6th June 2003 Archive

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Intel tightens revenue forecast

Chips up, flash down

Intel has trimmed the range of its second quarter revenue outlook, according to a mid-quarter update released Thursday. Intel now expects revenue to land somewhere between $6.6 billion and $6.8 billion for the period, which end June 28. Analysts had previously been told to look out for revenue between $6.4 and &7.0 billion, but …

Business 6 Jun 2003, 00:14
Blog noise is ‘life or death’ for Google

Letters Pollution control

Sick of blog noise polluting the Google search results? We didn't realize how popular this idea would be. Evidently, the quality of information is dear to the hearts of many readers. It's also dear to the hearts of Google engineers, who privately acknowledge the problem. Blogs aren't the only problem Google faces on the issue …

Letters 6 Jun 2003, 02:52
Public Wi-Fi – the debate bubbles on

Letters Hot-spotty coverage overpricing to blame?

Is there money in public hotspots? The decision by Singapore carrier MobileTel to drop WiFi for 3G has set a few of you thinking. Benedict Evans, the analyst to first identify the mania as "having all the elements of a classic bubble" in an equity report, has something to add. In March he wrote that "much comment on this …

Letters 6 Jun 2003, 02:57
Wi-Fi prices: Europe is being ripped off

Same old, same old

The Register's Wireless LAN Channel A report from Telecom.Paper now out says that European prices for public "hotspot" are out of line with prices in Asia and the US - and forecasts that high prices will remain for some time. "Public WLAN prices are very heterogeneous. The current pricing structure offers simple Internet …

Wireless 6 Jun 2003, 07:52
Peoplesoft & JD Edwards: an IBM narrative

Big Blue's coat-tails

So PeopleSoft is to acquire JD Edwards. But what does it actually mean and what are the industry economics behind the deal, asks James Governor, of analyst firm Red Monk. The obvious conclusion is that it’s a defensive move for the two packaged application vendors, a bulking up in order to better compete against the likes of …

Hardware 6 Jun 2003, 08:11
Pogo brings TiVO-style recording to radio

Reg Kit Watch Plus: HP desktops target gamers

MP3 Player Fed up of missing The Archers omnibus edition? Well, maybe not, but whatever floats your boat on the airwaves, Pogo Products' Radio Your Way portable AM/FM device could be for you. Not only is it a radio with ten station pre-sets, it's got a built-in recording facility backed by enough RAM (32MB) to store four hours …

Personal 6 Jun 2003, 09:47
UK portals lag US giants

Hope for NTL

Home-grown portals in the UK continue to lag behind the Anglicised giants of the US, according to research from Forrester. Together, AOL.co.uk, MSN.co.uk, and Yahoo!.co.uk have managed to hang on to 26 per cent of the UK's Web traffic in 2002, despite losing ground to non-traditional portals such as Google, eBay, and the BBC. …

Music and Media 6 Jun 2003, 10:04
Palm Tungsten-T follow-up revealed?

Piccy and spec. posted in China

Is Palm about to upgrade its ageing Tungsten-T PDA? That's certainly the suggestion made by posters on a Chinese bulletin board dedicated to the device after a piccy of the T's successor, the T2, was uploaded. According to the site, TomPDA, the T2 will feature 32MB of RAM - up from the T's 16MB - and run Palm OS 5.2, the latest …

Personal 6 Jun 2003, 10:32
BT admits distribution talks with Dixons

No go for telco

BT has confirmed that it has held talks with Dixons Store Group (DSG) about replacing Freeserve in a key distribution deal with the high street electrical retailer. However, the UK's dominant telco has confirmed that it has ruled itself out of any tie-up with DSG. A spokesman for BT told The Register "Yes, we have had held …

Channel 6 Jun 2003, 11:36
Microsoft pledges to cut Xbox costs

Not the same as lower prices

Microsoft has "aggressive plans" to reduce the cost of goods sold in its Xbox division as part of a broad cost management exercise, CEO Steve Ballmer says. As it stands, Microsoft makes a significant loss - thought to be over $150 - on each Xbox console it sells, and the Home and Entertainment Division of the company, which …

Personal 6 Jun 2003, 12:00
Holy Grail of crypto to arrive in three years, say UK boffins

