Firefox 3.5 Beta 4: Mozilla delivers the speed, as Beta 5 gets under way
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There are now (once again) three simultaneous development tracks for Mozilla's Web browser, as the first public beta of Firefox to be numbered 3.5 has officially hit the streets; the first private Beta 5 of Firefox 3.5 is being distributed to Mozilla testers; and the latest Firefox 3.6 Alpha continues to make headway.
EC's Reding: Europe needs a 'Mr. Cyber Security'
After an apparent victory in her efforts to prevent the UK from establishing a central database for private citizen communications, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said she wants her government to create a post for a point-man for the continent's cybersecurity.
"Although the EU has created an agency for network and information security, called ENISA, this instrument remains mainly limited to being a platform to exchange information and is not, in the short term, going to become the European headquarters of defense against cyber attacks. I am not happy with that," stated Comm. Reding (PDF available here). "I believe Europe must do more for the security of its communication networks. Europe needs a 'Mister Cyber Security' as we have a 'Mister Foreign Affairs,' a security tsar with authority to act immediately if a cyber attack is underway, a Cyber Cop in charge of the coordination of our forces and of developing tactical plans to improve our level of resilience. I will keep fighting for this function to be established as soon as possible."
One week later, it's time for Firefox 3.0.10
It's only been six days since the emergence on the scene of Mozilla's Firefox 3.0.9 -- ostensibly a major security and bug-fix update to the world's #2 browser -- and already the organization is preparing another update. Once again, no formal announcement has been made, though version 3.0.10 has appeared on the organization's FTP site for final preparation.
The emergence of yet another update follows a week of lackluster performance from the production version of Mozilla's browser in Betanews tests. Not only did release 9 lose some speed and performance, we noticed -- as we have from time to time with Firefox 3 -- the re-emergence of a memory leak that can leave the entire browser in the online equivalent of a coma. Release 10 may not have come too soon; already, we noticed a kick in its step, gaining back what it lost performance-wise in Betanews tests, especially in the SunSpider benchmark. Release 10's performance score now stands at 5.19, which is actually higher than for Release 7 -- meaning, combining multiple tests, we find Firefox 3.0.10 to perform 519% better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not IE8) in the same system.
It's finally settled: Broadcom and Qualcomm lay down their swords
The mobile communications industry can now pursue 3G technologies without fear of being caught in a whirlwind patent dispute. That's the outcome reached last weekend when Qualcomm agreed to settle its remaining disputes with Broadcom, in a deal which (at least at first glance) will net Broadcom $891 million over four years.
Qualcomm's incentive to settle was becoming obvious. In the current economy, a business plan built on the hopes of revenue from a big settlement from Broadcom or an unprecedented judgment in its favor, were becoming untenable. That point was driven home this morning when the company released its quarterly revenue numbers: Though revenue only declined by a mere 5.8% annually -- actually a noteworthy achievement -- net income could have ended up as high as $702 million, a decline of 22%. But the cost of putting this case behind it -- which only includes its initial payment to Qualcomm -- cost Qualcomm $748 million in this quarter alone, forcing it to post a net loss of $46 million.
Confirmed: Windows 7 RC to the public on May 5
Leaving not much time for folks to stew in the rumors over the latest "leaked" builds (plural) numbered 7100 of the Windows 7 release candidate -- one of which may have been legitimate -- Microsoft decided late Friday night to officially confirm that May 5 is the official public release date for the Win7 RC.
"I'm pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc in a corporate blog post late yesterday.
'Deep packet inspection' could become the target of legislation
The two biggest threats to Internet users' privacy, from the point of view of Rep. Rick Boucher (D - Va.), come from behavioral advertising technology and from deep packet inspection (DPI) -- the ability for an ISP to scan the contents of IP packets, and make determinations as to their handling based on those contents. But the specter of another company using both of these technologies together, like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, spelled out a more explosive danger. Chairing hearings of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet yesterday, Rep. Boucher made that clear:
"What services that consumers consider essential to the safe and efficient functioning of the Internet are advanced by DPI?" asked Boucher during his opening remarks yesterday. "Since the death of NebuAd's DPI-based behavioral advertising service last year, are other companies using DPI to deliver behavioral advertising? What, if any, safeguards are in place to ensure that consumers are giving meaningful consent to the tracking of their activities on the Internet?"
Nvidia's licensing situation with AMD is just as bad as with Intel
During yesterday's unveiling of its accelerated roadmap for 12- and even 16-core processors, an AMD executive said he did not believe the licensing situation between his company and Nvidia would enable Nvidia to produce chipsets that support future AMD platforms. Specifically, it appears Nvidia is not yet licensed to produce motherboard chipsets that support AMD's next-generation processors, reducing the likelihood for multi-GPU SLI support for AMD's "Istanbul" and future generations.
"For 2010 moving forward, the solutions coming out from AMD will be AMD and on AMD at this time," stated server business unit vice president Pat Patla. "We don't expect to see new chipsets from Nvidia or Broadcom for server implementations in 2010. But they will continue to support all existing platforms moving forward through 2010."
The plan to get AMD Opteron back in sync
Two years ago, after AMD promised to deliver the best performing CPU to data centers, its Barcelona architecture found the company trying to explain to customers why they shouldn't want performance, in an explanation that looked just as embarrassing as it sounded.
For AMD's last quarter, it actually managed to heal some of the ill effects of the negative economy on its desktop and mobile CPU segments, but not yet in the data center. Server CPU revenue is still hurting, though the company now declines to provide a specific breakdown. The way back for the company, it believes, is to create a marketing position that's similar to where it was in 2006, where system builders and partners started perceiving AMD as "one-upping" Intel.
