NEWS, ETC.
August 2001
8/31 Technological
Dissonance AMD's MHz Chicanery
8/31 Copyright
Office Study Supports "Fair Use" of Digital Media
8/31 Acer
Undercuts Chipset Rivals. Acer ships low-cost Pentium 4 chipset,
enabling cheaper PC systems when it ships in volume this October.
8/31 McAfee
Announces New Slate of 2002 Security Products. Updated
to 2002 versions will be VirusScan, McAfee Firewall, McAfee QuickClean
and McAfee Internet Security...
8/31 150-inch
Movies on LED Display From AVC
8/31 Intel
Details Next-Generation I/O Spec. Provided
a first look at technical details for Arapahoe, the third-generation
system I/O expected to replace the ubiquitous PCI bus.
8/31 A
Magnetic Attraction at the Theme Park. Magnetic-levitation
roller coasters. You
may have to log into the NY Times, but it is free and is well worth
the little effort that it takes.
8/31 Top
10 Digital Cameras $500 and Over
8/30 Worm
Alert: Masquerades
As An E-mail Message From Microsoft. Win32.Invalid.A@mm. The
mail carries a highly destructive payload: it can render .exe applications
unusable by encrypting them with a random encryption key. Subject:
Invalid SSL Certificate. Body: "Hello, Microsoft Corporation announced
that an invalid SSL certificate that web sites use is required to be
installed on the user computer to use the https protocol..." Attachment:
sslpatch.exe. Don't
open it. More
info.
8/30 Motorola
Designs Tools for Ultra-Small Chips. Motorola
has developed technology that would allow for mainstream production
of computer chips with microscopic circuitry more than 50-percent more
densely packed than currently possible.
8/30 Snail
Brain Drain
8/30 Sun's
Desktop Division Making Headway. Sun joined the GNOME Foundation
and promised both to support the development of GNOME and use GNOME as
the default desktop for Solaris. The GNOME project was the first
to provide a fully free desktop environment for Unix-like systems, such
as Linux.
8/30 EU
Expands Probe of Microsoft. Microsoft may be violating
antitrust laws by tying its Media Player into its Windows operating system...
8/30 New
High-Temp Superconductor Using Carbon Unveiled
8/30 Intel
Media Switch Chip Delivers Gigabit Speed For Cost-Effective, Scalable
Switching Solutions
8/30 Japanese
Rocket Launch Successful
8/30 AMD
Plays Name Game in Megahertz Race. Starting next
month, the chipmaker will introduce a new Athlon naming plan that reflects
the processor's overall performance rather than simply its speed based
on megahertz. AMD
Pulls Out of Intel Speed Race. AMD
will now begin to downplay chip speeds with the introduction of four
new Athlon XP processors set to ship next month. "...consumers
who rely on megahertz as an indication of relative performance are victims
of missed expectations."
8/30 Three
Lines of Code to Hack Hotmail and Passport. Then,
of course, he proceeded to tell the entire world about it!
8/30 Hynix
Samples 0.13-Micron DDR Memory. The company is quietly sampling
a 512-Mbit DDR SDRAM, based on its new 0.13-micron technology. Production
for this part will begin in November...
8/30 NVIDIA
Announces Breakthrough Power Saving Technology for Mobile GPUs
8/30 HailStorm
Promise and Threat Remain Distant. Microsoft
VP Allchin: "We're just not there. I know what we're doing
technically. I know it's the right direction. But when you touch on the
business model, I know there are a lot of discussions about that."
8/30 Users
Debate Linux Future as Windows Alternative. Smaller companies
could be much more affected by Microsoft's XP licensing plan, which prevents
a user from installing one copy of the OS on more than one machine, Boyd
said. Even though the practice is illegal, many small companies,
those with a couple of dozen or so users, continue to buy just one copy
of Windows and install it on all of their machines to save money. If
they try to move to the more feature-rich Windows XP, that strategy will
no longer be possible, he said. That's where Linux could come in,
Boyd said. Making
Linux Usable Tops Torvalds' List. Red
Hat CEO Pushes Linux in Schools.
8/30 Seagate
and Intel Demo Prototype Serial ATA Hard Drive
8/29 Final
Serial ATA Specification Released. The
Serial ATA interface will be used to connect such internal storage devices
as hard disks, DVDs and CD-R/Ws to the motherboard in desktop and mobile
PCs... Scalable performance (starting at 1.5 gigabits per second)... Serial
ATA FAQs. Specification.
8/29 Intel
Sticks to Brookdale DDR P4 Motherboard Chipset Launch in First Quarter. However,
Intel will ship the chipset to manufacturers next quarter. Motherboards
won't ship until first quarter 2001.
8/29 Intel
Offers Details on Future Itanium Chips. "McKinley" will
have 220 million transistors, 3 MByte on-die cache,' 400 MHz, 128 bit
bus, and be 1.5 to 2 times faster. "Madison," which follows "McKinley," will
have 6 MByte on-die cache'
8/29 First
Look at Microsoft IE 6.0. Microsoft's updated browser eats cookies
and sings a slightly new tune by adopting open standards.
8/29 Microsoft
Judge Orders Sept. 21 Meeting
8/29 Secretive
DRAM Group Seeks Standard Status for Its Spec
8/28 Gateway
to Cut 5,000 Jobs. About
25% of its workforce.
8/28 Motorola
May Integrate Memory Controller Into PowerPC. "It
makes a lot more sense to add high-speed memory controllers on processors," Handa
said. "Anytime you have a bus, you have to arbitrate for the bus.
