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April 25, 2003
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Oracle takes database potshot at Microsoft
Oracle has announced the general availability of its Oracle9i Database Release 2 for 32- and 64-bit Windows Server 2003.
Taking a potshot at Microsoft, Oracle claimed it has helped thousands of customers build available, scalable and reliable database systems on the Windows operating system "at much lower total costs of ownership than Microsoft SQL Server on Windows".
The database giant claimed its clustering technology, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, could offer "mainframe-class computing at a fraction of the cost" because it enables companies to deploy a single, low-cost server and then add more hardware - with no application changes - to accommodate growth.
Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies at Oracle, said: "We're proud to offer immediate support of Oracle9i Database for both the 32- and 64-bit Windows Server 2003 operating systems.
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Zire 71 Gets Palm Back On Track
Palm's been the No. 1 player in the handheld device space for quite a while now, but the products the company has released in the last couple of years have left me scratching my head.
First, Palm seemed content simply to tinker with its designs, leaving the development of much-needed new features such as memory card support, multimedia capabilities and sharper screen resolutions to licensees suxh (sic) as Sony and HandEra.
Then, after whetting our appetites with Palm OS 5-a new, more capable, ARM processor-based platform—Palm botched delivery of the operating system by pairing it with the much-too-costly (albeit very attractive) Tungsten T.
Palm then backtracked by following up that first OS 5-based device with a wireless-enabled Tungsten W that ran Palm OS 4.1.1. End users may not care what OS their devices run, but Palm's much-heralded development community certainly does. What good is a new platform without devices on which to run it?
However, with Palm's announcement this week of two new Palm OS 5-based devices--the $299 Zire 71 and the $499 Tungsten C--I think the firm's begun moving back in the right direction.
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Health crisis looms in Iraq
A United Nations watchdog warned on Thursday that war damage to sanitation and electricity systems, coupled with worsening pollution, had aggravated Iraq's environmental crisis and posed a threat to health.
The report, issued here by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), called for urgent action to restore Iraq's water and sewerage system and clean up pollution "hot spots" and piles of rubbish and medical waste to reduce the risk of epidemics.
It also suggested scientists carry out a risk assessment of sites struck by US depleted-uranium (DU) munitions and that the Iraqi public be given advice on how to avoid potential exposure to DU.
Reconstruction plans should include the environment "Many environmental problems in Iraq are so alarming that an immediate assessment and a cleanup plan are needed urgently," the chairman of the UNEP study group, Pekka Haavisto, said.
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Bashir in yet another interview scandal
TV journalist Martin Bashir, who made the controversial Living with Michael Jackson documentary, has been reprimanded over an interview he conducted with the father of a child genius.
Farooq Yusof complained to the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) over a programme fronted by Bashir about his daughter Sufiah and her relationship with her family.
Sufiah hit the headlines when, at the age of 15, she ran away from Oxford University where she was studying for a masters degree in maths.
She was found safe and well after two weeks and Bashir was the first journalist to gain an interview with the family, although they had not been reunited at that point.
The Media Guardian website reports that Mr Yusof told a BSC hearing that Bashir had promised to give him information about the whereabouts of his daughter in return for an interview.
The BSC upheld a complaint about the way the interview with Mr Yusof was obtained.
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Could Iraq become the Silicon Crescent?
Although Iraq first needs basics like electricity and a government, it is already shaping up as a rare opportunity for technology companies. It is saddled with a tattered phone system, weak Internet access and virtually none of the wireless wonders sweeping other countries.
Even if Iraq never becomes the Silicon Crescent, big money is at stake. Rebuilding the country's telecommunications networks and constructing new facilities from scratch would cost billions.
U.S. officials have not explained how telecom contracts will be awarded, whether deals signed by Saddam Hussein's regime will be honored, or whether U.S. and British companies will be preferred. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is doling out several Iraq reconstruction projects, will not oversee telecom deals, spokesman Alfonso Aguilar said.
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Depleted uranium tests for troops
UK troops returning from Iraq are to be offered tests to check for traces of depleted uranium (DU) in their bodies.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced the screening programme after concerns were raised about the effects of exposure to DU, including a possible greater risk of cancer or kidney damage.
Britain's leading scientific body - the Royal Society - claimed soldiers and civilians may have been exposed to dangerous levels.
The MoD said it had decided last year to offer urine tests to personnel returning from deployments where DU ordinance was used.
On Thursday the United Nations said people in Iraq need urgent advice on avoiding exposure to DU.
It is the substance left over after ordinary uranium has been enriched for use in nuclear weapons or reactors and is used to make armour-piecing shells.
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Loss of privacy not inevitable
"Give me Duquesne minus 7, for a nickel."
It was February 1965 on a lonely section of Los Angeles's Sunset Boulevard, and Charles Katz, one of life's little losers, was placing an illegal sports bet over a public telephone. Unbeknownst to Katz, however, the FBI had placed a microphone atop the telephone booth to record this small-time gambler's conversations.
Engineers often mock the law for lagging behind technology. In fact, the law is often far ahead of it. This time it was ahead by nearly 200 years, for after Katz's arrest his lawyers argued that although the framers of the Constitution could not possibly have encountered tape recorders and telephone booths, the Fourth Amendment's ban on "unreasonable" searches nonetheless covered them. Because the FBI had no search warrant, Katz's lawyers said, bugging the phone booth was illegal. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court agreed, affirming for the first time that electronic surveillance was-constitutionally speaking-a search. "No less than an individual in a business office, in a friend's apartment, or in a taxicab," the majority declared, "a person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment."
Equally important was Justice John Harlan's concurring opinion. The government, he argued, could not freely eavesdrop in any place where people have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"-a phrase that even now, four decades later, resonates in the laboratory of Wayne Wolf. An electrical engineer at Princeton University, Wolf leads a research team that is creating a tiny, inexpensive video camera one might glibly describe as a lens glued to a chip. In theory, the camera could be the size of a postage stamp and cost as little as $10, "small and cheap enough to scatter by the dozen," as Wolf puts it. The laws of optics dictate that tiny lenses make low-resolution images, so the researchers are developing software that melds video from multiple cameras located in a single area, producing sharp, real-time images of the entire space. "You could stick them up all over a building and know exactly what was going on inside," Wolf says. "A lot of people would find a use for that."
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