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Software
Top Story of the Day
Group aims to drastically up disc storage
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A few
hundred movies on an optical disc? That's the goal of the Holographic Versatile
Disc (HVD) Alliance.
Six
companies, including Fuji Photo and CMC Magnentics, have formed a consortium to
promote HVD technology, which will let consumers conceivably put a terabyte
(1TB) of data onto a single optical disc.
A TB-size
disc would certainly compress movie collections. The consortium said an HVD disc
could hold as much data as 200 standard DVDs and transfer data at over 1 gigabit
per second, or 40 times faster than a DVD.
HVD is a
possible successor to technologies such as Blu-ray and HD DVD. Single layer Blu-ray
discs hold about 25GB of data while dual-layer discs hold 50GB. Ordinary DVD
discs, meanwhile, hold about 4.7GB. HVD technology will be pitched at
corporations and the entertainment market, the HVD Alliance said.
The
technology behind HVD is based on holography technology from Japan's Optware,
one of the six founders of the consortium. A technical committee formed last
December to flesh out HVD standards.
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Other Headlines
 Microsoft To Release 13 Patches Next Week |
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Microsoft
on Thursday gave early warning that next week's monthly dose of security
bulletins and patches will be among its biggest ever.
According
to the Advance Notification service, which pre-announces upcoming patches but
limits the information disclosed, next Tuesday's roundup will include 13
security bulletins, at least three of which will be marked "Critical," the
Redmond, Wash.-based developer's most dire warning.
Nine of
the bulletins affect Microsoft Windows. That's a much-higher-than-normal number,
and three times what the company published in January.
Other
patches will be published to fix bugs in SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office,
the .Net Framework, Visual Studio, Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger.
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Huge security hole in .NET |
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James
Gosling, who is currently CTO of Sun's Developer Products group and the father
of the Java programming language, has called Microsoft's decision to support C
and C++ in the common language runtime in .Net one of the "biggest and most
offensive mistakes that they could have made" as part of his speech to
developers at an event in Sydney earlier this week. He further commented that by
including the two languages into Microsoft's software development platform, the
company "has left open a security hole large enough to drive many, many large
trucks through".
According
to Gosling, the security hole is based upon the fact that several features of
the older languages are ambivalent with regards to security: "C++ allowed you to
do arbitrary casting, arbitrary adding of images and pointers, and converting
them back and forth between pointers in a very, very unstructured way.
"If you
look at the security model in Java and the reliability model, and a lot of
things in the exception handling, they depend really critically on the fact that
there is some integrity to the properties of objects. So if somebody gives you
an object and says 'This is an image', then it is an image. It's not like a
pointer to a stream, where it just casts an image," said Gosling.
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Email meltdown claims slammed |
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Security
vendors have accused anti-spam experts at Spamhaus of hyping a trick that allows
spammers to take advantage of Internet service provider mail servers.
Earlier
this week Steve Linford, director of Spamhaus, warned that email infrastructures
were on the verge of collapse because a new worm is forcing zombie computers to
relay spam via ISP's mail servers. This, Linford said, is a huge problem because
including ISP domain names in spam black lists would cause a huge proportion of
legitimate mail to be blocked.
But
vendors, who also claim to be able to solve the problem with their products,
have attacked Linford over his comments.
"You
report the words of Mr. Linford from SpamHaus about the email infrastructure
being menaced and about to collapse," said François Bourdeau, director of
marketing for Vircom. "I find this to be not very accurate. Although the zombie
drone problem is very serious, there are solutions out there for ISPs that will
minimize the effects of zombie PCs sending out tons of spam."
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Eudora Flaws Patched |
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An update
which patches several Highly Critical vulnerabilities in the Eudora Email client
has been pushed out by Qualcomm. The issues make users vulnerable to several
forms of computer hijacking.
Research
firm Next Generation Security Software (NGSS) reported the vulnerabilities to
Qualcomm. Secunia has slapped a "highly critical" rating on the flaws and is
urging users to upgrade immediately.
According
to NGSS research John Heasman, the flaws are a “high risk” in the Windows
version of Eudora. He warns that a malicious attacker could execute any code he
wanted if a user previews or opens a special type of email.
