NEWS, ETC.
April 2002
Tuesday,
30 April 2002
IT
Salaries Drop First Time In 10 Years - Survey. IT managers
saw their salaries decline by 8 percent and staffers took an 11 percent
cut...
Hynix
Board Kills Micron Deal. The board unanimously decided not
to accept the proposed restructuring plan. A memorandum of understanding
between the companies for the acquisition has now expired.
Worms--Who's
the Deadliest of Them All? The latest fast-spreading versions
of the Klez worm have so far infected more than 7 percent of PCs worldwide...
AMD
Accelerates 0.13-micron Process to Pave Way for Hammer MPUs, says Sanders
Google
Challenges Yahoo. Of
all search referrals worldwide, 36.35 percent come from Yahoo, while
Google trails close behind with 31.87 percent.
Vishay
has Sequential Growth in Sales and Profits. Improving demand
in several of the company's strategic markets, including notebook computers,
cellular phones, game consoles, digital cameras, and other consumer
electronics sectors, was prompting the company to increase production
capacity.
Hubble's
New Camera Delivers Breathtaking Views of the Universe. First
four images unveiled.
Monday,
29 April 2002
Going
Ultra Wideband. Ultra wideband
(UWB) technology could be the next big thing in wireless.
Apple
Unveils the eMac. An all-in-one computer similar to the original
iMac, but built around a 17-inch flat-screen monitor.
File-Swapping
Sites Multiply Despite Legal Tangles. The
number of peer-to-peer (P2P) sites totals nearly 38,000, up 535 percent
in the past year.
X-Ray
Detects Black Hole Whirling Space Around It
Saturday,
27 April 2002
Semiconductor
Alert! Commentary & analysis of week's chip news, April
22-26. Sharp has come up with a next-generation "very smart" card
that integrates 1 megabit of flash memory, a 16-bit core processor,
and a dedicated crypto-processing unit. Now that's a lot of power!..
Fairchild Semi order rate best in more than 2 years...
Friday,
26 April 2002
Economy
Grows at Sizzling 5.8 Percent Rate in First Quarter. The economy
grew at an inflation-adjusted 5.8 percent annual rate, the best performance
in more than two years. Forecasters are now predicting a somewhat more
modest gain of 3 percent to 4 percent in the current quarter.
Big
Blue Chips Power-up 'Fast Path'. IBM plans to endow its Power5
and Power6 processors with an ability called "Fast Path" to
take over tasks that software currently handles more slowly.
Klez
Worm Rating Upgraded as Spread Continues. Antivirus
software vendor Symantec said it has received more than 3,000 reports
a day on the worm. Home users are taking a bigger hit than business
users.
Microsoft
Patches E-mail Editing Hole in Outlook. A
security vulnerability that could affect users of Microsoft Corp.'s
Outlook 2000 and 2002 e-mail clients who use the company's Word application
as an e-mail editor has been patched. More
info and fix.
Thursday,
25 April 2002
Intel
Responds to AMD by Disclosing New 64-bit Processor with 500 Million
Transistors. Intel disclosed the first public details of its
code-named Madison product, a 64-bit processor, based on a 130-nm process
technology. Madison is a 500-million transistor chip with 6-megabytes
of cache. Also, McKinley now called Itanium II.
Microsoft
Yanks Office Tools After Security Report. The latest versions
of Microsoft's Office Web Components (OWC) can enable malicious Web
sites or e-mails to perform several attacks.
AOL
Time Warner Posts Massive Net Loss. The
world's largest Internet and media company, on Wednesday posted a $54.2
billion net loss, the largest ever U.S. quarterly net loss, after taking
a whopping charge to reflect the decline in the value of its assets.
Wednesday,
24 April 2002
AMD
Announces “AMD Opteron” As Brand for Next-generation Server and Workstation
Processors.
The desktop version of Hammer is due out in the last quarter of this year
will have a variation of the Athlon brand name. Tomorrow, AMD will demo hammer
with a development version of Windows .net server software with Hammer 64-bit
instructions and a 32-bit version of Windows XP.
AMD
to Announce Microsoft Support for New Chip Family. A
source close to the company [AMD] said that AMD will announce Microsoft's
support with a 64-bit version of Windows that will run on AMD's Hammer
chip line. The first chips in the Hammer family, code-named ClawHammer,
are due at the end of the year, for the desktop market. AMD is also
expected to unveil the brand name of its new chip line...
