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April 18, 2003
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Sony recalls 20,000 Vaio desktops
It could be duff components or it could be duff design. The power supplies in some Sony desktop PCs are causing enough problems that Sony has issued a recall on the machines.
According to Reuters, the affected models are the PCV-RZ50, RZ60 and RZ70P. The problem is that the power supply in those machines can damage some power circuitry and lead to the PCs not switching on.
20,000 machines in Japan are affected, though a similar problem struck in the US and Canada last year with the same number of systems recalled there too. So far Europe has managed to escape the problem.
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No Help for NY Callers in Trouble
Trapped on a capsizing 8-foot fiberglass dingy floundering in 33-degree waters off New York, Henry Badillo used his cell phone to make a desperate plea for help.
"We're taking in water.... We're on the Long Island Sound in a boat off the coast of City I ... oh, my God, we're going to die!" Badillo screamed in his 12-second call to a 911 emergency services operator on Jan. 24, 2003.
Badillo, stranded on the boat with three friends, didn't have time to say exactly where he was before the call cut off, and the operator did not clearly hear his reference to City Island, which could have helped to pinpoint the boat's location.
The operator and her supervisor decided they didn't have enough information to request assistance. Badillo and his friends died that night.
Their parents believe they might have been rescued if New York's 911 system was able to trace cell-phone callers' locations, a service that the state has been collecting taxes to implement for more than a decade.
Since 1991 New York state has collected at least $200 million from a surcharge added to every New Yorker's cell-phone bill. The money is earmarked for installing an "E911" service, which uses GPS technology to quickly trace the location of 911 callers on their cell phones.
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Windows XP SP2 build download available on website
No more than a few days have passed since the apparent leak of Longhorn 4015 to WiNBETA (not the web) and Neowin has learned of a possible new build, this time at build #4021. Our source who wants to be known only as Serpant_winalpha has also said that this will leak very soon.
as with 4015:
(Build 4021.main.030415-0745) DX 9 (9.0.900)
WMP 9 (2991), Windows Messenger 5
Media Player & Classic Tray (Quick Launch?), located on the sidebar.
We have 2 screenshots and 2 files for download, Neowin can't confirm if this is real or not. Longhorn is scheduled to enter Beta phase in or around the end of the summer so this build is still considered Alpha. There are improvements with WinFS and I'm told there is some exciting developments with Peer to Peer in Longhorn but thats all a surprise for later.
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Space station astronauts prepare
American Edward Lu and Russian Yuri Malachenko have been formally named as the first two astronauts to return to space since the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February.
The pair will blast off from Russia's Baikonur space centre on April 26 to replace a three-man Russian-American crew at the orbiting International Space Station.
Lu and Malachenko were informally put forward several weeks ago by the Russians and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the first crew to venture back into space, but their status was made official at the Star City cosmonaut training centre near Moscow.
The two veteran astronauts say that their mission, to begin on a Russian rocket on April 26, will carry additional weight and meaning after the Columbia shuttle disaster, which lost all seven crew members as the craft returned to Earth at the end of its mission.
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Dell unseats HP in PC shipments
Dell Computer wrestled the top rank in worldwide PC shipments away from Hewlett-Packard in the first quarter of 2003 in a market that managed to grow a little bit.
Dell shipped about 450,000 more desktops, notebooks and Intel-based servers worldwide than did rival HP, according to research firm Gartner, giving Dell the top spot once again. The two companies have now traded the coveted designation four quarters in a row.
Round Rock, Tex.-based Dell accounted for 16.9 percent of the market worldwide, according to research firm Gartner, growing by 24.4 percent over the same quarter a year ago. HP, meanwhile, accounted for 15.6 percent of the market, a 5.7 percent decline from the combined shipments of HP and Compaq Computer a year ago.
Overall, PC shipments were slightly ahead of modest predictions. According to Gartner, 34.5 million PCs left factories in the first quarter, an increase of 5.5 percent. Shipments in the United States increased 7.7 percent, the firm said.
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Australia Plans to Ban Spam
Australians have had enough of unsolicited emails and it's incumbent on the government to ban what is popularly called "spam" now that it makes up at least a fifth of all email traffic, Australian officials said on Wednesday.
"People expect that legislation should be put in place," Communications Minister Richard Alston told reporters. "There is no reason why this legislation should not come forward in the next few months."
The legislation would ban unsolicited emails sent without prior consent from recipients, and rule that all commercial emails would have to identify the sender and the electronic address.
But as most spam originates outside Australia there would need to be international action to stop the practice entirely.
"We will pursue all the multilateral options, and do what we can to negotiate arrangements with countries that seem to us to be the most relevant," Alston said.
