NEWS, ETC.
November 2001
11/30 Mobo
Industry Likely to Lead the Rebound in 2002.
11/30 Nintendo's
GameCube Outsells Xbox by 50%. Lower pricing a factor...
11/30 Excite@Home
Can Shut Down. A must read for the
4.1 million worldwide customers of this service.
11/30 Brain
Cells Imaged As They Form Connections: A First. Interesting...
11/30 Intel
Plans More P4 Price Cuts Despite Tight Supplies. Up
to 20% in January.
11/29 Cable
Braces for Excite@Home Shutdown. Excite@Home may block service
on Friday so cable companies are scrambling to come up with alternative
plans for their high-speed Internet access customers.
11/29 DDR
Memory Spot Price Rises Dramatically. In just one month the average
spot price for 128Mbit DDR SDRAM has gone up 80%.
11/29 DDR
Production On the Rise. Major DRAM manufacturers will increase
production volume of DDR SDRAM by 50-200% before year-end. It will
take about a month before this additional supply makes it onto the market,
and until then DDR prices are expected to continue rising.
11/29 WinXP
Steals Your Bandwidth. The culprit is the QoS (quality of service)
packet scheduler...
11/29 Serial
Attached SCSI Ups Drive Speeds. SCSI equivalent of fourth-coming Serial
ATA drives.
11/29 President
Bush Signs Internet Tax Ban Extension.
Extends it two years.
11/29 Microsoft
Calls UPnP Victor in Home Connectivity Battle. Said the Universal
Plug and Play (UPnP) technology it helped define is sweeping away competing
alternatives proposed by Sony and Sun Microsystems. The first certified
UPnP products will appear Wednesday... UPnP
Forum.
11/29 IBM
Cuts 1,000 Semiconductor Jobs. Which comprises 4.6% of the jobs
in its microchip division amid the worst ever decline in semiconductor
industry revenues.
11/29 Top
10 CD-RW Drives
11/29 2001
Technology Roadmap Packs Some 'Unexpected' Surprises
11/29 Linux
Servers at Risk From 'Serious' Flaw. A bug in
a popular FTP program used with Linux servers puts Web sites in jeopardy
of attacks from hackers. Though fixes are in the works, a Red Hat warning
just makes matters worse.
11/29 Top
10 Virus List for 2001
11/28 P4
Chipset Market Shaken-up Again With Intel’s DDR-based 845 B0.
Despite high expectations for the new chipsets, board makers also said
that 845 B0 products will not contribute much to their revenues this
year, since related motherboards will not hit the market until after
mid-December.
11/28 Microsoft
Furthers Push Toward CRM. ONE YEAR AFTER acquiring Great Plains,
Microsoft is tying the CRM (customer relationship management) applications
together with its bCentral small-business hosted applications, releasing
a .Net-enabled version of bCentral...
11/28 Pentium
4 Shortage Expected to Last Until January
11/28 Zilog
To File For Bankruptcy Protection. Zilog today said it is
planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after reaching
an agreement with its key bondholders to support its plan to restructure
its debt.
11/27 Linux
App Brings Xbox Online. A group of software
developers has created a Linux-based application that they claim lets
Xbox users play system-link games over the Internet.
11/27 Windows
XP Fails to Spark Demand for PCs. PC sales rose only 1% in the
week after XP's launch Oct. 25 and climbed 2% the second week, says NPD,
which surveys retailers. Sales have lagged since. Research firm
Gartner predicts 16% of PCs used by businesses next year will run Windows
XP, with most sticking with Windows 2000.
11/27 DSL
Growth On The Rise Again
11/26 Intel
Rethinks Transistor Design for End of Decade. "We
can make transistors that are very small and very fast, but that's
not good enough any more," said Gerald Marcyk, director of Intel's
components research lab. "The problem is that the power consumption
is rising exponentially." Press
release.
11/26 Google,
Others Dig Deep--Maybe Too Deep. Search-engine
spiders crawling the Web are increasingly stumbling upon passwords, credit
card numbers, classified documents and even computer vulnerabilities
that can be exploited by hackers. If
Google can find something, anyone can find it.