Intel's
Big Water Means Big PC Change. The next two years are going
to see significant changes in the way that PCs are designed, according
to Intel executives speaking at this week's Intel Developer Forum (IDF)
in Taipei.
Journey
to the Internet's Unknown Regions. Experts
estimate that the "surface Web" contains 1 billion to 2
billion documents, while the "deep Web" could contain as
many as 550 billion. Put another way, the surface Web contains about
19 terabytes of information, while the deep Web contains about 7,500
terabytes.
Hubble
Uncovers Oldest "Clocks" in Space to Read Age of Universe
Tuesday,
23 April 2002
Forget
Laptops, the Folding Screen Lands in Korea. A
new paperback-sized computer screen that folds like a book will be
ideal for Internet users reading online novels.
A
Server Just Right for Small Biz. Sun
Microsystems' new Qube 3 is simple to run and quite affordable.
AMD
to Answer 64-Bit Question Tomorrow
Intel
Tries To Whip Up A Buzz
Samsung
Phone Doubles as a Digital Camera
Monday,
22 April 2002
Intel
Survey Reveals Laptop PC Users Don't Like To Leave Home Without It -
And Use It For Anything, Anywhere, Anytime. 81 Percent Use Laptop
PCs While Watching TV; One in Four People Describe Their Laptop as
Their "Prized Possession."
Gates
Takes Stand in Antitrust Trial. Microsoft's
chairman argues that complying with the proposed remedies would be
largely "impossible."
Will
AOL Go The Way Of The Model T? Is
Robert Pittman following in Henry Ford's footsteps? If so, that
may not be good news for AOL Time Warner shareholders.
Fast
PCs: Maxed-Out Architectures? Speed
bump time has hit the PC world once again, with the release of
the AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (running at 1.733 GHz) and the Intel Pentium
4 jumping to 2.4 GHz. What difference does a couple hundred megahertz
make in this gigahertz era? Answer: Not all that much.
Diagonal
IC Interconnects Clear Lithography Hurdle, Says ASML. Successful
fabrication of test structures on wafers from 0.18-micron design
data, using diagonal interconnect lines vs. the traditional right-angled
interconnects employed in most commercial chip layouts...
Micron
Signs Deal to Buy Hynix Memory fabs for $3.2 Billion. Micron
Technology Buys Toshiba's Virginia DRAM Unit.
Lucent
Posts 8th Straight Loss, Sees More Cuts
The
Mysterious Memory Effect of Rechargeable Batteries
Saturday,
20 April 2002
Semiconductor
Alert! (April 15-19) Commentary & analysis of week's chip
news. I'll miss Jerry Sanders; Will AMD miss him too? This was the
big week for first quarter earnings and Wall Street liked what they
heard from chip makers. A gaggle of companies reported an upturn in
their business from the previous quarter...
World's
Fastest Computer Now Japanese, Report Says. A
Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, one with
the computing power of the 20 fastest U.S. computers combined...
Top
15 Notebook PCs
Dataquest:
Dell Big Winner in Q1 PC Shipments
SiS
Obtains 533MHz FSB Technology Licensing From Intel
Friday, 19 April 2002
 A
PC In Your Pocket? OQO's Ultra-Personal Computer crams
processor, memory, battery and storage into a package the size of
a paperback novel. OQO's
web site.
Samsung
Rides Higher DRAM Prices To Record Profit. Rising DRAM prices
and tight supplies of LCD panels powered Samsung Electronics Co. to
a quarterly profit of $1.45 billion, its biggest ever.
Gateway
Reports Quarterly Loss On Lower Sales. Still, Gateway sales
of $992 million were half their year-ago level of $2 billion, though
they surpassed expected revenues of $978 million as it sold 645,000
units in the quarter.
Worldwide
PC Market in 'Low Tide' as Shipments Fall 9% in Q1 Over Q4
Wait
Till It Breaks Before Upgrading Say PC Buyers
Shuttle
Atlantis Returns After Successful Mission
Updated:
Dell Using Non-Standard ATX Power Supplies Since 1998 and Is Now Using
Non-standard Form Factor Motherboards
Thursday, 18 April 2002
AMD
to Phase-out Duron Processors This Year. Athlon will be outsourced
to UMC... Ruiz said even as the PC Claw Hammer and high-end Sledge
Hammer processors ramp up to dominate the AMD processor line in the
coming years, "there will still be a good market for Athlon" for
some time to come. Good read. AMD
Takes Athlon On The Road, Drops Duron.
