion but that …

    e-Business 21 Sep 2001, 15:50

  • HP told to pay three-and-half years' CD-R drive royalties

    How many CD-R drives have you shipped? German court asks

    Hewlett-Packard has been ordered by a German court to reveal how many CD-R and CD-RW drives it has sold in the country during the last three and a half years. The order is the latest chapter in story going back almost as long. Sued by the music makers and publishers as an exemplar CD-R drive maker, HP was forced in February …

    Personal 21 Sep 2001, 15:58

  • Reuters cybersquats on man's domain

    No you can't have it Mr Reters

    Just when you thought cybersquatting was getting dull because WIPO just handed over every domain to whoever was richer or more famous, along comes one of those great examples that makes you realise how insane the whole system has become. It was about, ooh, 15 months ago that WIPO decided that not only were big companies …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 16:26

  • AMD narrows Palomino launch timeframe

    From six months to three. Golly, what an admission that is...

    'AMD confirms Palomino will launch in Fall' shouts a PC World.com headline today, though really it's not much of admission that the chip company has actually made. AMD's roadmap has long shown Palomino - the latest generation desktop Athlon - shipping in the second half of this year. Narrowing the focus from six months to three …

    Business 21 Sep 2001, 16:37

  • Sanity and sweet reason, ZDNet's Dr Unwin and a Norwegian Wood

    Letters Readers defend Vulture terror coverage

    Were we right to print inflammatory letters critical of our terror coverage yesterday? These flames aren't representative of our postbag - but they are representative of a part of our readership. Still, an astonishing number of you have written to us in the past twenty four hours telling us that the warmongers aren't …

    Letters 21 Sep 2001, 16:55