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Zap! Air Force eyes Star Wars-style lasers By SUE VORENBERG Scripps Howard News Service June 24, 2003 - "Star Wars" laser battles might have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but for the U.S. Air Force they're just now starting to become a reality. A new high energy laser weapon and F-16 flight simulator, designed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Theater Aerospace Command Control Simulation Facility at Kirtland Air Force Base, will let pilots test technology that could put the United States far ahead of its enemies. The F-16 model is a...

update SAN FRANCISCO--Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs rolled out on Monday a new crop of Power Macs he says can outperform any Windows-based PC on the market.Speaking at the company's annual developer conference here, Jobs announced that the Power Macs will be built around IBM's new PowerPC 970 chip and come in three flavors--a 1.6GHz model, a 1.8GHz model and a 2GHz model. The machines, available in August, are priced at $1,699, $2,399 and $2,999. Dubbed the G5, the new chip is the successor to the G4 that's now used in the Power Mac lineup. On top of new chip,...

UCLA physicists have created a first-of-its-kind nanoscale sensor using a single molecule less than 20 nanometers long -- more than 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair -- the team reports in the June 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The nano molecular sensor could help with early diagnosis of genetic diseases, and have numerous other applications for medicine, biotechnology and other fields, said Giovanni Zocchi, assistant professor of physics at UCLA, member of the California NanoSystems Institute and leader of the research team. "This nanoscale single-molecule method could lead to significant...

<p>Britain's first ever mission into space unveiled its arsenal of technology on Monday, including a huge helium balloon and spacesuits to shield the pilots from cosmic rays.</p> <p>The balloon flight to the limits of the Earth's atmosphere is an attempt to capture the altitude record, which has stood for over 40 years.</p>

World's First Flight-Weight, Hydrocarbon-Fueled Scramjet Completes Mach 4.5 Testing, Running at Mach 6.5 Pratt & Whitney (P&W) announces the completion of Mach 4.5 ground testing on the world's first flight-weight, hydrocarbon-fueled, scramjet engine. Ground testing at Mach 6.5 is expected to be completed later this month. This engine, known as the Ground Demonstration Engine (GDE-1), uses standard JP-7 fuel in an "endothermic/regeneratively cooled cycle" during which the fuel cools the engine's interior walls before being introduced to the combustion chamber to produce trust. The engine injects, mixes and burns fuel to make thrust in a time span of less than...

Red Hat Plans Open Source Java, Prepares Linux Desktop By Matthew Aslett Red Hat Inc is in discussions with Sun Microsystems Inc about launching an open source version of Sun's Java environment, according to Red Hat chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux distributor is also lining up a slew of product launches including its new Red Hat Linux Desktop operating system and new versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Network. Szulik said that Red Hat has been working for five years on open source versions of Java technologies such as Just...

Graphics-chip underdog ATI Technologies is expected to introduce new chips next week that will dramatically increase the graphics performance of budget PCs.ATI has scheduled press events next week to discuss "next-generation integrated graphics." Analysts believe the company will unveil the RS300, a new family of integrated chipsets, PC components that combine a graphics processor with a chipset that controls basic PC functions such as memory use. An ATI representative did not respond to requests for comment, but the company typically does not discuss unannounced products. Integrated chipsets cost significantly less than standalone graphics processors and have made rapid advances in...

Scansoft gets Bill Clinton to speak his last will and testament But he's not dead By Tony Dennis: Saturday 21 June 2003, 12:04 IN A DRAMATIC demonstration of the power inherent in its latest Realspeak text to speech engine, Scansoft's Jan De Moortel gave a demo of former US President, Bill Clinton, giving an entire contrived speech. The results were clearly recognisable as Bill Clinton and would have sounded entirely realistic save his pronunciation of Scansoft. Spookily, De Moortel revealed that the results had been achieved by sampling a mere 15 minutes worth of a genuine Clinton speech downloaded...

The mysterious trojan horse that's been making security experts scratch their heads now has a name as more details of the oddball malware were made available. The trojan horse that has been causing confusion and concern among security researchers for over a month now has been dubbed 'Stumbler' by experts at Internet Security Systems (ISS). As reported earlier, Stumbler embeds itself in Unix systems and seems to be part of a concerted effort to map Internet-connected networks using port scanning techniques. A copy of the trojan was finally captured Wednesday, and investigation of its code began Thursday. After additional analysis,...

Worm? Trojan? Attack tool? Network administrators and security experts continue to search for the cause of an increasing amount of odd data that has been detected on the Internet. Security software firm Internet Security Systems (ISS) on Thursday declared victory, saying that a new hacker tool that scans for paths into public networks was responsible. But many other security professionals--including those at Intrusec, the company that originally tracked down the hard-to-find code--believe that ISS jumped the gun. The real culprit likely is still out there, said David J. Meltzer, founder and chief technology officer of Roswell, Ga.-based Intrusec. "It is...