HP
Refreshes Desktop PC Lineup. The company introduces
several new PCs, including a pair based on AMD's Athlon XP processor
and some systems with a chassis in dark blue and gray.
NVIDIA
and Keyhole Partner to Bring You the World in 3D. EarthViewer
3D transforms the way people receive and use geospatial information
by delivering to PCs with an Internet broadband connection a three
dimensional model of planet Earth... From April 22 to May 5, NVIDIA
will host a limited online promotion, giving 10,000 consumers up to
a two-week trial of the EarthViewer 3D program. In addition, those
who download the trial version will have the chance to win a Toshiba
notebook...
NVIDIA
Drives Development of New PCI Express Graphics Interface
The
Coming Battle for DVD-Burning Dominance
DSL
Growth In U.S. Falls Behind Asia-Pacific, Europe
How
Our World Could be Turned Upside Down
Nanotubes
In Epoxy Beef Up Epoxy's Heat Conductance
Wednesday, 17 April 2002
Global Warming? At
14:18 (2:18 PM) it was 94°F/34.4°C, or 37°F above the official average
of 57°F here at my home in Sanford, Maine, U.S.A. The
official reading may break the 92°F record set in 1962.
AOL
dumps IE for Netscape. AOL has come
one step closer to re-igniting the browser wars of the 1990s by including
the Netscape browser in its latest set of software for CompuServe users
at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Teaming
Up To Beat Cable. SBC and
EchoStar are joining forces to 'provide an alternative,' just a diplomatic
way of saying 'We're out to get them.'... SBC,
looking for a TV offering to pair with its DSL, and EchoStar, a TV
offering looking for a broadband Internet service, are a perfect match.
Combined, the two can offer what alone they have been unable to accomplish.
U.S.
Robotics Doubles Wi-Fi Speeds. Wireless LAN products hit 22
mbps, retain backward compatibility with other 802.11b devices.
AMD
Launches Mobile Athlon XP
Hydrogen
Found in Earth's Crust is 'Limitless Fuel Supply'? "The
key factor is whether the energy in the mined hydrogen would ever
outweigh the energy required to extract it..."
AMD
Reduced CPU Prices
Klez
Virus Back With a Vengence
Tuesday, 16 April 2002
The
Internet Sells Its Soul. A new hard-nosed commercialism is
spreading over the Internet. Users are increasingly being asked to
pay for information and services, while advertising is becoming more
intrusive. The backlash has already begun.
No
justice from Microsoft for the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice.
Microsoft wants $1.5 million missing proofs of purchase. Missing
certificates for Microsoft software on 2,000 five-year-old PCs... You
know those proofs of purchase that come with Microsoft products you
may have kept but probably lost? You need them.
CVD
Process Tames Carbon Nanotube Growth. The treated nanotubes
could be used by chip makers to interconnect single-electron transistors
with high-efficiency wires.
HP
Upgrades DVD+RW Drives--At a Price. Hewlett-Packard
will offer frustrated customers who own its first DVD-rewritable
drive a chance to trade it in for a model that will support more
formats--but at a cost of $99.
Monday, 15 April 2002
Dell
Using Non-Standard ATX Power Supplies Since 1998! "This
hidden trap can cause the destruction of the motherboard, power supply
or both!" Scott Mueller, author of Upgrading and Repairing
PCs.
Government
Examining HP Vote. Two divisions of the federal
government are investigating allegations that Hewlett-Packard pressured
an investment bank into voting for its proposed merger with Compaq
Computer, the company revealed Monday in a regulatory filing.
Western
Digital Puts 8 MBytes of Cache' on 80 GByte Caviar Hard Disk Drives
Intel
In Major Price Rollback. Intel has slashed prices on some of
its upper-level Pentiums by as much as 25 percent in its first major
pricing action since last year.
Intel
Preparing to Launch an Even Cheaper P4 Integrated Chipset. The
already intense P4 chipset price war may be heightened even further
as Intel is said to plan to launch a cheaper integrated chipset, the
845GLL (845GL Light).
Intel
to Pay Intergraph $300 Million to Settle Patent Fight
Powerline
Networking: Not for Everyone?
Home
Phones Losing-out to Cell Phones?
