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27th February 2002 Archive

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  • Xerox priesthood suffers Graffitti setback

    Ancient alphabet not owned by elders

    Xerox has been denied in its attempt to halt Palm from using the notation system Graffitti. Xerox priests claim to have sole legal rights to own the ancient alphabet, citing US Patent No. 5,596,656. Graffiti originated in the Nile Delta 4,000 years ago, where it was first used to record livestock. The name is a corruption of …

    Business 27 Feb 2002, 00:10

  • Hewlett's “Plan B” gains ground

    Greed factor

    Walter "Plan-" B Hewlett appears to be winning support for his plan for HP to abandon the Sircam merger, spin-off the printing division, and release Carly somewhere over the Himalayas. An institutional investor, Brandes Investment Partners, likes Hewlett's "spin-off and eject" plan so much it's swinging its voting shares, 1.27 …

    Business 27 Feb 2002, 01:20

  • Sun talks two-wave server blade strategy

    Gigabit Ethernet today, Infiniband blades tomorrow

    Sun has outlined its server blade strategy. It's more of a meta-strategy right now, with more "meta" than "strategy", But at least Sun's talking. Product will appear in the second half of this year, in 5x densities, with 15 CPUs in a 3u rack. Sun's director of blades development, Colin Fowles, told us that anything that falls …

    Hardware 27 Feb 2002, 01:27

  • GPL enforcement goes to court for first time in MySQL case

    Lack of Progress

    MySQL AB, the originator of the MySQL GPL database, is taking Progress Software Corporation, the corporate parent of NuSphere to court because it continues to distribute a database product that links statically to MySQL's code. The product was originally released without the accompanying source code. The Free Software …

    Software 27 Feb 2002, 03:19

  • N64 Killed My Son!

    Fall follows seizure

    A woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is suing Nintendo for "unspecified damages" after her 30-year old son died during a marathon session on his N64. the unfortunate man died after hitting his head on a table during a seizure while playing with the console. The man first started suffering seizures after buying his N64 in 1999, …

    Personal 27 Feb 2002, 03:24

  • MS takes a tilt at mid-market CRM

    A foot in the door

    The Microsoft Corp juggernaut is preparing to rumble into the CRM market. The Redmond, Washington-based software giant has unveiled plans for a CRM solution aimed at the small to medium-size business sector. Microsoft CRM, slated to ship in the US in the fourth quarter 2002 with phased shipments outside North America from …

    Software 27 Feb 2002, 07:36

  • Roll up for the Enron auction webcast

    Everything must go, laundry included

    Seeing everybody else has been doing the Enron auction and all the shredder jokes we weren't going to bother, but our eye couldn't help catching the featured items in the London sale, and it all became somehow entrancing. The shredders, BBC Radio 4 tells us this morning, have been withdrawn, but... 50 Cisco routers and switches …

    Music and Media 27 Feb 2002, 08:33

  • How to TiVO-ize your PC

    IDF But Windows only, right now

    TiVO-like time shifting capabilities have come to the PC. At the Intel Developer Forum, Rakesh Agrawal, CEO of thirteen-man SnapStream, took his PVS software through its paces for The Register's pleasure. It does two clever things. First it does the job of a DVR (digital video recorder) like a ReplayTV or a TiVO, complete with …

    Personal 27 Feb 2002, 10:35

  • Bulldog calls for LLU cost cuts

    Or wave bye-bye to competition

    Bulldog Communications – one of a handful of companies actively involved in local loop unbundling – has warned that BT’s decision to slash the cost of wholesale DSL could snuff out competition. Bulldog warned that unless there were "equally aggressive cuts in wholesale costs for LLU operators like Bulldog, it is unlikely that …

    Telecoms 27 Feb 2002, 10:36

  • BT Openworld announces broadband price cut

    Yawn...

    Britain’s biggest broadband ISP – BTopenworld – is to cut the cost of its consumer DSL service by £10 to £29.99 a month. Today's announcement by BTopenworld comes hard on the heels of yesterday’s news that BT Wholesale is to lower the wholesale cost of DSL to under £15 a month. The ISP also finally announced plans to introduce …

    Telecoms 27 Feb 2002, 12:57

  • Freeserve in dial-up price rise, fall, soft-shoe shuffle?