Rather than let it go hungry, you could feed the processor as fast as
it can be fed."
8/28 Intel
Demonstrates 3.5 GHz Pentium 4. Intel
demonstrated a 0.13-micron feature size Northwood version with 3.5 GHz
capability at the Intel
Developer Forum.
8/28 Intel
Touts Desktop Multiprocessing. 'Hyper-threading'
capability will permeate entire product line. Intel
Demonstrates Breakthrough Processor Design. 'Hyper-Threading'
to be Integrated in Server Systems in 2002, Move to Desktop Later...
improving system performance by 30 percent... allows a single processor
to manage data as if it were two processors by handling data instructions
in parallel rather than one at a time.
8/28 Abit
to Start Compaq Barebone System Shipments in October.
8/28 Seagate's
Super-Quiet Barracuda ATA IV Hard Disk Drive Featured Taishan Concept
PC System
8/28 Felines'
Favorite Herb Proves Abhorrent to Mosquitoes
8/28 Search
Engine Start-ups Seek Google's Throne
8/28 Microsoft
Opens 64-bit Windows
8/28 ALi
Unveils ALADDiN-P4 DDR Pentium 4 Motherboard Chipset. Supports
both Double and Single Data Rate memory.
8/28 IE
6.0 Released, Minus Java or Netscape Plug-ins
8/27 Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer Version
6.0. You can download it here.
8/27 Earth
to Microsoft - We're Not Ready for XP
8/27 Intel
Launches 2 GHz Pentium 4 Processor. Intel
Ships 2GHz P4s, Slashes Prices Again. Intel
Developer Forum: It's All About Speed.
8/27 AMD
Responds to Intel With Price Cuts
8/27 Move
Over USB: Here's FireWire. While Apple Computer
was happy to take home an Emmy for its FireWire technology, the company
must be even more pleased that the high-speed connection is moving closer
to a bigger goal--becoming standard on the majority of PCs. Good
read.
8/27 Linux
Barreling Deeper Into the Enterprise. "There's a real focus
on Linux clusters and high-availability systems, and storage-area networks."
8/27 Government
Embraces Wearable Computers. One application the Navy is considering
would enable a technician wearing a wireless, head-mounted camera to
send an image to a remote expert who could ``literally walk you through
whatever the repair may be...''
8/27 Net
Processors In Eye of I/O Storm. Network
processors and their companion ICs are getting sucked into an interface
and I/O maelstrom as communications chip vendors seek standardized hooks
into these new but ill-defined network nerve centers.
8/27 IBM
Gets Smart With Its Own 'Tags'
8/27 DSL
Growth Slows, Lags Cable Modem Market. "...you're
going to see cable have a distinct advantage until DSL starts to add
services and have something there that's going to draw people in." Narrow
Audience Stalls Broadband.
8/27 NVIDIA
Introduces Personal Cinema
8/27 NVIDIA
Displays Next Step in Adoption of Digital Displays
8/26 Old
PCs Fine for New School Year, Industry Fears. Students
will go back to school this year with freshly sharpened pencils, clean
new notebooks and maybe even new cell phones -- but probably not a new
personal computer.
8/26 IBM
Builds Miniature Circuit. scientists have built the smallest-ever
computer logic circuit, a two-transistor component made from a single
molecule of carbon. IBM
Press Release.
8/26 New
Worm Poses as Helpful Program. Win32.All3gro.A
claims to eliminate the SirCam virus,
etc., but doesn't. Depending on the day of the week, it tries to delete
documents or system files, and E-mails itself to people in the address
book. Look for Subject: "New antivirus tool"; attachment: "Antivirus.exe." Do
not open the attachment.
8/26 Exploration
of World Wide Web Tilts From Eclectic to Mundane. The average
user in the United States spent 20.7 hours in July, up 2 hours from last
year. But their visits are concentrated in fewer places. You
may have to log into the NY Times, but it is free and is well worth the
little effort that it takes.
8/26 Scientists
Find Genetic Secrets of Longer Life
8/26 Hitachi
Set to Cut 20,000 Jobs, Report Says. Full-scale
restructuring of its semiconductor operations hit hard by this year's
steep info-tech downturn...
8/26 Record-Breaking
New Asteroid Analyzed
8/24 Semiconductor
Alert! Commentary & analysis of week's chip news, Aug. 20-24
8/24 'Offensive'
Worm Spreading Worldwide. can
make Windows desktop icons invisible, prevent users from starting programs
or shutting down, and even persists when a machine is being used in the
Windows safe mode. Offensive
virus breaks Windows.
8/24 Intel
to Cut Up to 55% Off Pentium 4 Prices Sunday
8/24 Windows
XP Goes Gold. Microsoft Corp. said
development of its Windows XP operating system is now complete and that
the software giant will present the final version, or "gold code," to
computer manufacturers today.
8/23 SiS735
Shipments Increasing, VIA Trying to Catch-up with KT266CE. With
its superior performance, the DDR SDRAM-supporting SiS735 motherboard
chipset has gradually taken market share from VIA’s KT266.
8/23 Chip
Makers Work to Break Data Logjam. Several small
chip makers, with funding from Intel, have been working on chips that
use InfiniBand.
8/23 Microsoft
Says Hotmail Users Can Dial in for Email. Microsoft
will give its 20 million E-mail users in Europe access to messages via
their mobile phones.
8/23 nVIDIA
nFORCE Chipset Motherboards Available in October.
The first motherboards should appear in late September. Volume
shipments in October.
