The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

26th October 2001 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • PC World's free XP install offer

    They really are too kind

    UK retailer PC World is pushing Windows XP by offering to load it on your machine for free. It may then, at an outside guess, discover you need more memory and other upgrades, to really jack up your bill. The deal, a "Free Installation and Healthcheck worth £39.99", includes a complete diagnostic and virus check, as well as …

    Channel 26 Oct 2001, 09:17

  • Hynix to axe 20% of overseas staff

    Rest forced to take unpaid gardening leave

    Hynix plans to make 20 per cent of its overseas workers redundant and force the rest to take 30 days' unpaid leave - all to reduce the debt-laden chip maker's costs. The move comes a week after the company announced it had lost a massive 1.6 trillion won ($1.25 billion) for its previous quarter. Hynix has already cut its …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 09:42

  • Contract 128Mb, 256Mb DRAM prices start to rise

    Green shoots of recovery?

    Long-term contract DRAM chip prices have risen over the last month by up to 11.11 per cent, Korean market watcher DRAM Exchange reports. As of 17 October, 128Mb SDRAM chips were being sold under contract for $1.50, up 11.11 per cent on September's price. The cost of 256Mb parts also rose - though by one 3.3 per cent - to $3.10 …

    Channel 26 Oct 2001, 10:09

  • Lastminute does .NET

    IM - your airline has gone bust

    Lastminute.com will offer its users updates on their purchases via Windows Messenger. It has also integrated with Microsoft's Passport authentication scheme, allowing users to automatically logon to the service. All this ties the UK dotcom even closer into Microsoft's .NET vision of integrated Web services. A default tab from …

    e-Business 26 Oct 2001, 10:28

  • Etailers fretful about e-Xmas

    Oh deer

    Reliable delivery is top of the list of concerns for etailers this year in the run-up to Christmas. More than two thirds of those quizzed in a survey said getting delivery right is the most important influence on the future growth of the market. Of course, it wasn't always like that. It used to be security fears and how-to- …

    e-Business 26 Oct 2001, 10:30

  • WinXP saves the planet. Or not

    Of sales predictions and other numbers rackets

    There are two lines on XP sales expectations, but maybe they're not so far apart. In the one corner we have Microsoft's execs, tentatively (or in the case of Bill, not so tentatively) suggesting that XP will save the world, while in the other the hard-nosed analysts predict a slow rollout in businesses, and that XP Home Edition …

    Software 26 Oct 2001, 10:43

  • TSMC Q3 income up 297% quarter-on-quarter

    But down 93.8% year-on-year

    TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry, saw its income fall a massive 93.8 per cent year-on-year during the last three months, according to the company's Q3 2001 results, published today. Net sales for the quarter totalled NT$26.940 billion ($779.552 million), down 43.3 per cent on the same period last year. Net income came in …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 10:45

  • Google mulls premium subscription services

    Rejects 'pay-for-placement' route

    Google is considering offering premium subscription services as a way of boosting its revenues. Niche searches of specialist publications, hi-tech industries and for medical information targeted at enterprise and academic clients are among the options on the table for the popular search engine firm, CNET reports, citing unnamed …

    Music and Media 26 Oct 2001, 10:52

  • Computacenter and GE Capital swap euro ops

    In one country, out of another

    Computacenter is buying the UK and French businesses of rival GE Capital IT Solutions. In return GE Capital is buying Computacenter's German business. GE Capital's UK business cost £1,357,643 in cash. The French operation was a snip at £738,657. Computacenter's German business was sold for £177,773. Computacenter said the …

    Channel 26 Oct 2001, 10:53

  • Man behind £8bn bid for BT's local loop found dead

    Earthlease exec beaten with blunt object

    Theodore Ammon - the financier behind Earthlease's £8 billion bid for BT's local loop - was found dead at his home in Long Island on Monday. Police said he had been beaten about the head with a blunt object. So far, no weapon has been found. Neither do police have a motive for the violent attack. Police are still hunting the …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 11:00

  • Ericsson results disappoint but share price rises

    Plus chairman to leave and probe into results leak

    Ericsson released disappointing results late last night after a leak to the press but then saw a surprising nine per cent rise in its share price as the market reacted favourably to a positive cash flow and the news that chairman Lars Ramqvist was to step down. The markets have since lost their peculiar enthusiasm and the share …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 11:25

  • MS XP signed drivers regime draws consumer groups' ire

    A refreshing change from the usual grouse list...

    The US consumer groups demanding changes in Windows XP returned to the fray yesterday, claiming that the OS "is an illegal extension of the company's illegal monopoly, and which will cause significant harm to both the nation's consumers and non-Microsoft-affiliated software firms and Internet service vendors." Which is what they …

    Software 26 Oct 2001, 11:35

  • Intel, AMD to slash desktop processor prices

    Chip costs cut by up to 29 per cent

    AMD and Intel will both aggressively cut the prices of select desktop processors next week, by up to 23 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively. Intel's cuts will take place on 28 October, which is a Sunday so effectively they won't happen until business opens on Monday morning. Which is when AMD's own cuts will be applied. AMD …

    Channel 26 Oct 2001, 11:53

  • Opera and Mozilla get MSN support

    Very grudging U-turn

    Microsoft will now support Opera and Mozilla users on its MSN.com portal, a change decided late yesterday by Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN. Earlier this week, when users tried accessing its new-look portal, a number of non-MS browsers were denied access and rerouted to a site advising them to download IE in order to …

    Music and Media 26 Oct 2001, 12:31

  • Nasty email gives ANTS a case of worms

    Achtung!

