8 February 2006 Technology News

• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 13:39

  Dog poop--the next alternative energy source?
  
  San Francisco, a leader in urban recycling, is preparing to enlist its canine population for a first in the United States: converting dog poop into energy.
  
  Norcal Waste Systems, the city's garbage company, plans to test collection carts and biodegradable bags in a city-center park popular with dog walkers.
  
  A city study found that almost 4 percent of all the garbage picked up at San Francisco homes was from animal waste destined for the city's landfill, Norcal Waste spokesman Robert Reid said. San Francisco has an estimated 120,000 dogs.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 13:42

  HP Labs marks 40th with high-tech coffee table
  
  PALO ALTO, Calif.--The researchers at HP Labs are a serious bunch working on ways to create the data centers and transistors of the future--but the company sees no harm in going after the gaming-table market on the side.
  
  During an open house here Tuesday celebrating its 40th anniversary, HP Labs showed off Misto, the hybrid of coffee table and tablet PC that promises to either entertain or rile up family members next Thanksgiving.
  
  HP Labs, the central research arm of Hewlett-Packard, is responsible for several game-changing inventions--such as the thermal inkjet printer--which the company has turned into profitable businesses over its 40-year history, said Dick Lampman, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs. The key is not just working on an interesting project then "tossing it over the wall," but working closely with HP's product groups on its research projects, he said.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 13:50

  Windows bumps Unix as top server OS
  
  Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC.
  
  Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm's latest Server Tracker market share report. "It's the first time Unix was not top overall since before the Tracker started in 1996."
  
  And in another first, fast-growing Linux took third place, bumping machines with IBM's mainframe operating system, z/OS. Linux server sales grew from $4.3 billion in 2004 to $5.3 billion in 2005, while mainframes dropped from $5.7 billion to $4.8 billion over the same period, Eastwood said.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 13:51

  Lenovo-branded PCs to make U.S. debut
  
  Lenovo plans to dramatically expand its presence in the U.S. computer market by releasing a series of low-end desktop and notebook PCs for small businesses, CNET News.com has learned.
  
  The company plans to hold a press conference Thursday in New York to unveil the new systems, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. The 3000 series PCs, which will use processors from both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, represent Lenovo's first major expansion into the U.S. computer market since it completed the purchase of IBM's PC business last May.
  
  Lenovo is the world's third-largest PC seller, according to data from market researchers IDC and Gartner. But most of its historical strength lies in emerging markets such as its home base of China, and the majority of the PCs it ships are ThinkPads, a brand it acquired from IBM. The company agreed to purchase IBM's PC business in 2004 for $1.75 billion in cash and assumed debt in hopes of not only acquiring contacts at large U.S. corporations through the ThinkPads, but also to find new customers for its Lenovo-branded products.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:09

  Computer maker files antitrust suit against Microsoft
  
  Computer maker Tangent has filed a federal antitrust suit against Microsoft, accusing the software maker of anticompetitive behavior that forced it to overpay for the Windows operating system.
  
  The suit, filed last week in the Northern District of California, charges Microsoft with violating the Sherman Act and seeks to recover triple damages from the software maker.
  
  "Microsoft's exclusionary and restrictive practices...have caused significant harm to (Tangent) by increasing, maintaining or stabilizing the price it paid for Microsoft's operating system software above competitive levels," Tangent said in its suit. Tangent, based in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Burlingame, makes computers, servers and thin clients, primarily for the education, government and business markets.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:13

  Micron files suit against Rambus
  
  Micron Technology said Tuesday that it filed a lawsuit against Rambus, marking the latest legal shot in a long-running battle over the $30 billion market for computer and graphics memory chips.
  
  The lawsuit charges Rambus, whose shares dropped more than 4 percent, with violating federal racketeering laws and accuses the company of destroying evidence, false testimony and other improper activities designed to mislead courts.
  
  The complaint, filed in U.S. District court for the Eastern District of Virginia, also includes charges that Rambus intentionally concealed information through false testimony and other means regarding the ownership of its key patents asserted against Micron in patent lawsuits.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:14

  Sun's old CFO becomes Sun's new CFO
  
  Mike Lehman, Sun Microsystems' chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002, is coming out of retirement to replace Steve McGowan in the post, the server and software company said Tuesday.
  
  "Having now tried retirement briefly, I find that I like being involved in leading change and driving the business more directly," Lehman, who is 55, said in a statement. He returns to his old job on Wednesday and has resigned from Sun's board.
  
  And McGowan, instead of retiring as planned last October, will become executive vice president of finance. "He will be with us for the foreseeable future," Sun spokeswoman Stephanie Von Allmen said. "He's been convinced to stay on as EVP of finance."
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:17

  Tools, tune-ups for Linux efforts
  
  Gnome has brought the OS to its desktops, Debian's founder has taken on standardization, Linux now boots on Niagara, and more.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:18

  GNOME sliding Linux onto business desktops
  
  The next version of GNOME has been designed to make it easier for administrators to deploy the Linux desktop environment in enterprises.
  
