NEWS, ETC.
December 2001
12/28 Economy
Shows Signs of Rebound. Consumer confidence jumped sharply this
month, while initial claims for unemployment benefits last week remained
below the 400,000 level for the third week in a row.... new orders for
durable goods, excluding aircraft and defense items, rose 2.4 percent
in November on the heels of a 4.1 percent gain in October... sales of
both new and existing homes remained very strong in November.
12/28 AOL
Passes 33 Million Subscribers. Crediting its latest version of
Internet access software and the rollout of high-speed broadband, AOL
announced Friday that it has a worldwide membership of 33 million users
who each spend an average of nearly 70 minutes per day online.
12/28 Broadband
Alternative Gains Clout. Power line connectivity (PLC), a broadband
alternative that brings the Internet through your power lines and outlet
into your computer at speeds that top 1.5Mbps is closer to being a commercial
reality in the United States than ever before.
12/28 CD
Prices Set to take a Plunge. Shoppers may think
they have seen enough bargains this holiday season, but CDs at $9.99
may soon be a standard offer at music stores as retailers slash prices
in bid to battle the scourge of online music piracy.
12/28 Intel's
2.2GHz Pentium 4 Hits the Streets Early. ...went
on sale in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, ahead of its official
launch date in January.
12/28 Intel:
Confident of Resolving P4 Shortage in 1Q 2002
12/28 Reverse
Firewall Stymies Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks
12/28 DDR
Memory Prices Soar Pending Intel Introduction. The price of double-data-rate
SDRAMs is almost double that of comparable density single data rate chips,
as OEMs and suppliers gear up for Intel Corp.'s touted January launch
of its 845D DDR chipset.
12/27 Internet
Sales Take a Giant Step Upward. Retailers in the cyber world
fared better during the Christmas season than their brick-and-mortar
counterparts, reports released yesterday indicated.
12/26 Video
on Demand the Next Killer App? It's been the
Next Big Thing for a decade -- but video on demand finally appears to
be living up to at least some of its promise.
12/26 Giga
Scales Back 2001, 2002 IT Spending Forecasts
12/26 FBI
Warns on Windows XP Hole. In addition to installing
the security patch available from Microsoft's Web site, computer users
running Windows XP should disable the "Universal Plug and Play" feature,
if they are not using it. You
can download the security patch/install it here. Privacy
Expert Roots Out True Origin of "XP Flaw". Microsoft
said customers using Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows
ME with UPnP should also use the patch. Sure
enough, it was installed on my computer running Windows Me. Go
to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Windows Setup,
Communications, Details...
12/21 AMD
Processor Shipments to Grow by 40% in 2001. Sales have continued
rising lately, as the Pentium 4 shortage problem is still unsolved. AMD
will claim around 27% of the global processor market in the fourth quarter.
In the small-size enterprise market, AMD's overall share rose to 40%
in the third quarter.
12/21 Shoho
Worm Adds, Deletes Files. Has its own e-mail engine... Even users
who have e-mail clients other than Outlook can be affected if they double-click
attachments infected with Shoho. Subject: "Welcome to Yahoo! Mail" Attachment:
Readme.txt
12/21 Major
Security Vulnerabilities in Default Installations of Windows XP and Certain
Installations of Windows ME and 98. Windows XP, by default, ships
with a UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) Service that can be used to detect
and integrate with UPNP aware devices. Windows ME does not come
standard with the UPNP service, however some OEM versions do provide
the UPNP service by default. It is also possible to install the Windows
XP Internet Connection Sharing on top of Windows 98, therefore making
it vulnerable.
12/20 Students
Nabbed in Dutch Warez Raids. The Dutch department
of Justice raided the University of Twente as part of a software piracy
investigation, a school representative said Thursday.
12/20 Bluetooth
Set to Outdistance Wireless LANs. The promise of tens of millions
of sockets has Bluetooth poised to overtake wireless LAN technology in
the coming year due primarily to significant adoption by high-volume
cellular handset makers...
12/20 Comcast,
AT&T Cable Deal to Create Net Giant. After
months of corporate tire-kicking, AT&T Broadband, the biggest cable
company in the United States, has decided to merge with original suitor
Comcast.