    An email purporting to offer a patch to a Trojan horse scanner, popular in Germany, is actually an Internet worm. The Anset worm, which is doing the rounds on the Internet (and comes in three variants), spreads as an email attachment named ants3set.exe. THis poses as ANTS Version 3.0, but is actually a mass mailing virus that …

    Malware 26 Oct 2001, 13:04

  • MI5 turns to newsgroups to find Bin Laden supporters

    Can you tell us where they are please

    UK internal intelligence service MI5 has been posting various appeals for information on dissident Islamic Web sites over fears that cells of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network al-Qaeda are active in the UK. The message, in Arabic, has been posted on two sites at the moment: www.islah.org (a Saudi site) and www.qoqaz.com (a …

    Assault on America 26 Oct 2001, 13:15

  • Sportal hit by ‘challenging time’

    Needs an injury-time equaliser

    There are fears about the future of Sportal's European operations amidst these uncertain economic times. The sports portal operation is currently in negotiation with shareholders and employees about how to move forward. Although no redundancies have been announced the company has not ruled out job cuts in the future. In a …

    e-Business 26 Oct 2001, 14:12

  • NEC & Toshiba see red

    Toshiba speeds up job cull

    Japan's tech industry got itself deeper into the doldrums today when two of its leading companies announced losses for the half year ending September 30. NEC reported a net loss about £170 million on sales of £14 billion. Last year this time the sales were almost identical, but it managed to push out a profit of around £117 …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 14:26

  • UK IT spend – it's not so bad after all

    Upbeat-ish NCC survey

    At last, a welcome change from all those market carnage / vendor roadkill reports. The National Computing Centre(NCC) today releases its twentieth annual survey of IT spending in the UK. And the results are faintly encouraging. The NCC 2001 survey is based on answers from 390 organisations, with a collective annual IT spend of …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 15:34

  • Wales gets £18.4m for broadband

    Nice

    Wales is to get a cash injection of £18.4 million to help expand its broadband network. Welsh Assembly First Minister Rhodri Morgan and Assembly e-minister Andrew Davies said the cash will bring broadband within the reach of many more people in the Principality. Over the next six months the money will be used to bring high- …

    Telecoms 26 Oct 2001, 15:39

  • T-Motion and its digital uncertificate

    Admin cock-up

    Mobile services firm T-Motion has a security certificate on in its Web site, which fails to work properly for three reasons. Visitors to T-Motion's UK site who try to use the secure logon option get an alert which tells them: The certificate expired on October 4 2001 The certificate was issued "to a company you have chosen …

    Security 26 Oct 2001, 16:03

  • Tweenies can't sing and dance on WinXP

    More on that DVD incompatibility

    A reader has been in touch complaining that his four-year-old daughter can't access her Tweenies DVD (don't ask - just go here). An official response from the BBC explains that no BBC Multimedia titles have been designed to work with XP. And worse, the BBC says it currently has no plans for a patch for XP. If you have a small …

    Personal 26 Oct 2001, 16:06

  • Now Logica bans stamps

    Cost-cutting frenzy continues

    Logica, the "global solutions company", is extending its Draconian cost-cutting spree still further with an announcement today - sent to all staff via internal email - that stamps are being banned. Yep, from now on all staff will have to go via human resources to pick up their payslips because the company has decided that using …

    Business 26 Oct 2001, 17:07

  • WinXP doesn't feel the Force Feedback

    Sorry SideWinder

    Gamers using Microsoft's SideWinder Force Feedback game controllers and wanting to upgrade to WinXP are in for a bit of a shock - not all will work. At the launch yesterday Steve Ballmer boasted to the audience that WinXP could support 24 languages, more than 1,000 PC models, 1,700 applications and 12,000 devices. These do not …

    Personal 26 Oct 2001, 17:13

  • Win-XP firewall defeats Gibson NanoProbes

    How can the bad kiddies find you if Steve can't?

    A reader recently told me that the default settings on his Win-XP Pro firewall made him invisible on the Net, at least according to Steve Gibson's ShieldsUp security diagnostic tool. But this isn't what Gibberson is worried about. As we know, he's terrified that Harry Homeowner users will be Trojanized six ways to Sunday by …

    Security 26 Oct 2001, 19:26

  • Email deletion bug baffles McAfee

    Murder on the Outlook Express - Part II

    A glitch in McAfee's VirusScan software which 'disappears' email for Outlook Express users is more of a problem than it first appeared, the company says. An intermittent problem involving the interaction of Windows 2000 or XP with McAfee VirusScan 4.5.1 and Outlook Express 6 means that the index file to existing email folders …

    Security 26 Oct 2001, 20:30