NGSS is
being responsible by not releasing the public details of the issue for 3 months
– in order to allow users to patch their systems.
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Former AOL Employee Pleads Guilty in Spam Case |
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A former
America Online employee pleaded guilty on Friday to charges he stole 92 million
e-mail screen names and sold them to a "spammer."
Jason
Smathers, 24, admitted to conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen
property, charges that could carry a maximum prison sentence of 24 months under
federal guidelines.
The
federal case charged that Smathers, of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, stole the
screen names from AOL, a Time Warner Inc. unit, and sold it to an Internet
marketer.
The
marketer paid $28,000 for the names, then allegedly used them to promote his
online gambling operation while also selling them to other spammers, according
to prosecutors.
U.S.
District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year refused to accept the guilty
plea because he had a "technical" question, set a sentencing date of May 20.
News Source
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Gates' new mantra: interoperability |
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In a
missive offered via the company's Web site, Gates conceded that boosting
interoperability--the capability of technologies made by different vendors to
work together--remains one of the biggest challenges in the software sector
today. Gates noted that although the IT industry has adopted a number of
strategies over the years to help tackle the issue of integrating products from
multiple vendors, making a wholesale commitment to interoperability will be the
only way for companies to make customers' lives easier.
As a
result, IT providers, including Microsoft, must work to make different
applications and systems "do what they do best," while consenting to observe a
"common contract" that allows disparate systems to better communicate and
exchange data with one another, Gates said in the statement.
"Our goal
is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business
software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts," Gates said. "We want to further eliminate friction among
heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their
distinctive underlying capabilities."
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Kazaa's a drag at its own company |
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Employees
at peer-to-peer provider Sharman Networks "hate" installing the company's own
Kazaa software because it has ill effects on their computers, according to an
internal document written by Sharman's chief technology officer.
The
document, entitled "Kazaa Technology 2004" and written by Phil Morle, says that
Sharman needs to be careful about installing too much adware on a computer upon
the installation of Kazaa. The document is part of a bundle for which a request
for confidentiality was rejected this week by Justice Murray Wilcox, the judge
overseeing a copyright trial against Sharman in Australia.
The adware
"slows down users' machines and can affect other activity such as browsing the
Internet," Morle wrote. "We are also adding increasing p2p networks to the
users' machines. These are good value to users but they use more resources and
create confusion for users as to what resources they are sharing and where this
can be controlled."
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Microsoft Avalon is basically next DX 10 |
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We use to
call it DirectX 10, later someone called it DirectX Next and now we have ended
up with name Avalon. No one ever gave a clear answer what Avalon will be. We
know it is the codename of Microsoft's next generation Longhorn User interface
that runs on top of next generation DX Next.
We present
the name Avalon as codename for graphic subsystem which Microsoft plans to
release with Longhorn. As we said in our previous article Avalon will be
available for Windows XP and some other versions of Windows as well.
The
easiest way to describe it is the fact that Avalon is basically DX10, or "DX
Next", wrapped under a User Interface. OpenGL will run on top of it due to
security reasons, but Avalon tends to remove the bad old legacy habits of the
old DirectX architecture.
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Google Goes Local with Beta Search |
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Google has
taken live on its homepage a new service for locating local businesses, which
scours millions of Web pages and crosschecks the results with the Yellow Pages
data. Google Local was previously part of the company's Google Labs development
sandbox, but has now been deemed ready for widespread use.
One
example cited by Google is using the service to find an auto parts store within
walking distance. Google Local shows results on an area map, and can limit
results to a specific distance from a user's starting point. For frequent local
searchers, Google remembers the location in which to look.
Although
the service currently only works in the United States and Canada, Google plans
to expand its reach in due time. The company also expects to provide a way for
businesses to add themselves directly to the search results.
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BT lays path to faster broadband |
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Broadband
services in the UK
are about to get a lot faster, at least for some.
Alongside
its proposed regulatory settlement with Ofcom, published on Thursday, BT's
wholesale division is planning to begin trialing ADSL at speeds up to 8Mbps.
This is a
four-fold increase on its current top speed -- but it's likely that only homes
and businesses sited within a few kilometers of their local exchange will be
able to get such rates.
