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16th July 2003 Archive

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  • GSM to overtake CDMA in USA

    Within two years

    When Nokia repeated its prediction that the global GSM standard could grab half of the US cellphone market, we were skeptical. Thanks to adoption by Verizon and SprintPCS networks, CDMA phones grabbed a seemingly impregnable lead in the United States. But the latest prediction from ABI Research suggests that the GSM family of …

    Mobile 16 Jul 2003, 02:13

  • Revealed – Microsoft's Munich sweeteners

    Burghers showered with discounts, visits from Chief Executive Klaxon - report

    Over at USA Today, Byron Acohido has unearthed the paper trail that reveals how hard Microsoft fought to prevent the city of Munich from defecting to Linux. The decision was hailed as a landmark for the open source movement, as it struck deep into Redmond's home turf: with Munich's aldermen agreed to moving 14,000 desktop PCs …

    Software 16 Jul 2003, 02:16

  • Yahoo, Overture: more consolidation likely

    Ball in MSN's court

    Yahoo is leveraging its high share price to fund the acquisition of Overture Services. If the deal goes through, Yahoo would own the sponsored and algorithmic search engines used by its main rival, Microsoft's MSN. Eyes are now on Microsoft, which may now be looking to buy a search provider itself. Yahoo has said it will pay 0. …

    Music and Media 16 Jul 2003, 08:37

  • UK small.biz is bunch of IT cheapskates

    Better things to spend money on

    Less than half (46 per cent) of Britain's small business owners and managers are planning to spend more than £1,000 on information technology in the next 12 months, Even so, 70 per cent of these small businesses see investment in technology as a positive step and a “tool that can be harnessed to perhaps improve their working …

    Small Biz 16 Jul 2003, 08:46

  • Motorola Q2 chip sales slide

    Losses mount

    Motorola's chip division, the Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS), lost $134 million during the three months to 28 June, the second quarter of its current fiscal year, 2003, the company reported yesterday. Sales during the period were down 11 per cent year-on-year to $1.1 billion. Orders slipped 25 per cent to $1 billion. This …

    Channel 16 Jul 2003, 08:47

  • Samsung Q2 semicon sales up 13.8 per cent

    LCDs do particularly well

    Samsung's semiconductor operation, the Device Solution Network (DSN), saw sales grow 13.8 per cent year-on-year during the company's second quarter, it reported today. DSN yielded revenues totaling KRW3.76 trillion ($3.2 billion) for the period, up from the KRW3.24 trillion ($2.7 billion) it reported this time last year. It …

    Channel 16 Jul 2003, 09:23

  • Man sentenced for trying to sell vital organ

    Sidney, pass me the kidney

    An Austrian mechanic who tried to flog his kidney through the Internet has been handed a four-month suspended jail sentence and €2,000 fine. The wannabe organ seller had advertised his kidney as a 'blood purification organ' - starting price €66,500. Which seems a tad unrealistic, considering that he is 48 years-old, and that …

    Music and Media 16 Jul 2003, 09:26

  • Software bootlegger jailed for three years

    They call me Mr M.

    A software bootlegger has been jailed for three years in Germany. We don't know his name - the BSA simply calls him "Mr M.,", its coyness attributable to legal reasons we infer, as investigations are continuing into other members of Mr M.'s gang. Mr M., 42, was sentenced to three years jail without parole, after pleading guilty …

    Channel 16 Jul 2003, 09:56

  • AOL kills Netscape

    The party's over - but who's to blame?

    Jobless levels in the USA reached their highest point for twenty years this week, and the mother lode of the "Long Boom", San Francisco, has just been declared the fastest-shrinking city in the nation. Now AOL-Time Warner has added to the pyre by making most of its Netscape browser division redundant. Netscape's public …

    Software 16 Jul 2003, 09:58

  • Voodoo offers laptop with upgradeable graphics

    'Gamebook' debuts with ATI Mobility Radeon 9600

    Canadian notebook maker Voodoo has released what it claims is the first mobile PC with a modular, upgradeable graphics sub-system. Voodoo's VoodooPC Envy M:460 is based on ATI's top-end mobile product, the Mobility Radeon 9600. The graphics chip contains 64MB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM dedicated graphics memory and drives the machine' …

    Personal 16 Jul 2003, 10:08

  • Transmeta powers first sub-$800 Tablet PC

    Reg Kit Watch Plus: Corsair ships DDR500 1GB DIMMs

    Tablet PC Taiwanese monitor maker TDV Vision has announced what it claims are the first sub-$800 Tablet PC, the Visionary V800XPT. The new machine is powered by an 800MHz Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 processor, so naturally Transmeta is jumping up and down, and shouting about the design win. Unsurprisingly, Transmeta doesn't mention …

    Personal 16 Jul 2003, 10:39

  • Virtualisation, the Linux way

    De facto standard

    IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, among others, are creating an imperative. Their infrastructure initiatives, entitled respectively; On Demand, Adaptive Enterprise and N1, are all quite similar and aimed at the idea of virtualising the hardware layer, writes Robin Bloor of Bloor Research. The primary reason for wanting …

    Servers 16 Jul 2003, 10:53

  • MS staffer pleads guilty to $6m software racket

    Third big theft uncovered

    A former Microsoft worker has been caught stealing $6 million of software from Microsoft's internal store in the third case of its type in recent months. Kori Robin Brown, 31, a former administrative assistant In Microsoft's Xbox video console and games division, "ordered more than $6 million worth of Microsoft's SQL Server …