  GNOME 2.14, which is due for release on March 15, will include new administrator tools such as a profile manager and an editor to lock down PC functionality, developer Davyd Madeley wrote in an article posted on the GNOME project Web site last week.
  
  Madeley explained in his blog that he wrote the article to "pimp the shiny features" in GNOME 2.14, although he cautioned that the details of what is included in the final version of 2.14 may change.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:19

  Coca-Cola Enterprises hires Sun internal auditor
  
  Coca-Cola Enterprises has hired Suzanne D. Patterson as vice president of internal audits, the bottling company said Friday. Patterson, who starts the new job Feb. 27, had held a similar position at server and software maker Sun Microsystems since 1997.
  
  Coca-Cola Enterprises sells approximately 80 percent of beverage maker Coca-Cola's cans and bottles in North America.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:20

  eBay names new financial chief
  
  eBay on Tuesday said it had named a new chief financial officer, slated to start work on March 16. Robert "Bob" Swan, who has been serving as CFO and executive vice president of leading computer services firm Electronic Data Systems, will report directly to CEO Meg Whitman at the online auction giant's San Jose headquarters.
  
  Swan spent 14 years overseeing finances within various divisions of General Electric and recorded a two-year stint at the start-up Webvan, an online grocer that went bankrupt in 2001. At eBay, he will replace Rajiv Dutta, who served as CFO for the last five years, as he takes over as president of online voice provider Skype, which eBay snapped up last fall in a deal valued at $2.6 billion.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:29

  Sun: Tape storage evolving, not dead
  
  Magnetic tape data storage may have been around for more than half a century, but systems administrators will be stuck with it for some time, according to one of Sun Microsystems' top storage executives.
  
  "Tape's going to be around for a long time," Randy Kearns, vice president of Sun's new Data Management Group, said in the wake of the finalization of Sun's $4.1 billion acquisition of primarily tape-focused vendor StorageTek.
  
  However, Kearns is seeing changing patterns of usage for the venerable sequential-access medium, which is primarily used for backing up data stored on servers.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:30

  Web services upend ideas about little guys
  
  The old story of technology in business was a trickle-down affair.
  
  From telephones to computers, big companies came first. They could afford the latest innovations, and they reaped the benefits of greater efficiency, increased sales and expansion into distant markets. As a technology spread and costs fell, small businesses joined the parade, though from the rear.
  
  Now that pattern is being challenged by a bottom-up revolution, one fueled by a second wave of Internet technologies like the search services from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and software delivered as a utility-like service over the Web.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:31

  Running a hatchery for replicant hackers
  
  At 26, Phil Yuen's identity lay somewhere between Dilbert and a Microserf.
  
  His office, on the first floor of Building 16 on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., did not have a window. Not to worry. "I could see the window from my manager's office," he said.
  
  Yuen was a midlevel manager who wrote specifications for enterprise project management software--giant computerized flow charts. "I drew boxes and lines to help other people draw boxes and lines," he said.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:33

  Google releases Desktop 3 for Enterprise
  
  Google on Tuesday released the beta version of its latest desktop search application, Google Desktop 3 for Enterprise, which the company recommends for companies worried about security risks.
  
  The enterprise version has all the functionality of the consumer version, which was released last week. But it allows network administrators to completely disable features, such as Search Across Computer. That feature, disabled by default, automatically stores copies of data on multiple computers.
  
  Because the data travels through Google servers and is stored there for up to a month, privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as network administrators, have complained that it could lead to the compromise of sensitive data.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:34

  Symantec completes Relicore buy
  
  Symantec on Tuesday said it completed the acquisition of Relicore, a provider of data center automation software. The takeover, initially announced on Feb. 7, is meant to help Symantec build a product offering for standardized, simplified data center management, it said in a statement. Symantec acquired its existing line of storage and server management software through its acquisition of Veritas.
  
  Clarity, Relicore's main product, will continue to be offered as a stand-alone product through Symantec. The software is designed to automatically detect dependencies between different components of business applications so IT administrators can spot and fix problems. The Relicore software creates a visual map of a corporate data center hardware and software and keeps a record of how products are configured. Symantec will continue to offer Relicore services to RelicoreÂ’s customers and partners, it said.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:39

  McAfee updates intrusion prevention software
  
  McAfee on Tuesday announced the availability of a new intrusion prevention product. McAfee Host Intrusion Prevention 6.0, formerly McAfee Entercept, enables exploit protection through dynamic vulnerability shielding update capabilities and the integration of full desktop firewall functionality in one software agent for the PC, the company said in a statement.
  