First
Space Railroad Hits Snag. Software
glitch put the nine-foot trolley into safe mode after it had moved
about 17-ft along its 32-ft of track. Space
Station's Train Rolls as Test Resumes.
Sunday, 14 April 2002
Atlantis
Astronauts Ready Space Rail Car for Test. The
small trolley is designed to roll the station's giant robotic arm from
one construction site to another as work progresses on the station
over the next several years.
Saturday, 13 April 2002
Semiconductor
Alert! (April 8-12) Commentary & analysis of week's chip
news. Is Japan's chip industry beginning to fade away? Philips comes
out with 'world's smallest IC package'...
Waiter,
there's a fly in my cell phone
Friday, 12 April 2002
The
End of Computer Rebooting. The time-consuming and often annoying
task of restarting the operating system of your computer every time
it is shut down, or rebooting, may soon be gone for good, following
an innovative development in computer memory research.
Unannounced
Intel P4 Chipsets Appear in Tokyo. Once
again, the component shops in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district
have beaten Intel Corp. to the punch by putting on display computer
motherboards based on engineering samples of two unannounced Intel
chipsets.
Warning:
A Parasite is Living in Your Computer
DVD
Authoring Heats Up
Unresolved
Issues Still Stall Digital TV Transition
South
Korean Monitor Producers Made Record LCD Monitor Shipments in 1Q
Thursday, 11 April 2002
Time
Warner: Bandwidth Hogs, Pay-up. All-you-can-eat
bandwidth is a thing of the past if you're a cable modem customer of
Time Warner. Anyone who exceeds monthly download limits will soon be
charged extra. Cox
Internet Users To See Rate Increase.
Fiber
Optic Cables Abound, but What Price to Pay? With
an enormous glut of capacity already on the market and at least four
other companies struggling with major financial problems...
Free-Space
Optics Lasers Offer Fast Data. Free-space optics (FSO), is
emerging as one way to avoid the bottleneck that occurs when fiber-optic
lines don't extend the "last mile" to offices. Instead of
spending time and money to tap into those lines, companies can use
laser beams to relay massive amounts of data from building to building.
Wednesday, 10 April 2002
Perpetual
Motion Lives. There is a
new perpetual motion machine. It is composed not of two parts, but
three. They are sensory digitization, search and storage. Think of
them as the three Ss. But if you like your trends captured as companies,
think Foveon, Google and Extreme Networks.
Microsoft
Releases Cumulative Security Patch for IIS.
Includes all security patches released for IIS 4.0 since Windows
NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a. Includes some new fixes.
Weird
Stars Show Evidence of New Form of Matter. A
teaspoon of neutron star material weighs a billion tons, or as much
as all cars, trucks and buses on Earth. Astronomers believe the two
stars they studied could be even denser...
Tuesday, 9 April 2002
Microsoft
Offers Free Tool for Security Checks. Called
the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), the tool is intended
to provide users with an easy way to check their systems for common
problems that arise when computers are configured incorrectly or when
users fail to install suggested security patches. Download
for Windows
NT 4.0 SP4 and above, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.
Next-Generation
PDAs. Today's handhelds finally offer something for everybody--from
bargain-price organizers to the first PDA/phone combos that actually
work. Tests of 16 models spotlight the best.
Holographic
DVD. The device uses Tapestry technology to hold 100GB of data
on a single CD-sized write-once disc as a succession of 1.3MB holograms.
Monday, 8 April 2002
IBM
Warns of Sharp Downturn in Revenues. IBM
warned of a huge first-quarter shortfall, which it blamed on businesses
cutting technology purchases... Expects first-quarter revenue to come
in at $18.4 billion to $18.6 billion, more than $1 billion below analyst
expectations.
Vendors
Up the Volume on VoIP. This week's Voice on the Net show will
feature new wares that help customers mix legacy phone gear with an
IP PBX, add multimedia communications to call centers and better integrate
the latest voice-over-IP technologies with existing network and security
infrastructures.
Memory Appears to be Dropping. A visit
to Crucial shows 256 MByte DDR modules for $69.95 down by about
$20 from last week, as I recall.
DRAM
Makers Resist Cutting Contract Prices
DRAM
Spot Prices Bobbing, Next Week Likely to Rise
Apple
Sings Praises of DVD-RW. Apple says
it has shipped more than 2 million DVD recording discs and nearly
half a million computers with DVD recording drives. But analysts
expect its lead to vanish as PC manufacturers jump onto DVD recording.
