The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

8th October 2001 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • UK will miss 2005 broadband goal

    Govt research confirms what we all knew

    Britain's broadband strategy lies in tatters today after Government-backed research found it will fail to meet its goal to make the UK the most competitive and extensive broadband market in the G7 by 2005. The damning report, currently in its final draft, concludes that even if the Government adopts all the recommendations …

    Telecoms 8 Oct 2001, 07:37

  • EB buys its way into France

    Proud new owner of Scoregames

    Electronics Boutique, the UK's biggest games retailer, has jumped into France through the acquisition of Scoregames, a leading French indie. The company is paying FFr80m upfront and up to FFr 120m on performance for Scoregames, a mostly Paris-based chain of 37 computer and video games outlets. The acquisition will take …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 08:18

  • 'We're not killing off floppy drives' – Intel

    Intel Technology Roadmap That's not what its documents suggest

    Intel has denied it is trying to kill off the floppy disk drive, despite suggestions made in documents sent to PC makers and seen by The Register that it would like to see them phased out by the second half of next year. "Intel's position is not to request wholesale the removal of floppy drives from PCs - or indeed any other …

    Personal 8 Oct 2001, 09:43

  • CMP Said to Lay Off Nearly 200

    'Not significant'

    CMP Media is in the process of chopping nearly 200 jobs in a cost-cutting measure made necessary by an historic free-fall in the tech economy, insiders have told SWMS. Although corporate staff was affected, the layoffs were weighted toward CMP's Specialized Technologies Group (STG) and Business Technology Group (BTG), one …

    Business 8 Oct 2001, 09:56

  • Arise Sir BOFH

    Episode 26 In the Court of King Bastard

    Episode 26 "It sounds bad," The Boss comments, as we trundle off to meet the HR types. "A matter of some concern, they said." No doubt it's something crucial like the colour of their fileshare server or the background image on the wallpaper on their desktops... . . . As it happens, I was completely wrong. The matter of some …

    BOFH 8 Oct 2001, 09:58

  • Bidders for BT local loop put heads together

    Summit meeting planned

    The two companies that have put in bids for BT's local loop are planning a summit meeting with a view to working together, the Sunday Times reported yesterday. The meeting between Earthlease, which offered BT £8 billion in July for its local loop, and West LB, which offered £18 billion for BT's entire landline business a week …

    Data Networking 8 Oct 2001, 10:41

  • Time to start downloading software in-store

    And reviews customer support

    Time Computers will test an in-store downloading and burning software replication system in three stores over the next three months. Following the trial period, the company will decide whether to roll it out to its entire retail network. The SoftWide distribution system, from Tribeka Ltd, provides a catalogue of "thousands of …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 10:54

  • John Lewis back in e-business

    Ditches 'never knowingly undersold' line

    John Lewis Partnership has relaunched its Website with six-times more product lines than first time around. At the same time it's ducked the famous 'never knowingly undersold' marketing commitment for its ecommerce venture. The souped-up site went live today. TAlthough the range of lines has increased, the number of computer …

    e-Business 8 Oct 2001, 11:05

  • Music biz wants tougher DMCA, CPRM 2 to protect copyright

    Scary strategies revealed at secret Washington meeting

    Update Our source may not be all he or she claimed to be, and serious doubts have been cast on the veracity of the comments attributed to the RIAA's Rosen and co. For a full update click here. The music industry and its hired muscle, the Recording Industry Ass. of America, plans to step up its war against MP3 file sharing and …

    Music and Media 8 Oct 2001, 11:08

  • Microsoft pulls stealth release of Java for .NET

    Updated You have just missed Visual J#...

    Microsoft has pulled a download that added Java language support to .NET. Microsoft silently made it available on Sunday, less than 48 hours after we first broke the news of the project. A release note, curiously dated October 11 - this coming Thursday - describes it as a beta of "Visual JSharp .NET Version 7.0." From reports …

    Software 8 Oct 2001, 11:54

  • BT admits to bandwidth restrictions for file-sharing sites

    Forced to come clean after evidence builds up

    BT Openworld has been forced to admit it is restricting the bandwidth for certain Web sites after furious customers starting compiling evidence of interference. Previously BT had categorically denied any such restrictions. An email - sent out in response to an increasing number of complaints - reads: "In the short term we have …

    Music and Media 8 Oct 2001, 12:02

  • Solectron buys Stream

    Blast from Past

    Stream International, once one of the world's biggest resellers of software, has a new owner. Step forward, Solectron, the contract manufacturer for outsourcing companies, which is acquiring privately-held Stream for an undisclosed sum. Operating in nine countries, and headquartered in Massachusetts, Stream handles support and …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 12:24