Quantum cryptography taken to new lengths

UK boffins have demonstrated unbreakable quantum cryptography over fibre links longer than 100km for the first time. Researchers at Cambridge-based Toshiba Research Europe say their work paves the way for commercial quantum cryptography systems within three years. Future development will now be partially funded by the …

Security 6 Jun 2003, 12:06
Oracle ambushes Peoplesoft with $5.1bn bid

Spanner in the works

Oracle has launched an ambush bid for Peoplesoft, just days after its target announced an agreed $1.7bn share offer for JD Edwards. Oracle is offering $16 a share for Peoplesoft, valuing the enterprise apps firm at a cool $5.1bn. It has secured bridge financing from Credit Suisse First Boston to help fund the offer. And it's …

Hardware 6 Jun 2003, 12:28
KaZaA founders to ‘borrow’ your PC to distribute content

Joltid wants your unused bandwidth, disk space, CPU cycles

Joltid, the Swedish peer-to-peer software company formed by KaZaA founder Niklas Zennstrom, has launched PeerEnabler, a secure content distribution technology that utilises users' own PCs to disseminate content for publishers. PeerEnabler essentially uses peer-to-peer software to get content even closer to the edge of the …

Music and Media 6 Jun 2003, 13:08
Further Nvidia driver ‘optimisation’ detected – report

Aniso filtering improved if 3DMark03.exe renamed

Nvidia has been accused - again - of using its Detonator FX graphics card drivers to reduce image quality in order to inflate its products' 3DMark 03 scores. Tests carried out by web site The Tech Report found that anisotropic filtering operations carried out on GeForce FX 5200, 5600 and 5800 chips yield worse 3DMark 03 scores …

Personal 6 Jun 2003, 13:51
Wired to publish Slammer code

Publish and be Slammed

Wired is to publish the code for SQL Slammer, the worm which caused havoc to Internet operations worldwide this January. The magazine's July issue, will explain how the SQL Slammer worm spread like wildfire, knocking South Korean ISPs offline and rendering some bank automatic teller machines temporarily inoperable. The article …

Anti-Virus 6 Jun 2003, 15:46
boycottebay.co.uk flogged on eBay

Predictable

It had to happen. A hacked-off eBay punter has registered his dissatisfaction in eBay's decision to increase in "seller fees" in the UK by flogging "boycottebay.co.uk" on the auction site. Paul Jackson from Guildford writes: "With eBay using the inclusion of VAT on its sellers fees in the European Union, to unfairly raise its …

Bootnotes 6 Jun 2003, 16:03
SCO's Second Amendment rebuffs Novell Unix claim

But good enough?

The army of paper shufflers beavering away at the SCO Group has managed to unearth a 1996 amendment powerful enough to block some of Novell's Unix claims. Amendment No. 2 found in a SCO file-cabinet last week appears to have to set us back where we started in the Unix/Linux ownership saga. The document alters a provision in the …

Software 6 Jun 2003, 20:27
Data speed record crushed

Streaming across The Pond

U.S. and European scientists have set a new data transfer speed record, shattering the previous mark using nothing but good old fashioned Ethernet. The researchers sent one terabyte of data from Sunnyvale, California to Geneva in less than an hour. Their 2.38Gb/s sustained rate for a single TCP/IP data stream beat the old top …

Data Networking 6 Jun 2003, 20:30
Oracle to migrate PeopleSoft accounts to… Oracle

Hostile. Very hostile

The normally staid world of the ERP gorillas has been thrown into turmoil this week, writes Fran Howarth, of Bloor Research. First PeopleSoft announced plans to acquire JD Edwards. Then Baan announced its sale and subsequent alignment with SSA technologies. Now Oracle has stated that it will be making an offer on Monday to buy …

Hardware 6 Jun 2003, 22:10
Return to sender, false address unknown

Spammer technique or marketing ploy?

Are spammers deliberately getting mail servers to bounce undeliverable messages towards their targets as a way of getting their junk read? Computer Mail Services (CMS), a Michigan-based e-mail security and management software provider, certainly thinks so and reckons the "Reverse Non-Delivery Report" (RNDR) technique is being …

Security 6 Jun 2003, 22:23