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March 28, 2003
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Tech firms respond to Asia disease scare
An outbreak of a deadly disease in Asia prompted Hewlett-Packard to close a 300-person office in Hong Kong on Friday and take added precautionary measures, but other technology companies say they haven't been affected by the scare.
The possibility that an HP employee working out of a Hong Kong office contracted Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) led the company to send home all workers at that facility. HP is cleaning the office--which takes up five floors in an office tower on Hong Kong island--and also has distributed information about the illness to its staff throughout Asia.
"We're notifying all employees in the region (about) what they can do to try to prevent catching it," said Monica Sarkar, an HP spokeswoman.
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Protein memory to create 1,000 fold increase in storage
Analysts at market research firm iSuppli got together for a brainstorming meeting on what could be hot new technologies and have come up with a set of absolute corkers.
One of the more interesting idea includes optical 3D protein memory. This is a volumetric type memory which is three dimensional and could give as much as 1000-fold increase in storage capacity compared to current technology, according to senior analyst Bill Bernard.
The technology uses a photosensitive protein which has some similarities to proteins in the human retina. Transformed into a gel block, one side is accessed by a laser blade, effectively creating a slice through the substance. The block's front is lit by a digital laser light pattern composed of dark and light spots. So when these two laser blocks are intersected, it gives a recordable or read back of that particular slice of protein, said Bernard.
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Sun plans to get Java on PCs
Sun Microsystems expects major PC makers soon will begin bundling Sun's software for running Java programs on their computers, Sun executives said Friday.
If successful, the move would bypass some of the legal wrangling between Sun and its arch-rival Microsoft. Microsoft has been variously adding and removing Java from Windows throughout the course of an antitrust suit Sun brought against the software colossus.
"The PC OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are all looking at this point at licensing Java," said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, in a meeting with reporters Friday. "We hope to have some progress on that soon."
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Sun Drops Its Linux Distribution
In a major strategy shift, Sun Microsystems Inc. officials said it will stop offering its own customized version of Linux and will instead turn to several other standard Linux distributions.
"Yes, this is a change in strategy. Our Sun Linux distribution is essentially Red Hat Linux with a few minor tweaks," John Loiacono, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group, told reporters at a "town hall" meeting in San Francisco Friday morning. "But our customers told us they didn't want a standard distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will be.
"I'm currently talking to the Linux vendors and hope that this move will happen as soon as possible," said Loiacono.
Loiacono added that Linux provider Red Hat "would be a logical partner" and that Sun would ensure compatibility with the spectrum of products offered by the vendors selected.
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New Windows Server, XP Versions Roll Out
Microsoft announced Friday that it had released two high-end operating systems--Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit Edition Version 2003--to computer manufacturers.
Windows Server 2003 is Microsoft's high-end business operating system the company hopes will extend its foothold into the enterprise. Windows XP 64-bit Edition is designed for workstations running Intel's Itanium 2 processors.
Release of Windows XP 64 could benefit sales of Itanium-based workstations, which have not sold as well as expected, say analysts. Dell released a workstation containing the original Itanium chip in 2001, but then quietly pulled it off the market. Although Dell hasn't come out with Itanium 2 computers yet, company executives said the direct PC maker will adopt the chip. Currently, Hewlett-Packard is the only major computer manufacturer offering Itanium 2 workstations.
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Virus Mystery Almost Solved
U.S. health officials said on Thursday they were homing in on a virus believed to cause a globe-trotting respiratory infection and added six more cases to the American toll.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said evidence was mounting that a coronavirus, a member of a family of viruses best known for causing the common cold, was involved in the illness now known as severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The CDC reported it was monitoring 51 suspect cases in 21 states. "So far, happily, there have been no deaths attributed to SARS in patients in the United States," Dr. Jim Hughes, head of the CDC's infectious disease branch, told reporters.
Worldwide, more than 1,400 people have been reported with SARS in 12 countries and more than 50 have died.
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AMD, Via team up in anti-Intel Centrino push
Chip manufacturers Via and AMD are set to take on Intel by collaborating to offer wi-fi standards of their own.
According to a report in the Economic News, they fear that Intel will grab the entire notebook world if it succeeds in its attempt to establish the triple-pronged notebook push as a standard.
And AMD, the reports add, have already broached their case with giant notebook ODMs (original design manufacturers) by sending the Athlon XP-M microprocessor, its 802.11b wireless answer, and Via's chipset for mobiles supporting these two elements to Quanta and Compal.
The major thrust in this push will be cheap and cheerful chips, and AMD has already started mass producing cheaper chips in volume, the newspaper claimed today.