For the desktop, AMD covets the budget enthusiast with 3.2 GHz quad-core
If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a Nissan Z car (I've owned two in my lifetime), you understand the extra feeling of confidence you get from still being able to afford your house, your clothes, and food. They're very solid performers, they look presentable in a crowd full of Porsches and BMWs, and yet their owners are conscientious folk who can also maintain a budget.
Every time I tell the fellows at AMD that I've been a Z owner, they shout back at me, "Well then, you know what we're talking about!" They're hoping that there's a certain niche of enthusiast system builders who aren't all that interested in displaying the measurements of their disposable income in public. For them, on time, AMD released its next version of sensible high-performance: the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU.
More speed to come from the first Firefox 3.6 alpha
While awaiting the first public (non-nightly build) copy of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, we noticed this week the first nightly alpha build of the Mozilla browser to come afterward: the first 3.6 Alpha 1 builds. In Betanews initial performance tests of some of Mozilla's very latest code, there's a lot of room for encouragement: The latest code-name "Minefield" build posted 11.7% better performance overall than the last code-frozen nightly build of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, and 232% the overall performance of the latest Firefox 3.0.9, released just yesterday.
Our tests pit the latest Windows-based Web browsers in a virtual Vista system, and combine the Acid3 standards test with three trusted performance tests for CSS rendering and JavaScript speed. Nearly all the early news for the 3.6 alpha was good, including posting Mozilla's best-ever score on the Acid3 test -- a 94% -- and posting a Betanews cumulative index score for the first time above 10.0, which means this alpha performs over ten times better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not the current version, IE8, but the previous one).
Congress puts the head of LimeWire back in the hot seat
During Congressional hearings back in July 2007, legislators were astounded by high-profile testimony from former NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, revealing that federal employees who had installed the P2P software LimeWire on their computers inadvertently shared classified government materials with other LimeWire users, in many cases without those users even requesting the material.
But sidestepping the entire question of why P2P file-sharing software was installed on government computers in the first place, Rep. Darrell Issa (R - Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, quizzed Lime Group Chairman Mark Gorton about his personal responsibility for the security breaches. Calling him the "elephant in the room," Rep. Issa asked, "Are you prepared here today to say you're going to make significant changes in the software to help prevent this in the future?" Gorton responded, "Absolutely, and we have some in the works right now."
VP Biden promises movie industry to step up search for IP czar
According to an account from a pool reporter assigned to Vice President Biden yesterday, and covered in its entirety by Time Magazine's Mark Halperin, Mr. Biden told a Washington gathering of both senior senators and motion picture industry leaders that he plans to accelerate the search for an Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC).
Though the role has been treated as a creation of the Obama administration, it was President Bush who signed into law last October the controversial PRO-IP Act, stepping up enforcement provisions against intellectual property infringement and piracy, and creating the role Mr. Biden likes to refer to as a "czar." But it was Biden himself who coined the usage of the term "czar" to apply to policy leaders with authority over specific issues, who report directly to the President -- in this case, in 1982 when then-Senator Biden helped create a drug policy enforcement administrator.
New Opteron EE processors attempt to carve out an 'ultra-low-power' niche
Already, AMD has a low-power segment to its Opteron server processor line, the HE series. With Intel Xeon processors still holding a measurable performance lead -- especially with models that command a comfortable premium -- AMD needs to be able to compete efficiently and maintain that goal of 40% gross margin (it made 43% last quarter). And to do that, the company feels it needs a new product category for a certain segment of customers who may be willing to pay a bit extra for something particularly useful.
If that's not performance, then for now, maybe it can be very low power consumption. This afternoon, the company announced a new and exclusive segment of Opteron EE quad-core processors that are intentionally turned down, drawing 40 watts of average CPU power (ACP, which is AMD's own metric) versus 75 watts for the standard Opteron and 55 watts for the company's Opteron HEs -- which will continue to exist as an in-between choice.
AMD: 12-core server CPUs in 2010, 16-core in 2011
During a press webcast Wednesday afternoon, AMD server business unit VP Pat Patla verified yesterday's news revealed during the company's quarterly earnings call yesterday, but then added one big component: In addition to six-core "Istanbul" Opteron server CPUs for 2P, 4P, and 8P servers available as soon as this June -- moved up from the second half of the year -- the first of AMD's 45 nm 12-core Opteron server CPUs will become available next year.
The "dodeca-core" processor will be made possible through an upgraded version of AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, now numbered 2.0. Patla showed off an accelerated roadmap for future server CPUs, which from here on out divides Opteron series into two families -- the general-performance 4000 series and the higher-performance 6000 series -- featuring 16-core "Valencia" and "Interlagos" architecture 32 nm CPUS, respectively, as soon as 2011.
Seagate adopts the 'hybrid' theme for Earth Day with 5900 RPM HDD
On this Earth Day, a number of manufacturers are releasing their "green" product announcements, some believing they're either capitalizing upon, or trying to jump-start, a social trend in smarter engineering. But PC builders and OEMs don't need peace rallies and protest signs to tell them how important it is to make systems and data centers run cooler and with more energy efficiency.
For them, the news from Seagate today about a new class of lower-power Barracuda hard drives that makes an effort to squeeze out a little more performance than low-power drives have before, will make them skip over the whole Earth Day part and go straight to the details. The company's new Barracuda LP series will be unique in that it won't reduce drive rotation as much as other brands and as Seagate's own brands have in the past.