8/23 VIA
Counters Allegations by Intel. "Intel
has made repeated claims both in the media and in discussions with customers
that we are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the
Intel Pentium 4. We disagree with these and other scare tactics that
Intel is employing in the PC industry for marketing purposes..."
8/23 Total
Number of Jobless Workers Hits Nine-Year High
8/23 Qwest
Won't Credit Code Red Victims. Customers using
Qwest DSL service experienced intermittent outages for about 10 days. Qwest:
Qwest and Cisco "made every attempt to work with customers on this
problem. The problem is not the modem, the problem is the virus. Qwest
is not crediting for the virus."
8/23 Gateway
Cut to Junk Status by S&P
8/23 Compaq
Tries to Murder the English Language
8/23 Nanochains
Could Yield Single-Electron Transistors
8/23 Unified
Messaging- Coming-on Strong. Voice mail, E-mail and FAXes from
a single in-box...
8/22 Larry's
One-way Cable Goes Two-way
8/22 The
New and Improved AMD Duron Processor. Beginning with the 1 GHz
Duron, AMD's low-end Athlon core has been replaced with the Morgan core....
Morgan features the same architectural improvements as the Athlon MP
("Palomino"). Unbelievably, the 1 GHz Morgan simply trashes
the competition and gets a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 score! Even more surprisingly,
the Athlon Thunderbird with DDR is beaten by a Morgan with PC133 SDRAM! Cost
(see next headline) = $89 retail! Street price will probably be
lower.
8/22 New
AMD Processor Pricing Released Official
AMD Processor Pricing Unofficial
(Street) AMD Processor Pricing
8/22 Intel
Chip Price Cuts Expected. When
the 2 GHz P4 processor is demo'd at the Intel
Developer Forum (IDF) in San Jose, California on Monday. Cuts
may be announced over the weekend.
8/22 New
Tools Help Chips Read Linux. Intel plans
to announce compilers that translate Linux programs written in C++ or
Fortran languages into commands an Intel Pentium 4 or Itanium chip can
understand.
8/22 Space
Station Crew Back On Earth
8/22 Alpha
Astronauts Say Trip to Mars Is Doable
8/22 Fusion
Energy: the 'Fast Igniter' Shapes-up. A
modification of the 'fast igniter' approach to ICF, reported this week,
could be a significant advance towards efficient laser fusion ignition.
8/22 ALi
Declares Support for AMD's HyperTransport Technology. Motherboard
chipset maker, Acer Labs, joins the crowd... plans to incorporate
AMD’s HyperTransport data bus technology into its future southbridge
chips.
8/22 People
Change Once They Go Broadband. Wind up spending more time online,
viewing many more Web pages, and parking themselves in front of their
computer monitors more often.
8/22 Chip
lithography Harnessed to Grow Living Brain Cells
8/22 Windows
XP to Descend on PC Makers. On Friday
Microsoft will deliver final Windows XP code to PC makers in a big way:
with helicopters decorated with Windows XP and major PC maker logos. Microsoft
Outpaces Legal Foes with Windows XP.
8/22 Microsoft
Takes-up Passport Defense
8/21 Instant
Messaging Goes to Work. Although instant messaging is often associated
with teen-agers chatting online, corporations are increasingly looking
toward the tool as a way to boost worker productivity. Around 18.3
million workers use instant messaging (IM) for job-related purposes...
8/21 Intel
Using Legal Threat to Slow Via, Says Analyst. "...the
company is now resorting to legal threats to mobo (motherboard) makers
to stay away from the P4X266, buying time to ramp 845/DDR..."
8/21 Motherboard
Manufacturers Forced to Take Sides in Chipset Battle
8/21 Motherboard
Makers Choosing Their Primary Product Lines for 4Q
8/21 MicronPC
Settles on Intel
8/21 Compaq
Joins Sun in Java Fight. Compaq now joins Dell to bundle a Java
Virtual Machine (JVM) with every Windows XP computer it sells. Sun's
Java Misses the XP Bus.
8/21 Physics
Of Football In Flight About To Be Confirmed
8/21 Intel
Putting Last Pieces of P4 Strategy in Place. The last piece of
the puzzle will drop into place when Intel formally launches its i845
chipset next month with support for PC133 memory... Intel is hoping to
jump-start sales of the Pentium 4 by lowering the price of its 1.5GHz
processor to less than $200 and pairing the chip with low-priced memory
for the sub-$800 PC market...
8/21 LAN
Services Set to go Wireless. What's
now a trickle of wireless LAN services from carriers, mobile operators
and Internet service providers could turn into a torrent by year-end.
8/21 Scientists
Isolate 'Tender Steak' Gene
8/20 Ballmer:
Windows XP May be Ready to Go. Microsoft Chief
Executive Steve Ballmer: "With a little bit of luck, we should
have it ready by Friday..." "I don't know what a monopoly is
until somebody tells me."
8/20 AMD
Announces the Mobile 1.1 GHz Athlon 4 Processor. AMD
Cuts Prices, Launches 1.1GHz Mobile Athlon 4. AMD's
Duron to Hit 1GHz; Athlons Upgraded. A
1.5GHz desktop Athlon processor is expected next month, completing AMD's
move from its Thunderbird and Spitfire processor cores--the current desktop
Athlon and the desktop and mobile Duron, respectively--to the Palomino
and Morgan cores.
8/20 First-Tier
Motherboard Makers Asked to Design and Develop P4X266 Products. Taiwan’s
first-tier motherboard makers are reportedly being asked by over three
of the world’s top 10 PC brands to design and develop motherboards based
on VIA’s P4X266 Pentium 4 DDR chipset.
