Gossip in City parlours is of a US alliance for Vodafone Group Plc, which has not thus far had any involvement in the US market, and the name that is being put into the frame is that of AirTouch Communications Inc, the spun-off cellular operations that were built up by Pacific Telesis Group Inc: it is not clear what such an alliance would involve in the way of cross-shareholdings although a merger where the combined company continued to be listed on both sides of the Atlantic would be interesting, and joint trawling for a stake in licence-seeking consortia in third countries would make perfect sense, but it looks too early for any US-UK roaming agreements because the standards are too different until the whole world goes all-digital; the satellite cellular people such as Iridium Inc will likely be looking for grand alliances with terrestrial cellular operators because their first source of customers will be people already with phones, and some of the would-be satellite operators are not planning direct coverage of areas where copious terrestrial coverage is in place.
IBM Corp may be weighing a bid for Novell Inc, journalist Dan Dorfman said on the Cable NBC network, adding that a bid would have a rumoured value of about $10,300m: Dorfman was responsible for much of the misdirected excitement in Sybase Inc shares, but also seems to have been first with news that the Westinghouse Electric Corp bid from CBS Inc was on the way, and when we told you back in January that IBM was likely to buy Lotus Development Corp, we also suggested that Novell was the most appropriate software acquisition for IBM (CI No 2,577), so if IBM really is serious about making it big in software for client-server systems it could happen.
Unipalm Group Plc shares leaped 63 pence to 390 pence on the bid approach reported on the front today.
Microsoft Corp unveiled Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Internet browser designed specifically for use with Windows95 – but the core of the offering is Enhanced Mosaic from Naperville, Illinois-based Spyglass Inc, which the firm licensed to Microsoft for a flat fee; Microsoft labels its offering as the first Internet browser to ship with real-time audio capabilities.
Intel Corp is mulling a jump into the commercial market for massively parallel boxes with its Scalable Parallel Processors, PC Week hears.
Is Dennis Hayes trying to wriggle out of the agreement for Boca Research Inc to take over Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc? Anthony Zalenski, chief executive of Boca Research says he is surprised to learn that Dennis Hayes has been seeking alternatives to bring his company out of Chapter 11, including seeking investors – Boca is continuing to conduct due diligence, pursue financing sources and otherwise take steps to buy Hayes.
Cisco Systems Inc, just shy of $2,000m sales for the fiscal year just ended (figures, page five) saus it is eyeing acquisitions, though they are a third option it considers to meet its goal of being number one or two in each of its markets, the preferred options being joint ventures with existing partners or venturing with new partners – although Cisco is currently looking at a few acquisition possibilities, it tends to acquire companies for technology or engineering talent and prefers small companies of under $200m in sales with next generation technology.
A Russian hacker penetrated Citibank’s computers and stole $2.8m from corporate accounts in New York, the Justice Department told a UK court on Thursday: Vladimir Levin, a mathematician who graduated from the University of St Petersburg, is accused of transferring the money in a series of electronic break-ins in August and September last year – allegedly from a terminal at AO Saturn, a St Petersburg computer company, he directed computers at Citicorp’s Citibank to send the money to bank accounts in Finland and Israel and at Bank of America; Levin was arrested in April at Heathrow Airport in London as he was changing planes, and the US is now seeking his extradition; tw
o confederates were arrested in February and are in custody here.
Digital Equipment Corp says it is supplying the Windows NT server for Microsoft Corp’s Windows95 home page, but the company has cruelly chosen a Prioris HX 590DP server, which if you unravel the letters and numbers looks like a box with dual 90MHz Pentiums in it, rather than gi ving DEC a reference site for Windows NT on its Alpha RISC.
Flash memory PC Card specialist SunDisk Corp, Santa Clara has bowed to irritated pressure from Sun Microsystems Inc and has agreed to change its name to SanDisk Corp.
Although UK press reports have said that Mick Jagger set a price of $12m for Microsoft Corp to use of Start Me Up in its commercials and warn us all of how Windows95 is going to make grown men cry, one person familiar with the matter put the true figure at closer to $4m: quoting the Stones is suddenly fashionable, and Al Kohn, music licensing expert and retired vice-president of Time Warner’s Warner-Chappell Music unit went back to 1969 and the Let it Bleed album for You can’t always get what you want but if you’re Microsoft you get what you need, his nicely-turned observation to Dow Jones & Co.
It seems that the people involved in handling computer shows for the likes of IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp and Computer Associates International Inc are an excitable lot, and while it was only a month ago that Computer associates started dismantling the IBM stand at CA World in New Orleans before cooler heads prevailed (CI No 2,713), IBM has now pulled out of the Windows Solutions show to be staged by Softbank Corp in San Francisco at the end of the month because – IBM’s Dan Lautenbach alleges – the keynote address by IBM’s Lee Reiswig was cancelled by Softbank under pressure from Microsoft; Microsoft pleads not guilty, a less favourable scheduling that put him up against another popular speaker, was not accepted, and IBM is out – Big corporations can earn billions of dollars a year, employ thousands of people and still behave like toddlers in a sandbox fighting over a little plastic bucket is the San Jose Mercury New’s take – ours too.
All attempts at bending computers to the human will seem to end up bending the poor human to the computer, as wretched victims of Repetitive Strain Injury will attest (all people are different, so if you spend long hours at the keyboard, ignore all the preferred postures and positions, find a chair that is sufficiently comfortable that you are not aware of it, a position that is right for you, and get all the hand-rests and padding you need for the way you in your unique way use the keyboard), but the cruellest cut – reported in the Wall Street Journal – is that people suffering from dread Carpal-Tunnel Syndrome that have taken to speech input to avoid using their hands are now beginning to suffer from nodules on their vocal cords and are being ordered by their doctors to speak as little as possible – growing anecdotal evidence suggests using speech recognition systems can lead to chronic hoarseness and sore throats, and the problem, say specialists, seems to stem from the deliberate, halting speech needed if the stupid computer is to get the words right.