11/26 Thirty
Nations Sign Global Cybercrime Treaty
11/21 Badtrans
Worm Leaves Backdoors, Logs Data
11/21 Scientists
Build Tiny Computer From DNA. Israeli
scientists have built a DNA computer so tiny that a trillion of them
could fit in a test tube and perform a billion operations per second... first
programmable autonomous computing machine in which the input, output,
software and hardware are all made of biomolecules... DNA can hold more
information in a cubic centimeter than a trillion CDs.
11/21 VIA
to Start Volume Deliveries of New P4 Chipset This Week. According
to some testing reports, the P4X266A performs better than the P4X266
on many indexes and is expected to compete well with the SiS645 from
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS).
11/21 Red
Hat Counters Microsoft's Education Offer. In
the wake of Microsoft's announced settlement proposal with more than
100 private antitrust plaintiffs, the Linux software provider Tuesday
announced plans to offer its open-source software to every school district
in the U.S. free of charge.
11/20 GameCube
Sparks $100 Million in Sales Consumers
Splurge on Xbox, GameCube
11/20 VIA
Releases VIA Apollo P4X266A Pentium 4 DDR Chipset
11/20 Flaw
in Windows Media Player Lets Any Code Run
11/20 XP
Can Be A Minus With AOL Plus. In many cases, the culprit appears
to be a lack of XP-compatible drivers for the DSL modems America Online
provides to AOL Plus users...
11/19 Intel
Exec: DDR Will Replace Rambus on Desktop. Intel Corp. will place
its focus in the future on DDR (Double Data Rate) memory, and sees Rambus
as only a niche product, said Intel executive Anand Chandrasekher in
an interview.
11/19 ATI
A3 Athlon XP Chipset Revealed. FIC gave ATI's A3 chipset its
first public outing at Comdex last week... expected to ship next month...
11/19 Truce
Produces New Office for Mac. Office v. X for
the Mac slipped into stores Monday, culminating a nearly five-year development
effort by Microsoft.
11/18 Semiconductor
Alert! Commentary & analysis of week's chip news, Nov. 12-16. AMD
rushes ahead on silicon-on-insulator SOI front...
11/18 Meteor
Magic. Astronomers
predict this year's Leonids meteor display, expected to appear before
dawn Sunday, will be a dazzler worth missing a little sleep.
11/16 DRAM
Prices Reverse Course and Begin Falling. Savvy DRAM buyers didn't
panic this week when the spot market price of mainstream PC memory chips
doubled in five days. In a show of restraint, procurement teams resisted
the temptation to place crash orders to guard against a possible price
escalation, and sure enough, DRAM spot tags started back down by week's
end...
11/16 Senate
Passes 2-Year Internet Tax Ban
11/16 New
Wireless Networking Standard Approved
11/16 Dell
Says 2GHz Pentiums Back on Track. After a short
2GHz drought, Dell Computer is back in the chips.
11/15 Microsoft
Puts Lid on Cookie Jar. Fixes for additional cookie handling
vulnerability and a variant of the zone spoofing issue.
11/15 Gates
Sells First Xbox Game Console
11/15 COMDEX
- DRAM Prices Surge. The
price of faster DDR (double data rate) memory has also risen, although
not by as much, with a 256M-byte module trading for $34 on Wednesday,
up from $24 a week earlier...
DRAM
Contract Prices Still Reflect Weak Market Demand. Although spot prices
for 128Mbit SDRAM have gone up above US$1, weak market demand continues to
push contract prices further down.
11/15 Microsoft
Gathers Partners for Home-Network Initiative.
11/15 Dell
Profit Drops As Prices Fall Amid PC Share War
11/15 Microsoft
Unveils .Net Server Plans
11/15 Intel's
Unveils World's Smallest Transistor with 15-nm Device. CMOS-based,
0.8-Volt device, said to handle 2.63 trillion switches per second.
11/15 AMD
Announces 1.2 GHz Duron Processor
11/15 Comdex:
Intel's DDR Chipset Debuts. Vendors
confirmed plans to begin shipping 845-D-based motherboards in December.
11/14 AMD
Passes Athlon Chipset Baton. AMD has essentially exited the Athlon
chipset market, focusing its design work on multiprocessor implementations
and the upcoming 64-bit Hammer family...