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FBI seeks Internet telephony surveillance
The FBI and Justice Department are worried that Voice Over IP (VoIP) applications may become safe havens for criminals to communicate with one another, unless U.S. regulators make broadband services more vulnerable to lawful electronic eavesdropping, according to comments filed with the FCC this month.
The government filing was prompted by the efforts of telecom entrepreneur Jeffrey Pulver to win a ruling that his growing peer-to-peer Internet telephony service Free World Dialup is not subject to the regulations that govern telephone companies.
Free World Dialup has been called "Napster for Phones." It's a free service aimed at developing Internet telephony as a mainstream alternative to the public switched telephone network. After an initial investment of about $250 for a Cisco SIP telephone -- a device that functions much like a conventional analog phone, but plugs directly into an IP network -- users can "dial" each other over the Internet anywhere in the world at no cost. Free World Dialup provides a directory service that assigns each user a virtual telephone number, and sets up each phone call. Since it was launched in November, the service has gathered over 12,000 users.
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IBM, Government Talk Super Computers
IBM and a variety of high-level government agencies are huddling to come up with an agenda for the future of U.S. supercomputers and to hammer out their differences on the subject.
Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies met with IBM executives in Washington this week to discuss pressing issues in high-performance computing, said Big Blue. They also discussed how to improve the performance of certain supercomputing applications, such as those for environmental modeling.
IBM, of course, is one of the global leaders in high-performance computing, accounting for 39 percent of the processing power on the Supercomputer 500 list.
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Small Meteor Breaks Up Over Midwest United States
Chunks of rocks believed to be the remains of a meteor that lit up the Midwestern sky as it exploded rained down across the southern suburbs early this morning, damaging homes and other buildings but injuring no one.
The meteor streaked across the sky about midnight before apparently blowing up with a bright flash and a thundering boom. About 100 fragments ranging in size from small stones to softball-size chunks were recovered from yards, driveways, streets and even the insides of houses in Park Forest, Matteson and Steger.
One piece reportedly struck a Park Forest fire station. Another grayish, five-pound rock landed in the second-floor bedroom of Noe and Paulette Garza, of the 400 block of Indiana Avenue in Park Forest.
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Copyproof CDs moving to market?
Copy-protection technology on music CDs may be headed for the U.S. market in bulk this year for the first time, according to one Wall Street analyst.
In a research note published Friday, J.P. Morgan analyst Sterling Auty said that Arista Records, a subsidiary of BMG Music, appeared to be moving to market with CD copy-protection technology produced by SunnComm Technologies.
"We expect volume shipments of protected CDs to ship commercially in the U.S. as early as the May-June time frame using the SunnComm solution," Auty wrote. "This will be the first major step in the growth of the CD audio protection market."
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An Introduction to PHP5
"PHP core developer Sterling Hughes has a (sic) excellent presentation (mirror) about PHP5 online. So far it seems to be the best coverage of the new features in PHP5; highlights include the new object model, namespaces, interfaces, access control and exceptions. Java by any other name..."
Source:
Slashdot
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Chinese IT players gain ground
Chinese companies are giving global giants like IBM and Hewlett-Packard a run for their money in China's burgeoning IT services market, market researcher IDC says.
According to a new report from IDC, local vendors command a dominant market share in mainland China and now account for more than 55 percent of China's total IT services market, compared with less than 45 percent in 1999.
"Last year, eight of the top 10 players in the market were local players," said Dorothy Yang, associate director of IDC China. "Companies like Digital China and Legend have gained share in 2002, bolstered by several acquisitions to strengthen their capabilities in the vertical industries like banking, telecoms, government and manufacturing."
These companies enjoy relatively low operational costs and have strong market penetration, due to their established sales and support networks and their local market knowledge, she added.
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Web gamblers wager on Saddam's future
Think Saddam Hussein's days are numbered? Care to put a little money on it?
If so, tune up your Web browser to one of the many Internet gambling sites taking bets on how long America's most wanted despot will hold onto the presidency of Iraq.
Big money is riding on the question -- about $1.25 million in wagers just on one site, www.tradesports.com.
Late Thursday, the site put Saddam's chances of lasting in office through Monday at about 90 percent. But he was given only a 1 in 3 chance of being in power at the end of April.
Betonsports.com, which bills itself as the Internet's "largest, legal and licensed sportsbook," puts Saddam's chances of remaining in Baghdad until June 30 at 1 in 15. The site offers 5-to-1 odds he will be in U.S. hands by then.
