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March 24, 2003
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RedHat 9.0 Released March 31st
Subscribe to Red Hat Network (subscriptions start as low as $60 USD/year). Red Hat Linux 9 ISOs will be available to paid subscribers starting March 31, 2003--a week before they will be available on redhat.com, in stores, or on Red Hat FTP. A paid subscription also gets you access to RHN technical support, errata updates, priority access during peak times, and immediate email notification. It's the quickest way to get Red Hat Linux 9.
Full Article:
Redhat.com
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Mobile Phones to Monitor Children
Parents could soon keep a much closer eye on what children are up on their way to and from school thanks to a mobile monitoring system.
Guardian Angel is a product which allows parents to map out the exact route a child takes to school.
It will send text alerts to their mobile phone if the child deviates too far from that route or takes too long getting there.
Made by French mobile firm Alcatel, the system takes advantage of the existing mobile phone network to locate a child's whereabouts rather than using global positioning systems like some location-based services.
Parents need simply follow the usual route a child takes to and from school and at three-minute intervals press a button to map out the route.
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Intel plans Linux support for Centrino
Intel is working on Linux support for Centrino, its package of chips for mobile computers with wireless networking abilities, but the company hasn't yet decided how or when to release it.
Although the Linux support software for Centrino is working at Intel's labs, it hasn't been fully tested and full completion of the project hinges on the timing of requirements from computer makers, company spokesman Scott McLaughlin said Monday.
Centrino is a bundle of chips for mobile computers, including the Pentium M processor code-named Banias, a chipset, and a wireless networking chip tested by Intel. To support all the Centrino capabilities, Linux or other operating systems need software modules called "drivers" that enable the use of specific hardware such as printers, graphics accelerators or wireless networking chips.
"Intel has tested Linux on Intel Centrino mobile technology-based systems in our labs," McLaughlin said. "Final validation will be based on customer demand and timing, but we expect complete Linux driver support for the Intel Centrino mobile technology."
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Retail sector to up IT spending
Retailers are expected to increase their information technology spending in 2003, after a year in which they tightened the purse strings, according to a study released Monday by research firm IDC.
The U.S. retail industry, a sector highly sensitive to consumers' spending whims, is anticipated to increase IT purchases by 2.8 percent to $23.5 billion this year, according to the survey. The slight increase will be a welcome change for IT vendors, who last year saw retailers pull back on spending with a 3.4 percent decline to nearly $22.9 billion.
"The retail industry ended 2002 much weaker than it began the year," said Christopher Boone, program manager for IDC's U.S. retail and wholesale IT spending program, in a statement. "Despite the setback in 2002, we expect retail IT spending to resume growth in 2003 and beyond."
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Microsoft takes code to the classroom
The University of Leeds in the United Kingdom has received partial funding from Microsoft to teach would-be developers to write secure code.
The class will be available to 100 undergraduates at Leeds starting January 2004. Nick Efford, who is designing the syllabus, said it will differ from classes at other universities. "They have traditionally emphasized network security, cryptography and things like that," he said. "Our course is emphasizing secure coding and software security. We will still cover cryptography, but that will not be our focus."
Efford said the course will cover areas such as vulnerabilities of software, design principles and coding techniques. "We will illustrate all of these with case studies, classic security problems that have emerged...for example, Melissa and Slammer...looking in each case at what gave rise to the problem in the first place and how it was dealt with."
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Program exploits Windows 2000 flaw
A Venezuelan security consultant has released a small program designed to compromise Microsoft Internet Information Service servers that haven't had a recent security hole patched.
Monday's public release of the program's source code--known in security parlance as an exploit--will allow less technically knowledgeable system administrators to test for the existence of the vulnerability or allow less skillful miscreants to attack servers.
"I released (the code) to enlighten the public and to promote system security for administrators unfamiliar with these exploits," said Rafael Nunez, information security consultant for Scientech de Venezuela and a former hacker who used the handle "RaFa."
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Fast updates corporate search technology
Fast Search & Transfer on Monday introduced a new version of its real-time navigation technology for corporate networks, in a bid to capture a bigger piece of the competitive enterprise search market.
The Oslo, Norway-based company updated Fast Data Search with real-time analysis and management features that it says builds on its powerful corporate search technology.
"Fast Data Search is now providing organizations with real-time data analysis and business management tools that allow them to maximize their business objectives and to free up IT resources to concentrate on larger issues," Fast CEO John Lervik said in a statement.
The update, version 3.2, comes shortly after the company sold its Internet search technology to Overture Services for $70 million in cash, along with performance-based incentives of up to $30 million over three years. The deal, which was announced in late February, is expected to close by April.
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Amazon makes bid for Web-ad patent
Online retailer Amazon.com has filed for a patent on a method for auctioning Web advertisements, a move that raises questions about the company's interest in the ad market.
The e-commerce giant, which sells limited advertising space on its Web site, recently filed with the United States Patent and Trademark office for a patent that deals with Internet ads. The application was updated Friday.
