The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

19th September 2002 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Sun discloses UltraSPARC VI and VII, shows IV silicon

    Do or die

    Sun's processor roadmap is at sixes and sevens - or VIs and VIIs to be more precise. The company has disclosed for the first time that it has embarked on UltraSPARCVII (7) work and has been working on USVI (6) for some time, Sun's David Yen said today, in response to a question from The Register. Yen is executive VP of the …

    Channel 19 Sep 2002, 00:58

  • No escape act for General Magic

    Liquidation

    General Magic Inc, a provider of speech recognition technology, is to cease operations in the face of dwindling revenues and its failure either to obtain additional financing or find a merger partner. While the demise of the Sunnyvale, California-based company, which made a $5.4m loss on revenue of revenue of $2.1m in its …

    Software 19 Sep 2002, 06:19

  • Cisco adds Dell to competition

    On report

    If Cisco Systems Inc's reasons for dumping Dell Computer Corp as a reseller last week were in any doubt, the company dispelled it yesterday. Cisco thinks Dell is a competitor. In the company's 10-K annual report, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, the company listed Dell alongside the likes of …

    Data Networking 19 Sep 2002, 06:20

  • UnitedLinux might not be very GPL-friendly

    Closed beta

    UnitedLinux held a telephone party yesterday to announce new general manager Paula Hunter and talk about its open beta release. Lots of curious journalists showed up. The question-askers all had a cynical air about them, and yet UnitedLinux bigwigs didn't seem surprised by the grilling. The underlying question still: what will …

    Software 19 Sep 2002, 06:31

  • Watch out! the audicons are coming

    This time Irish whimsy goes too far

    Irish company 2PM Technologies has unveiled a new application that will let users send whimsical noises alongside audible SMS messages. The noises, which can be attached to any standard text message, have been dubbed audicons, because they are designed to have a similar effect as emoticons, which have been used for years in SMS …

    Mobile 19 Sep 2002, 07:21

  • Prudential sues Unisys for £12m

    Who's Unisys insured with?

    Prudential, the UK insurance giant, is sueing Unisys for £12m over an Internet based IT system which failed to "failures and inabilities to perform its obligations". Called "Unite", the system was designed to enable Prudential sales agents to process orders over the Internet in near real time. Only it didn't work. Now the …

    Business 19 Sep 2002, 07:34

  • Intel cranks up Celeron to 2GHz

    Cheaper, faster

    Intel yesterday began shipping a 2GHz Celeron chip, which means that tcheap PC you buy for Christmas needn't run like a dachshund. Celerons are aimed at the budget PC market, also occupied by AMD's Durons (for now - AMD is winding down Duron production in 2003). Intel's new top-of-the line chip is certainly cheap - $103 a pop …

    Channel 19 Sep 2002, 08:32

  • Internet filtering software ‘damages educational opportunities’

    Censorware fails test. Again

    Surprise, surprise, Internet filtering 'wrongly blocks many sites', according to a new study on the use of this technology in schools. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Online Policy Group ran "Internet searches on Internet searches of all topics from the state-mandated curriculums of California, Massachusetts, and …

    Music and Media 19 Sep 2002, 09:05

  • SK govt ‘sceptical’ of Hynix independence

    Future decided 'soon'

    The South Korea government is 'sceptical' of Hynix's ability to survive on its own, because of falling memory prices. Speaking yesterday, SK Finance Minister Jeon Yun Churl said the memory maker's future will be decided 'soon'. The government is awaiting a report from Deutsche Bank which is mulling break-up, sell-off, or lots …

    Channel 19 Sep 2002, 09:49

  • BT blankets TV with broadband ads

    Part of £33m campaign

    BT is to spend a whopping £33m over the next couple of weeks in a bid to double the take-up of broadband in the UK. From Sunday the monster telco is to spend £1m a day in a ten-day nation-wide TV campaign to plug broadband. Immediately after it will launch into a £23m campaign promoting its no-frills, access-only BT Broadband …

    Telecoms 19 Sep 2002, 09:52

  • VIA climbs on Quad Band Memory bandwidth wagon

    Chipsets, mobos

    VIA and its US sub S3 Graphics are to produce chipsets which support Quad Band Memory (QBM). This memory technology, from Kentron Technologies, is designed to double the bandwidth of DDR SDRAM. Kentron's pitch for QBM is that it "provides DDR II speeds, cost savings and a dramatic performance improvement over DDR333 and future …

    Channel 19 Sep 2002, 11:07

  • Record biz rips off UK – a history lesson

    In the past, don't do it again

    Punters steal when they swap music over P2P services, right? So what is the music industry doing when it sends in the goons to stop retailers from importing CDs? That's what happened in the UK, where the Office of Fair Trading has uncovered evidence of anti-competitive behaviour in the UK CD market. It's a history lesson, the …