    Channel 16 Jul 2003, 11:09

  • EC waves through 3G Germany network share

    No surprise

    The European Commission today approved a 3G network share between T-Mobile and 02 in Germany. This is not exactly a surprise, as the EC said it was minded to approve the deal in May, when it gave the thumbs-up to a similar gig between the two mobile operators in the UK. By pooling network infrastructure, O2 and T-Mobile can be …

    Mobile 16 Jul 2003, 11:38

  • Sun Microsystems: big fish, shrinking pond

    HP Away

    Sun Microsystems has launched a new migration plan to steal away users of Hewlett-Packard's Tru64 Unix AlphaServer systems. Sun is trying to win over customers that HP acquired along with Compaq, many of whom Compaq originally inherited from Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998. Sun has been planning its move on HP for some …

    Servers 16 Jul 2003, 11:50

  • NAI rows into the black (just)

    Sales down

    Network Associates (NAI) today announced second quarter profits of $1.1 million on reduced revenues. For the three months to June 30, NAI's net revenue was $216.6 million - approx. 10 per cent down on last Q2's $233m. NAI's key landmarks for the quarter included the acquisitions of intrusion prevention firms IntruVert Networks …

    Security 16 Jul 2003, 11:59

  • Intersil to bow out of WLAN biz

    Consolidation commences

    WLAN chip maker Intersil has become the first major casualty of the battle to dominate the crowded Wi-Fi silicon market. Today it said it will sell its WLAN chip business to DSL chip specialist Globespan Virata for $365 million in cash and shares. Intersil is one of the best-known WLAN chip companies and has been in the market …

    Wireless 16 Jul 2003, 12:12

  • EC fines Wanadoo €10m for predatory pricing

    Sold ADSL too cheaply

    The European Commission has slapped a €10.35m fine on Wanadoo for predatory pricing on consumer ADSL services in France. An EC investigation found that the France Telecom-owned ISP deliberately set prices on broadband products at lower than cost. This restricted the opportunities of rivals to enter the market and constituted an …

    Telecoms 16 Jul 2003, 12:20

  • Stop this SMS – I want to get off

    New premium rate rules

    ICSTIS, the premium rate regulator, has incorporated a universal stop sign and age verificaction into its guidelines for SMS operators. ICSTIS says the new features address concerns expressed by consumers over the difficulty of unsubscribing premium-rate SMS services and the ease with which children can access paid-for adult …

    Mobile 16 Jul 2003, 12:41

  • EMC's services biz boosts Q2

    Software still slow

    EMC's services business carried it higher in the second quarter, as the storage maker was able to hit the high side of analyst expectations. EMC churned out $1.48 billion for the quarter ended June 30. This marks a 7 percent rise over the $1.39 billion posted in the same period a year ago. For what it's worth, analysts had a …

    Storage 16 Jul 2003, 14:11

  • MS secures 140k desktop Homeland Security deal

    But it's smaller than it looks...

    The US Department of Homeland Security has signed a deal for Microsoft software worth something in the region of $100 million, covering servers and over 140,000 desktops. This does not however mean that Microsoft and its hench-OEM Dell are poised to hoover up all of the Department's lovely IT budget, nor indeed that this is all …

    Software 16 Jul 2003, 14:15

  • Town Mouse much faster (still) than Country Mouse

    Down these narrowband lanes

    A huge digital divide still exists between broadband connections in rural and urban areas, according to a new report published today by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The study found 95 per cent of people in urban centres - 50 per cent of the UK population – had access to a broadband connection. This falls …

    Telecoms 16 Jul 2003, 15:30

  • Linux defector Colt firing blanks

    Netcraft survey is mixed bag for MS

    Three months after its release, Windows Server 2003 is showing strong growth in the hosting market and even picking up a limited number of Linux converts. This gain comes even as Microsoft's overall market share in the Web server market declined. According to Netcraft's latest statistics, published yesterday, the number of …

    Data Networking 16 Jul 2003, 15:33

  • Robosnail: Science or sex toy?

    Sluggish MIT researchers

    Researchers at MIT have come up with a new experiment that raises the question, "Where do you draw the line between science and simply having too much time on your hands?" Lurking in MIT's Fluid Dynamics Lab is a rather large creature known as Robosnail. At first glance, the contraption appears to be a sophisticated sexual aid …

    Bootnotes 16 Jul 2003, 16:57

  • PS3 memory rumour mill turns again

    Leaks and spills

    In the quest to guess what's going to go inside the PlayStation 3, the most useful sources of information so far (aside from Sony's own rumblings about the Cell microprocessor) are the companies contracted to make memory chips for the console. Once again this week the memory makers appear to have done a convincing leaky sieve …

    Personal 16 Jul 2003, 21:08

  • Broadband Britain 2008 – a second tier state

    Question of price

    More than a third (35 per cent) of British households will have broadband Internet access by 2008, according to a study by analysts Forrester published today. But the prediction that 9.5 million British households will be connected to higher speed networks in five years time stills leave Britain lagging Scandinavia and the …

    Telecoms 16 Jul 2003, 21:08

  • AMD still seeing red

    Loss narrows

    Advanced Micro Devices is creeping back toward the black with a second quarter that showed improved revenue and a smaller net loss than last year. AMD reported revenue of $645 million for the quarter ended June 29. This marks a 7 percent increase over the $600 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. AMD's net loss …

    Channel 16 Jul 2003, 22:48

  • Services hold IBM up in Q2

    Currency conversion

    IBM's services and software businesses carried it higher in the second quarter, while hardware revenue continued to wane. IBM brought in $21.6 billion in revenue - a 10 percent rise from the $19.7 billion reported in the same quarter a year ago. Income hit $1.7 billion in this most recent quarter versus $445 million in last …

    Hardware 16 Jul 2003, 23:06