12/20 Winbond
Makes 512Mbit DDR on 0.13-micron Process. Winbond's advancement
from 0.175 to 0.13-micron will allow it to produce 80% more DRAM die
on each wafer.
12/20 Euro
Bank Notes to Embed RFID Chips by 2005. The European Central
Bank is working with technology partners on a hush-hush project to embed
radio frequency identification tags into the very fibers of euro bank
notes...
12/19 Holiday
Virus Spreading Through E-mail. Dubbed W32/Reeezak, W32/Zacker
and W32/Maldal... Reeezak arrives in an e-mail with the subject "Happy
New Year" and message "Hii I can't describe my feelings But
all I can say is Happy New Year :) bye." Executable file attachment
is Christmas.exe. This is nasty
bug which will destroy your data.
12/19 VIA
Announces 933 MHz C3 Processor. Socket 370, 0.13-micron
core, small die size, cool running (still needs a fan), 128KB Level 1
and 64KB Level 2 cache, and 100/133MHz Front Side Bus. Weak floating
point unit.
12/19 World
Temperature Second Highest on Record
12/18 AMD-Intel
Rivalry Gets Ferocious. AMD is preparing a new line of chips,
the Hammer series, to challenge Intel's nascent Itanium processors...
12/18 Toshiba
Exits DRAM Market, Sells fab to Micron. Update:
Toshiba fab May Cost Micron $400 Million. Press
Release.
12/18 Top
10 Tech Gifts Under $200
12/18 Report:
IT/IS Spending Bottoms Out. IT/IS spending in the U.S. and Europe
hit rock bottom in 2001 and is expected to rebound in 2002...
12/18 IBM
Offers App Building Kit for Linux Servers. IBM
it will begin offering independent software vendors free access to iSeries
servers running the Linux operating system, in an attempt to stimulate
development of new open-source applications for the server platform.
12/17 AMD
Introduces 1 GHz Mobile Duron Processor
12/15 Semiconductor
Alert! (Dec, 10-14). Commentary & analysis of week's chip
news. AMD's Dresden fab plays big role in keeping up with Intel . . .
as AMD eyes locating 300-mm effort at Dresden...
12/15 Global
Chip Industry to Tread Water in 2002. Analysts
predict that growth won't resume in earnest until late next year at the
soonest.
12/15 Shuttle
Protects Station From Space Junk, Departs. The
space shuttle Endeavour adjusted the International Space Station's orbit
on Saturday, moving it out of range of a tumbling Soviet-era rocket booster,
then departed the station, ending a week of joint operations.
12/15 Low-energy
E-beam Proposed for Next-generation Lithography. At Semicon Japan,
Leepl exhibited the beta version of the lithography system and silicon
stencil masks as well as an earlier, diamond stencil mask. The beta machine
prints 45-nm lines and forms 50-nm contact holes. It is said to achieve
overlay adjustment accuracy at 25 nm, which is required for the 70-nm
node in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS
2001).
12/15 Microsoft
Cleans-up Office XP. Microsoft has
released its first Service Pack for the desktop productivity suite that
focuses on improved performance, security, and reliability. You
can download/install it here. If
you choose the install option, it will also check for updates for any
Office 2000 applications you may have installed.
12/14 Microsoft
Rushes to Close IE Security Hole. Microsoft released
a security patch to plug a hole in its Web browser that could allow hackers
to steal passwords and trick people into downloading virulent files. The
2.27 MByte patch can be downloaded here.
12/14 Micron
May Take Over Toshiba's fab in Virginia. Micron is in talks to
take over Toshiba semiconductor fab in Manassas, Va., even as it continues
to negotiate an alliance and possible merger with the DRAM operations
of Hynix according to well-placed industry sources last week.
12/13 Microsoft "Tunes" Up
XP. Microsoft released a
number of free entertainment enhancements to its Windows XP operating
system Thursday, as the software maker continues to advance its digital
media strategy.
12/13 IE
Hole Can Become a 'Back Door' for Hackers.The
file name as it appears in the IE file download dialog box can be faked
by using certain URLs and HTTP headers on a Web page. A back door is
a program that can be used by hackers to enter a user's PC.