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Opera hits the small screen
Opera Software, which makes the browser, has established a foothold in a technology that some analysts see as an emerging force in the next few years: television delivered over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The Opera browser will be used in an interactive TV box from PlatC2, a player in the Japanese IP television industry, Opera said this week.
The deal is part of Opera's ongoing drive to put the browser into all sorts of non-PC devices, including smart phones such as Sony Ericsson's P800. Microsoft's Internet Explorer thoroughly dominates the PC desktop, but so-called embedded devices are seen as more open to competition.
In PlatC2's Broadband Terminal Box, Opera will act as middleware, presenting all applications and menus in HTML, Java and cascading style sheets (CSS). The small device, about the size and shape of a home smoke detector, is designed to decode MPEG-2 video streams from an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) or a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband connection.
The browser includes a spatial navigation feature, which allows Web navigation via direction arrows and lets people type e-mails or fill in Web forms via a numeric keypad.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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New SuSE Platform Targets Itanium Servers
According to reports released Thursday, Linux developer SuSE began shipping its newest enterprise server platform on Wednesday, specifically designed for use with servers running Intel's Itanium processor family.
The company says its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 is available for $749 per server, either through SuSE or one of its retail partners.
According to SuSE, the new release is the first time the company has modified its software to run on the 64-bit processors from Intel. The platform also supports protocols that allow it to be used as a Web server, file and print server, Internet or intranet gateway, communication server or an installation server. The version 8 for Itanium software also has support for third-party components, including Oracle and SAP, as well as IBM's DB2, Lotus, Domino and Notes.
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New build of Windows XP SP2 leaks out
"Thats right folks, just like Windows XP SP2 and Longhorn a few weeks back another build of Windows XP SP2 has found its way onto the internet. Holding the build number 5.1.2600.1185 (xpsp2.030313-1931) there are clear indications that SP2 is progressing in it's development and might well be ready to go into its beta stages sooner than we expected.
From what we can see there are no major changes to SP2 apart from hotfixes included, no WMP9, Windows Messenger 5/MSN Messenger 6, DirectX9, or three degrees."
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Planning Iraq's Wireless Future
A U.S. representative from California defended his call for U.S. agencies rebuilding Iraq after the current war to use Code Division Multiple Access instead of a popular mobile technology used in the Middle East, saying that U.S. companies should benefit from the rebuilding effort.
Representative Darrell Issa (R-California) sent a letter dated Wednesday to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development asking them to build a wireless system in Iraq based on CDMA instead of the rival Global System for Mobile Communications, or GSM, equipment for which is produced by French and German companies, he said.
About 30 other lawmakers had signed the letter as of Thursday afternoon. Late Wednesday, Issa also introduced a bill requiring the federal agencies to use U.S.-based CDMA technology while rebuilding Iraq, and requiring the preference of U.S. contractors for all government rebuilding efforts--presuming, of course, that the U.S. wins the war there.
The bill wouldn't stop private companies from installing GSM systems, said Dale Neugebauer, Issa's chief of staff. "We're talking about funds that'll come from U.S. taxpayers," Neugebauer added. "CDMA is a U.S. industry."
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War reporting goes hi-tech
Technology is gradually bringing the front line and the living room closer together.
Improvements to equipment used by reporters travelling with troops in Iraq mean that viewers are getting unprecedented access to a war as it unfolds.
Small satellite phones, laptop video editing software and light digital cameras are helping journalists file broadcast-ready reports direct from combat zones.
Before now, many journalists in war zones had to put reports on tape which then had to be carried far behind the frontline before being broadcast.
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Battling the Spam Hydra
It was the end of another 12-hour day filled with hostility, deception and confusion, and an exhausted Suresh Ramasubramanian, a systems administrator at a Hong Kong ISP, was finally getting ready to head home.
On his way out the door he happened to take one last look at the network status and noticed that a mail bomb -- a flood of incoming spam messages -- had just begun.
Ramasubramanian realized he probably wouldn't be getting any sleep that night.
He spent the next eight hours struggling to block the spam attack and contain the damage. The huge volumes of mail the spammer was sending -- several hundred thousand messages at a time from different Internet protocol (IP) addresses at the rate of 20,000 every 10 minutes -- was clogging his servers and seriously slowing down mail service to his legitimate users.
Stopping a spam surge usually isn't rocket science; skilled workers can trace and trap a spam flood within a few minutes by determining what IP address the spam is coming from and then blocking access to the spammed servers from that IP address.
Unfortunately, expert spammers can also switch IP addresses as quickly as the blocks are applied. Ramasubramanian wasn't surprised to see that each time he located the IP address the spammer was spewing from and blocked it, the spammer quickly jumped to another IP address.