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Flaw bugs Office 2000 customers
A software slipup in Microsoft's latest update to Office 2000 results in the application repeatedly asking some customers to register the program.
The glitch apparently affects only Office 2000 users who don't have administrative rights on their computer, a Microsoft representative said Thursday.
"They are experiencing unexpected registration prompts, but it doesn't interfere with product functionality," he said.
Administrative rights allow a PC user to exercise total control over the computer's data. Giving such rights to nontechnical employees is considered by many security experts to be an unacceptable risk for companies. Thus, the glitch effectively hurts some companies that have implemented a good security policy.
Windows 2000 allows PC users to have one of several different levels of access to a computer: administrator, power user, limited and guest. Windows XP allows users to be assigned to the standard group with administrator privileges, a restricted group that has more limited privileges, or a custom group set up by the network administrator.
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Cisco Wi-Fi phone due in June
Cisco Systems intends to introduce a portable Wi-Fi phone in the next few months, adding its stamp of approval to the emerging business technology.
The 7920 phone is essentially a wireless version of Cisco's 7960 IP (Internet Protocol) phone, which uses a wired Ethernet connection to make and receive telephone calls. However, the 7920 will have a wireless handset that uses an office's Wi-Fi network to connect. The device will start shipping in June, executives said Friday. Its price has not yet been disclosed.
Cisco will have plenty of competition when it introduces the 7920, especially from Wi-Fi equipment maker SpectraLink, which sells a similar phone. Handset maker Motorola and Avaya also are at work on their own versions.
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CNN Mistakenly Reports: Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela and Bop Hope are Dead
CNN is having plenty of problems these days and there will have been plenty of red faces yesterday when the company's website published obituaries of several well-known people who are live and kicking.
US Vice President Dick Cheney, former US president Ronald Reagan, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II, South Africa's Nelson Mandela and US comedian Bop Hope, who is due to celebrate his 100th birthday on May 29, all had their obituaries published.
"The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed," The Smoking Gun website noted.
The premature obituaries, housed in a publicly accessible area of the CNN server and searchable via Google, were said to be the work of Peter Rentz, a senior multimedia designer at CNN.
It is usual for media organisations to prepare obituaries in advance and it is a good thing for CNN that these identities are still alive, as there is a lot of work to do on getting the information right.
The obituary of Castro, for instance, has information from Reagan's life mixed in.
Next to a dignified photo of the dictator it says, "Fidel Castro". Above that is a Castro quote: "History will absolve me."
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HP to sharpen blade with Pentium M
Revisiting the early days of blade servers, Hewlett-Packard will use Intel's Pentium M processor, designed for mobile computers, in a new slim server expected early in the third quarter.
HP will upgrade its ProLiant BL10e blade server with a 1GHz Pentium M, a processor code-named "Banias" that should boost performance over the current 900MHz ultra-low-voltage Pentium III used in the current product, Sally Stevens, director of blade servers for HP's Industry Standard Server group, said in an interview. The Pentium M comes with 1MB of high-speed cache memory rather than the 512KB in the Pentium III and supports faster double data rate (DDR) memory.
"There's a nice opportunity for enhanced performance," Stevens said.
Keeping momentum in the Intel server market is crucial for HP, which acquired Compaq Computer in 2002, in part for the ProLiant line. HP had the biggest fraction of the $16.4 billion market for servers using Intel or Intel-compatible processors in 2002, but IBM and Dell Computer are gaining, and even Intel-phobic Sun Microsystems has entered the fray with its own Intel servers.
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Mozilla Firebird Name Debate Enters a New Stage
"As many readers will know, mozilla.org was asked to change the name for their standalone browser, Phoenix as another browser had the same name. After months of discussion, the new name was announced as Mozilla Firebird. Despite the new name being approved by AOL Legal, supporters of the FirebirdSQL database were quick to object (though the name is also used by many other people). A coincidentally named supporter of FirebirdSQL, IBPhoenix, put up a slightly immature request for their readers to participate in mass posting campaign targetting mozilla.org developers' email accounts, newsgroups and even forums at independent sites such as MozillaZine and Slashdot. FirebirdSQL's official site later reiterated this message. However, IBPhoenix have now declared this shock-and-awe stage of their campaign over, heralding it a success. Their second stage calls for a more focussed email protest at just two of mozilla.org's members: Mitchell Baker (mozilla.org's leader) and Asa Dotzler (announcer of the name change). In addition, they ask their readers to move away from 'derogatory messages' and to show more 'courtesy'. Unsurprisingly, the beleaguered admins of affected sites such as MozillaZine have welcomed this change of direction. This is getting very interesting!"
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