8/20 Chipset
and Motherboard Makers Ponder the Real Market Demand for Intel’s P4 Processor. Intel
has made its new Pentium 4 processor the hottest product in the current
market. However, chipset companies like VIA and SiS and motherboard makers
now think that given the seemingly overheated market expectations, real
demand for P4 products may be overestimated.
8/20 Microsoft
License Changes Anger IT Managers. "If
Microsoft continues to make my choices narrower and life tougher
for me, they'll see exactly how little monopoly they really do have
over this market, and we'll exercise our choices to go somewhere
else..."
8/20 Hackers
Hit Hotmail Hole. Underground
hacker site has released a graphical exploit tool for sneaking a glimpse
at other users' Hotmail accounts.
8/20 Does
Linux Have a Future on the Desktop? "One
of the places it won't be going any time soon, it seems, is to consumers'
desktops."
8/20 Sony
Unveils New 'Networked' Handycams. Bluetooth-enabled
wireless allows them to send moving and still digital images directly
to personal computers, or via a mobile phone to the Internet.
8/20 HP
Set to Ship Rewritable DVD Drive for PCs. $599,
available in September... compatible
with most DVD players... capable of writing DVD disks at 2.4x speed reading
at 8x... write to CD-R discs at 12x and read at 32x.
8/20 Excite@Home
Survival Chances Dim
8/20 Fujitsu
to Axe 16,400 Jobs In IT Slump. Nearly 10 percent of its global
workforce...
8/20 GroupWise
Users Fight Mystery Bug.
8/20 Dinosaurs
Walk Again, Thanks to Technology
8/20 Seagate
Ships Over 1.5 Million U Series Hard Drives. Number One Disk
Driver Maker in 2001.
8/18 Semiconductor
Alert! (Aug. 13-17). Commentary & analysis of week's chip
news. Chip business to hit new bunch of records--all the wrong
kind. The worldwide semiconductor market is expected to show the largest
decline in history--a fall of 26%...
8/18 NetWare
6: Don't call it a comeback.
After examining Beta 3 of NetWare 6, we are impressed... Even someone
with no previous NetWare experience can have a server up and running
and available to users within a few hours... end-user installation
is reduced to a few clicks in a Web browser.
8/18 AMD
Finds Tough Sledding in the High End Enterprise Space
8/18 Research
Could Lead to Skinnier CRTs. Researchers say
they've developed an electronic display that is half as deep as current
models. "We think this is going to enable large TVs that basically
can sit on your bookshelf.''
8/17 Code
Red Set to Reawaken This Weekend
8/17 Court
Rejects Microsoft Bid for Delay
8/17 Workstation
Battle Royale. Let us be honest here, even at 1.7 GHz,
the Pentium 4 Xeon has a hard time competing with the much cheaper 1.2
GHz Athlon MP.
8/17 DDR
Athlon Motherboard Rumble. ...Seeing the
numbers above, it seems like there is very little reason to go with a
RDRAM based Intel system unless gaming is your thing and you have way
too much money.
8/17 Dell
Reports Q2 Loss of $101 Million
8/17 Hewlett-Packard
Profit Drops Sharply
8/17 Analysts:
Tech Bottom Could Last for Years. Ah,
good! That's the kind of pessimism I like to hear because history shows
that is what happens just before things start to get better.
8/17 Intel
Warns PC Makers Over Via Chipset. Intel representatives
have privately cautioned PC and motherboard manufacturers in the United
States and overseas against using the product, saying it could draw them
into a costly legal battle, said sources with some of those companies.
8/16 Economic
Slowdown May be Halting. New home construction rose 2.8% in July,
the biggest rise since February 20... new claims for state unemployment
benefits fell by 8,000 to 380,000 last week... consumer prices dropped
sharply (0.3%) in July.
8/16 Samsung
Makes DDR Push With New DRAMs. 128 and 256 megabits... 0.15-micron...
from 5% to 20% of total DRAM by the end of the year... All 333 MHz.
8/16 DRAM
Distributors Pessimistic About a Price Rebound
8/16 DNA
Database Helping Solve Decades-Old Crimes
8/16 New
Peripherals Thrive in PC Downturn. Removable memory, CD drives,
LCD monitors and other new toys computer users increasingly can't live
without -- have had a robust year.
8/16 Meet
the Metal Muscle. Will
new "nanomuscles" make electric motors passé?
8/16 IBM
Gains Market Share in Servers, Report Says. Jumped from 5.5%
to 12%.
8/16 Microsoft
Releases New Security Tools. HFNetChk is a command-line
tool that helps administrators to check from a central location which
security patches have been applied to all machines in a network.
8/16 Athlon
Advocates Beating Performance Drum. AMD
believes it can convince the buying public that systems based on its
processors will outperform those based on its competitors’ products,
even if their processors spin at 1.7GHz or 1.8GHz.
8/16 Intel
Faces Up to Taiwanese Challenge. VIA and SiS chipsets will interface
the Pentium 4 to DDR memory and are launching ahead of Intel’s own version
of such a chipset.
8/16 No
Intel Patents for P4 Bus, VIA Says. Facing
a possible legal battle with Intel over the release of its latest chip
set (P4X266), VIA said it has been unable to find evidence that Intel
holds a patent for the 400MHz front-side bus used with the Pentium 4
processor.
8/16 Egghead
Files For Chapter 11. You
may have to log into the NY Times, but it is free and is well worth the
little effort that it takes.
8/16 Dell
to Report 2Q Earnings. Despite moving to the top of the PC class,
analysts say there could be trouble ahead for Dell.