  Additionally, McAfee Host IPS can be centrally controlled with McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator management tool, the company said.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:43

  Kaspersky update zaps Microsoft antivirus
  
  Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab have recovered from an error that caused significant e-mail troubles for some users of Microsoft's Antigen e-mail security software.
  
  Antigen users started receiving updates for their Kaspersky Lab antivirus engine again on Tuesday. Microsoft and Kaspersky had put those on hold after a flawed update caused trouble last week, representatives for the companies said Tuesday.
  
  "As far as both parties are concerned, the problems have been addressed, and it's business as usual," said Steve Orenberg, president of Kaspersky's North American operations.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:49

  Mac OS flaw exposes Apple users
  
  A serious flaw in Mac OS X could be a conduit for attackers to install malicious code on computers running the Apple Computer software, experts warned Tuesday.
  
  The security problem is the third to surface for the operating system in the past week. It exposes Mac users to risks that are more familiar to Windows users: Visiting a malicious Web site using Apple's Safari Web browser could result in a rootkit, a backdoor or other malicious software being installed on the computer without the user noticing anything, experts said.
  
  "This could be really bad," the SANS Internet Storm Center, which tracks network threats, said Tuesday. "Attackers can run shell scripts on your computer remotely just by visiting a malicious Web site."
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:50

  U.S. reclassifies many documents in secret review
  
  WASHINGTON--In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
  
  The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
  
  But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy--governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved--it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:52

  U.K. e-passports start their travels
  
  The United Kingdom's first e-passports, which feature personal information stored on a chip, have been issued.
  
  According to the U.K.'s Home Office, e-passports are now being issued by the Foreign Office in Washington, D.C. Offices in the U.K. itself are expected to start issuing them to applicants for new passports and renewals, starting in April.
  
  In the early stages of the changeover, some people will receive a new biometric passport while others will receive a passport with existing digital identification. The switch is expected to be complete at summer's end.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:54

  Bills would boost unlicensed Wi-Fi
  
  Wireless Internet service providers would be allowed to operate freely on new chunks of unused TV spectrum, according to two new bills in the U.S. Senate.
  
  A pair of similar measures introduced Friday would give wireless device manufacturers the green light to develop products for unlicensed use on the broadband airwaves' "white spaces"--that is, empty, unused channels in the broadcast TV bands.
  
  Companies interested in deploying Wi-Fi networks covet the bands of spectrum on which broadcast television currently resides because of its inherent scientific properties. Signals at that frequency travel straighter and farther. Consumer advocates say using the spectrum would enable cheaper and easier set-up--and thus more widespread access for rural and low-income areas.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 14:56

  Cingular phones can dip into Yahoo accounts
  
  AT&T and Yahoo have launched a service that lets people use Cingular cell phones to access photos, e-mail, instant messages and address books on their Yahoo accounts, AT&T said Tuesday.
  
  The AT&T Yahoo Go Mobile service is part of the Yahoo Go brand, the Internet media company's push to make its services available on a variety of devices, from mobile phones to televisions.
  
  The new service was initially announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and is only now available for consumers to purchase preloaded on handsets, the companies said. "It's the first kind of baby steps toward this whole concept of an anytime-anywhere device," said Matt Davis, director of consumer multiplay services at IDC, a market researcher.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 15:05

  Sony unveils next HD camcorder for consumers
  
  The high-definition camcorder, which was pretty space-age in 2005, will become more common over the next two years.
  
  Sony showed off in Tokyo this week an HD camcorder that's lighter and smaller than the company's first consumer HD camcorder and, perhaps more importantly, costs less. The HDR-HC3 will sell for 160,000 yen, or $1,400, less than the $1,800 price tag on Sony's HD-HC1, its current HD camcorder for consumers.
  
  Japanese consumers will be able to buy the HDR-HC3 starting March 3. Although Sony did not specify a U.S. release date, the company typically follows through with U.S. versions anywhere from six to 12 months later.
• ndmmxiaomayi

  23 Feb 06, 15:07

  Judge denies bid for another BlackBerry hearing
  
  The federal judge overseeing the patent infringement case against the maker of the BlackBerry portable e-mail device on Tuesday rejected a request by the U.S. Justice Department to hold additional proceedings on how to exempt government users from a potential shutdown of BlackBerry service.
  
  U.S. District Judge James Spencer turned down a request by the Justice Department to hold a separate hearing to delve into the department's concerns about the potential shutdown, something that could have further delayed the case against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
  
  Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is trying to fend off a shutdown sought by the plaintiff in the case, patent holding company NTP Inc. NTP won a 2003 patent infringement ruling against RIM in federal court in Richmond, Virginia.