Tomorrow's News Today
|
|
|
Please visit our Sponsor
| Tech News for Friday July 21st 2000Internet
Audio Platform Delivers $5 MP3 Chip. Parthus Technologies, a developer of semiconductor intellectual property, is licensing a collection of Internet-audio hardware and software modules that can be implemented as a single-chip MP3 player at a silicon cost of less than $5, the company said. The company's MediaStream platform supports a range of audio equipment types and functions, from MP3 portable players and cell phones to speech recognition for mobile devices and devices with Bluetooth connectivity. Intel
Desktop CPU Roadmap. The Register has posted a table depicting Intel's CPU roadmap.
New
Apple "Cube" machines. So what do you think of the new Apple "Cube"? I would keep confusing the machine with a box of Kleenex's I keep on the same desk.
And here are the specs: The 450MHz
Power Mac G4 Cube comes ready for action with Mac
OS 9, 64MB of high-performance RAM, 1MB of backside level 2 cache, a
capacious 20GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive, DVD-ROM drive with DVD-Video
playback, and the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics card with 16MB of graphics memory. Redesigning
the PalmPilot. Take a look at these new Palm Pilot that should be available sometime shortly. Head on over to ZDNET for a full slide show.
Unfortunately the new Palm PDA's are about 25% smaller (which includes the display) but here's the good news: Palm is working with third-party manufacturers on MP3 players, cameras, modems and self-contained backup products for the M100. Major
Intel CPU price cuts. Yesterday's report on AMD financials must have scared Intel into slashing the price of their high-end CPU. Take a look at these price cuts: Intel's family of Pentium III processors is now available at a lower price. The Santa Clara based company cut the PIII's prices by up to 24 percent. The 933MHz model dropped 10 percent, and is now $699, while the slower 750MHz chip is now $262. The PIII Xeon processors also received a price drop. The 933MHz is now $719, and the 866MHz is $515. Intel made no announcement regarding price arrangements on 1GHz+ chips. New/Patches/Updated
Windows software. There are a couple of interesting Windows program updates circulating the web today. Here's list in case you missed them:
New
Microsoft Windows Vulnerability Puts Users At Risk. Nothing better to start your Friday mornings when you discover your machine is at risk of being hacked by any smart hacker. This week, the SANS Institute, a leading security think tank, identified what it called ``probably the most dangerous programming error'' in the Microsoft® Windows operating systems. This vulnerability affects users of Windows® 95, 98, 2000, and Windows NT® 4.0 with Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer who use HTML-enabled email software. Unlike vulnerabilities exploited by past email attacks, this vulnerability does not require email attachments. HTML-formatted email can contain embedded instructions that will compromise the recipient's system as soon as the email is opened or previewed. If this vulnerability is exploited, it can result in a total compromise of a system's integrity, availability and confidentiality. Microsoft has not released a software update yet, but has provided a workaround. However, their current solution is difficult to deploy enterprise-wide, leaving many computers vulnerable. The most effective protection against new vulnerabilities is implementing a security policy and applying strong security tools. AXENT Technologies, Inc. offers powerful vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection solutions to repair and detect problems and is currently developing countermeasures for this specific vulnerability. Tech News for Thursday July 20th 2000Blockbuster
gets closer to video on demand with deal. Blockbuster and Enron Broadband Services have struck a 20-year agreement to deliver movies on demand to consumers' computers or televisions over high-speed telephone lines. The two Texas companies are expected to offer the movies in selected cities by year's end. Those cities have not been determined. Consumers will be able to choose for the first time from an extensive library of movies through their computer or TV screens with VHS quality and VCR-like control, the companies said yesterday. "We said a year ago that we would transition Blockbuster from a retail powerhouse to a multichannel powerhouse in the delivery of home entertainment," said John Antioco, chairman and CEO of Blockbuster. "This is the deal that will make it happen." Consumers will need a set-top box that can be bought or rented and a high-speed Internet connection, such as a digital subscriber line (DSL). Netscape
Communicator 4.74 released. Netscape has released an update to the Communicator browser bumping it up to version 4.74. Download the new version here. ABIT
SE6 i815e Motherboard. The first batch of i815e motherboards are slowly starting to trickle it into the consumer market. The i815e is the new motherboard chipset from Intel that is to replace the current BX chipset. Ars-Technica place ABIT's new i815e motherboard called the SE6 under the magnifying glass. If you are planning to purchase a new motherboard then you should maybe take a look at the specs on the new i815e chipset. The i815 fully supports a
133MHz FSB, a feature from Intel hitherto only found in their sucky i810E
chipset, and their i820-based offerings. The i820 is the oft attacked piece of
work that typically uses RDRAM, meaning that you might as well just buy another
computer as buy 128MB of RDRAM. With the i815E models, we also add ATA/100
support, making the i815 perhaps a step above even the VIA Apollo Pro 133A? Cyrix
makes waves with 1GHz Samuel. The first Samuel 2s will be made using a 0.15 micron process and feature 128K L1 cache and 64K L2, but Hays said the latter figure would definitely increase in the not too distant future. ATi
Radeon 64mb review. ATi's new Radeon video card is taking the net by storm. Game Center has posted a review on ATi's pixel pump and here is what they had to say: We never thought we would
catch ourselves typing this: ATI has released one of the most powerful and
future-proof graphics cards we have seen to date. The Radeon 64MB DDR smokes the
Voodoo5 5500 good and it even gives the mighty GeForce2 GTS a serious challenge.
