Not to be outdone by Cisco, Dell launches Xanadu II servers for clouds
With Sun and newly initiated server market competitor Cisco also rolling out data center servers this week, Dell has made its own announcement of XS-23 II servers, formerly codenamed Xanadu II. Dell launched the new high-end x86 servers on Monday in celebration of the second birthday of Data Center Solutions (DCS), a division producing servers aimed at easy customizability for cloud computing and other data center applications.
Forrest Norrod, Dell's VP and general manager of DCS, contended today that DCS "isn't a one-size fits all approach." Dell's new XS-23 servers, for example, come with a choice of several different processors, including the new Intel Nehalem chip that will also show up in Cisco's first servers, although those machines will be offered in blade configurations with a built-in fabric architecture.
Microsoft in an IP deal with manufacturer that brought DMCA case
Early this afternoon, Microsoft and printer maker Lexmark jointly announced that they had entered into a cross-licensing agreement, which gives both companies access to each other's portfolios. Their statement basically said that such agreements are necessary in tough economic times, in order to shorten their own development lifecycles.
Conceivably, Microsoft could use this deal to craft better printer drivers for Windows, especially drivers that are capable of testing such statistics as cartridge fluid level, without relying on printer manufacturers to craft the software for themselves. Notoriously, Lexmark's biggest competitor Epson produces its own printer drivers, but to this day has yet to resolve issues concerning its photo printers and 64-bit Windows Vista.
A phishing scheme may have exposed 700 Comcast customers
A document that appeared on the online sharing service Scribd appeared to show thousands of comcast.net accounts, along with their passwords. It was probably posted there as a display of somebody's phishing prowess, though it would appear it took two months or more before anyone finally noticed.
Well, someone finally noticed. As it turns out, only about 700 of those 4,000 or so addresses were for real Comcast subscribers, the company confirmed to Betanews this morning, which creates some doubt as to whether the would-be phisher stole these account names from Comcast itself or from a really bad screen-scraper routine.
Encouraging notebook anorexia: Dell launches Adamo
View images of the Dell Adamo up close
Dell's fashion-first Adamo notebooks are now available for pre-order on the company's site. The super thin notebooks may offer reduced computing power, but they are the current apogee of Dell design.
AMD to Intel: We'll come clean if you will
Yesterday in an interview with Betanews, Intel corporate spokesperson Chuck Mulloy requested that AMD lift its veil of secrecy regarding the redacted portion of a cross-licensing agreement between the two companies. The unseen portion, we're told and Mulloy believes, includes the list of technologies that AMD is currently licensing to Intel -- Mulloy himself has not seen that list.
It's the list of technologies whose licenses AMD is threatening to cancel if Intel goes through with its plan to cancel its part of the cross-licensing agreement.
Analysts: Where is (and isn't) SaaS headed?
SaaS is now moving toward greater success in online backup, Web conferencing, and some other areas, but not really in either integration or business intelligence, say Forrester Research analysts.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) originally got off the ground with customer relationship management and human resources applications, Forrester notes in a new report. But although SaaS will keep gaining ground in those two areas, SaaS will also pick up considerable momentum in online backup, Web conferencing, collaboration, and IT systems management, the analysts predict.
Apple Macs get Carbonite online backup, with free trials
After a beta test, Carbonite, a major provider of online backup services to consumers and small businesses, this week opened its first backup service for Macs.
Carbonite's new service provides automatic online backup for Intel-based Macs running Mac OS 10.4 or 10.5, backing up files to Carbonite's cloud-based servers in the background while users work at their computers. Secure socket layer (SSL) encryption is used for privacy.
Nintendo avoids yet another patent infringement suit over controllers
Nintendo prevailed in yet another patent infringement lawsuit about its controllers for the Wii and GameCube. A 2007 suit from Fenner Investments Ltd. sued Nintendo and Microsoft for the joystick ports on their consoles.
The patent held by Fenner (#6,297,751) is for a low-power interface with standard 5 volt peripherals that "includes a bi-directional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal."
IRS servers in need of hebdomadal malware scans
A report released last week by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) after a year-long audit states that servers at the Internal Revenue Service are in need of hebdomadal malware scans, after the agency's Cybersecurity Computer Security Incident Response Center noted a 45% increase in malware infections between 2007 and 2008.
