Sun SPARC catches fresh fire with new Fujitsu UNIX servers
A quad-core, dual-threaded processor that until now had been tested by the likes of the Japanese space program, is being unveiled this morning for the consumer space by Sun and Fujitsu.
Last May, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced it had built a supercomputer assembled from 424 new Sun processors delivering 3,392 computing cores, with a design that even some of Sun's employees weren't expecting. With eight threads per processor, they couldn't have been "Olympus" processors, which were only dual-core, dual-threaded. JAXA placed the order from Fujitsu back in February.
Icahn's proposed Microsoft deal with Yahoo was for more than just search
Why won't Yahoo part with its search business when Microsoft would be offering a rich amount for it, asks Carl Icahn this morning? The answer could lie in the component of the deal that justifies being offered more than triple its value.
In an open letter to Yahoo shareholders this morning (entire press release available here), Icahn Partners chief Carl Icahn revealed that a deal he attempted to broker over the weekend between Microsoft and Yahoo would have resulted in Microsoft owning more than just Yahoo's search business. The most valuable item on Icahn's list of transferrable assets was not the search division -- that was #2 -- but rather a line-item described as "$12.5B in Asian Assets," valued at $9 per share.
iTunes, activation outages are rendering new and old iPhones inoperable
BetaNews correspondents in Maryland and Michigan are seeing first-hand problems as a result of significant system outages affecting both AT&T and iTunes. Many buyers still can't activate their phones hours later.
2:30 pm EDT July 11, 2008 - Six and a half hours after the launch of the iPhone 3G, Apple and AT&T continue to struggle with activation problems, leaving many without any sort of working phone. Although they may be able to get their new AT&T service active, iPhone 3G buyers must still activate the device via iTunes, and Apple's servers can't seem to handle the load.
CheckPoint issues fix for ZoneAlarm problem after DNS patch
BetaNews has confirmed through testing that CheckPoint's latest build of ZoneAlarm, issued yesterday in response to a problem arising from a Microsoft patch to a major DNS security problem, fixes a major problem with Internet access.
When Microsoft issued a major fix on Tuesday, to the way it handles the Domain Name System, that fix was necessary in order to avert a possible severe exploit of the entire Internet. Microsoft was cooperating in a joint effort, which also involved Linux distributions, to upgrade the world's DNS servers.
FISA amendments bill passes Senate, President likely to sign
The compromise legislation will enable a court to decide on a case-by-case basis whether telcos that cooperated with the US government will be granted immunity from prosecution. Prominent Democrats were among those voting for the compromise.
By a final vote of 69 - 28, with three senators not voting, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed the US Senate yesterday afternoon. With all three major amendments offered to the bill having been soundly defeated, the provision enabling a FISA court to grant immunity from prosecution to telecommunications companies that may have participated in surveillance activities in the wake of 9/11, remained intact.
ISO 29500 publication process may resume in August
The status code for the ISO's publication of OXML as an international standard has been on hold since four countries appealed the outcome of a ballot resolution meeting. That roadblock may now be lifted as soon as next month.
A spokesperson for the International Organization for Standardization confirmed this morning that, should the recommendations of the ISO Secretary-General and the International Engineering Consortium be agreed upon, the process of publishing the already approved Open XML document format suite as ISO/IEC 29500 will resume where it left off.
Apple iPhone 2.0 software goes live one day early, App Store launches
Despite Apple's official Web page continuing to state its iPhone 2.0 firmware is "coming soon," iPhone users everywhere have already discovered its existence, thanks in large part to MacRumors.com. Build 5A347 is directly available from this link, as an unofficial release.
With Apple's new iPhone App Store launching today, users need the iPhone 2.0 firmware to be able to take advantage of it. And how can they do that unless it's available? -- thus, the unofficial release of the firmware.
SQL Server 2008 to finally be released, but probably not in August
Giving itself a little more wiggle room, company representatives stated at a conference today that the new database server would be "priced" in August, leading some to conclude that's when SQL Server 2008 would be released.
