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April 11, 2003
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Dell starts auctioning new systems on Ebay
The Dell Corporation has started selling brand new PC systems on auction site Ebay.
The firm has a dedicated page, maintained by itself, and says that the systems are selling are brand new, and not refurbed models, lest you should think that.
Products it offers are in its Mobile Affordable range, its Axim X5 PDAs, Mobile Cutting Edge and Cutting Edge Technologies. When we looked at the site, there were a total of 16 systems in all categories.
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Apple updates Mac OS X to 10.2.5
Apple OSX users will want to get clicking on Software Update. According to InfoWorld, there's a new version of OS X. Well, more of a service pack than a new version.
Version 10.2.5 puts loads of little fixes in place. According to the report, Airport, Classic compatibility and graphics get some tweaking amongst other things. There do not appear to be any new features so we're guessing that this is really just a bug fix.
The report states that the update is available through the Software Update control panel or, if you're willing to stump up $19.95, on CD. If you've got OS X you can find out about using Software Update here.
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Another 1,268 quarantined due to SARS
Another 1,268 people in the Toronto area were ordered into quarantine yesterday because of potential exposure to two cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) -- one an infected worker at Hewlett Packard Canada Ltd.'s Markham operations who was supposed to be in isolation and the other a student at Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in Scarborough.
In the employee's case, public health officials say the individual ignored their warnings to stay home.
"Managing this outbreak continues to be two steps forward and one step back," said an exasperated Dr. James Young, Ontario commissioner of public security, yesterday. "The failure of people to take isolation seriously ... is resulting in major inconvenience and risk to the community."
Yesterday, Toronto Public Health officials ordered Leacock and neighbouring John Buchan Senior Public School closed as precautionary measures while they investigate.
Health officials are trying to determine if a Leacock student with SARS-like symptoms posed any health risk to her fellow students when she attended class last week. She was not in quarantine at the time but had a "potential connection" to someone with the disease.
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Microsoft ports Windows Media to Linux
The day has finally come. Microsoft has acknowledged the existence of Linux by allowing one of its own applications to be ported over to the rival operating system.
Earlier this week the software giant quietly announced that it had selected media player developer InterVideo to port its Windows Media technology to Linux for use in consumer electronics such as set-top boxes and personal video recorders.
While this may not seem like a big deal, it does show that Microsoft has realised that it cannot afford to ignore Linux.
Steve Ro, chief executive at InterVideo, said that the open source software is popular for such devices because it offers a "stable low cost solution for multimedia functionality".
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Getting broadband through power lines
The walls in a one-story brick home in suburban Washington don't talk but their power outlets do.
From those outlets pour streams of digital video, interactive games, online radio stations and services familiar to people who use cable or telephone modems to get high-speed Internet connections. This technology that delivers broadband through ordinary electric wiring should be commercially available to some consumers this year.
"This is within striking distance of being the third major broadband pipe into the home," said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, who visited the house Wednesday to get a preview of the technology.
The home is part of a trial project run by Current Technologies, a company based in Germantown, Maryland. The company, working with the Potomac Electric Power Co., is providing broadband over power lines to about 70 homes in Maryland. Another trial offers the service in suburban Cincinnati.
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Nintendo Confirms Royalty Reduction
Echoing reports from earlier in the year, Nintendo has confirmed a reduction in its royalty rates for third-party games on its hardware, according to reports from a recent investor briefing. The cost of releasing games for Gamecube is now roughly equal to that of any other console, at least as far as the royalty paid to the console manufacturer is concerned.
Nintendo also announced plans for a special bundle packing in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker with a Gamecube console. The bundle, priced at $150, is slated to appear at Wal-Mart stores in mid-April and at all retail locations in May.
On the subject of console price cuts, a hot topic following the recent Xbox price reduction in Europe, Nintendo reiterated that it would not take the lead in price cutting, but that it would react to any cuts by Sony and Microsoft. The obvious indication is that if PlayStation 2 or Xbox prices ever drop to the $149.99 price point currently occupied by the Gamecube, Nintendo would lower its price to $129.99 or even $99.99.
