Further Playstation 2 DVD Woes
According to the Daily Radar, SCEI has been forced to recall the software on the utilities and drivers disc of 1.25 million Playstation 2 units. By April 1st, PS2 owners are to have returned the software at Seven-Eleven, and in the interests of good taste, pick up a Slurpee.
The cost of handling this software recall may run Sony a cool million, but that is nothing compared to the financial damage a hardware recall could have inflicted. Having dodged possible litigation with this move, Sony is still responsible for the enabling of DVD recording via the PS2's RPG output port as reported earlier by The Register.
IBM Launches Win2k Powered Web Hosting Server
Based on a derivative of Windows 2000, IBM today announced their new Netfinity A100, which boasts 70 percent higher performance than traditional Web serving appliances. The A100 is being marketed as an an easy-to-use solution for ISPs and ASPs (Application Service Providers), and is capable of hitting the net within minutes out of the box.
IBM teamed up with Microsoft's Embedded and Appliance Platform Group and
optimized the appliance based on analysis of performance and load characteristics from customer sites. The A100 should be able to scale to different amounts of dynamic content extremely efficiently.
Mozilla Clarifies Beta Plans
According to Mozilla.org's Mitchell Baker, "There's a beta coming. That much
is clear." This upcoming release, however, is not a beta of Mozilla itself, but of Netscape's mozilla-based product. Aimed at end users, the beta will not incorporate the Mozilla IRC client used by active developers, nor will it be based off frozen APIs, though both are expected soon.
Future releases of interest to developers will be marked by Mozilla.org. Exactly how the releases will be labeled is still undecided, as there has been some justifable confusion over the upcoming beta release. The word beta is just too nebulous a concept to sufficiently delineate differences in releases. Too many people have conflicting views on what makes a release beta -- be it frozen APIs, feature completeness, or its target audience.