AMD's Opteron: Does it measure up? Is the mainstream IT media in Intel's pocket? By Mario Rodrigues: Thursday 19 June 2003, 12:17WITH ALL OF the delays, Hammer (AMD64) has been a long time coming. Since its formal announcement some four years ago, Hammer has generated a truck load of hype, but has the wait been worth it? If allegations of Intel strong- arming are true, then the chip giant takes Hammer to be a very serious threat indeed. When AMD launched Opteron, it was pretty much a server product launch, as there were no workstation boards available. Of course, this...

 Why SCO decided to take IBM to court By David BeckerStaff Writer, CNET News.comJune 16, 2003, 4:00 AM PT newsmakers A few years ago, Caldera Systems was bobbing along as one of the last software companies to claim a piece of the Linux land rush, scoring a successful IPO that raised $70 million. Since then, Linux companies have gone through several rounds of grueling consolidation, and Caldera--now known as the SCO Group--has sworn off Linux. What's more, the company now finds itself a pariah in the same open-source software community it helped elevate to prominence. SCO's non grata status...

SCO suit now seeks $3 billion from IBM By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 16, 2003, 9:20 PM PT SCO Group has upped the ante in an amendment to its suit against IBM, seeking more than $3 billion in damages for alleged copying of proprietary Unix intellectual property into Linux. In March, SCO Group surprised the world with a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion against IBM in the case. An amended complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Utah, added more claims against IBM, tripled damages to at least $3 billion, sought an injunction prohibiting...

All-Time Top 100 Stars of Aerospace & Aviation Announced 18 Jun 2003, 3:00pm ET - - - - - Wright Brothers, Wernher von Braun Earn Top Ranking as Most Important and Influential Ever in Aviation Week's 'Top 100 Stars of Aerospace' Poll NEW YORK, June 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In the year commemorating the 100th anniversary of The Wright Brothers historic flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright, followed by Wernher von Braun, Robert Goddard, Leonardo da Vinci, Glenn Curtiss, Charles A. Lindbergh, William L. "Billy" Mitchell, Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, Neil A. Armstrong, Daniel Bernoulli were voted the top 10 luminaries...

NEW YORK - Linux vendors are under attack. In March, IBM was sued for $1 billion by The SCO Group, of Lindon, Utah, which claims IBM has put SCO's Unix code into Linux, the open-source software program. SCO also has sent letters to 1,500 large companies warning them that if they are using Linux, they may face legal problems. Though IBM is the only company named in SCO's lawsuit, other Linux vendors, like Red Hat and SuSE Linux, could suffer collateral damage. Why You Won't Be Getting A Linux PC The Limitations Of LinuxBoies' Take On LinuxPeopleSoft Jumps On The...

SCO'S EXECUTIVES have been making some extremely wild claims and ridiculous veiled threats lately, even by their own, er... standards. SCO's really cranked up its volume of FUD generation recently, from its announced "termination" of IBM's AIX license (which IBM immediately denied and dismissed) to laughably grandiose ambitions to go after virtually every vendor of Unix based operating systems (excepting Sun, apparently) including possibly even Microsoft. ($10 Million doesn't buy very much SCO loyalty anymore, it seems.) It's almost as though SCO is screaming "All Your Code Belongs to Us" with respect to every Unix or Unix-like system developed since...

<p>Security researchers believe they have identified a new breed of Trojan horse that is infecting machines on the Internet, possibly in preparation for a larger coordinated attack.</p> <p>However, experts have been unable to pin down many of the details of the program's behavior and are unsure how many machines might be compromised by the Trojan.</p>

A computer memory chip based on carbon nanotubes has passed a manufacturing milestone, according to the US company developing the technology.The prototype chip would store information using hundreds of billions of nanotubes with a theoretical capacity of 10 gigabits of data, says Nantero, based in Boston, Massachusetts.Once fully developed, the company says nanoscale random access memory (NRAM) could hold more data that existing types of RAM and would also be non-volatile, meaning data would not be lost when the power is been turned off. Computers using such memory could boot up almost instantly. Nantero also claims that NRAM would...

Boston -- Linux father Linus Torvalds is leaving microprocessor company Transmeta to work exclusively on Linux kernel development. On Tuesday, the Open Source Development Lab in Beaverton, Ore., announced that Torvalds will join that organization as the first OSDL fellow. In this role, Torvalds will devote himself full-time to the development of the kernel and guide thousands of open-source engineers that contribute code. He also will set priorities and direction for the OSDL's industry initiatives, the lab said. The OSDL, founded in 2000, is aimed to promote the growth of Linux and its adoption in the enterprise. The consortium is...

Waltham, Mass. -- Linus Torvalds won't render his own verdict on SCO Group's legal case against IBM until the Unix code in question is revealed in court. In an e-mail response to CRN, Torvalds, widely considered the father of Linux, said he is awaiting judgment until SCO identifies the Unix code IBM allegedly misappropriated and handed over to the open-source community. But at this point, he said he's skeptical the case has merit. "SCO isn't even telling what they have, and I'm not a lawyer anyway," Torvalds wrote. "The people I've spoken to seem to think the merit of the...