  • Govt tries to sell fixed wireless licences for fourth time

    This time they're giving companies 12 months to buy

    The government is trying for the fourth time to get people interested in the licences that offer fixed wireless access. Let's hope it's a bit more successful this time. The people behind the licence sale, the Radiocommunications Agency, got together last month for a seminar over broadband fixed wireless access (BFWA) and …

    Data Networking 8 Oct 2001, 13:14

  • BT targets SMEs with new services

    Could generate £500m extra revenue

    BT Retail went on the offensive today in a bid to generate an extra £500 million revenue over the next five years from small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). The customer-facing division of the monster telco has teamed up with a clutch of IT heavyweights including BT Cellnet, Cisco, Dell and Microsoft to offer a string of …

    Business 8 Oct 2001, 13:59

  • E-envoy plugs BT

    Whatever next?

    BT laid on an impressive show of force this morning as it launched its new range of ebusiness services for SMEs. E-envoy, Andrew Pinder, was an honoured guest and spent some of his valuable time giving his endorsement to the initiative saying that it was a "great package" and hoping BT "would do well". Not wishing to seem too …

    Bootnotes 8 Oct 2001, 14:01

  • Profit warning – Arrow's turn

    Crap Q3

    Arrow Electronics, the world's biggest electronics components distie, is the latest tech firm to issue a profits warning. The company says that Q3 sales will be approx. $2.2bn, 13 per cent down on Q3, and 35 per cent down on the same period last year. The company will record a net loss of between $.15 and $.20 per share. It …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 14:08

  • Intel takes bumps off packaging

    BBULs hit solder balls

    The boffins at Intel have developed a new means of casing the guts of a processor. The technology, called “Bumpless Build-Up Layer” (BBUL), will only start to be used in the somewhat distant future to build processors, but will pave the way to deliver the “performance of billion-transistor processors”. Currently, the case (or …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 15:02

  • NTL unveils hi-speed unmetered Net access

    Which is nice

    NTL has unleashed an unmetered, always-on high-speed Net access service which, it claims, will go head-to-head with existing ISDN and flat-fee dial-up services. Running at speeds of up to 128kbps over NTL's cable network, the new service provides a stepping stone between dial-up and broadband services. Costing £14.99 a month, …

    Music and Media 8 Oct 2001, 15:46

  • Another step towards cheaper TFT-LCD monitors

    Samsung goes volume with 15in smart displays

    Samsung is kicking its 15-inch TFT-LCD XGA-resolution display panel into mass production. The sample price of the LTM150XH is $350, which includes built-in video-input, but isn't going to set the world alight. However, the mass production move should mark another step in the price fall of TFT-LCD monitors. The panel is a smart …

    Personal 8 Oct 2001, 15:50

  • Western Digital bumps EIDE drive buffer to 8MB

    Big fat cache

    Western Digital (WD) has released its latest Caviar hard drive, the WD-1000BB-SE, a 100GB EIDE hard drive. The thing that separates it from the pack is its 8MB buffer, which the company claims is the largest available in this class of drive. A hard drive's buffer is used to hold the results of recent reads from the disk, as …

    Personal 8 Oct 2001, 16:10

  • First Athlon XP reports

    Some Germans already confused

    A few tests have started popping up on the Web in anticipation of tomorrow's Athlon XP launch from AMD. Ace's Hardware has a posting summarising some benchmarking results published in c't magazine. It shows a 1.53GHz Athlon XP scoring 597 on a SPECint_base2000 test, which put it just one point ahead of a 1.8GHz Pentium 4. It …

    Channel 8 Oct 2001, 16:53

  • The recession is good news. For IBM anyway

    Web services marketing manager tries to sell the dream

    The current recession is music to the ears of IBM's Web services marketing manager, Siva Darivemula. "The recession could help our e-services because companies are looking at cost-cutting," he told us in a flying visit to the UK. Siva reckons that for everyone dollar you spend on Web services kit (from IBM of course), you can …

    e-Business 8 Oct 2001, 16:56

  • Sun lures IIS defectors with iPlanet price cuts

    You've got nothing to lose but your patches

    Sun is doing it best to make hay from the Gartner Group's recommendation to ditch Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). It's announced a 37 per cent price cut for iPlanet Web Server, and again touted its migration services that let Microsoft defectors run their ASP code unmodified. The new offer brings the list price of …

    Software 8 Oct 2001, 18:36

  • The Times misquoted me – crypto expert

    'Lurid urban myth'

    International cryptography expert Professor Ross Anderson has demanded a correction from the The Times for being misquoted on the subject of terrorists' use of email. Last month Phil Zimmermann complained of being seriously misrepresented by the Washington Post, which described Zimmermann as being "overwhelmed with feelings of …

    Security 8 Oct 2001, 18:38