Free Republic

Researchers at IBM have overcome an important obstacle to building computers based on carbon nanotubes, by developing a way to selectively arrange transistors that were made using the carbon molecules. The achievement, described in the current issue of Nano Letters, could help make large-scale integrated circuits built out of carbon nanotubes possible, leading to ultrafast, low-power processors. For decades, the size of silicon-based transistors has decreased steadily while their performance has improved. As the devices approach their physical limits, though, researchers have started looking to less conventional structures and materials. Single-walled carbon nanotubes are one prominent candidate -- already researchers...

IBM has just given Microsoft another 125 million reasons to worry about the future of its one of its two biggest money spinners, Microsoft Office. Big Blue has announced that the next version of its Groupware suite Lotus Notes will include the three main applications of the MS Office suite, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation program. What's more, IBM has stated that not only will the office productivity applications be compatible with Microsoft Office as well as the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF), but the existing 125 million Lotus Notes users will be able to upgrade...

The US State Department has backed down on a controversial decision to install computers made by Chinese company Lenovo on its classified networks, officials said. But the department's purchase of about 16,000 personal computers (PCs) from Lenovo raises serious questions given accusations that China is aggressively spying on the United States, Republican lawmaker Frank Wolf said.

ARMONK, NY, May 18, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- IBM today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Rembo Technology, a privately held software company based in Geneva, Switzerland. Financial details were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2006. Rembo is a leading provider of software that helps organizations automatically install or upgrade operating systems on thousands of servers, laptops and desktop computers simultaneously, which eliminates the need for IT specialists to spend days or weeks installing software manually on each physical or virtualized computer. Installing and configuring...

IBM chose the Deutsche Notes User Group conference in Germany this week to make a significant announcement about its adoption of the ODF (OpenDocument Format) in the next version of Lotus Notes. The first beta, due out this fall, will include an ODF-compatible version of OpenOffice embedded in the Notes e-mail application. It will include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications (or editors, as they are called), giving users the ability to create, edit, and save documents natively in ODF. Amy Wohl, president of Wohl Associates, called the news significant on a number of levels. "This is the way of...

TiVo Won http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2006/mft06051143.htm By Tim Beyers (TMF Mile High) 05/11/2006 When I read Wednesday that News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Fox brokered a deal to make available several of its shows at Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes music store, my mind immediately went to TiVo(Nasdaq: TIVO). "So, this is how it ends," I thought. What I mean is that the bigwigs at the networks know that live TV, save for sports events, is over. TiVo won. Not that couch potato surfing will go away immediately, of course. Television advertising remains a $100 billion-plus business, after all. But The Carmel Group reports that...

A group of open source software vendors has teamed up with the hopes of ending the systems management dominance enjoyed by the likes of IBM, HP, BMC and CA. The companies today have formed the Open Management Consortium (OMC), hoping to get out the message that open source management tools have matured to the point where they can compete with proprietary packages. The names of the OMC founding members could have come straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien's brain. There's Ayamon, Symbiot, Zenoss and then the slightly more traditional Qlusters and Emu Software. Each one of these organizations brings a different...

IBM, the world's biggest computer services company, sees growing contribution from Indian and Chinese markets helping it maintain its global position despite a shortage of skills and rising wages in the industry. The Armonk, N.Y.-based tech power employs 38,500 staff in India--a globally feted software services exporter--up from 9,000 three years ago, and 7,000 professionals in China, the world's manufacturing hub. "India is the epicenter of the flat world," Michael Cannon-Brookes, vice president for business development in China and India, said Tuesday from his office in Shanghai. "If you look down from 1 mile up in the sky, India and...

Into the Valley Anyone gullible enough to believe vendor press releases would wonder why Cassatt even exists. It's a software start-up trying to compete in a server virtualization market dominated by the likes of IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems. And, in fact, these massive companies have already solved the virtualization problem, according to the last three years of their marketing material. Customers actually trying to improve their data center management situation don't buy this hype. They've watched HP kill off the Utility Data Center project after billing it as the clear future of computing. They've also seen Sun Microsystems do...

Quantum plans to acquire Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) for about $770 million. With the acquisition, unveiled Tuesday, Quantum would become the third-largest tape automation vendor after Sun Microsystems and IBM, according to research firm Freeman Reports. San Jose, Calif.-based Quantum said it expects the transaction to close in three or four months. The deal is the latest acquisition Quantum has made in the tape industry. In October 2004, Quantum acquired Certance, a maker of LTO tape drives that competed directly with Quantum's DLT-format tape drives, making Quantum a manufacturer of both formats. And two years earlier, Quantum expanded its...

See for example this thread first. A new scientific breakthrough from IBM, and here's what they do: Using 'atomic force' to sort molecules (of course!) No electrophoresis, no "goo"!

