Free Republic

Microsoft recruits EU investigator loaded with competitors' secrets Trustworthy initiative By Paul Hales: Thursday 28 November 2002, 11:43 AN EU OFFICIAL who was involved in gathering evidence from Microsoft's competitors in the on-going European Commission anti-trust investigation into the software company's monopolistic behaviour is taking time off from his day job to go work for, erm, Microsoft. Detlef Eckert, promised not to reveal confidential commission information to Microsoft during stay at the company, Commission spokesman Per Haugaard told Bloomberg. For its part, Microsoft says Eckert will be involved in developing the company's "trustworthy computing" initiative. He is to enter Voledom...

  Transition to a Nuclear/Hydrogen Energy System   Drs. Leon Walters, David Wade, and David Lewis   Abstract The paper explores the motivation for the transition to a nuclear/hydrogen system. For such a transition to be successful the technologies employed must be able to generate enough hydrogen to displace a significant fraction of the petroleum fuels used in the transportation and process heat sectors. This hydrogen must be generated in a manner that is compatible with the environment and independent of foreign fuels. Nuclear energy, along with contributions from wind, solar, and geothermal resources, meet the criteria of environmental...

<p>NEW YORK  — It almost sounds too Star Trek to be possible: A multipurpose cell phone that also serves as an FM radio, walkie-talkie, garage door opener and TV remote control.</p> <p>And what if every time you made a call with that handset it increased the performance of other phones already in use — instead of competing for airwaves with them?</p>

<p>SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- Water is a precious commodity even here in one of the nation's most affluent counties. Low-flush toilets, low-volume showerheads and drip sprinklers are the norm in a region wholly dependent on winter rains and imported river water.</p>

Like most things in nanotech, assemblers are a big topic. Is an assembler even possible? What do we need to do to develop them? Who is working on them? When will we have them? And what will we be able to do with them? That's too many questions for one essay; I'll focus on the technology required to build one, and by extension, the schedule we might see. The point of this essay, as the title implies, is that it's impossible to give a sensible timeline for the development of an assembler. There are too many factors that could cause...

E-hoard with Microsoft's life database By Nick Farrell [21-11-2002] 'Surrogate memory' stores your life on hard disk Hoarders everywhere will be heartened to hear that Microsoft is developing a database that will give them an electronic outlet to their obsession, storing their whole life on a hard disk. According to New Scientist magazine it believes the database - dubbed "MyLifeBits" - could hold a huge amounts of information, catalogued and easy to search. Many people already record important moments in their lives - but shoeboxes full of photos, piles of documents and scattered video tapes take much longer to...

Windows flaw allows hard drive re-format By Nick Farrell [21-11-2002] That's security alert number 65 since the start of the year Microsoft has found a flaw in some versions of Windows that could allow attackers to reformat a machine's hard disk. In its 65th security bulletin issued this year, the company warned that two types of computers are at particular risk: those used for browsing the web or reading email, and those hosting websites using Microsoft Internet Information Services. Windows XP is not affected by this issue, but anyone using Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98 SE, Windows...

Microsoft users slam roadmap changes By Gareth Morgan [21-11-2002] Customers demand clear guidelines on OS timing and content Microsoft's plans for migrating users from older operating systems have come under fire again, with customers expressing confusion over its ever-changing roadmap. Users were happy to continue using the NT4 operating system, but are being forced to migrate, according to David Roberts, chief executive of blue chip IT user group The Corporate IT Forum. "The enormous pressure users face to reduce the cost of computing is worsened by the lack of clarity over the timing and content of future releases," he...

A simple way to exploit an unfixed defect in Internet Explorer has been discovered that allows malicious web sites, and possibly malicious email messages read with Outlook or Outlook Express, to take control of a computer. All you would need to do is click a web link and the owner of the web site could take almost any action they desired on your computer. Simple, working exploit software was recently published to a public mailing list. There is no patch to fix the problem. Anti-virus and personal firewall software will not prevent an exploit. It is hoped that Microsoft will...

Hexus.net Press Releases Company: AMD Title: AMD ANNOUNCES "AMD ATHLON 64" AS BRAND NAME FOR NEXT-GENERATION DESKTOP AND MOBILE PROCESSORS- Upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processor will bring simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit computing to desktop and mobile users - LAS VEGAS - NOV. 19, 2002 - At Comdex, AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced it has selected "AMD Athlon 64" as the brand name for its next-generation processor for desktop and mobile PCs, formerly code named "Clawhammer." The upcoming AMD AthlonÔ 64 processor is expected to be the industry's first and only 64-bit, x86 PC processor for desktop and mobile computing. Desktop...

