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19th December 2001 Archive

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  • The Google Underpants Winners are…

    Best Usenet posting never seen

    Last week we invited you to submit the best Usenet posting you'd never seen. Thanks to Barry and David at Google, who've send us some fresh pairs of undies, we can announce not one, but four winners of our Google Usenet Underwear Competition. And they've helped avoid a disaster. The original underpants earmarked as the prize …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 02:17

  • Motorola to axe more fabs

    "Asset light"

    "Asset light" Motorola will close more chip fabs and lose another 9,400 staff to save a $1 billion a year. "The greatest impact of these actions is in the Semiconductor Products segment," said the company in its Q4 guidance. Moto wouldn't say which fabs would be closed. The company has suggested that it will spin-off its loss- …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 02:37

  • Intel poised to roll out 54MBps WLANs in Europe

    I have a cunning 802.11a-ready plan...

    Intel is set to roll out high speed wireless LAN kit based on the 802.11a standard in Europe from the start of next year. Which is a pretty good trick, given that 802.11a is currently illegal this side of the pond. But before you reach for your regulators, we should assure you that the would-be Wavezilla will be shipping dual …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 11:37

  • Court halts Adobe InDesign shipments in copyright case

    What goes around...

    A judge has stopped Adobe shipping its Quark-killer desktop publishing package InDesign. The litigious software giant, which recently used copyright provisions in the DMCA to send Russian programmer Dmitiy Sklyarov to the clink, has itself been accused of breaching copyrights held by Trio Systems, a tiny software company based …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 11:56

  • Losses narrow at 3Com

    Gain after pain

    3Com has reported narrowed losses with the announcement of its Q2 results, which show its restructuring plan is on track. The networking firm reported a net loss for the quarter of $104m on revenues of $394 million. This compares to a net loss of $129m on revenues of $390 million in Q1. Operating expenses, which include …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 12:17

  • UK Govt plans to tackle regional digital divide

    Wales unplugged...

    The UK Government is putting its faith in its UK Online Centres in a bid to ease the growing digital divide between different regions of the UK. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that only one in four homes in Northern Ireland, the North East of England and Wales has Net access. In contrast, …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 12:45

  • Ireland launches 3G ‘beauty contest’

    Operators grumble about cost of licences

    Ireland has fixed the price firms will have to pay for a 3G licence in the country. Unlike Britain, Ireland has decided to award four licences through a "beauty contest" and not through an auction process. Reuters reports that the one "A" licence, which requires comprehensive coverage, will cost 50.7 million euros (£31.4), and …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 12:48

  • Tax AOL now, says Freeserve

    Pluthero 'bitterly disappointed' at Govt inaction

    A tax loophole that exempts AOL from paying VAT in the UK could about to be closed. A new European Directive that is scheduled to be ratified in February would mean that non-European Union businesses offering digital services in the EU would now be liable to pay Value Added Tax (VAT). The decision has been jumped on by rival …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 17:36

  • Huge WinXP sales don't save planet after all

    That was one we made up earlier...

    As The Register, tediously, has been telling you for some months now, it's important for Microsoft to be able to claim that XP is the biggest-selling software product of all time, selling X times as fast as the previous (Microsoft) biggest selling software product of all time, cure for cancer, world famine, saviour of the …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 19:50

  • HP joins Liberty Alliance

    Signs up for single sign-on

    Seven companies are to join the MS Passport-rival Liberty Alliance today, amongst them Hewlett Packard. That's a hugely significant addition because when Sun put the coalition together, its chief server rivals IBM and HP were missing. So it'll be hard to sustain the 'friends of Sun' jibe at the Liberty Alliance now. The …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 20:27

  • Symbian moves US office to /dev/null

    Updated Home rule

    Symbian has closed its US office in Redwood City, CA and all but three of the staff have been made redundant. The cuts took place last month, when we were out of town. A spokesperson for Symbian told us the office wasn't closing, but moving to a new location in Redwood City". "There is still a US team comprising partnership …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 20:42

  • Europe's server sales slump again in Q3

    Not a lot of fun for Sun, particularly...

    Server sales in Western Europe fell for the third consecutive quarter in Q3, says Gartner Dataquest. Overall shipments fell 7 per cent to 248,000 compared to the same quarter last year, while revenues slumped 21 per cent to $3.26 billion. But the pain doesn't seem to have been dispensed equally. Scaleable enterprise servers, …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 22:46

  • Linux takes obscurity route to datacentre

    SAN castles...

    Yes, OK. We know you're busy people. But our passion for bringing obscure Linux file system announcements to your attention remains undiminished. Especially when they're important, and this one is certainly worth keeping tabs on. Last week Sistina released version 5.0 of the open source GFS clustered file system. It richly …

    Business 19 Dec 2001, 22:48