BT is also
planning to cut the cost of its wholesale broadband products in areas where
there is "high customer demand, high take up and lower costs". This is likely to
mean high-population urban areas, where some of BT's rivals are keen to use
local-loop unbundling to offer competing wholesale services.
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IBM Discovers The Power Of One |
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For a
proud tech industry leader, the situation couldn't have gotten much worse than
what IBM faced in the summer of 2003. The company's semiconductor unit, which
had bet on a strategy of manufacturing all kinds of chips for all comers, had
lost $1.2 billion over the previous 18 months. Big Blue was also spending
billions to upgrade its chip plants -- and getting thrashed by Asian rivals that
were manufacturing at much higher volumes and offering bargain-basement prices.
It was a full-blown crisis. "We were in danger of being marginalized," recalls
William M. Zeitler, senior vice-president in charge of the systems and
technology group.
That
called for a meeting of some of IBM's best minds. So on July 15, 2003, starting
at 7 a.m., Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano, Zeitler, and about
70 others from the company's then-separate chip and computer divisions gathered
in a conference room at
Harvard
University to come to grips with the situation. By the end of a long day, they
had charted a new course. The chip and computer units would be combined. Rather
than manufacturing all kinds of chips for 400 customers, IBM would focus
primarily on one family of chips, its well-regarded Power microprocessors. It
would make some of the chips for its own use and others for key partners'
products, including Nintendo game consoles, Apple G5 computers, and Cisco
Systems networking gear. It would also recruit co-investors to help fund
advances in chip manufacturing technology.
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Sun floats open-source database idea |
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Sun
Microsystems has raised the possibility that it might offer customers its own
database, a move that could trigger displeasure at Oracle but curry favor with
open-source advocates.
Chief
Executive Scott McNealy offered the provocative idea Wednesday at a meeting of
influential financial analysts at Sun's headquarters here. During a speech, he
showed a slide that placed the words "Sun DB" next to a list of existing
database products.
McNealy
offered no details besides "stay tuned," but Sun President Jonathan Schwartz
indicated in an interview that database software is one possible way Sun plans
to extend into new open-source software realms.
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Sony may miss target for PSP Europe launch |
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Japanese
electronics maker Sony could miss its end-March target for the European launch
of its new handheld game machine PlayStation Portable, a company source said
Friday.
"There's a
possibility that the launch could be delayed," the source said, adding that an
announcement about the specific date would be made within the next several
weeks.
This would
effectively be the second time it has delayed the European launch since it
originally planned to release the machine in time for Christmas last year.
Sony hopes
to pose a serious challenge in the portable game market to Nintendo, which
helped to pioneer the format with its Game Boy products.
But Sony's
PSP fell behind Nintendo's latest portable, Nintendo DS, from its launch,
entering the Japan market on Dec. 12, a week after the DS debuted.
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Game firm holds 'cast' auditions |
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Video game
firm Bioware is to hold open auditions for people to become cast members for
future games.
The
company, which makes role playing games such as Knights of the Old Republic and
Neverwinter Nights, is seeking people aged 18 to 99.
The
Canada-based company says it was looking for "a wide variety of people to use as
face models for characters".
Everyone
chosen to appear in a video game will receive a performer's fee for the use of
their image.
The
company is inviting people to come along to a shopping mall in West Edmonton,
Alberta, on Friday and Saturday, bringing along a piece of photo identification.
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FBI Urged to Scrap $170M Computer Project |
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A $170
million computer system intended to allow the FBI to better manage criminal and
terrorism cases will have to be scrapped or require a lot of additional work,
the Justice Department's inspector general said Thursday.
Glenn
Fine, the inspector general, blamed bad planning and management by the FBI for
most of the problems encountered in the design of a system to move large amounts
of investigative information into new digital databases that could be accessed
throughout the FBI.
Known as
the Virtual Case File, the system is supposed to give FBI agents and analysts an
instantaneous and paperless way to manage criminal and terrorism cases.
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Charity gives 40,000 PCs a fresh start |
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Nearly
$3.8 million worth of computers may not seem like a huge deal these days. But
when each computer is valued at about $95, it adds up to quite a lot.
For
Computer Aid International, it equals 40,000 PCs that have now been refurbished
by the North London-based charity and sent out to schools, community projects
and other not-for-profit organizations in 90 countries, mainly in the developing
world.