12/13 Gokar
Worm Spreads by E-mail, Web, Chat. A new worm called "Gokar" began
to spread across the Internet Thursday via e-mail, the chat program mIRC
and the Web, according to a trio of antivirus firms. The worm is not
destructive and has not yet infected many systems.
12/12 Xerox
to Turn PARC Lab Into Independent Company. PARC, founded in 1970,
is the birthplace of such inventions as the laser printer, the building
blocks of computer networking, ``what-you-see-is-what-you-get'' word
processing and the graphic user interface that replaced all-text displays
and was adopted by Apple Computer.
12/12 Raids
Crack-Down on Pirated Software. The
major target of the offensive, known as Operation Buccaneer, was a warez
group called DrinkOrDie that has some 40 members worldwide and was founded
in the early 1990s in Russia.
12/12 Hackers,
Programmers "Improve" Xbox. Microsoft's
Xbox has been praised as one of the most technologically sophisticated
game devices ever. But that's just not good enough for hardware and software
experimenters who have been tinkering with the Xbox since the day it went
on sale.
12/12 SlugBot
12/12 Artificial
Leech
12/12 VIA
Launches VIA ProSavage DDR KN266 Mobile Chipset for Athlon 4/Mobile Duron
12/12 AMD
Prepares for SOI Processing in Dresden fab. The Dresden fab has
been processing all its wafers with copper interconnects from the start
of production in late 1999. It is now starting to process SOI wafers and
by 2H '02 will be exclusively with SOI to make the new Claw Hammer and
later Sledge Hammer 64-bit processors.
12/12 AMD
Introduces Athlon MP Processor 1900+ and AMD-760 MPX Chipset
12/12 Excite@Home
Receives Court OK to Continue Service.
Court approves continuation of high-speed Internet service for about
2.1 million subscribers through February.
12/11 Intel,
Sun Sketch Multiprocessor Chip Plans. Both plan to put two to more
processors on a die with simultaneous multithreading (SMT), a design approach
that lets a processor handle two or more threads of an application simultaneously.
12/11 HyperTransport
I/O Spec Made Publicly Available. It now looks likely that HyperTransport
will be the interface of choice connecting chips to other chips on a motherboard
or adapter card, and 3GIO will be the interface that connects all the subsystems
to one another.
12/11 Intel
Software Accelerates Development Of 'Human-Like' Computer Vision.
Researchers have released
at no cost software that allows developers to build computers that can
view the world the way people do -- in stereo.
12/11 Microsoft
Previews 'Corona' Windows Media Technologies. Windows Media technologies
that the company claims vastly speeds up Internet streaming.
12/11 Users
Cry Foul Over IBM Bills. The first effects of IBM's revamped software
licensing model are catching customers off guard and driving up costs for
some IT executives by more than 80%.
12/8 HP/COMPAQ
- Packard Foundation Votes Against Merger. Board members
of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, holders of 10% of HP's stock,
voted Friday to oppose the proposed merger with Compaq, a move that could
potentially sink the $25 billion deal.
12/8 Hitachi
Fashions Multibit Cell for 1-Gbit Flash Chip. The company said
it will apply the technology to create 1-Gbit flash chips and a 1-Gbyte
card with a 10-Mbyte per second writing speed that it will bring to market
within a year.
12/8 Semiconductor
Alert! (Dec. 3-7). Commentary & analysis of week's chip news.
12/7 Rambus
Sidelined as DDR Deluge Begins. Motherboards
based on Intel Corp.'s long-awaited 845-D chip set, which provides DDR
SDRAM (double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM) support for the Pentium
4 processor, finally started hitting the retail market on Friday...
12/7 Intel,
AMD Say 4Q Better Than Planned. Brisk sales of microprocessors
12/7 States
Get Tough in Microsoft Case. Nine states and the
District of Columbia are expected to file a remedy proposal Friday that
could upset the momentum of a settlement hammered out between Microsoft,
the Justice Department and nine other states.
12/6 European
Ministers Agree on Spam Ban, Cookie Rules.
12/6 "Bandwidth
Hogs" Not at Home at AT&T. A small but vocal group of
former Excite@Home customers is complaining that connections have gotten
slower since AT&T switched them to its own high-speed cable network.
It's not their imagination...
12/6 Atlantis?