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Doctors Race to ID Killer Virus
Researchers are closing in on the cause of the deadly respiratory illness known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, but they've stopped short of naming a single virus as the culprit.
SARS has infected almost 2,800 people worldwide and caused 111 deaths. No one in the United States has died from the disease, but it has infected up to 166 people.
On Thursday, two papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine pointed to a new version of the coronavirus, the same kind of virus responsible for some forms of the common cold, as the cause of SARS.
"Nineteen patients with SARS have been identified as infected with the new coronavirus," the researchers wrote in the NEJM paper. "All have direct or indirect links to the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and Guangdong province, China."
A coronavirus with the same genetic sequence was also discovered in a patient with SARS in Canada, where the malady has killed 10 people, the paper says.
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Microsoft, Lucent patent quarrel heats up
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Lucent Technologies, asking that a court nullify a number of Lucent patents covering technology in some of the software giant's products.
The suit, filed on Tuesday in a federal court in San Diego, is the latest in struggle that has simmered over the past year over audio and video coding and other technologies patented by Lucent's research arm, Bell Laboratories.
The Wall Street Journal first reported this story on Friday, noting that Microsoft was seeking to invalidate 13 Lucent patents.
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AIDS Group Berates S.Africa for Stalling Deal
South Africa drew fresh criticism on Friday for failing to sign an agreement which would see more than $40 million flow to AIDS treatment programs in one of its provinces hit hardest by the epidemic.
More than 36 percent of KwaZulu-Natal province's population of eight million are HIV positive.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria approved the funds a year ago but the project was halted by the government because proposals were not filed properly. The deal was due to have been signed this week.
Richard Feachem, the fund's executive director, flew in for Sunday's signing ceremony. The ceremony went ahead, but the signing was postponed to Thursday for further talks.
On Friday morning, South Africa released a statement announcing further delays, citing "relatively complex legal processes."
Feachem told a breakfast briefing he believed the delays were genuine and he would allow South Africa as much time as it needed.
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Siebel requests FBI probe into leaked docs
Siebel Systems said on Wednesday it has asked authorities to investigate the leak of internal documents that portrayed the software maker's customer service in a negative light.
San Mateo, Calif.-based Siebel, the world's largest maker of customer service software, called an impromptu conference call to say that the leaked documents were distributed with "very malicious intent."
Steve Mankoff, a senior vice president at Siebel, told reporters that paper copies of eight pages from the report were distributed to traders, analysts and reporters over the past week. He said the documents were part of a customer satisfaction report that included both negative and positive feedback, but that only the negative comments had been leaked.
"They were taken out of context," Mankoff said. He added that some of the problems to which the comments referred were later fixed in patches to its software. Mankoff said Siebel has contacted the FBI about the incident and decided to go public with the information in order to prevent a wider spread.
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Lost letters' Neptune revelations
Long-lost documents relating to the 19th Century discovery of the planet Neptune are shedding new light on one of the most controversial episodes in the history of astronomy.
Speaking at the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting in Dublin, a historian who has pored over hundreds of letters from the period says British scientists have taken more credit for the discovery than they deserved.
The planet was found on 23 September 1846 after the French astronomer Urbain Jean-Joseph Le Verrier calculated its likely location, based on perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.
He wrote to German astronomers equipped with a powerful telescope, telling them where to look.
The new planet was discovered at the Berlin Observatory immediately.
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Advanced telescope camera astounds
The biggest digital camera ever installed on a telescope has begun work, taking spectacular and scientifically rich images of the Universe.
The camera, called MegaPrime, has been placed on the aging Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, US, restoring the facility once again to the forefront of optical astronomy.
The CFHT was once considered a large telescope with its 3.6-metre mirror, but today is small compared with current eight to 10-metre telescopes. But with MegaPrime installed, it is once again in high demand.
