Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Patent Case on Use of Intel Chips
While the US Congress continues debate on new patent reform legislation that would likely limit the amount that aggrieved parties could receive in infringement suits, the Supreme Court has agreed with a Justice Dept. request to hear a critical case. Its outcome, one way or the other, may not only impact technology patent law but also how manufacturers mix Intel and AMD parts, and also how - believe it or not - how digital music stores sell MP3 tracks.
The case was originally brought by LG Electronics, which manufactures a part for use in Intel-based communications equipment. LG holds a US patent on that part, which was expressly designed to be used with Intel chips; and Intel sells those chips under license from LG. One of Intel's customers is Quanta, a Taiwan-based computer manufacturer and the original defendant in this case. It assembles systems for Hewlett-Packard, among others.
Slight Bright Spot for Vonage: Partial Remand in Verizon Case
It may be extremely slim comfort for VoIP services provider Vonage in the wake of yesterday's total loss in the patent infringement suit brought against it by Sprint Nextel, but Vonage will take it nonetheless: A federal appeals court upheld today only two of the three patent infringement decisions in last March's case brought on by Verizon, remanding the third to a lower court for retrial.
This afternoon, Vonage accepted the good news like a team down six touchdowns in the fourth quarter that has just kicked a field goal from the 48. In a statement this afternoon, the company said it has already implemented a workaround for the other two patents, so service should not be affected. It did not refer to yesterday's statement, which said Vonage would plan to implement workarounds for the Sprint Nextel methodologies.
HD DVD and Blu-ray: Toward an Endgame
In a recent survey of HDTV owners by NPD Group, a full 73% were satisfied with the picture quality provided by upconverted DVDs for them to become too interested in a high-definition disc player of either format. Other figures are equally shocking, suggesting that the high-def format war may already be over. BetaNews spoke at length with the NPD report's lead analyst, Ross Rubin.
If there were just one universally embraced format for high-definition video discs, it would most likely have been introduced just over two years ago, probably at the $1,200 price point. By the spring of 2006, the budget-priced versions would have appeared at around $699.
Core CTO: Highly Exploitable AIM Bug Could Lead to System Hijack
In an interview this morning from Buenos Aires with BetaNews, Core Security Chief Technology Officer Iván Arce described a scenario whereby a malicious user could be able to trigger AOL's Instant Messenger into launching Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 Web browser, and then send it commands that enable that user to wrest full remote control of the AIM user's system.
"The problem here, I think, is not with implementation," Arce told BetaNews. "It's the way this was designed from the start. It wasn't designed thinking about potential malicious inbound messages, so the mechanisms for filtering were not put in the right place."
Microsoft Acknowledges Floating Point Bug in Excel 2007
It's the type of bug that, when discovered twenty years ago on the world's leading spreadsheets of the time, generated controversy and sent thousands back to their software stores for refunds: Excel 2007 has a bug with the display of floating-point values, a Microsoft developer confirmed on his team's blog yesterday. BetaNews confirmed the bug's existence, which leads to some values in floating-point multiplication to be "rounded" to incorrect values.
The problem appears to be with certain kinds of pairs of values whose product is either 216 (65,536) or 216 - 1 (65,535). When one or both factors has floating-point precision but is only slightly fractional - meaning, it has perhaps one or two decimal places but is otherwise not "irrational," to borrow its mathematical meaning - Excel renders the product as 100,000 instead.
Vonage Loses Patent Case to Sprint, Injunction May Be Next
In a blow to its fortunes that analysts feared could be fatal to the company, VoIP service provider Vonage was handed a defeat this afternoon by a federal jury in Kansas City, Kansas trying a patent infringement case brought against it by wireless carrier Sprint Nextel.
Vonage has been ordered to pay Sprint $69.5 million in damages plus 5% royalties on all future revenue, though the defeated company said this afternoon it will file an appeal. Today's decision comes six months after Vonage lost very a similar case to Verizon. There, the VoIP provider was ordered to pay Verizon $58 plus 5.5% in royalties on all future revenue.
Core Security CTO Finds Major Vulnerability in AIM, IE7
The Associated Press reported this afternoon that the chief technology officer of the company that makes Core Impact, a very well-known penetration testing product for enterprise networks, has gone public with the discovery of a new and significant vulnerability affecting AOL Instant Messenger, on systems where Internet Explorer 7 is also installed.
Core Security CTO Iván Arce told the AP that the current AIM 6.1, including the Pro and Lite versions, as well as the beta of AIM 6.2 all utilize Internet Explorer 7 for some of their rendering functions, including graphic emoticons. The interaction between AIM and IE7 apparently takes place over a link that Arce says he's proven can be exploitable, in demonstrations last month to officials of AOL's parent company, Time Warner.