Web
Surfers Brace for Pop-up Downloads. Web surfers
who thought online advertisements were becoming increasingly obtrusive
may be dismayed by a new tactic: pop-up downloads.
Adobe
Supports XML With FrameMaker 7.0. From
a single user interface similar to that of a word processor, Adobe
FrameMaker enables users to create content, such as a user manual
or sales documentation, and publish it for use in a variety of settings,
including the Web, handheld devices, and print. At
$799, I certainly can't afford it. I wouldn't pay half that
price.
Uncle
Sam: Hold Your Horses on XML
eBay
Suffers Second Day of Outages
Friday, 5 April 2002
Unemployment
Rate Up to 5.7 Percent. The nation's unemployment rate nudged
up to 5.7 percent in March, but employers added 58,000 new positions
to payrolls, signaling a strengthening economy that hasn't completely
filtered down to the jobs market.
Win
XP to Upgrade--More or Less. Microsoft this summer will institute
some changes to Windows XP as part of a settlement agreement meant
to benefit consumers and increase competition. But some state trustbusters
and Microsoft's chief rivals aren't convinced that those changes go
far enough.
Will
You be Able to Trust Brilliant? Following up on Brilliant Digital
Entertainment, the company that secretly installed its own peer-to-peer
network on perhaps millions of individual users' PCs...
Is
Your E-mail Watching You? Watch out--the spam
choking your e-mail in-box may be loaded with software that lets marketers
track your moves online, and you may not even be aware that you've
been bugged.
Immense
Asteroid May Head our Way. But threat is centuries in the future
Electricity
From Mud
Science
Finds Genetic Recipe for Rice
Gila
Monster Spit May Yield Alzheimer's Drug
Thursday, 4 April 2002
Tests:
New P4 Beats Athlon--Just. The catch is that Intel's processor
is significantly more expensive than AMD's, and Rambus memory is another
added expense...
This
New Network. The corporate office of the future. Building corporate
offices with flexible voice and data infrastructure requires collaborative
design.
Top
10 CD-RW. Four new drives storm the chart this month, including
a new number one.
Smart
Glass Knows When It Needs Another Beer
Hydrogen-fed
Bacteria May Populate the Universe
Wednesday, 3 April 2002
Company
Touts Technology That Tops DSL, Cable. DSDN
technology allows download and upload speeds of up to 100 megabits
per second. That's about 2,000 times faster than 56K modems, 14 times
faster than DSL, and 10 times faster than the maximum speed of cable
modems.
Broadband
Coalition Targets 'Last Mile' Regulations. A half dozen U.S.
industry trade groups are joining forces to press the government to
relax regulations on "last mile" networking technology as
a way to speed deployment of broadband communications technology.
Deployment
of the gateways, which will begin in late 2002, will provide DIRECTV
Broadband with the ability to launch Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) services.
Sneak
Peek: The Computer Screen of the Future. Light-emitting polymer
(LEP) technology is creating a new class of flat-panel displays that
are thinner and lighter than ever before.
Spectacular
Planet Show Promised. The five planets visible to the naked
eye will line up in the sky at the end of April.
Japanese
Scientists Teach Cellphones to Lip-Read
Nvidia
to Introduce DDR-Supporting Version of GeForce4 MX420
Security
Researcher Uncovers Two Office XP Flaws
WorldCom
to Cut 3,700 U.S. Jobs
GM
Chickens Lay Drugs for Humans
Tuesday, 2 April 2002
Tech
Shares Slammed as Recovery Hopes Thin. Technology
shares tumbled on Tuesday after several analysts lowered their earnings
forecasts for heavyweights such as IBM, PeopleSoft and Microsoft, saying
a technology sector recovery is lagging the broader economy.
Stealth
P2P Network Hides Inside Kazaa. A California
company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads
of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn
on" people's PCs, welding them into a new network of its own.
Ultimate
Portable PCs
Gigabit
Ethernet Prices in Free Fall
Intel
Introduces 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 Processor
Monday, 1 April 2002
Samsung
and Hynix May Drive 64Mbit DRAM Prices Back Down to US$1. This
is not DDR memory.
Taiwan's
Chip Makers Report Few Problems Due to Quake
CeBit
2002 Report Part 2: Graphics, Chipsets, and Memory
HP
Won't Renominate Walter Hewlett to Board
It's
just a computer ... not a lifestyle statement
Index |