8/15 DDR,
RDRAM Shipments Double in August. Now expected to double or even
triple in August... Distributors are not afraid to say that DDR may become
the more dominant memory in the future.
8/15 IBM
Rattles AMD Shareholders. I don't
know why, except there was some hoopla about it in the press yesterday...
IBM's decision was made last May.
8/15 VIA
Begins Volume Shipments of VIA Apollo P4X266 DDR Pentium 4 Chipset
8/15 Intel
Escalates Threats to Via Over P4 Chipset
8/15 3D
Graphics Chip Market Accelerates. Despite
slump in other sectors, 3D is hot, and Nvidia is in position to take
the wheel...
8/15 Light
May Have Speeded Up. The cosmic speed limit - the speed of light
- may have increased as the Universe matured.
8/15 Linux
Is Going to Hollywood, and IBM Wants a Lift. Hollywood's
latest rising star is Linux, the upstart operating system that serves
as an alternative to Windows.
8/15 The TSC Streetside
Chat: Benjamin Anixter of Advanced Micro Devices. "The
Athlon product is going to go through two generations between now and
this time next year. The first generation... is now only a couple of
months away. That will give us a lower-power device, which will be
good for notebooks, and also a fast product, which gives better performance.
We'll also start production on the Hammer family, our eighth-generation
machine. We'll have samples out by the end of this year..."
8/14 Microsoft
MCSE Training Comes Under Fire. IT
Professionals and trainers are blaming insufficient security training
offered under the nationwide Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer program
for contributing to the spread of Code Red and other damaging viruses.
8/14 Intel
to Introduce 2 GHz Pentium 4 on August 27th
8/14 Canon
Introduces Ten Printers, Scanners, Devices. Printers and scanners
start below $100, and multifunction devices debut this fall.
8/14 Cable
Firms Add Nearly 1 Million High-Speed Internet Users In Q2
8/14 Little
Big Science. Nanotechnology
is all the rage. But will it meet its ambitious goals? And what the heck
is it?
8/14 Americans'
Time Spent Online Keeps Going Up
8/14 RDRAM
Demand Weak – DRAM Sector at a Loss. Some analysts are actually
detecting greater sales for DDR SDRAM, the memory that could possibly
take Rambus out of the running.
8/14 DRAM
Free Fall May Not be Halted by Fab Closures. Current fab utilization
rates are running at about 40% for foundries and 70% for integrated device
manufacturers... "...People don't like to make one-sided cuts in
output because they can lose market share."
8/14 'Web
Bugs' Are Tracking Use of Internet. Internet
monitoring technology popularly known as "Web bugs" has exploded
on personal Web pages — especially those created free through online
companies like America Online and Geocities... You
may have to log into the NY Times, but it is free and is well worth the
little effort that it takes.
8/13 Startup
Revives Dynamic Circuits for Use in MPUs. An 80-person startup
is reviving a technology that ruled in the pre-CMOS era: dynamic logic...
In an embedded market where the speediest MPUs push 500 MHz, Intrinsity's
bare-bones test chip operates at 2.2 GHz.
8/13 'Big
Brother' Watching? In Britain, Quite Likely
8/13 Upbeat
Analyst Report Boosts Chip Sector. Goldman Sachs suggested that
the worst could soon be over for the struggling sector.
8/13 When
Will the Tech Slump Finally End? Analysts think the near-recession
conditions gripping the high-tech industry will continue well into next
year.
8/13 Web
Services Competition Heats Up. Application
server vendors are gearing up to do battle with IBM and Microsoft in
the Web services game by strengthening their infrastructure toolkits
and support for standards.
8/13 Are
Microsoft's Papers in Order? Passport, the user ID service, is
scaring the competition.
8/13 Q&A:
Microsoft Passport Protects Consumer Privacy
8/13 Microsoft,
Banks Battle to Control Your e-info. Gates may finally have banks
in his cross hairs. But it may be because the dinosaur is awake and looms
as a serious threat to Microsoft's grand plan to control the Internet. HailStorm
will be accessible only by Passport users, initially for no charge. But
Microsoft plans to nick consumers for a subscription fee once the services
become pervasive. Good read.
8/13 Microsoft
Users May Vote With Their Feet. Users are ready to investigate
alternatives to Microsoft's desktop and office software, prompted in
part by rising costs following changes to licensing policies.
8/13 $8
Billion in Excess Chip Inventory Still Clogs Supply Chain
8/13 P2P
to Revolutionise Internet by 2004. Analysts believe that peer-to-peer
is about to break the domination of the Web server - and firms into P2P
could be the next hot tech stocks.
8/13 Dell
Tops Customer Satisfaction Survey. Although
the study had shown gradually declining satisfaction among Dell customers
over the past three quarters, the company regained a large portion of
those losses in the second quarter.
8/13 Ethanol
For Fuel Fundamentally Uneconomic. "Abusing
our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process
that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized
food burning," says the Cornell professor... "About 70%
more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually
is in ethanol..."
8/13 Smarter
Worms Are On Their Way. "It wouldn't take too much to design
a worm that attacks key parts of the Internet. You could cause quite
a problem for a country or a network..."
8/12 Microsoft,
Kodak Settle Windows XP Dispute. Kodak's criticism
appears to have been quelled by Microsoft changing one dialog box affecting
how Windows XP handles imaging devices...
8/11 Security
Firm Blamed For Code Red Costs. 'Was it really necessary to release
full details of the IIS buffer overflow that made the Code Red I and
II worms possible?'
8/11 Semiconductor
Alert! (Aug. 6-10) Commentary & analysis of week's chip news
8/11 Intel
Fights Back Against AMD and VIA in the Low-end Processor Market.