NVidia Moves Further Into Integrated GPUs
Today's introduction of a new set of GeForce 7 integrated graphics chips for PC motherboards marks a major push for nVidia towards a segment of the market that Intel has traditionally commanded.
For years, graphics processor manufacturer nVidia has executed a simple strategy: Introduce innovative features on the high-end first, then push yesterday's high-end features down to the mainstream. By consequence, yesterday's mainstream GPUs were pushed to the low end, where the company historically maintained it's a better choice than integrated graphics.
EC: Certain US Companies Can't Merge Without EU Approval
An official spokesperson for the European Commission, in response to our questions regarding procedures for reviewing the proposed merger between Google and DoubleClick, told BetaNews this morning that under EU law, any two companies anywhere in the world whose projected post-merger annual revenue from European customers would exceed 250 million euros is subject to regulatory approval there.
While declining specific comment on these two companies, EC press officer for competition policy Linda Cain wrote to BetaNews, "In general terms, under the EU Merger Regulation, proposed mergers must be notified to the European Commission if the annual turnover of the combined businesses exceeds specified thresholds in terms of global and European sales (5 billion euros annual global combined turnover, each party having at least 250 million euros annual turnover in Europe). All proposed mergers notified to the Commission are examined to see if they would significantly impede effective competition in the EU."
Apple Warns of Dangers of iPhone Unlocking
Late yesterday afternoon, Apple Computer issued a single-paragraph statement reminding its iPhone users that their warranties would not be able to cover damages to their phones caused by the use of unlocking utilities. The company used a carrot and stick approach, reminding users that an iTunes Music Store update was on the way, but that attempting to install it on a cracked phone could render it useless.
Here is the Apple statement in its entirety:
Windows Vista SP1 Beta Released to Private Testers
Multiple Microsoft sources have confirmed that the first beta test editions of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista were distributed to a select group of about 12,000 testers today. BetaNews learned these are indeed exclusive invitees, not merely a subset of the company's MSDN or TechNet subscriber base.
An account of the SP1 experience published today by Microsoft team blogger Brandon LeBlanc confirms what BetaNews reported three weeks ago: Rather than add new features, SP1 concentrates on making the existing ones work better - at least, those which remain after a slight feature cut.
Windows Server 2008 RC0, Viridian CTP Released Tomorrow
Despite denials from members of its own server development team on blogs last week, Microsoft announced today that it is indeed making Release Candidate 0 of Windows Server 2008 available for download tomorrow, if not sooner, as a community technology preview.
With it, multiple sources are confirming that the first preview code for Viridian, Microsoft's highly anticipated built-in hypervisor platform for what will be called Windows Server Virtualization, will be included as part of RC0.
Dueling Think Tanks Debate Fate of Windows on European PCs
Last week's ruling by the European Court of First Instance (CFI) upholding the European Commission's 2004 finding against Microsoft and its subsequent Statement of Objections, may open the door for the EC to take unprecedented action. Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes stated she's open to suggestion, and today one response came from the respected Brussels-based Globalisation Institute think tank: Force manufacturers by law to sell PCs without operating systems pre-installed or bundled.
"We decided that the best way to approach competition was simply to insist that operating systems are purchased separately from desktop and laptop computers," reads a white paper published by the GI this morning (PDF available here). "This, we believe, would have a significant effect on the market share of Windows, providing the competitive marketplace that Ms. Kroes has called for. Price conscious consumers, including many students, would opt for cheaper operating systems."
Could Google's and DoubleClick's Merger Plans End in Europe?
Over five months after the two companies announced their intention to merge, search engine leader Google and display advertising leader DoubleClick petitioned the European Commission on Friday for clearance of their merger terms. This morning, according to the Associated Press, the EC responded by warning that a full investigation of their petition could consume as much as four months.
Since the US Federal Trade Commission announced it would investigate the merger terms, Google has tread very carefully in its proceedings with Europe, where antitrust laws in recent months have been somewhat more strict.
Google Leads August Search Rankings
ComScore's monthly rankings for America's leading Internet search providers were announced this afternoon, and it may not be much surprise that Google continues to top that list by a substantial margin. For the month of August, Google handled 6.8 billion US queries, up by about 200 million from July.
While Yahoo handles about a third of Google's volume to US Web users, its traffic loss for the month was not dramatic - only 50 million queries. Between July and August, MSN sites lost about 110 million queries.
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