These
40,000 PCs have a second-life expectancy of three years each, according to the
organization, adding up to more than 220 million hours of IT use.
"This is a
real testament to the generosity of our donors and yet another important
milestone for Computer Aid International", said Tony Roberts, chief executive of
Computer Aid. "Demand for PCs is high, and we are looking to more than double
the number we have shipped so far in the next two years. Our target now is to
reach 100,000 PCs in 2007."
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PalmOne Raises Treo 650 GSM Price |
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PalmOne
seems bound and determined to slough off all the good will anyone ever had for
them, with so many customer-last maneuvers you'd think they were run by Steve
Jobs or something. Last night, PalmOne raised the price on their unlocked,
unsubsidized Treo 650 GSM model from $599 to $699, citing a 'pricing error.'
That's total and complete bull$#!t and everyone knows it—something as important
as the price of a launching product gets checked and re-checked.
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Super Bowl XXXIX Is A High-Tech Playground |
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The game
of football hasn't changed much in decades, but the influence of technology on
Sunday's Superbowl game will be on display, as companies hawking and using
technology jockey for their place in the Jacksonville sun.
The New
England Patriots were the first NFL team to build a Web site of its own, back in
1995, when the team was a sad also-ran in professional football. Today, the
Patriots are favored to win the big game Sunday, and the team's owners and
coaches pioneered the use of technology to build fan support and contribute to
the team's winning ways. Perhaps it's fitting that instant polls taken by online
gambling Web sites favor the Patriots heavily.
Motorola
was so impressed when 120,000 fans visited its "Motorola Venue At the NFL
Experience" exhibit at last year's Super Bowl contest, in Houston, that it is
mounting a similar program this year. The company will be demonstrating many of
its new cell-phone handsets, including the hot RAZR V3. It will be impossible to
miss Motorola's campaign at the event. There will be abundant billboards, music
groups, and NFL player appearances--all hawking Motorola, either subtly or
aggressively.
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Health researchers back new, free Web archive |
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The
National Institutes of Health, which spent nearly $20 billion last year funding
research, urged scientists on Thursday to let the agency publish their studies
on the Internet.
Researchers receiving NIH grants should send their manuscripts to a free,
Web-based archive managed by the National Library of Medicine as soon as they
can, after first submitting them to medical or scientific journals, NIH director
Dr. Elias Zerhouni said.
"With the
rapid growth in the public's use of the Internet, NIH must take a leadership
role in making available to the public the research that we support," Zerhouni
said.
"Scientists have a right to see the results of their work disseminated as
quickly and broadly as possible, and NIH is committed to helping our scientists
exercise this right."
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Chemists escape labs via mobiles |
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A blend of
mobile technology and award-winning software is letting scientists finally
escape the lab.
The
software, called "middleware", lets different computer systems talk to each
other securely and instantaneously.
As part of
a national e-Science project in the UK, it is being used to let Southampton
University chemists monitor experiment conditions from mobiles.
Sensors in
the lab pick up any changes in the environment so the system can alert chemists,
wherever they are.
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Previous News
MSN Messenger hit by double-whammy worm
MSN to Support Electronic
ID Card Technology
Microsoft To Offer
Governments Early Threat Warnings
US Release Date, Price for
PSP Set
Linspire Chief Defies DRM
Wave with New Music Service
Napster's 'rental' music
service takes on iTunes
Japanese hackers vs.
Microsoft
Hefty fine for French
downloader
Warning over tsunami aid
website
New Yahoo Test Product Aims to Focus Web Search
RSS feeds attract venture
dollars
Sprint profit up on
wireless strength, cost cuts
Reboot ordered for EU
patent law
Open source leaders slam
patents
Gosling questions
Sun-Microsoft pact
BT offers equal access to
rivals
WebEx hits Citrix with
cybersquatting suit
NASA warned not to rely on
computer models
DoCoMo introducing cheaper
handsets for FOMA 3G
Fisher-Price, Scholastic
Plan Interactive DVD Books
Piero gives rugby new perspective
Experts: Zombie trick set to send spam sky-high
Microsoft Denies SP2
Vulnerability
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