Nokia and InterDigital may be preparing to settle
When a patent dispute gets so entangled that the parties involved can't quite agree upon what it is that's in dispute, maybe it's time to call it quits. Today, two of the sides in a notorious three-way dispute admitted they're thinking about it.
The big question that remains up in the air today is this: Is Nokia a licensee of InterDigital technology or not?
New buffer overrun exploit threatens old Jet database engine on XP
A few weeks after a security laboratory found what it claimed to be an unchecked relationship between an old database provider and Word, Microsoft indicated that someone out there may still be trying this old attack vector.
It's such an old style of attack that you might rationally wonder why anyone would still be targeting specific computers with it, unless they're really trying to prove a point about their old software. But late Friday, Microsoft said it was informed of a targeted buffer overflow attack that involves the Jet database engine and any version of Microsoft Word dating back to Word 2000 Service Pack 3, on up to Word 2007, running on older operating systems: Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 SP1.
Is the Centro helping or hurting Palm?
It's even shaped like a little lifeboat, and it's supposed to bring the Palm brand out of the doldrums and back into people's pockets. The Centro may be doing so, but the problem is, it's doing so at a cost.
Quarterly earnings releases typically focus mainly or entirely on the good news, and let the analysts out there do the math. But when the math is something as simple as determining gross margin -- a little detail quite obviously omitted from yesterday's printed earnings report from Palm -- the result is that it becomes the center of attention.
Columbia University professor could trigger a Blu-ray injunction
With a few victories already under her belt, a celebrated physicist seeks to leverage those wins in a contest to reclaim her legacy. The other side of the story is that everything with a blue laser diode in it has just come under suspicion.
A fifty-six-year veteran physicist who is currently Columbia University's Howe Professor Emerita of Materials Science and Engineering, will have her patent infringement case heard by the US International Trade Commission. If Judge Paul J. Luckern concurs, an injunction could be placed on the import of all electronics containing blue-laser diodes manufactured using a certain patented process.
How AT&T, Google, and Dish Network fared in the 700 MHz auction
After an enormous amount of publicity for the richest sale of publicly-held frequencies in history, the question being asked sounds like something Walter Cronkite could be heard saying: "What kind of a day was it? A day like all days..."
From a standpoint of contests -- especially the athletic and political kind -- typically the second prize winner is often forgotten. But the second prize in the US Federal Communications Commission's 700 MHz auction, which ended on Wednesday, was not exactly dinner for two at Applebee's: AT&T will pay $6.636 billion to purchase 227 licenses to deploy services nationwide on the "B-block."
Verizon Wireless captures 700 MHz glory in near-sweep of C-block
As it turned out, those smiles were on the Verizon Wireless executives' faces for a very good reason: It has won easily the most valuable wireless spectrum ever auctioned in US history, by virtue of high bids placed 230 rounds ago.
Verizon Wireless may not have ever been seriously challenged for rights to use the most valuable C-block of wireless spectrum -- currently hovering around Channel 63 of the VHF TV dial -- for future wireless operations. Throughout the lower 48 states, it placed winning bids for the nation's major regions as early as round 18, in an auction that lasted through round 261.
AMD denies reports of layoffs under way
Two separate AMD spokespersons denied to BetaNews this afternoon published reports that the company was already implementing a five percent workforce reduction, and that employees were already receiving pink slips.
"AMD confirms that it has not had a reduction in force," states one AMD spokesperson today. "While AMD cannot comment on speculation about what may happen in the future, we confirm that we have not had layoffs at this time."
Adobe's plans for iPhone Flash depend on your meaning of 'committed'
Is Flash coming to the iPhone or not? For two consecutive days now, Adobe has said it wants to make that possible. But the way it's handling the issue has the press parsing every participle for latent meaning.
A statement from Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen during the Q&A session of his company's quarterly earnings call last Tuesday appeared to indicate his company was actively pursuing the production of a Flash component for the Apple iPhone. That's how quite a few press sources reported the story, including BetaNews.
Verizon Wireless releases 'open specifications' for device builders
Going forward with an historic initiative launched last November, one of the nation's largest wireless carriers held a gala conference to celebrate the release of specifications for how any wireless device can just plug right into its network.
While Verizon Wireless' vice president for open development, Tony Lewis, read the FCC disclaimer prior to the start of his presentation in New York City yesterday -- the part where he says he's prohibited from discussing the proceedings or outcome of the 700 MHz auction, usually the least newsworthy part of a show -- his wide, beaming smile and jovial demeanor spoke volumes.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)
There are so few gentle geniuses left. One more has passed: a man who could not only dream magnificent new things could come about, but who had the competence to actually make his dreams reality.
When most people I know think of Arthur C. Clarke, they think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and almost immediately, they conjure images and sounds of HAL the computer, spaceships landing in overlit, white parlor rooms, dancing orangutans, Johann Strauss music intertwined with Richard Strauss music, and innocent young fetuses hanging in space. That's generally when I say they're confusing Clarke for Stanley Kubrick.
What would NVidia want with a CPU company?
There may be an actual window of opportunity for graphics chip producer NVidia to acquire some x86 CPU design expertise and production prowess. But as In-Stat's Jim McGregor told us, there are reasons why NVidia + Via wouldn't work.
There are more than two CPU producers in the known universe, although it's Intel and AMD that tend to dominate any discussion of it. But what could be the world's #3 CPU producer -- a very distant third -- is once again the topic of discussion, as rumors of Via Technologies' possible acquisition by graphics chip producer NVidia were turned up from "simmer" to "high" this morning, by a report from the respected Taiwanese industry daily DigiTimes.
The 700 MHz auction ends, with the D-block unsold
By one measure, the 700 Mhz spectrum sale was the most successful government auction in history. But a dark cloud remains over at least one part of it, where the FCC finds itself stuck right where it was before the opening gavel was struck.
After weeks of competitive and secret bidding, the US Federal Communications Commission's auction of some of the most valuable spectrum ever offered to the private wireless industry -- still part of the upper UHF TV band until February next year -- finally closed yesterday. According to the Commission's revised tally this afternoon, the auction could raise almost $19.6 billion, 92% above last year's congressional estimates.
Updated: Windows Vista SP1 downloadable now, ships tomorrow
11:50 am March 19, 2008 - Despite Amazon's messages on Tuesday that it would be shipping commercial packages with Windows Vista SP1 starting today, those messages this morning were found to be replaced with new notices that the new boxes aren't in stock yet.
Currently, items for sale are marked with the curious message, "In stock on March 20, 2008."
Hyper-V release candidate due for availability today
When Microsoft really is on track with something, it likes to march to a very loud drumbeat. This time, it appears the Hyper-V virtualization platform project is going well, and with the latest milestone, the company's trumpets are blaring.
Holding true to its schedule of final release within six months of the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft this morning advanced the first genuine release candidate of Hyper-V, the built-in virtualization hypervisor for the OS that utilizes the new, underlying virtualization platforms in both AMD and Intel server CPUs.
DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC
It's official, so now the process can finally begin for a national licensing system for terrestrial broadcasters that exclusively service mobile devices.
This time, it actually happened: The European Commission has formally decided that DVB-H is Europe's official national standard for digital mobile broadcast television. This affects how broadcast and transmission licenses are handled throughout Europe, where viable alternatives to DVB-H now have a significantly diminished chance to compete.
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