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House votes on Net porn
The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to ban pornographic Internet sites with misleading addresses and computer-generated child pornography.
During a debate over a bill to create a notification network for child kidnapping cases, House members added two technology-related amendments to the legislation. The first measure, which was approved by voice vote, says anyone who knowingly uses an innocent-sounding domain name to drive traffic to a sex site could be fined and imprisoned for two to four years.
The second amendment, which the House agreed to by a 406-15 vote, represents Congress' second attempt to outlaw "morphed" or virtual child pornography. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down Congress' first law banning nude images of computer-generated minors and underage teens, saying the 1996 measure violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression.
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Windows Server 2003 Goes Gold
Microsoft is expected to announce on Friday that Windows Server 2003 has completed testing and has been certified final, or gold, code.
Release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Server 2003 code clears the way for next month's product launch event in San Francisco. RTM also means that computer manufacturers can begin selling systems with the software.
"As soon as that product is RTM, the (PC makers) are ready to roll with what they want to do," Bob O'Brien, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows Server, said Tuesday. In recent years, Microsoft's practice has been to let computer makers ship systems with a new operating system ahead of the official launch date. That was the case with Windows XP and Windows 2000.
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California moves closer to Net sales taxes
California, the nation's most populous state, this week took a step closer to collecting tax on sales of consumer goods over the Internet--a move rejected by its governor in better budgetary times.
A tax committee of California's Senate on Wednesday approved two bills that would clear the way for the state to collect sales tax on goods sold by out-of-state vendors to its residents via the Web, a move that could help it recoup an estimated $1.75 billion in lost annual tax revenue.
When California's homegrown Internet sector was thriving, California Gov. Gray Davis was an opponent of online sales taxes, saying they could hamper the growth of then-booming dot-com companies.
But such concerns have been eclipsed by a recent study finding that California appears to losing more tax revenues to online sales than any other state.
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Red Hat Linux 9 Forces Stability Gamble
"Release early and often" is an open-source mantra, but it has anything but a calming effect on enterprise IT administrators more concerned with maintaining stability in their infrastructure than staying on software's bleeding edge.
In a bid to court these enterprise customers without relinquishing its Linux leadership role, Red Hat Inc. has split its operating system offerings into enterprise and general-purpose lines, with the former focused on maintaining stability by sticking to a conservative upgrade path and the latter free to incorporate the latest and greatest of Linux.
On the general-purpose fast track, there will be no point upgrades--nor the stability they promise. Case in point is Red Hat Linux 9, the first update of the product since Version 8 was released just last September.
eWEEK Labs tested Version 9, which will be available on April 7. Superficially, the differences between versions 8.0 and 9 are less pronounced than those between 7.3 and 8.0, but changes to core packages, such as the glibc (GNU C Library), can potentially impact thousands of applications. For example, users of Phoebe, the Red Hat 9 beta, have reported problems compiling WINE, the software that provides an open-source compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux.
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Infineon expands chip business in China
German chipmaker Infineon Technologies said it will increase production of computer memory in China and in the process help a local foundry become more globally competitive.
Under the deal announced in Munich and Shanghai, Shanghai Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) will manufacture computer memory based on the 110-nanometer manufacturing process for Infineon. SMIC already makes 140-nanometer memory for Infineon. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; the measurement refers to the average size of features on a chip.)
The extension of the alliance will more than double the amount of memory being produced for Infineon, according to the company, which is trying to catch up to Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology in this market.
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Web services paths remain divided
Sun Microsystems entry into IBM and Microsoft's WS-I (Web services interoperability) organization was widely interpreted as a good step towards industrywide cooperation.
But as a dazzling array of vendor-driven standards continues to emerge, a fresh set of machinations are proving that the battle for control of Web services standards remains alive and well between two camps: IBM and Microsoft on one side, Sun and to some extent Oracle on the other.
And where enterprises are concerned, the politics threaten to limit the choice of commonly available standards they rely on to drive down the development and support costs related to the integration of disparate systems across the Internet.
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Lucent settles suit for $315 million
Lucent Technologies announced on Thursday that it settled class action shareholder lawsuits against it for $315 million, marking the end of one chapter in the telecommunications-gear maker's troubled history.
Under the settlement, Lucent agreed to pay out $315 million in cash, stock or a combination of both. As a result, Lucent expects to take a charge of $420 million, or 11 cents a share, in the second quarter.
In addition to Lucent's settlement, the company's insurance carriers have agreed to contribute $148 million in cash toward the settlement fund. And Lucent will also seek to recover up to $70 million from its insurance carriers to offset its own contribution.
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