10th January 2003 Archive

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Divine Inc. extracts dotcom tithe from UK firm

All your shopping carts are belong to US

UK e-commerce firms trading in the US face the prospect of costly payouts to Divine Inc., which claims ownership of a patent on shopping cart technology. This week Thompson and Morgan, an Ipswich-based plant seeds specialist, settled a patent claim brought by Chicago-based Divine against it in US courts. Thompson and Morgan …

Music and Media 10 Jan 2003, 00:21
SAP posts solid prelims

And explains US re-org

SAP AG yesterday announced preliminary fourth-quarter and year-end figures for fiscal 2002, anticipating full-year sales to be up slightly on fiscal 2001, writes Jason Stamper. It said it expects software license revenue for the fourth quarter to be around €950m ($997.5m), beating analyst expectations but nevertheless down …

Hardware 10 Jan 2003, 09:30
RealNetworks preps format-agnostic DRM

Helix beta

RealNetworks Inc plans to help prevent theft of digital content with the beta release of its digital rights management system, Helix DRM. Traditionally, film studios and music companies have been less than keen to distribute their content in electronic form due to the ease with which it can be copied and distributed, usually …

Software 10 Jan 2003, 09:30
IBM general managers play musical chairs

Zollar takes iSeries

IBM chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano is starting to move around the captains of various business units, writes Timothy Prickett Morgan. Last week, Al Zollar, who has been general manager of the Lotus unit within Software Group, was tapped as general manager of the MidMarket Server Division within IBM's Server Group - the unit …

Servers 10 Jan 2003, 09:31
Computacenter meets 2002 profit target

Flat sales

Computacenter Plc has met its profitability targets for full year 2002 after experiencing a flattening out of demand in the last quarter of the year. Hatfield, UK-based Computacenter said its operating profit for the year ended December 31, 2002 would be no lower than £51.1m ($79.2m), effectively flat on the previous year, and …

Channel 10 Jan 2003, 09:32
Xbox Live goes gangbusters in US

Online maiming

Xbox Live is dominating the early online gaming comparisons in the US, Microsoft proclaims. Since the service launched on November 15, 250,000 starter kits have been sold - double Microdsoft's original stated expectations. This is great news for Microsoft, whose investment in Xbox Live will run into the billions. In further …

Personal 10 Jan 2003, 09:42
Seagate ships an awful lot of hard drives

Record Q2

Seagate has shipped an awful lot of hard drives, unlike Fujitsu which has shipped a lot of awful hard drives. For the three months to December 27, its fiscal Q2, Seagate shipped 18.3m disk drives, a company record. This helped the company to produce revenue of $1.734bn and net income of $198m for the quarter. Revenue for the …

Storage 10 Jan 2003, 10:41
GAME in Xmas sales turnaround

All smiles again

The GAME Group appears to have pulled off an amazing trading turnaround just three weeks after warning of disappointing pre-Christmas sales. In a trading statement today the high street video games retailer reported that sales grew 7.5 per cent over Christmas in the UK, thanks to a late shopping surge. The upshot is that GAME …

Business 10 Jan 2003, 10:44
Dad uses web to shame kids over ‘obnoxious’ behaviour

Uptight

A Wiltshire Dad has named and shamed his kids on a Web site because he's concerned they're rampaging out of control. According to reports Dave Forward did it as a last resort after his kids ran amok in Malmesbury. The headline-grabbing story focuses on his concerns about drug-taking, joyriding, swearing and a host of other …

Music and Media 10 Jan 2003, 14:02
Lexmark unleashes DMCA on toner cartridge rival

More unexpected applications of controversial copyright law

Lexmark has invoked the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act in a legal action against a firm that makes chips that permit third party toner cartridges to work in its printers. The printer company is suing Static Control Components for violation of the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act regarding …

Business 10 Jan 2003, 14:05
Firstnet in ‘me too’ ADSL promo

NIB

Leeds-based ISP Firstnet Services is offering a Free Allied Telesyn router with all wires-only ADSL connections. The promo also includes a year’s free virus scanning. And the ISP is also halving the cost of ADSL connection. FirstNet's offer comes as a stack of ISPs - including Eclipse, Virgin.net, Demon and One.Tel - have cut …

Telecoms 10 Jan 2003, 16:12
SPEC revamps high performance benchmark

Acronyms 'R' us

Revised benchmarks for high-performance computing (HPC) applications and the MPI and OpenMP standards for parallel processing have been issued by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. SPEC HPC2002 is targeted at those who evaluate performance for HPC systems, including users, system vendors, software vendors, and …

Servers 10 Jan 2003, 17:02
TiVo pitches DVRs as home network hub

Streaming media

TiVo has unveiled plans to position its digital video recorders at the centre of home entertainment networks. From this spring, users of TiVo Series 2 Digital Video Recorders will be able to link the device over a network with either Apple or Windows PCs, using TiVo's Home Media Option. TiVo Home Media Option costs a one-off …

Personal 10 Jan 2003, 17:44