IBM works on biggest supercomputer ever By Nick Farrell [19-11-2002] 130,000 processors, 360 trillion mathematical operations a second IBM is to build the world's most powerful supercomputers as part of a contract with the US Department of Energy. The Blue Gene will be the first of two machines containing 130,000 advanced IBM manufactured microprocessors, and could reach peak computing speeds as high as 360 trillion mathematical operations a second. That is 10 times the speed of the world's fastest supercomputer, a monster known as the Earth Simulator built by NEC. According to the New York Times, Blue Gene is...

Innovation is focus of Comdex show Knight Ridder Newspapers /TABLE>About 1,100 tech companies are showing off their wares at the Comdex trade show.That includes high-end gear like GeForceFx graphics chips from Nvidia and a $2,999 laptop from PC Laptops that runs at 2.8 gigahertz. On the low end are $15 IXLA disposable digital cameras. Nvidia is showing its much-delayed graphics chip, which sales executive Dan Vivoli says will be up to twice as fast as graphics chips from rival ATI Technologies (no way, says ATI) and able to come much closer to the lifelike quality of animated films. Another leading-edge...

Gates: Wake up to the digital decade By Andy McCue at Comdex 2002 in Las Vegas [18-11-2002] Bill promises 10 years of technological revolution Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates opened Comdex in Las Vegas today by predicting 10 years of revolution in the way people and businesses interact, including smart alarm clocks that tell you how late you are going to be for work. "During the course of the digital decade we'll think about personal computing in a different way," he said. "The magic of the chip and the magic of software are now spreading out...

<p>WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is laying the groundwork for the resumption of nuclear testing and the development of new nuclear weapons, according to a memo obtained by the Mercury News.</p> <p>The memorandum circulated recently to members of the Nuclear Weapons Council, a high-level government body that sets policy for nuclear weapons. The two-page memo urges the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories to assess the technical risks associated with maintaining the U.S. arsenal without nuclear testing, which President Bush's father halted in 1992. In addition, the memo suggests that the United States take another look at conducting small nuclear tests, a policy rejected by the Clinton administration.</p>

If a crime scene yields only a single drop of blood as evidence, how can a forensics lab perform the dozens of necessary tests on it? What if a doctor finds a suspicious bacterium, but a patient can't wait for the days needed to grow a large colony for testing? University of Rochester researchers are working on a new way to move and distribute microscopic amounts of fluid around a chip, essentially mimicking the work of scientists testing dozens of samples in a laboratory. The research is in response to a growing demand for "laboratories on a chip," programmable devices...

<p>More than 1 in 4 of U.S. households that go online -- and more than 1 in 3 in California and other Pacific Coast states -- now do so with a broadband connection, according to a report released Wednesday by market research company Gartner Dataquest.</p>

<p>Had Winston Churchill been alive in the months subsequent to Sept. 11 he might well have described U.S. intelligence agencies' performance prior to the attack thusly: Never have so many known so much and done so little.</p> <p>On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will begin awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system.</p>

Ballmer excuses Microsoft's behaviour By Gareth Morgan [14-11-2002] We didn't realise we were the dominant force in the market. D'oh! Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has told the company's users that it took anti-competitive actions because it failed to realise how dominant it was. In an open email sent to Microsoft users, Ballmer claims that "even five years ago, we still tended to think of ourselves as the small start-up". The revelation may come as a surprise to many. Back in 1997, Microsoft was gearing itself for the launch of Windows 98. It was also basking in the success of...

Los Angeles, CA -- Computer scientist Keith Uncapher, 80, whose pioneering research and development work on computer networking helped lay the foundation for the Internet, died October 10 in Los Angeles from a heart attack.Uncapher founded the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California School of Engineering in 1972 and served as its executive director until 1987. Under this leadership ISI researchers developed such key elements of the Internet as the "dot.com" domain name system and made major contributions to electronic mail and basic Internet protocols.Uncapher persuaded both the government and the late dean of USC Engineering,...

Unix's days are numbered, says Dell By Andy McCue [13-11-2002] Server OS market share has decreased by half in last five years Dell chairman and chief executive Michael Dell told delegates at the OracleWorld conference in San Francisco this week that the days of the Unix mainframe are numbered. Promoting his company's deal with Oracle and Red Hat to provide Linux applications on Dell servers, Dell said cost was the main reason users were moving away from Unix. "If we look at today's enterprise customers they are concerned with how to reduce cost of IT while maintaining high levels of...