Specifically, the company is seeking a patent for "a method in a computer system for allocating display space on a Web page, the method comprising: receiving multiple bids indicating a bid amount and an advertisement," according to the application. The system continues with "receiving a request to provide the Web page to a user; selecting, based at least in part on review of bid amounts, a received bid; and adding the advertisement of the selected bid to the Web page."
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E-mail patterns map corporate structure
Figuring out a company's power and communication structure may be as simple as examining patterns of e-mail exchanges, according to new research by some Hewlett-Packard scientists.
In the study, researchers attempted to identify different formal and informal communities within an organization by graphing mail flow. Researchers Joshua Tyler, Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman studied e-mails sent between any two of the 485 workers at Hewlett-Packard labs over a two-month period, examining 185,773 relevant e-mails in the process.
The researchers said graphing e-mail flow not only correctly identified communities within the organization, but it also provided insight into who the leaders of those groups were. It also helped to identify informal communities that arise when people need to communicate across departments or work collaboratively on projects. What's more, it took just a few hours to analyze the data and identify the groups and their leaders, the study said.
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For AOL, 8.0 is not yet enough
America Online is planning to launch an enhanced version of its AOL 8.0 service next week as part of an effort to revitalize its struggling Internet service and to burnish the appeal of its broadband technology.
The launch of AOL 8.0 Plus comes six months after the AOL Time Warner division unveiled the first incarnation of AOL 8.0. As part of the launch, a source close to the company said, the online heavyweight will spend $35 million in an advertising campaign. The campaign got under way during Sunday night's Academy Awards show with a commercial starring actress Sharon Stone.
The Plus package, at the standard price of $23.90, will include firewall, antivirus software and parental controls that will function on the PC itself rather than within the AOL client. The service also includes the company's advanced e-mail software, Communicator; the ability to share AOL Radio with other AOL subscribers via instant messenger; and, for broadband users, a redesign of its Welcome Screen.
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Hotmail restricts outgoing messages
Microsoft's MSN Hotmail, a free Web-based e-mail service, has tightened restrictions on daily outbound messages sent by subscribers, a tactic it says will help curb spam.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Friday said that Hotmail subscribers are now limited to sending only 100 messages a day "in an effort to prevent spammers from using Hotmail to spread spam," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager. The change, made last week, should affect only about 1 percent of its nearly 110 million worldwide users, based on historical usage data, Gurry said.
"The higher the limit is, the more likely that the service can be used for spam, so we found that 99 percent of Hotmail users would find this new limit perfectly acceptable," she said.
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Telecom competition rules upheld
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said a lower court was correct when halting a city's practice of charging only some telephone companies a fee to install equipment on public property.
The decision is a victory for AT&T, which sued White Plains, N.Y., after the city asked for 5 percent of local calling revenue in return for adding network equipment to its properties. Verizon Communications, which already had a stranglehold on the market, didn't have to pay any fees.
Most of the property AT&T wanted to build on was public right-of-ways, which are owned and operated by the local government.
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Dell steps onto printer stage
Dell Computer is making its first foray into the printer business with four of its own models for consumers and businesses.
The Round Rock, Texas, PC manufacturer will start taking orders for its new printers on Tuesday. It is touting aggressive prices as well as free shipping for printer accessories and recycling for customers' old printers.
As previously reported, the first models to come out of the company's new printing and imaging business will comprise a color inkjet and a monochrome laser printer for homes and small businesses, and two monochrome laser printers for businesses.
The inkjet, which can print, scan, fax and copy documents, will sell for $139, while the monochrome laser printer for small businesses will be priced at $289. The other two printers will start at $499. The company said it will start shipping by April 8.
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Intel updates chips for handhelds
Chipmaker Intel is altering the specifications of its XScale processors so that handheld devices will be better able to incorporate additional features, such as Wi-Fi connectivity and integrated cameras.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said Monday that it is providing device makers with samples of two new chips, the XScale PXA263 and PXA260, and products using the processors will be available later this year. The PXA263 is the latest in Intel's line of "stacked" chips, which incorporate StrataFlash memory and an XScale core. Stacking the components reduces the number of parts in a device and gives manufacturers the option to reduce the size of a product or add other features without making a device bigger. The PXA260 chips are about 53 percent smaller than other processors, potentially leading to lower cost chips and improved battery life.
Both are available in 200MHz, 300MHz and 400MHz clock speeds. The PXA263 incorporates 32MB of 32-bit StrataFlash memory. A 200MHz PXA263 processor costs $42.35 in 10,000 unit quantities, and a 200MHz PXA260 processor costs $22.85 in 10,000 unit quantities.
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Apple ends Safari test program
Apple Computer has terminated a program that gave some developers access to the latest test versions of its Safari browser, after some testers apparently leaked several prereleases to the public.
The decision followed the appearance on the Internet of a new prerelease known as Safari version 67.
Safari, Apple's first Web browser, is based on open-source software, and the first public test version was introduced at the Macworld trade show in January. Apple is well known for its efforts to keep information about its upcoming products secret and has launched lawsuits over the issue in the past.