8/11 U.S.
Urges Court To Deny Microsoft Delay Request. The brief reference
to Windows XP in Friday's filing is the first time the government has
brought up the new operating system in court.
8/11 Sun
Demands Java for Windows XP. In full-page ads in The New York
Times, San Jose Mercury News and The Wall Street Journal on Thursday,
Sun called on consumers "to demand that Microsoft include the Java
platform in their XP operating system."
8/11 Microsoft
Tightens Its Grip on the Web. It wants to own ecommerce, just
like it owns your desktop. If XP makes Passport a de facto standard for
software writers, Microsoft will control a crucial part of the way websites
collaborate... Well-written.
8/11 Microsoft
Puts More Privacy in Passport. Criticism
of Passport has mounted from some privacy advocacy groups... Microsoft
said it will now require only an e-mail address and password to open
a new Passport account.
8/11 Discovery
Launches to Meet Space Station
8/11 Judge
Orders Rambus to Pick-up $7M Legal Tab for Infineon. ..."baseless,
unjustified and frivolous" suit.
8/11 Intel
to Show 2GHz Xeon Chip Next Week.
At Siggraph 2001 computer graphics trade show in Los Angeles.
8/11 Intel
CEO Sees Some Pickup in Computing in 2001. Computer
shipments should improve later this year, but telecommunications equipment
sales will probably not step up until late 2002.
8/10 Hynix
Expects to Double its DDR Memory Shipments This Month
8/10 Socket
A Chipsets Comparison. Plenty
of benchmarks, good comparison, easy read.
8/10 Small
Seattle Firm Takes on Microsoft on Its Turf. xSides,
a tiny Seattle company, is entering the fray with technology that literally
pushes Windows aside...
8/10 Code
Red III Detected in South Korea. The
Code Red III worm spreads even faster than earlier versions and leaves
a wider "back door" on infected machines.... 43,201 servers
infected so far. Code
Red III Alert In Korea May Be False Alarm - Expert. Nothing
concrete one way or the other in this most recent story. More
Code Red info.
8/10 Intel's
Itanium Processor Too Hot for Servers? At
130 watts, the 0.18-micron Itanium dissipates significantly more heat
than the 32-bit Pentium 4. "If you open up our [Dell PowerEdge]
7150 [a 7U server with four Itaniums], about two-thirds of that is
fans..."
8/10 U.S.
Funds Supercomputing Grid. The NSF-funded grid is planned to
be capable of sending the entire contents of the World Wide Web to any
of the four Distributed Terascale Facility sites in two hours. IBM
news release.
8/10 Baby
Bell Breakup Movement Gains Ground
8/9 Microsoft
Plans ‘Blizzard’ Of Web Services On Corporate, Enterprise Landscape.
Hailstorm is more around the desktop; this [code named Blizzard] is more
server-oriented... shared databases and spreadsheets that will
extend out to suppliers... Great Plains group [accounting] is also developing
a set of XML Web services...
8/9 "Self-assembling" Solar
Cells Developed. Solar cells that "self assemble" from
a liquid have been developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge.
The breakthrough could make it cheap and easy to cover large areas, like
roofs, with efficient, ultra-thin solar cell coatings... "Organic
materials normally have low efficiencies, but we found we this was high
- peaking at 34 per cent."
8/9 China
Wants to Choose Next Dalai Lama. You've
got to be kidding...
8/9 SiS
Announces SiS645/SiS961 DDR333 Chipset for the Pentium 4. Sample
in August with mass production in September 2001.
8/9 IE
6 Central to Passport Privacy Boost. Microsoft
will soon be offering better privacy and security for online consumers,
but at a price: exclusive use--for now--of the company's forthcoming
Internet Explorer 6.0 Web browser.
8/9 FCC
Reports 63% Jump In Broadband Use
8/9 No
PC Recovery Until 2003, IDC Says. Small
amount of growth is still expected for 2002.
8/9 VIA
P4X266 Based Board from ESC to Move Pentium 4 to Low-End. Pics
of motherboard with VIA P4 DDR chipset.
8/9 ECS
to Begin Shipping Pentium 4 Motherboards for IBM. No mention
of the chipset that will be used for these boards.
8/9 Security
Firms Call for Video-Surveillance Law. Facing
a growing public backlash, the security industry called on Congress Wednesday
to regulate the use of surveillance systems that match faces of people
on the street with a database of known criminals.
8/9 Firewalls
Bypassed in Wireless LANs... Over-the-air security built into
today's 802.11b WLAN systems is too easy for attackers to break... at
least 20% of enterprises already have "rogue" WLANs attached
to their corporate networks...
8/9 QuakeCon
2001 Starts at the Mesquite Convention Center Mesquite, Texas. "Mesquite-based
id Software, makers of the wildly popular DOOM and QUAKE, are holding
the sixth annual QuakeCon video game conference and tournament."
8/9 Nobel Prizes Awarded for Physics and Chemistry
8/9 Wandering
Lonely as a Planet. 18 large, planet-sized objects found wondering
in the Orion constellation instead of circling a star.
8/9 Microsoft
Expands Icon Use Requirements. In
an attempt to counter AOL Time Warner, the software giant reportedly
wants three of the icons on XP desktops to point to its own services.
8/9 Microsoft
Appeal Gets No Respect... from
legal experts.
8/9 No
Sign of Bottoming Out In Economy, Fed Reports. Survey finds that
weakness in manufacturing is expanding to other areas; stocks plummet
on the news.