11/14 Intel's
Accidental Revolution. The Intel 4004 Microprocessor,
which debuted thirty years ago Thursday, sparked a technological revolution
because it was the first product to fuse the essential elements of a
programmable computer into a single chip.
11/14 When
Birds Ate Horses
11/14 HP
Says Compaq Merger Will Occur
11/14 Xbox
Has Arrived
11/13 Pentium
4 Drought Hits Dell PCs. Dell says it has run out of 2GHz Pentium
4 chips and is suspending orders for its Dimension 8200 desktops. But
it won't call the lack of chips a shortage.
11/13 Notebook
Batteries Recalled. Three companies are recalling about 13,000
batteries used for notebook computers because they may overheat and catch
fire...
11/13 Reader
Poll: Windows XP Not for Everyone. Despite some
misgivings about Windows XP, many early buyers say they have been pleasantly
surprised by what they see in the new operating system.
11/13 Activation
Scheme for Windows XP a Marketing Fiasco
11/13 Win
XP Has Problem With AMD Mobile Chips Too. XP has a problem with
Intel and AMD mobile processors.
11/13 Intel
Finds Allies for Futuristic Nonvolatile Memory
11/13 COMDEX
- Mobility, Free Slacks Steal the Show
11/9 Windows
XP, 2000, Me Performance Comparison. Unlike previous benchmarks
reported by Infoworld, using Pentium processors, which showed
XP significantly slower than 2000, these benchmarks, and there are
lots of them, with Athlon XP processors, show that XP and 2000 are
roughly comparable and that both beat Windows Me hands-down.
11/9 AMD's
Future: Notebooks, Servers, Hammer. AMD spent
most of 2001 increasing its market share in desktops; next year it will
concentrate on notebooks and servers--and gear up for the 2003 push on
Hammer, its next-generation chip. More here.
11/9 Sky
Survey Lowers Estimate of It Falling (of Asteroid Impact Risk)
11/9 Microsoft
Says Early Windows XP Sales Top 95, ME
11/9 Microsoft
Warns Of Browser Cookie-Eating Attack
11/7 IBM
Announces New Hard Disk Drives with Pixie Dust. IBM
predicts that with the pixie dust technology hard-disk densities will
reach 100G bits per square inch by 2003 and capacities could reach 400
GBytes for desktop drives and 200 GBytes for notebooks.
11/7 Packard
Son Joins Hewlett Family in Opposing Compaq Merger. HP/Compaq
Merger Now A 50-50 Chance.
11/7 Nine
States Say No to Microsoft Deal
11/7 Web
Heaped with Thanksgiving Lore, Food Options. Thanksgiving
is celebrated in the United States this year on Thursday, Nov. 22, and
more than ever, people are turning to the Internet to spice up their
holiday; make their plans; book their flights; and, perhaps most importantly,
figure out how to make the same old turkey not taste like the same old
turkey.
11/7 Mobo
Makers Report Record Revenues for October
11/7 Dump
Broadband Movement Growing. Sour economy, broadband
price hikes, and a continuing dearth of online content are prompting
some adopters to cancel their high-speed connections.
11/7 Perl
Overview, Tools, and Techniques. Perl is probably best known
as the engine powering millions of CGI scripts on servers around the
Web...
11/6 Fed
Cuts Rates Half Point, Ready for More. The
Fed lowered its key federal funds rate for overnight bank loans for the
10th time this year to 2 percent -- the lowest level since during the
Kennedy administration in 1961.
11/6 Hewlett
Family to Oppose HP-Compaq Deal. Descendents
of Hewlett-Packard co-founder William Hewlett said they plan to oppose
the company's blockbuster merger with Compaq Computer.
11/6 Breakaway
States Nix Microsoft Pact Microsoft
Moves to delay Litigation Proceedings in Antitrust Case
11/6 MicronPC
Introduces nFORCE Desktop PC
11/6 Magnetic
Semiconductor Step Toward Quantum Computing
11/5 Taiwan
Gears up for DVD+RW. Ricoh’s DVD+RW technology has been picked
up by Taiwan’s Lite-On IT, Behavior Tech Computer (BTC), Acer and AOpen,
and related products will be released as soon as the first quarter of
2002.
