Latest Technology News

Typically, the reason a manufacturer helps a government agency build a supercomputer is to establish bragging rights. But this time, IBM plans to help the DOE put its latest creation to work with the nation's infrastructure.

It's been a long two seasons for Lawrence Livermore Labs, whose one-time heavyweight champion supercomputer BlueGene/L found itself stripped of its title belt, last time not only by Los Alamos Labs' up-and-coming IBM/AMD hybrid Roadrunner, but also by a Cray -- a name that until last year was synonymous in many circles with "dinosaur."

Dell's new OptiPlex Thin Client devices will be pre-loaded with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client. This version of the SUSE Enterprise Linux desktop is optimized for use on the smallest thin client footprints, offering images from 128MB in size.

Linux is the preferred operating system for resource-constrained devices, and IDC in June forecasted that it will reach 30.5% OS market share on thin clients by 2011, totaling around 1.8 million Linux-based units.

Massachusetts software company NewRiver Inc. has sued financial research firm Morningstar Inc. for allegedly using NewRiver's proprietary technology to amass a database of US Securities and Exchange Commission Prospectuses.

Morningstar is accused of "screen scraping" NewRiver's Prospectus Express, a subscription service that catalogs compliance documents for mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life products. The suit claims Morningstar accessed the service some 130,000 times between May 1 and December 3.

Four Google execs face trial today in Milan, Italy, on criminal charges of defamation and privacy around a cellphone video, in a case that raises questions around the applicability of country-specific laws to user-submitted content.

In the video, a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome gets taunted by a group of high school students in Turin, who then proceed to hit him with a box of tissues. Although the executives weren't directly involved in handling the three-minute clip posted to Google Video, all four face possible jail time.

The US House Rules Committee is scheduled to vote late this afternoon on whether to bring the DTV Delay Bill back to the floor of the House for full consideration. Should that measure be passed today, the bill may yet bypass a markup session in the House Commerce Committee, and could be voted upon by the full House as soon as tomorrow.

In what appears to be a deadly serious effort to expedite the rollout of its next operating systems, Microsoft has opened some of its developer support tools to a broader audience of partners.

One of the major shortcomings of Windows Vista that Microsoft has quietly, though plainly, acknowledged in recent months concerned the company's relative inability to engage partners in the development process. With a respectably long development cycle, there were too many third parties that complained that they couldn't get their drivers to work right, well after the operating system had already launched.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported yesterday that 2008 global semiconductor sales were down 2.8% from the previous year, representing a $1.2 billion decrease in overall revenue.

SIA's president George Scalise said in a statement that the recession has weakened the demand for all of the major drivers of semiconductor sales, such as Automotive products, PCs, cell phones, and corporate IT products.

Recent shipping numbers from DisplaySearch showed a 12% year-over-year decline in the demand for plasma panels, yet manufacturer Panasonic bucked the trend and was the only company to see an increase in market share. In light of this, the company has announced that it will be launching new plasma screens that are 75% thinner and 50% as energy consumptive.

Japan will be the proving ground for these new displays in April, followed by a launch in North American markets this summer. Like the displays Panasonic showed off at its CES keynote in January, these one-inch thick displays make use of the NEO PDP technology for energy efficiency. The company today discussed a 50-inch model that is expected to cost $6,685 and consume about 260 kWh of electricity. The average plasma screen consumes 339 kilowatt hours, while the average LCD consumes about 215 kWh.

Guests of recent Microsoft seminars and conferences who received copies of Windows Vista Ultimate will be delighted to know the Web site for registering their copies and receiving their product keys, is now fully operational.

In Betanews tests this morning, the registration site did require us to fill out a brief survey, which was understandable and not at all out of the ordinary. Upon entering our valid promotional code, which we received with a Vista Ultimate giveaway during a recent conference, we did immediately receive a product registration key via e-mail.

Prosecution of a once-notorious warez ring ends with a flicker, not a flash, as the last defendant in the "Operation Safehaven" and "Operation Higher Education" investigations pleads guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

Wired's 27bstroke6 blog on Monday broke the news of Greg Hurley's guilty plea, entered last week in US District Court in Connecticut. Hurley, who lives in Orlando, Fla., was a supplier in the warez network -- the first link in the chain, the guy who can get the not-yet-released movie or album or software title.

GoDaddy's Super Bowl ads may have gotten predictably saucy, but the response to them on Twitter Sunday night led to something the company couldn't have been expecting: A win for domain registration competitor Network Solutions.

GoDaddy's Super Bowl ads have a tradition of random T&A. That's really not news anymore, and in fact about three weeks ago the operators of GoDaddy's Twitter account invited followers to drop by and vote on which ad to run.

Back in 2007, Motorola had plans to split into two companies, one that concentrated on communications equipment and the other on cell phones. But that was before the global economic crisis, and now it must change course.

6:17am PT: Earlier in the call, Jha said that the Mobile Division will contain costs -- through reductions in its workforce in the first and second quarters, and by shrinking its manufacturing footprint -- while placing a "greater focus on quality."

After a years-long falling out, it appears that two of the co-founders of Facebook have concluded a dispute that included assertions that one of them, effectively speaking, didn't exist. Did the threat of a nasty tell-all bridge the gap?

That's the assertion today at Gawker, which ran a nice overview on Monday of the dispute between Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, which originated at Harvard (where Saverin incorporated and managed the business and invested $20,000 in seed money). The dispute led to a lawsuit, a book deal, and reputed interest by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing") in a screenplay.

Is it possible that the Recording Industry Association of America is afraid of listeners? Their pleading to a US appeals court to forbid the Webcasting of arguments in RIAA v. Tenenbaum is starting to sound like the excuses from a kid seeing monsters under the bed.

The latest round of entertainment up in Boston came last week, when 14 news organizations filed an amicus brief with the appeals court explaining that contrary to RIAA's claim, allowing cameras in the courtroom for the February 24 hearing falls in line with usual and customary camera access for similar hearings.

An agreement negotiated in secrecy among governments and industry representatives and known to the public only through leaked documents and the efforts of privacy activists may sound so 2008.

But unless concerned citizens and a federal court intervene, a number of intellectual property laws may get a very "retro" cast to them.