8/9 Another
Leak from ATI: This Time a Roadmap
8/9 IE
6.0 Launch Date = Wednesday, August 15th
8/9 AOL,
MSN Not as Satisfying as Others, Survey Says
8/9 The
20th Anniversary of the PC? Well, Sort Of
8/9 Gateway
Closing Operations in Britain, Ireland
8/9 AMD
Works on Its Megahertz Image. AMD is preparing
to launch its next desktop Athlon processor, a 1.5GHz chip, in late September... Intel
is getting ready to release the 2 GHz P4... Herein lies AMD's marketing
problem.
8/8 Continued
Popularity, New Capabilities Assure the Future of the PC. With
the 20th anniversary of the Aug. 12, 1981, launch of the IBM
5150 Personal Computer approaching, many within the computer industry
are pausing to reflect on how far personal computing has come -- and
how far it is likely to go in the next 20 years.
8/8 Light
Shed on Brave New World of Nanotechnology. "These
properties suggest that nanotubes may soon be able to conduct electrons
over many micrometers, making them a viable, much smaller alternative
to conventional electronic wires."
8/8 Dell,
Locally-Built, and Micron Rated the Best Overall Desktop PC's.
8/8 Number
of U.S. Households Online Grows in Second Quarter. Rose 3%
to 70.7 million subscribers during the second quarter of 2001.
8/8 The
Perseid Meteor Shower. One of the best of the annual meteor displays
reaches maximum before sunrise next Sunday.
8/8 HyperTransport
Consortium Leader Brings Clarity to Interconnect Technology Landscape
8/8 PC
Chip Makers Revenues Seen Off 24%
8/8 Microsoft
Releases Code Red II Cleanup Tool. Designed to "eliminate
the obvious effects of the Code Red II worm." It does
not install the patch released by Microsoft correct the buffer-overflow
bug in the IIS Web server. It may not fix other worms, etc. installed
using the back door installed by Code II. Scans looking for servers
with the back door are being detected.
Tool
description and download.
More on Code Red and Red II.
8/8 Got
a Virus? You're Sued! Analysts
are now predicting that those who have been lax in their security practices
will begin to find themselves on the losing end of civil suits for negligence.
8/8 World
Silicon Wafer Demand Off 21%
8/8 Toshiba
to Cut Memory Chip Output by 25%. Closing
oldest production line. Semiconductor makers around the world have
been cutting back production, particularly that of DRAM and SRAM chips,
as the world market slumps and prices continue to slide. This
story says they are cutting production by 60%. Toshiba
Axes Japanese Fab, Cuts Rambus Production. The promise of RDRAM
parts as a sole profit source and comfort to DRAM makers is in tatters... "The
demand for Rambus parts is still relatively limited. The P4 is still
very expensive and it does not penetrate the market yet..."
8/8 Intel-VIA
Chipset Showdown Imminent. VIA to launch P4 DDR memory chipset
August or September despite no license from Intel, which it claims it
does not need because of the S3 acquisition. It is cheaper than
Intel's Brookdale chipset, which only supports PC133 memory. Motherboard
Manufacturers: Little Profit for 845 Boards With Intel’s Plan to Launch
Its Own Products. Some motherboard makers that are also developing
VIA’s P4X266-based products may not be able to obtain as many 845 chipsets
as they desire after Intel made an unexpected visit last week. Intel
Cools-Down Pentium 4 Market by Adjusting Supply of 845 chipsets. Intel
to vary its 845 chipset supply to different motherboard manufacturers
depending on their shipment ratios of Socket 370 and Pentium 4 products.
8/8 Ordinary
Electrical Outlets May Rule Home Networking
8/8 Adobe,
Xerox tiff Slows Internet Fax Standard. The
Internet Engineering Task Force has slammed the brakes on plans for a
common way of sending faxes over the Internet, due to last-minute licensing
problems between rivals Adobe and Xerox.
8/8 Code
Red II Worms Its Way Deeper Into Internet. Costing
nearly $2 billion and on its way to becoming one of the most expensive
security threats to hit the Internet. "We're already seeing reports
of denial of service attacks starting up..." Some slowdowns
for U.S. cable modem networks. More
on Code Red and Red II
8/7 Windows
XP May be Released Early - September. Microsoft
has given PC makers the go-ahead to ship Windows XP as much as one full
month before the operating system's official Oct. 25 launch date... The
company is advancing its release schedule to ship Windows XP ahead of
any possible injunction that would delay the new operating system's debut.
8/7 Microsoft
Appeals Antitrust Case to Supreme Court.
8/7 Web
Sites Prey on Rivals' Stores. Gator and other
such programs as "hijackware," applications that easily whisk
consumers from a point of sale at one site to a competitor’s site. In
one extreme example, eZula has been working with file-sharing networks
Kaazaa and iMesh to superimpose links to marketers' sites over text on
Web pages.
8/7 Code
Red-Like Worm 'Storming Back'. About 100,000 systems were infected
Sunday, and in a "conservative" estimate, another 50,000
to 100,000 may be victimized through Monday. More
on Code Red and Red II
8/7 Intel
Expected to Halve Pentium 4 Price. "We believe
Intel is planning to detonate a price bomb by cutting prices about
50 percent on high-end processors..." Intel
Shares Slip Amid Price War Concerns
8/7 AMD
Voices Support for Arapahoe. HyperTransport and Arapahoe compliment
rather than compete... Despite depictions in the media directly pitting
AMD's HyperTransport against Arapahoe, HyperTransport was never intended
to be the next generation of PCI.
8/7 New
Language Could Speed-up the Web. Creators claim Curl can speed
up the delivery by up to 10 times.