11/5 Sprint
Takes $1.1 Billion Leap Into Future. Sprint to let Nortel Networks
upgrade telephone network to provide asynchronous transfer mode (ATM).
11/5 ABIT
Introduces KR7A-RAID Motherboard With VIA KT266A Chipset
11/5 AMD
Picking-up Speed in Chip Race
11/5 Microsoft
Antitrust Settlement in Question. Before
Massachusetts Attorney signs off on the agreement, major changes must
be made to eliminate exceptions in the definitions for operating system
software and the conduct required of Microsoft.
11/5 Search
for Intelligent Life. Keep in mind that astronomers have been
able to look for signs of life on only the 1,000 nearest stars -- in
a galaxy of 400 billion stars. The Allen Telescope Array is expected
to begin operating in 2004 in northern California and let astronomers
more closely study the 1 million nearest stars.
11/4 AMD
Introduces 1.6 GHz Athlon™ XP 1900+ Processor
11/3 Microsoft
Infects Customers With Virus
11/3 Microsoft
Leaves Its Wallet Wide Open. Software flaws
in the security of Microsoft's Passport authentication system left consumers'
financial data wide open, causing the software giant to remove a key
service from the Internet to protect people from having their data stolen...
11/3 UPDATE:
Reaction Mixed to Microsoft-DOJ Settlement. Some
observers wonder if the enforcement mechanism has any teeth, while others
worry that more regulation will trip up the Redmond, Washington, software
giant. Microsoft
Will Crush The Competition. Solution providers say settlement
has no teeth. It
Looks Like Business as Usual for Microsoft. Industry experts
say settlement won't affect firm's practices.
11/2 Semiconductor
Alert! Commentary & analysis of week's chip news, Oct. 29-Nov.
2. Global IC sales indicate market bottom is near...
11/2 Microsoft,
Department of Justice Reach Settlement in Historic Case
11/2 P4
Memory: New Options. Intel's Pentium 4 can finally be matched
with SDRAM and DDR SDRAM, not just costly RDRAM modules. What's your
best buy?
11/2 SiS
to Launch DDR400-based Pentium 4 Chipset in 2002
11/2 DARPA
Kick Starts Wearable Computer Initiative
11/2 Amazon.com
Launches Virtual Credit Card
11/1 VIA
Says it Shipped a Million Pentium 4 Chipsets in October. What
surprised many analysts is that Via shipped more double-data-rate (DDR)
chipsets featuring P4 than expected even though it hasn't received a
P4 license from Intel. Didn't
surprise me.
11/1 VIA
Claims First Graphics Chipset For Intel’s P4. Also,
read all about it in VIA
P4M266 Mainstream Commercial P4 Platform.
11/1 Microsoft,
DOJ Close to Settlement Deal? Antitrust
Case Backers: Tentative Microsoft Deal a 'Sellout.'
11/1 New
Web Spec Has Microsoft, IBM Blessing. The new
standard creates a uniform way for companies to find web services by
connecting to each other's web sites.
11/1 EpoX
Turns a Profit in 3Q. EpoX has been running production at 100%
of capacity and even needed to outsource a portion of production to other
manufacturers.
11/1 Waiting
for Windows XP. Windows
2000 significantly outperforms Windows XP.
11/1 Hewlett
Launches $1,000 Home Digital Music Player. Through
a built-in display or a menu on the television, the center can be programmed
to rerecord music from CDs onto the hard drive, converted into the popular
MP3 music file format. The machine also will write CDs, but it
lacks a DVD player.
11/1 Sony's
Robot Dog Gets Hacked
11/1 Broadband
Available to 75% of U.S. by Year's End
11/1 Microscope
With Probe Gets Light From Tiny Surfaces
11/1 ABCs
of Videoconferencing
11/1 Greenland
is Melting
11/1 November should be nVIDIA nFORCE month
in the motherboard world. CNET reports
that a slew of motherboard makers and some smaller PC makers are expected
to announce products based on the new nFORCE DDR Athlon motherboard chipset
next week. Benchmarks on the chipset are starting to show-up on the
Internet... Click here for
more...
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