Sega Enterprises Ltd looks to have taken first blood in the high-performance video games machines wars: it says that by the end of June it will have sold about 100,000 units of 32-bit Sega Saturn to US customers, and demand for the machines exceeds supply.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB and Telenor A/S of Norway have developed what the two companies call the world’s first system for Universal Personal Telecommunications: the companies say that after successful year-long trials, Telenor is now to offer the services commercially in Norway, and that this means user receives a personal Universal number by which they can be reached wherever they are in the world; it requires the Ericsson AXE digital exchange-based Intelligent Network Platform.
ICL Plc has a รบ10m contract to supply integrated speech and data communications infrastructure for Hong Kong’s new Chek Lap Kok airport: ICL will use more than 500 miles of fibre optic and copper cables to link passenger terminals, airline offices and the control tower, and ICL beat other international companies, including Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd, to the contract.
Philippe Kahn’s Starfish Software Inc, which keeps the man in Scotts Valley, California, plans to have 32-bit Sidekick 95 and Dashboard 95 organiser and utilities ready to ship as soon as Microsoft Corp can get its Windows95 out of the door.
Microsoft Corp and Compaq Computer Corp have been ascloseasthis for a long time now, and the pair have signed a new OEM agreement under which Compaq will ship new versions of its servers with the complete BackOffice line of server applications, starting later this year; the two will also expand their joint marketing activities under a new Compaq-Microsoft Business Solutions Partnership programme, and have agreed joint technical support procedures for customers using both Compaq and Microsoft client-server products; BackOffice will be supported the Compaq SmartStart configuration and optimisation tool.
Those conference calls with analysts sound very high power and high-tech, but the reality is a little different: according to the Wall Street Journal, when Computer Associates International Inc president Sanjay Kumar gave his conference call to 300 institutional investors and analysts explaining what a wonderful deal the acquisition would be, he was speaking from a pay phone at a petrol station near the Long Island Expressway, because he was stuck in traffic on his way to the Islandia office.
Dealing a big blow to the credibility of the Internet as a source of authoritative information, the New England Journal of Medicine has rejected suggestions that medical studies be posted for evaluation on the worldwide computer network before formal publication, on grounds that so much information on the Internet is unreliable these days: the respected journal’s two top editors, Doctors Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell, said in an editorial in this week’s issue that distribution of unreviewed medical studies on the Internet might lead some people to use the wrong medications or to stop taking needed ones on the basis of inadequate information; scientific journals use a peer review system under which studies are published only after they have been sent to other experts who act as referees by checking for errors, bias and sloppy research; Reuters notes that the system is designed to ensure that any researcher who may claim to have discovered a cure for cancer, a new planet or a fin from the Loch Ness Monster faces a severe test of evidence to support the claim; At present the Internet seems to pr omote medical rumours more than dispassionate scholarship, the editors wrote – Much information about health issues on the Internet, such as the risks of medications and the effects of various foods on health, is of uncertain parentage; the New England Journal does however have an Internet address and accepts letters to the editor sent via it.
We knew we’d soon get the chance to correct a grievous typo in a recent issue pointed out by
a reader: Standard Microsystems Corp is the latest company to find itself on the wrong end of one of those meretricious shareholder class actions.
We should have remembered that as well as trying to force the pace in digital photography, Eastman Kodak Co is working with Japanese partners on a new conventional photographic system, and it is for this that that $300m investment at its Rochester base is earmarked (CI No 2,689): the aim is smaller, easier-to-use cameras, improved picture quality, enhanced methods of developing film and innovative ways for storing and retrieving photographs; the partners on the system are Canon Inc, Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd, Minolta Co Ltd and Nikon Corp – each will design, develop and market its own products for the system; the pocket-sized cameras will offer virtually effortless drop in film loading and the capability of taking pictures in three distinct sizes, including true panoramic prints, and electronics will play a big part, because the Advanced Photo System will also offer improved picture quality and the ability to imprint more information on the back of a photo, including specific instructions for film processors.
Retired Philadelphia police officer Herb Rhodes was on the speaker phone in his kitchen in Sewell, New Jersey when he made the call, and My wife dropped a pot, my daughter’s mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t believe it, Rhodes told The Philadelphia Inquirer: it’s not quite in the Hoover class, but there are very red faces at AT&T Corp over its True Reward air miles promotion aimed at frequent users of its long-distance service – in a mailing to 175,000 True Reward customers, transposed a couple of digits in the number on which people were asked to claim their True Rewards, and callers expecting to reach an AT&T operator (there are still a few such creatures) were greeted instead by a sultry, breathy voice at Amtex Communications Inc in Los Angeles saying Are you ready to get naked? If you want hard-core, uncensored, explicit sex now, then come and-ummm-take it!