Yorktown Heights, NY, April 25, 2006 – IBM today announced its researchers have discovered numerous DNA patterns shared by areas of the human genome that were thought to have little or no influence on its function and those areas that do. As reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), regions of the human genome that were assumed to largely contain evolutionary leftovers (called “junk DNA”) may actually hold significant clues that can add to scientists’ understanding of cellular processes. IBM researchers have discovered that these regions contain numerous, short DNA “motifs,” or repeating sequence fragments,...

BRUSSELS (MarketWatch) -- A U.S. court in New York on Thursday quashed a Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) subpoena for International Business Machines Corp.'s (IBM) documents related to the software company's European anti-trust case, Microsoft said Thursday. Judge Colleen McMahon said Microsoft's subpoena amounted to a "blatant end run" on the European Commission's authority. The judge noted that the Brussels-based regulator strongly opposed Microsoft's request and said enforcing such a subpoena could harm U.S. sovereignty if a foreign court were used to obtain documents in a U.S. proceeding. Microsoft says the commission is colluding with IBM and other rivals and denying...

IBM 1Q Earnings Up 22 Percent to $1.71B Apr 18 7:17 PM US/Eastern By BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer BOSTON The residual effects of sweeping cost cuts helped boost International Business Machines Corp.'s first-quarter earnings by 22 percent as the technology company beat analysts' expectations Tuesday despite minor revenue growth. In the first three months of the year, IBM earned $1.71 billion, or $1.08 per share, on revenue of $20.7 billion. Wall Street's consensus estimates were for earnings of $1.05 a share and $20.7 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Financial. In the same period of 2005, IBM's net income...

After having finally acquired IBM’s ThinkPad division, Lenovo has not really had an impressive ride thus far, and not without reason. There was a reason why ThinkPad was so successful (legendary reliability with support from one of the world’s largest technology companies). Users trusted IBM. In fact, they still do and that is one of the prime reasons that even though Lenovo has bought over the brand, nowhere on a ThinkPad does it say Lenovo. Despite the overall poor performance, Lenovo has still not gained the mindshare or the respect that the ThinkPads command. In fact, it has, to some...

The PC market was emerging fast, and IBM wanted to hit the ground running. Rather than reinvent the wheel, IBM took what was already available. A 12-man design team was authorized to use off-the-shelf components and an open architecture, which meant that other manufacturers could build compatible machines. A bevy of new PC makers soon entered the market. It was a radical departure from the past, when companies designed and manufactured all their products in-house. As the tech industry grew, companies like Sun Microsystems (SUNW) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) also teamed up with contract manufacturers in order to save time...

SAN ANTONIO - A team of three students from Russia proved their brainy prowess Wednesday, winning an academic competition in which they had just five hours to solve perplexing computing puzzles such as how to connect gears of a clock when given a specific shaft speed. ADVERTISEMENT "I am pleased with our performance today. It feels pretty good," Igor Kulkin, 21, said after his team from Saratov State University won the 2006 Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest. Working in teams of three, contestants in the 30th annual event had five hours to solve 10 problems that would...

Now we're cooking. We have now IBM's Reply Memorandum in Further Support of Motion to Limit SCO's Claims Relating to Allegedly Misused Material and all the trimmings: IBM's Reply MemorandumAddendum A, a timeline showing all IBM's requests for specificity, the court's orders, and SCO's "repeated failures to identify" the allegedly misused code Addendum B, chart showing what IBM calls SCO's failure "to identify lines of System V, AIX or Dynix, and Linux material with respect to any of the 198 items". Addendum C, cases Declaration of Randall DavisAddendum A, Randall Davis' credentials as an expert Addendum B, the same chart,...

SAN JOSE, CA, Mar 30, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- IBM scientists have developed a powerful new technique for exploring and controlling magnetism at its fundamental atomic level. The new method promises to be an important tool in the quest not only to understand the operation of future computer circuit and data-storage elements as they shrink toward atomic dimensions, but also to lay the foundation for new materials and computing devices that leverage atom-scale magnetic phenomena. "We have developed a window into the atomic heart of magnetism," said Andreas Heinrich, research staff member at IBM's Almaden Research Center...

The USCC launched a probe against Lenovo, but many wonder if the accusations are warranted The United States government is planning to spend roughly $13M USD on computers from Lenovo. The company, famous for buying up IBM's PC manufacturing arm, is working on a deal with the US government to produce roughly 16,000 computers. Just recently, the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission (USCC) has requested that Lenovo be probed for any concerns about possible spying, eavesdropping or worse. The supposed problem presented by the USCC is that the 16,000 computers are being built by a Chinese-mainland company. The USCC argues...