6th November 2001 Archive

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Blair backs broadband

It'll 'revolutionise' our lives

Prime Minister Tony Blair took time out yesterday from a hectic round of international diplomacy to address business leaders about the benefits of broadband. Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference Mr Blair said broadband had the "potential to revolutionise many aspects of our lives". And he …

Telecoms 6 Nov 2001, 09:38
Cisco beats the Street

Long slow road ahead

Cisco posted income of $332 million on the back of $4.4 billion sales in Q1. Add in one-time charges for various exceptional items (acquisition costs, inventory gains and investment write-down), actual net loss is $268 million, compared to a net income of $7 million last quarter and $798 million year on year. Sales were up …

Business 6 Nov 2001, 09:42
HP to give away app server

To BEA, or not To BEA

Hewlett Packard is turning on the pressure on BEA Systems, the leading app-server vendor, by offering its own app-server for free. HP is making the move to pique interest in its web services stack, which earns the company money, HP's Andre Pino told InfoWorld. Sun is mulling similar moves, and after software chief Pat Sueltz …

e-Business 6 Nov 2001, 09:44
Never Mind The Wingdings

Site News Warning: two mild profanities

Laurence Sterne, the 18th century novelist, was an accomplished practitioner of visual jokes on the written page. In his landmark comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a long black squiggle represents the movement of a stick. This is possibly the first typographical joke in the English language. In a …

Bootnotes 6 Nov 2001, 09:50
Photoshop for Mac OS X nears completion?

Updated Out early January, we hear - other apps coming sooner

Adobe at long last announced the immediate availability of the Mac OS X version of Illustrator yesterday and promised that OS X-native versions of its other applications will ship within the next six months. Certainly if there's one application Mac users want ported over to OS X as soon as possible, it's Photoshop. Two separate …

Mac Channel 6 Nov 2001, 11:02
E-envoy says Chancellor is ‘obstacle to broadband’

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

E-envoy, Andrew Pinder, has landed himself in hot water after labelling the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a possible "obstacle to broadband". It seems the prudent Gordon Brown is sceptical about broadband because demand for high speed Internet access has so far failed to take off in the UK. Mr Pinder's remarks at the …

Telecoms 6 Nov 2001, 11:08
Apple seeds 1.6GHz Power Mac G5s

Key developers get kit - and tell us about it

We're getting reports that appear to confirm that Apple has indeed begun to distribute PowerPC 8500-based development systems to its main third-party software partners. It's tricky to confirm the accuracy of these reports without sufficient material to cross-check their claims, but circumstantially they seem plausible. But we'd …

Mac Channel 6 Nov 2001, 11:33
Bin Laden hackers denounce founder

In their own words

Leet German script k1dd13 and would-be investment guru Kim Schmitz aka Kimble, who recently promoted his YIHAT (Young Intelligent Hackers Against Terrorism) Ninja force with loose claims to have hacked a Sudanese bank with /bin/laden accounts, has been denounced by two people claiming to be members of his organization. We …

Security 6 Nov 2001, 12:11
Vodafone/ Mannesmann multi-million payouts not illegal

Says report sponsored by the companies

The multi-million payouts given to executives of Mannesmann and the CEO of Vodafone when the two companies merged, currently being investigated by German authorities, aren't illegal, a new report has concluded. Which is fine until you consider the fact that the report was commissioned by Vodafone and Mannesmann. The two …

Business 6 Nov 2001, 12:13
Alcatel to snuff 1,500 US staff

After ditching 10,000 euro workers

Alcatel is shedding 1,500 US employees. The move comes less than a week after the troubled telecom company announced it is canning 10,000 European job cuts. While the announcement has not been made official to world+dog yet, an email was sent yesterday to workers in the company advising them of the cuts, which it blames on the …

Business 6 Nov 2001, 12:36
US e-Xmas looks bleak

Get ready for some 'very tough sledding'

Softening consumer confidence in the US could hit ecommerce revenues in the run-up to Christmas, according to gloomy research released by San Francisco-based Odyssey. It found that consumer confidence in the US has slipped with shoppers less likely to spend online in the run-up to the busiest time of the year for both retailers …

e-Business 6 Nov 2001, 12:37
T-Online losses down, sales up

Moving slowly towards high profit Net services

T-Online, Europe's biggest ISP, has announced smaller-than-expected losses and increased sales. The company, majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, posted losses before interest, tax etc. of £21.6 million, down from £26.5 million last year. Analysts actually expected losses to increase slightly to £27.7 million. This comes on top …

Business 6 Nov 2001, 13:04
All you ever wanted to know about the DoJ's Windows cave in

Oh all right, you didn't want to know most of it. But for the record...

The DoJ-Microsoft settlement deal doesn't get any better once you've actually had the opportunity to read the small (and often largely unintelligible) print. It won't stop the onward march of integration, it won't stop Microsoft inducing PC companies to take the easy way out, and it won't magically reinvent tough competitors to …

Software 6 Nov 2001, 13:21
Tiscali UK delays broadband satellite roll-out until 2002

Integration first

Tiscali UK has delayed the roll-out of its broadband satellite service until next year while it completes the integration of its UK business. The ISP will begin taking orders in December ahead of a three-month trial beginning in January. Upon completion and contingent upon the level of demand assessed the ISP could make the …

Telecoms 6 Nov 2001, 14:55
Multi-format DVD writer arrives

Speaks your language

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) has developed a multiple format drive that is able to write in both DVD-RAM and DVD-RW formats, as well as DVD-R and CD-RW. HLDS is a joint venture between LG Electronics and Hitachi. Its combo drive, expected to hit the market in January, should be a boon for consumers mired in confusion over a …

Personal 6 Nov 2001, 15:27
The end of the MacLine?

Ceased trading, in rescue talks

Cambridge-based online Mac dealer MacLine has gone bust. It ceased trading last night, according to UK publication MacUser. MacLine says it is close to agreeing a rescue deal with a third party and will issue a statement tomorrow. The collapse of the Cambridge-based reseller comes one month after London Mac dealer Mygate went …

Channel 6 Nov 2001, 16:26
IBM continues writing Lotus out of history

Knowledge base pulled into Big Blue mothership

IBM's desire to completely absorb Lotus has entered a new stage - it has pulled the search function out of the Lotus knowledge base and is directing sysadmins to the main IBM site instead. The Lotus knowledge base is still used by hundreds of customers to search for solutions to problems with Lotus products such as Notes or …

Software 6 Nov 2001, 17:46
WLANs hit 22Mbps

Not quite 802.11g

Buffalo Technology recently announced a range of 802.11b-based WLAN (Wireless LAN) products that allow a theoretical transfer rate of up to 22Mbps. This is twice the transfer rate of regular 11Mbps 802.11b products. The range is the first to ship based on Texas Instruments' (TI) ACX100 chipset. Buffalo, a subsidiary of Japan- …

Data Networking 6 Nov 2001, 17:50
Hewlett family hates Compaq merger (true)

Voting with their feet

Hewlett-Packard today suffered a major embarassment when the offspring of founder William Hewlett announced their intention to vote against the proposed takeover of Compaq. HP shares leapt 19 per cent on the news. The Hewlett family account for approx. five per cent of Hewlett-Packard's share capital, directly or through trusts …

Business 6 Nov 2001, 21:06