MegaPrime has a resolution of 340 megapixels. It has an unusually large field of view of one square degree, the size of four full Moons.
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How cyber piracy affects you
The temptation is great: simply copy a program to CD and hey presto, software for free. The perfect crime where Bill Gates is the only victim, right? Not quite - the implications could be closer to home than people expect.
"Copying software is so easy, of course I've done it," says Matthew, a London-based IT specialist. "That was in my undergraduate years - I didn't know anyone who bought the stuff legitimately.
"Someone would turn up and say 'give this a crack, it's the latest version' and it'd get passed around until it was obsolete. It was mostly office and spreadsheet programs, the kind of stuff you can download from the web now."
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Molecular Block to Viable Clones
Cloning humans, or any other primates, may be impossible with today's techniques because of a fundamental molecular obstacle, say scientists trying to understand why attempts to clone monkeys have failed.
From the very first step, cloned primate cells don't divide properly, causing a helter-skelter mix of chromosomes too abnormal for pregnancy to even begin, University of Pittsburgh researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
"Most people in the cloning field will be surprised by this," said lead researcher Gerald Schatten. "This work demonstrates there's a pothole in the process. We now know the depth and breadth of the pothole, and we're designing strategies to get around" it.
Dozens of animal clones -- including cows, pigs, mice, goats and a cat -- have been born since Dolly the sheep became the first new being created from an adult cell in 1997. But it's still a very uncertain field: Many are stillborn and some survive only with severe defects.
A cult group claimed in December to have cloned a person, something never verified. A doctor who separately is pursuing human cloning has reported in an Internet journal preliminary data on an early-stage cloned human embryo, but with no chromosome information.
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HP lines up outsourcing deals
Hewlett-Packard on Friday announced that it is on the verge of scoring two major information-technology outsourcing deals.
The company said it plans to manage Procter & Gamble's IT infrastructure, including data centers, desktop and end-user support, and maintenance support for the consumer products giant's operations in 160 countries. The agreement still needs to be made final, but the companies said it will be worth $3 billion over 10 years. The companies expect to reach a definitive agreement in May.
Also Friday, HP said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ericsson to provide IT services for the cellular equipment maker's global operations. At this time, the memorandum establishes the principles of how the two companies intend to work together. No financial terms were disclosed for the deal, but the final agreement is expected to be signed before the end of the second quarter.
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Afghan women go high-tech
The screensaver on 18-year-old Nabila Akbari's desktop computer shows a spectacular sunrise, and with just a few clicks on the mouse she replaces it with bright spring tulips.
The Kabul University student hopes she is part of a new beginning in war-ravaged Afghanistan, where less than two years ago a young woman like her would hardly have been let out of her house, let alone into a classroom to study information technology.
On Tuesday, Nabila became one of the first 17 Afghans trained in their own country to earn industry standard certificates in computer networking skills and part of what her government hoped would be a growing talent pool of badly needed information technology specialists.
More than two decades of war have meant Afghanistan was largely bypassed by the IT and Internet revolution.
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Dell ships out Lighter Pentium M notebooks
Dell Computer floated a trio of new Pentium M models into its notebook armada on Thursday.
The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker launched the new Inspiron 500m and Inspiron 600m notebooks, aimed at consumers and small businesses, and the new Latitude D500 for corporations.
The new notebook models are part of an effort by Dell to overhaul its entire notebook product line. The company has now replaced or refreshed all of its notebook models, except for the Latitude X200 and Precision M50 mobile workstation.
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Microsoft cuts console cost
The price of the Xbox games console has been cut for the third time in Europe in just over a year.
The 20% cut means an Xbox will cost about £129.99 (199 euros).
The cut means that the console is the same price as the Nintendo GameCube and cheaper than Sony's Playstation 2.
Sony and Nintendo have yet to say whether they will respond with price cuts of their own.
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