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Corel searches for a buyer
Struggling software maker Corel is looking for a buyer.
In an announcement released Monday morning, the Canadian company saidit has signed a nondisclosure agreement with Vector Capital that will allow the investment firm to explore a takeover bid.
Corel said it also has hired Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets to look for other potential bidders and explore strategic options.
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Top Apple employees take home bonuses
Apple Computer has awarded more than 200 of its top workers a bonus, despite the fact that the company fell short of targets it had established for such payments.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Apple said last year it awarded employees in its incentive bonus program a "special recognition bonus" amounting to between 3 percent and 5 percent of their base salary, despite the fact that the company failed to reach its stated objectives. The bonus plan applied to 230 executives at the director level or higher, but excluded the company's senior executive officers such as CEO Steve Jobs and his top deputies.
"The company did not meet the metrics specified in the Incentive Bonus Plan," Apple said in the filing. "However, the (compensation) committee believed that the employees participating in the plan had significantly contributed to the company's overall performance and that external economic and business conditions may have produced results that were unrelated to employee performance. As a result, the committee approved a special recognition bonus for all plan participants."
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Portable PC pioneer dead at 64
Adam Osborne, whose successes and failures pioneering the first portable computer became one of Silicon Valley's great cautionary tales, is dead at 64 after a long illness.
Osborne, a British immigrant and longtime resident of Berkeley, Calif., died in his sleep March 18 in Kodiakanal, a village in southern India, his sister, Katya Douglas, said Monday.
His death ended a decade-long battle with an organic brain disorder that caused him to suffer an endless series of mini-strokes.
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Dog translation device coming to U.S.
If you're wondering why your pooch howls at the moon, growls at the mailman or barks uncontrollably at squirrels, the answer may be only a click away.
A Japanese toy maker claims to have developed a gadget that translates dog barks into human language and plans to begin selling the product -- under the name Bowlingual -- in U.S. pet stores, gift shops and retail outlets this summer.
Tokyo-based Takara Co. Ltd. says about 300,000 of the dog translator devices have been sold since its launch in Japan late last year. It is forecasting far bigger sales once an English-language version comes to America in August.
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Will NASA Actually Get to Mars?
The men and women who ride into space have always been willing to take risks. The men and women who run NASA's spaceflight program - and many of the millions who support it - are much more cautious. They are incredibly protective of the current system, fearing that any change will mean the end of space travel. In the aftermath of the Columbia crash, it's time to face that fear and get past it.
The shuttle was conceived as the cheapest way to ensure that Americans would continue to fly into space. Its design was compromised from the beginning, and it has proved costly, temperamental, and dangerous to operate. Perhaps its most profound failing, though, is that until the missions to Mir in the mid-1990s, the shuttle had nowhere to go. And that made human spaceflight repetitive and kind of boring. Because it provided a plausible destination, the International Space Station was allowed to lumber along through umpteen redesigns, "descopings," and cost overruns. And while construction of the station has provided the shuttle fleet with a belated raison d'ętre, it is not a project that has set many pulses racing.
The only real achievement the codependent programs can boast is that they fulfill the shuttle's original goal of keeping Americans in orbit. Sadly, many people who believe humankind has a destiny beyond Earth have decided that's good enough. They think the dream of spaceflight is so fragile that, while crashes cannot derail it, the cancellation of a single program could shut it down for good. They fear that if we take one small step back, we will never again be able to go forward.
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Aim to create 'sensitive' PCs
Computers that can recognise and understand human emotions could be about to move a step nearer.
Brunel University in London is launching a three-year research project into emotion recognition technology that could make the interaction between computers and humans far friendlier in the future.
The research team will conduct a series of experiments aimed at gauging emotional responses to computers and how people react if computers respond to their moods.
Already computers can recognise basic human emotions in photographs, although the Brunel team acknowledges that the technology to recognise the complex emotions of a real face are still some years away.
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NEC Web Site Hacked by Peace Activists
The British arm of major Japanese combine NEC has had its site hacked by anti-war folk.
The site -- nec.co.uk, had its identity removed and replaced with a "no war for oil" message at press time.
The message claimed it was hacked by "1001Nights" and was redirected to this place.
The domain, nec.co.uk, belongs to NEC Electronics UK, according to a whois.org search.
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Mobile phone spam puts crooks out of action
The Chinese government is using a new weapon against criminals - bombarding their mobiles with messages until they turn themselves in.
Authorities in China have come up with a high-tech way to punish criminals -- a computer program that spams their mobile phones until they turn themselves in.
Officials in Hangzhou, the capital of China's Zhejiang province, have developed a system which bombards mobile phones with pre-recorded voice messages, according to the official newspaper, the People's Daily. And businessmen who put up illegal advertisements which contain mobile numbers are the first target of the computerised phone-spammer.
According to the paper, illegal stickers have become an eyesore in recent years, with China's coastal and urbanised areas blighted under a blizzard of advertisements. This is because the postcard-sized stickers, which promote everything from fake identity cards to counterfeit academic certifications, are cheap to produce and offer some anonymity.
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