After having promised that the eventual release of SQL Server 2008 would take place within a six-month timeframe from when it was originally scheduled -- during the "Heroes Happen Here" launch last February -- the latest Microsoft could possibly extend the product would be late August. Of course, once again, that depends on what you call "release."
Comcast and Vonage to work together on 'protocol agnostic' Internet
Common sense might tell you that Comcast's pledge to stop throttling Internet customers for the protocols they use would immediately help Vonage. But a new agreement may make sure Comcast's alternative doesn't end up hurting it.
In a remarkable agreement announced this afternoon, VoIP service provider Vonage and the US' largest Internet service provider Comcast will work together to improve the "network agnostic" management techniques that Comcast announced last March it would develop. Those techniques may help Comcast to regulate network traffic without implementing throttling techniques that, while benefitting Comcast, would hurt Vonage.
Standards board execs recommend ISO 29500 appeals be rejected
It's looking more likely now that Open XML will overcome perhaps its last hurdle on the road to publication as an international standard, as the leaders of both ISO and IEC have systematically disassembled four member countries' appeals.
The secretaries general of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Engineering Consortium, in a report to the technical and standards management boards of both organizations, recommends that those boards reject the appeals of representatives of Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela against the publication of the Open XML document format suite created by Microsoft, as ISO/IEC 29500.
Windows DNS bug fix can impair firewalls, including ZoneAlarm
BetaNews has confirmed through its own testing this morning that a critical patch, released yesterday by Microsoft as part of a worldwide DNS bug fix effort, can and does impact the functionality of software firewalls.
Multiple reports from users since yesterday afternoon have complained of systems incapable of contacting the Internet after having implemented patch KB951748. This patch makes a major change to the way the operating system handles DNS requests. Specifically, it implements a system that enables source port randomization -- a way to scramble the address from which a request is placed -- as a security measure to thwart malicious users from being able to craft false DNS responses, and thus "poison" the caches of DNS servers.
Major fix to DNS vulnerability impacts Windows, Debian
A very serious flaw in the Internet's DNS servers may have been ripe for a significant exploit, though a familiar security researcher might have sounded the alarm just in time. Now, Microsoft and Linux vendors are responding urgently.
In what appears to be a coordinated effort to fix a well known, though still potentially critical vulnerability to the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol, patches are being deployed today for both Windows and Linux, by both Microsoft and Debian, respectively. These patches would enable a long suggested protocol for validating the source of DNS requests.
Microsoft to host 'Deskless Worker' entry-level Web services
When Microsoft announced in March it would be marketing its own hosting services for Exchange and SharePoint, some wondered how the company could successfully compete with itself? Today, it provided the answer.
One under-appreciated facet of Microsoft's business is the amount of software that it sells to registered partners, who then resell that software to their clients. We're not talking about the Office suite or Visual Studio, but rather Windows installations, along with the services installed on Windows-based servers that can be licensed per user. Businesses that keep their employees connected through SharePoint sites and Exchange services often get their software through these partners.
Google releases its data encoding format to compete with XML
In an effort to solve the bulk and time-consumption problem when encoding large databases, Google developed its own alternative to XML. Yesterday, the company began evangelizing others to use it as an alternative to the industry standard.
There's an argument that open standards are only truly useful when one standard applies to any given category of service -- an argument that was raised in the matter of application formats. Now the broader category of data encoding -- handled nowadays by XML -- is about to receive a big challenge, ironically from the group perceived as the champion of open standards in Internet communication: Google.
Fourteen states' attorneys general join opposition to XM + Sirius
If the merger must go through, a group of states' legal leaders now contend, then at the very least, the FCC could mandate that the merged Sirius publish its specifications for interoperable receivers as open source.
In a phone conference July 1 with US Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, representatives of fourteen states' attorney generals' offices, including the attorneys general of Tennessee and Connecticut, collectively voiced their opposition to the merger of Sirius and XM satellite radio recently approved by the Justice Dept. And in a filing with the FCC Thursday, the Tennessee A-G's office states they questioned the DOJ's logic that compelling or forcing the merged parties to develop a standard for interoperable radios would be anti-competitive.
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