Michael Phillips, deputy inspector general for audit at TIGTA, issued four recommendations for the IRS, all in line with statutory requirements that the agency get a good look from auditors on a regular basis.
Nokia continues its cost-cutting plan with more layoffs
Late last month, Nokia announced that it would be scaling back its operations, and instated a voluntary resignation program for 1,000 of its employees.
Today, Nokia announced further workforce reductions will take place, affecting devices and markets, corporate development, and global support divisions that would be overlapping after the company completes its acquisition of Symbian.
Cisco: Intel Nehalem-based servers part of long-term data center 'vision'
With a sweeping data center initiative that includes Cisco-produced servers, Cisco is still only part way through a just revealed long-term strategy to stand at the center of network-based cloud computing, said John Chambers, CEO of the network equipment company, during a customer and press event today.
Cisco's emerging network-based data center architecture is designed to provide a variety of benefits to customers. "The first challenge is complexity," said Prem Jain, senior VP of engineering, who equated data center operations with "buying a car and assembling it yourself."
Fun with WikiScanner, Scientology edition
Masters of procrastination are familiar with the snoopy pleasures of WikiScanner, which lets you input an organization name or domain and get back a list of what folks using their network have been up to on Wikipedia. Some edits are pretty obvious -- for instance, the edits from users at aig.com on "The Fate Of Achilles' Armor," "Lists of Past Disneyland Attractions," and "1975 in Country Music" are obviously attempts to earn their bonuses. But what was the Church of Scientology up back in 2006 to with Kurt Cobain?
Over at Culture kills... wait, I mean Cutlery, Matthew Caverhill searched on a whim for "Scientology" and noticed that in addition to the sort of edits one might expect from a large organization with concerns about their public image, the CoS domains also showed a number of edits to pages done on a single January day in 2006, concerning celebrities who had killed themselves or been murdered by someone believed to be mentally ill.
Egress debuts fresh data-security model
Operating on the theory that data at rest isn't a problem until it becomes restless, Egress Software Technologies on Monday debuted a security system designed to protect data in motion -- over the net, on a thumbdrive, in the cloud, or what you will.
Bob Egner, US president of the UK-based Egress, notes that practically speaking you can't not share data these days; the ways we all work with partner firms and third-party vendors dictate it. The problem is that as your data gets further from you, its primary keeper, it can become increasingly hard to make sure that only the right people can access it. The ubiquity of cheap, capacious data containers (DVD-Rs, thumb drives, even MP3 players) adds another layer of complexity, making it even easier for large masses of data to go on walkabout.
Microsoft: If Vista buyers knew so much, why would they sue?
In all the confusion that arose in 2006 over whether lesser-grade editions of Windows Vista was "real Vista" and whether existing PCs were ready or capable of running it, consumers probably downloaded a lot of information about different ways they could get their hands on the new product. In a motion filed last week by Microsoft in the "Vista Capable" suit in US District Court in Seattle, and first reported on by our friend Todd Bishop at Seattle's TechFlash, the company argues that the wealth of such information that former plaintiffs unearthed during their purchasing research should have been enough to tell them that Vista Home Basic wasn't the same as Vista Home Premium.
For that reason, the company claims, prospective plaintiffs can't exactly say they were harmed in the same way, so they don't deserve to be re-enlisted as class action plaintiffs. The judge in that case threw out the class action distinction last month.
No more Hitachi monitors after July's restructuring
After suffering the shame of pleading guilty in the US Justice Dept.'s ongoing investigation of price fixing in the TFT-LCD monitor industry, Hitachi announced this afternoon, Tokyo time, that it had gone about as far as it could in the present economy, in its current structure. Beginning this July, the division responsible for engineering and building those monitors probably won't even be known as Hitachi.
Spinoffs of the Consumer Business Group and the Automotive Systems Division are now fully underway, with the current executive vice president slated to take charge of the new consumer products manufacturer. That group will still downsize -- or, as Hitachi's statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange calls it, "rightsize" -- to about 750 employees, and will outsource some of its development to Panasonic, so the new company will start out small.
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