    Dunno - but we have a bid for weirdest no comment substitute award

    The UK’s biggest ISP, Freeserve, could be about to increase the price of its flat-rate narrowband service. Or not. We’ve received an anonymous tip-off that from next week the price of Freeserve’s flat rate dial-up service will increase by £1 to £13.99 a month. Of course, not wishing to print any old rumour we contacted …

    Telecoms 27 Feb 2002, 13:00

  • AMD shows Hammer outside Intel show

    IDF-ish Gatecrasher

    Advanced Micro Devices Inc showed off prototypes of its x86-64 Hammer technology yesterday even as Intel Corp failed to dampen speculation that it is developing a similar hybrid technology,Joe Fay writes. AMD's Hammer technology is designed to support both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and applications and yesterday …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 13:40

  • Morse hit by slow server sales in 2001

    IBM up, HP and Sun down

    Poor sales of servers at Hewlett-Packard Co and Sun Microsystems Inc caused Morse Group Plc, Europe's largest server reseller, to report a large drop in revenue in the second half of 2001. In the six months to December 31, the Brentford, UK-based company made a net loss of £6.1m ($8.7m) compared to a gain of £8.3m ($11.8m) in …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 13:47

  • This week's bunch of fives from IT-Minds

    The usual 20 per cent off five top books

    This week's discounted bunch of fives from Reg associate IT-minds bookstore features Software for your head by Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy. The book represents a new approach to creating software teams that ship and produce software on time, every time. Sounds good. It normally sells at £30.99, but Reg readers can, …

    Site News 27 Feb 2002, 14:06

  • Firm adds bandwidth management into the WLAN mix

    Bluesocket on European reseller recruitment drive

    Bluesocket is aiming to make wireless LANs both secure and easier to manage by offering policy enforcement and bandwidth management features on its line of wireless gateway devices. The company, which is touring Europe recruiting resellers this week, is promoting its flagship product, the WG-1000, as a means of offering secure …

    Data Networking 27 Feb 2002, 14:07

  • Reg editor struck by lightning

    French weather implicated in total destruction of laptop

    The day-to-day news business at Vulture Central today suffered an unforeseen glitch when editor John Lettice's house in Normandy was struck by lightning. Mr Lettice was on news editing duties while in France and had just finished perusing a hot networking story by firebrand John "Lips" Leyden when disaster struck. "I felt a …

    Bootnotes 27 Feb 2002, 14:17

  • Intel scales back RDRAM for Xeon workstations

    IDF And it was going so well for Rambus

    Intel is to drop support for Rambus RDRAM memory in new Xeon workstations, according to a roadmap obtained by EBN's Jack Robertson. The chip giant will instead use a Placer chipset with DDR memory for DP Xeon workstations and a Granite Bay DDR chipset for single processor versions. These replace RDRAM-supporting 860 and 850 …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 15:15

  • Morpheus goes to sleep – users locked out

    Incompatible software blamed

    Users of file swapping service Morpheus arelocked out of the service because technical problems. MusicCity Morpheus blames the problems on incompatibilities between it's the way its network works and a fresh release of software provided by Fast Track software, the KaZaA Media Desktop v1.5, which was released on February 11. …

    Music and Media 27 Feb 2002, 15:26

  • Intel outs Prescott, demos 4GHz desktop

    IDF Concept Platform

    Intel is to introduce hyperthreading to the desktop next year with Prescott, the codename for the next major iteration of desktop class Pentium 4s. Prescott is slated to ship in volume the second half of 2003 and is to be built using the as-yet-unintroduced 90nm manufacturing process, Intel veep Louis Burns revealed today at …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 17:48

  • Tiny fallout: 130 jobs on line at Inkfish

    Firm is 'optimistic'

    Around 130 call centre jobs are at risk in Redhill, Surrey, following the buyout of Tiny Computers by Time Computers. Inkfish supplied technical helpdesk support services for Tiny Computers. But following the PC maker’s buy-out by Time last month the contract to supply tech support is under review. A decision on whether Time …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 17:49

  • Intel outs Banias, mobilises notebook designers

    IDF It's a wireless world - soon

    Intel today demoed Banias, the codename for its latest class of mobile processors, together with the tweaked- for-mobiles Odem chipset, for the first time at IDF. Shipping in the first half of next year, Banias marks the next generation of P4 processor technology for notebooks. The first iteration of P4 technology for mobiles …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 18:34

  • Big things come in little (Intel) form factors

    IDF Tidewater and Big Water

    Intel today announced two new small PC form factors, codenamed Tidewater and Big Water, for OEMs. These are intended to help system builders produce small footprint PCs without any sacrifice in performance. Tidewater incorporates a Micro ATX board and is out in April and is a nine liter box - at least that's what we think Louis …

    Channel 27 Feb 2002, 19:46

  • Woz blesses Captain Crunch's new box

    Legendary phone phreak debuts anti-hacker kit

    John Draper, the man better known as legendary phone phreak Captain Crunch, is soon to debut the fruits of recent labors: a box designed to thwart hackers. Crunch played a pivotal role in the phone underground thirty years ago, and paid for it with two spells in the clink. Crunch got his name by discovering that a plastic …

    Security 27 Feb 2002, 21:32

  • New York Times internal network hacked

    Classic blunder: open proxies

    Security holes in the New York Times internal network left sensitive databases exposed to hackers, including a file containing Social Security numbers and home phone numbers for contributors to the Times op-ed page, SecurityFocus Online has learned. In a two-minute scan performed on a whim, twenty-one-year-old hacker and …

    Security 27 Feb 2002, 23:31