    Business 19 Sep 2002, 11:58

  • Rural Hants could get wireless broadband

    Steady

    Rural Hampshire could be getting broadband, according to the boss of Andover-based Net outfit SP10. Marc Warman hopes to provide a wireless broadband service in the south of England by the end of the year, once he gets the go-ahead to install half a dozen base stations around Hampshire and Sussex. SP10 already has around 1,500 …

    Telecoms 19 Sep 2002, 12:01

  • MS slammed for antitrust deal violations in XP, Win2k SPs

    Can't even comply with a toothless deal, says ProComp

    ProComp, the Sun-, Oracle- and usual suspects-backed lobbying group set up to push for tougher measures against Microsoft, has launched an attack on WinXP SP1 and Win2k SP3, saying they contain clear violations of the MS-DoJ proposed antitrust settlement terms they're claimed by Microsoft to comply with. That is not of course to …

    Software 19 Sep 2002, 13:18

  • LCD monitor sales pedal backward in Q2

    Loses share re CRT in UK, France and Spain

    LCD desktop monitor sales in Europe fell for the first quarter ever in Q2 this year. Two quarters of consecutive price rises proved too much for the already weak PC market to bear it seems - In France, Spain and the UK, LCD market share compared with CRTs actually fell in Q2. But if sales of LCD were down in Q2, the long-term …

    Personal 19 Sep 2002, 13:21

  • NHS PKI project in sick bay

    Scrambled technology transfer

    All is not well in the changeover of digital certificate technology providers used to transfer pathology results within the NHS. In May this year the original provider Royal Mail ViaCode closed its digital certificate operation citing slow development of the market and a failure to reach profitability. The NHS Information …

    Security 19 Sep 2002, 13:40

  • Greek gaming tragedy turns to farce

    Retrial

    The Greek gaming tragedy is fast sliding into farce. Last week a Greek judge threw out a case against two cybercafe owners from Thessaloniki, ruling that a law banning computer games was unconstitutional. Had they been found guilty, the two proprietors and an employee could have faced a three month jail sentence and fines of …

    Personal 19 Sep 2002, 13:43

  • Linux rootkit hacker suspect arrested in UK

    That's T0rn it

    A 21-year old from Surbiton, Surrey has been arrested on suspicion of writing and distributing the T0rn rootkit, which dumbs down the process of hacking Linux servers. Officers from Scotland Yard's Computer Crime Unit arrested the man for alleged offences under Computer Misuse Act 1990 earlier this week, as part of a joint FBI/ …

    Security 19 Sep 2002, 15:12

  • HP issues statement on Compaq Fujitsu HDD failures

    Published in full

    Last week we reported a product recall - sorry replacement - of 300,000 faulty Fujitsu hard drives (possibly only in Japan. Fujitsu is not saying). Dozens of Compaq corporate customers, collectively owning a few tens of thousands of Compaq Deskpros, contacted us following our initial report. Time and again, we were told of …

    Personal 19 Sep 2002, 16:48

  • Motorola mega-leak: the agony lingers on

    Czech mate?

    Motorola has plugged one source of the leak that saw most of next year's GSM handsets spill on to the web over the weekend. But a Czech site still appears to have chapter and verse, and includes some information that Howards didn't publish. Motorola sources reminded us that phone roadmaps are updated monthly - and unofficially …

    Mobile 19 Sep 2002, 16:50

  • Flaws in Microsoft VM. Fix now

    Patchwork quilt

    Microsoft has alerted the world+dog to a trio of vulns in its implementation of Java Virtual Machine. The most serious enables an attacker to gain "complete control" over a victim's system. So get patching now. In an advisory, the company warns that the flaws to Microsoft VM, which ships as part of most versions of Windows and …

    Security 19 Sep 2002, 17:00

  • RIM granted handheld email patent – clobbers Handspring

    Nuts

    On Tuesday Research in Motion was granted a patent for a "hand-held email device", and waited just 24 hours before clobbering rival Handspring Inc. with a writ. Have a close look at the patent [6,452,588, here], because it's sure to cast a very long shadow over the handheld wireless and cellular businesses in the coming months …

    Business 19 Sep 2002, 19:00

  • WLAN sales reach for the stars

    But too many players

    Wireless LAN sales are rocketing, with shipments expected to grow 73 per cent this year. Even though prices are falling, revenue will grow 26 per cent this year, according to Gartner Dataquest. The industry will continue this consistent growth in 2003, as worldwide wireless LAN shipments total 26.5 million units, up from 15.5 …

    Mobile 19 Sep 2002, 20:06

  • Gwana-gwana landslide buries Sun Linux

    Analysis Air war delivers lethal payload

    What are we to make of Sun's Linux Desktop announcement? We inadvertently provided the answer ourselves talking to Sun executives yesterday. What a good idea it is, we mused, to revive the vendor show: the press arrives in droves, and for a few hours at least, you have their undivided attention. The trick is to sneak something …

    Business 19 Sep 2002, 20:27