8/7 Is
Copy Protection Dead on Arrival? Audio CD's... Record
Labels Plan Copy-Proof CDs After Napster
8/7 Vaccine
From Fly Spit
8/7 U.S.
Productivity Bounces Back. Grew at an annual rate of 2.5% in
the second quarter for the best showing in a year.
8/7 New
Disc--Is It the End of The Music CD? Digital
disc, about the size of a quarter, holds 11 hours of music and is designed
to thwart piracy.
8/7 DRAM
Makers Readying 333MHz DDR Memory Chips. Getting ready to sample
later this year.
8/7 Injunction
Against Windows XP Unlikely-Analysts
8/7 Antitrust
Concerns Could Delay Future Windows OS. Microsoft
plans to push back the next major release of its operating system,
code-named "Blackcomb," to 2005. Expect release of a less
ambitious version, dubbed "Longhorn," sometime in 2003. Plans
are to bundle a database with Blackcomb...
8/7 MS
Passport Security Considered Harmful. "The
system carries significant risks to users..."
8/7 Solar
Power On The Rise. Domestic
shipments of photovoltaic cells increased 74 percent during the two-year
period ending in 2000... solar cells now cost just 20% percent of what
they did 25 years ago... Rooftop systems that can meet half a home's
electricity needs now cost as little as $10,000...
8/7 Wireless
Security is Even Flakier Than We Thought
8/7 Taiwan's
Motherboard Makers Enjoyed Strong Growth in July.
Abit up 23%, Gigbyte 17%, DFI 20%, Chaintech 25%..
8/7 AOL
Releases Final Version of New Netscape. Version 6.1. Minor
changes. Faces uphill battle against Microsoft's
Internet Explorer, which controls more than 90% of the browser market.
8/6 New
Code Red: Worse Than the First? A new and possibly
more virulent version of the worm was detected circulating the Internet
over the weekend, attacking machines and leaving them vulnerable to other
intruders. More
Serious Code Red II Worm on the Loose. Installs
a backdoor in servers that allows attackers to easily access the infected
computer, gain control of the machine by changing passwords, and giving
them the ability to copy, browse, and delete files.
8/6 Nvidia
and ATI Able to Supply Motherboard Chipsets in 4Q
8/6 Office
XP: Two Thirds of German Users Refusing Compulsory Registration
8/6 Microsoft
Explains XP Software Activation.
8/6 Microsoft's
Internet Explorer 6 Goes Gold. Microsoft
says it expects to have the final version, or "Gold Code," of
its newest Internet Explorer Web browser completed some time next week. August
15th.
8/6 Faster
Wireless LANs May Prove a Bargain. Even
before significantly faster wireless LAN products hit the market, the
cost of that equipment is said to be plummeting.
8/6 Wireless
Network Group Discloses New Vulnerability
8/6 Does
Xbox Mark the Spot?
8/6 Maxtor
Ships First 40GB External Hard Disk Drive With USB 2.0 Interface. $199.95. MaxtorUSB
2.0 board available for 4$49.95.
8/6 Intel
CEO Barrett Sees More Chip Price Cuts. Intel
will continue to cut microprocessor prices at least once every two
months.
8/6 The
Birth of the PC. Two decades
ago, a team of 12 IBM engineers -- dubbed the Dirty Dozen -- created
a PC that transformed the industry, setting computing standards still
in use today.
8/6 Sun
Says UltraSparc V Procesor is Two Chips In One
8/2 Critics
Blast U.S. Ties to 'Snooper Bowl' Technology. A face-scanning
technology that drew sharp criticism from lawmakers and privacy advocates
when it photographed thousands of Super Bowl fans in Tampa...
8/2 Fujitsu
to Halt 3.5-inch IDE Hard Disk Production
8/2 Intel
CEO: Industry Entering Extended PC Era
8/2 Semiconductor
Sales Wilt in June. Worldwide sales of semiconductors
in June sank to $11.6 billion, down 8.8 percent from May.
8/1 Code
Red Worm Comes Storming Back!
8/1 Code
Red May be Picking-up Speed. A revived
Code Red appeared to be gathering momentum Wednesday, but there were
no signs yet of a traffic surge that could affect the functioning of
the Internet.
8/1 'Code
Red' Comes Calling
8/1 Via
Runs Into Resistance on Its Pentium 4 Chipset. The
lack of an Intel license has left Asus, Gigabyte and Microstar unwilling
to use Via's new chipsets.
8/1 I have just been notified that Windows
XP RC2 (Release Candidate 2) is ready for downloading.
8/1 Win
XP Windfall for PC Makers
8/1 Sony
Cuts 'Memory Stick' Prices
8/1 Vishay
To Acquire General Semi In Stock Deal. Sure... they
closed the Sprague plant here.
8/1 New
Microscope Creates Images Using Antimatter
8/1 (Updated) Code
Red Worm is Scanning the Internet... The
Code Red worm is active and looking for servers to infect. The
increasing activity “is indicative of the first phase of operation
for the worm, in which it scans random IP address for systems to
compromise,” CERT reported. “These reports indicate that the number
of compromised systems is increasing exponentially.”
Code
RED Worm Alert! How Big Is The Problem? On
July 19, the Code Red worm infected more than 250,000
systems in just 9 hours. Code Red is likely to start
spreading again on July 31st, 2001 8:00 PM EDT and has
mutated so that it may be even more dangerous.... Every
organization or person who has Windows NT or Windows
2000 systems AND the IIS web server software may be vulnerable. More
Info......
Index |