12/5 'Goner'
Worm Takes Out Firewalls, Antivirus Protection. Despite
an e-mail subject line and message that remain the same, 'Goner' poses
a serious threat because it can disable personal firewalls and antivirus
programs.
12/5 Excite@Home
to Shut Down. Excite@Home will shut down on Feb.
28, 2002, after arranging transitional services with its major cable partners
in the past few days. AT&T
Nearly Finished With @Home Migration. 100,000 customers remaining
to migrate.
12/5 Chestnut
Tree Makes Comeback; Fungal Foe Makes Drugs. The American chestnut
is an indigenous tree that once grew from Maine to Mississippi and across
the Midwest. With its distinctive and wide-spreading branches and deep,
broad-rounded crown, the tree could easily grow to 5 feet in diameter and
100 feet high. My Father used to speak
fondly about them.
12/5 Scientists
Activate Neurons with Quantum Dots. In this new biological application,
attaching quantum dots directly to cells eliminates the need for external
electrodes. The procedure is entirely non-invasive, similar to the use
of fluorescent dyes to mark cells. And since molecular recognition is used,
it is a "smart" technology that can pick precisely which capability
will be controlled on each neuron to which a quantum dot is attached. Taken
to the logical extreme, biologists could remotely control any neural function
by activating select neurons.
12/5 Toshiba
Finds 'Nothing' Makes a Better Transistor. The technology, surreally
called silicon-on-nothing (SON), will make logic circuits that go faster
and use less power purely by separating parts of the transistor from the
rest of the chip by a gap.
12/4 "Goner" E-mail
Worm Rated Highest Risk. Says: "How are you ? When I saw this
screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry, I promise
you will love it!"
12/4 Visa
Lures E-Shoppers with Online Password Security. The new "Verified
by Visa" program works with participating banks to validate cardholder
identity through the use of passwords during the online checkout process.
12/4 AT&T
Withdraws $307 Million @Home Bid. Citing
significant breaches to its service contract, Ma Bell took its $307 million
offer home. Meanwhile, officials say they now have 500,000 customers
back online. Cable
Firms Reach Deals on Excite@Home Access. Excite@Home's biggest
remaining cable customers have agreed to pay hundreds of millions of
dollars to ensure that the bankrupt Internet access provider keeps its
service up and running for the next three months.
12/4 Homeplug-Compliant
Chipset Supports Power Line Networks. Two-piece chip set designed
to support home networking over power lines at speeds of up to 14 Mbits/second.
12/3 Global
DDR Memory Output Explodes in December, Spot Prices Higher. Expected
to grow 70% or more in December. In November, 128Mbit DDR spot prices went
up 100%.
12/3 AMD
Announces World's Fastest CMOS Transistors
12/3 IBM
Could Boost Chip Speed With New Transistor. IBM
has developed a transistor that has two gates instead of one, allowing
it to operate at as much as twice the speed of today's conventional transistors. Press
Release.
12/3 Chip
Sales Climb for Fourth Straight Month
12/3 Excite@Home,
Partners Continue Talks. Cox Communications and
Charter Communications confirmed that talks were taking place Monday morning...
AT&T service has already been shut-off, leaving as many as 850,000
consumers without access. AT&T
Continues Cable Migration. High-speed cable Internet access
resumed for 330,000 of the 800,000 customers stranded over the weekend...
majority should be back online by the end of the week. Link
has schedule by area. Excite
to Reach Net Pact.
12/3 "IT" is
a Two-Wheel Scooter. After months of speculation, the elusive gizmo
referred to as "It" or "Ginger" has been unveiled to
the public.
12/1 AT&T
Says AtHome Internet Service Unplugged. AT&T
said 850,000 high-speed cable Internet users had been shut off the AtHome
network overnight after negotiations with troubled ExciteAtHome Corp. broke
down.
12/1 Many
Excite@Home Customers Disconnected. Many Excite@Home
customers were unable to access some services from their high-speed Internet
access providers on Saturday, and they're worried that the problems are
a result of the company's complicated bankruptcy proceedings.
12/1 Semiconductor
Alert! Commentary & analysis of week's chip news, Nov. 26-30.
...semiconductor inventories are not going away as fast as some people
had expected... DRAMs go south again... Is chip industry running
out of process technology
Index
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