When DirectX 8.0 is released and developers start to utilize the features of the
Radeon (some, in fact, already are), it is likely that this chipset will become
the darling of the gaming industry--if it is not already. ATi
Radeon is shipping. The Adrenaline Vault reports that ATI's Radeon video card is now shipping. ATI Technologies is shipping
its latest graphics board, the Radeon. Using patented technologies and three
texture units per rendering pipeline, the Radeon board features 32-bit gaming,
hardware transform and lighting, and full support for D3D and OpenGL.
Furthermore, patented technologies decrease the amount of information sent to
the frame buffer, reducing bandwidth problems. ATI also claims Radeon can speed
through games such as the upcoming Halo
because it can render multiple textures in a single pass. VIA-Athlon
Mobile CPU/Chipset Roadmap. VIA has posted a roadmap that lists the upcoming mobile AMD Athlon CPU's and chipsets. Very impressive configurations especially when you consider that you will carrying around this sort of power.
AMD's
Sales Nearly Double In A Year. AMD has come a long way from just over a year ago. The company deserves a healthy round of applause. Update: Just read over at ZDNET that the AMD stock has split. For the second quarter ended July 2, AMD (stock: AMD), Sunnyvale, Calif., reported net income of $207.1 million, or $1.21 per share, compared with $79.9 million, or 53 cents per share, for the same period a year ago. Revenue increased by 96 percent to $1.17 billion, versus the $595.1 million AMD reported for the year-ago quarter. Eighteen brokers polled by First Call/Thomson Financial expected AMD to return earnings of $1.14 per share. "AMD had another great quarter," said Hector de J. Ruiz, president and chief operating officer of AMD, in a statement. "Strong revenue growth in both of our principal product lines -- PC processors and flash memory devices -- again resulted in record sales and earnings." Tech News for Wednesday July 19th 2000Meat-eating
robot is born. I know this is somewhat of a news post that is slightly "off" the wall but it technology news related. Man really is in danger of being swallowed up by technology after U.S. scientists announced on Wednesday they had designed a robot that runs on meat. Dubbed Chew Chew the “gastrobot,” a 12-wheeled train-like robot runs on a microbial fuel cell, which breaks down food with bacteria and converts it into electrical energy, according to a report in New Scientist magazine. Win
a Hercules 32MB 3D Prophet II GTS. If you are having a slow day and you feel like winning one of two GeForce2 based Hercules video cards then visit this link over at nVNews. nVNews is celebrating 2 million visitors. Congratulations to nVNews. Caldera
close to buying SCO Unix. Caldera would become a more formidable Red Hat rival; SCO would morph into a Linux services company. The result? Caldera Systems , a leading Linux distributor, is on the verge of buying SCO's server -- aka Unix -- division for a price expected to be north of $70 million in stock, according to a number of sources claiming familiarity with terms of the deal-in-progress. Intel
Itanium Delayed. Intel said it won't start receiving revenue from the Itanium chip, the company's first 64-bit processor, until the fourth quarter of this year. The company earlier expected revenue to begin in the third quarter. Consequently, general availability for Itanium won't begin until the first half of next year. "We expect our customers to offer general availability of hardware, software (and other Itanium products) over the first half of 2001," Otellini said. Microsoft
warns of new Outlook bug. Microsoft and other software sellers and security organizations have long warned people that they should protect themselves against email viruses by not opening attachments they are not expecting. But under a potential exploit Microsoft described today, email recipients wouldn't even have to open booby-trapped attachments or the email message. Simply receiving the message from the email server would be enough to trigger the damage. A component distributed with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and common to both the Outlook email software and Outlook Express productivity software suite is vulnerable to a buffer overflow exploit. Via
flouts Intel with DDR chipset for Willamette MPU. This is funny - Intel is not permitted to develop a chipset that utilizes the speedier DDRAM memory because of a signed agreement with RAMBUS. Now Via is thumbing their noses at Intel and is developing and releasing a new chipset that supports DDRAM. Via Technologies Inc. next year will introduce a double-data-rate (DDR) chipset to support Intel Corp.'s next generation Willamette processor, a Via official told the Platform 2000 conference today in San Jose, Calif.Eric Chang, director of product marketing, removed all doubt over whether the Taiwan-based independent would develop a DDR chipset for Willamette, which so far uses only the Intel Tehama logic controller supporting Direct Rambus memory. Intel so far has refused to license any other firm to make chipsets for its next-generation bus line architecture, called IA-32 for 32-bit and IA-64 for 64-bit processors. LaCie
Shipping 6GB, 18GB & 32GB PocketDrives. This is amazing: Now we are going to be carrying 32GB drives in the palm of your hand. I keep reflecting on the days when the price for a 10mb drive on my Amiga 500 was around $500. With the capacity, mobility and convenience they provide, LaCie's new 6GB, 18GB and 32GB PocketDrives(TM) have already been labeled as ``must-have'' storage expansion solutions by content developers, illustrators, audio/video professionals and people on-the-go. Measuring only 3.5`` x 5.75'' and weighing less than a pound, LaCie's new drives are not only some of the world's smallest hard drives, they're the first peripherals to offer both Universal Serial Bus (USB) and FireWire® (IEEE 1394) support, or ``U&I'' (LaCie's acronym and trademark for the dual-support capability). Windows
Media Player 7.0 causing major problems. For those of you that downloaded the latest version of the media player from Microsoft has better read this announcement on ActiveWin. It does sound like there are many other problems but this one is the worst. Installing Windows Media Player 7 and Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.02c and DirectCD 3.01c on Windows 2000. After installing the WMP7 final and restarting your PC, the DirectCD icon on the taskbar will change and when you put your mouse cursor over the icon, you can get the following message "Adaptec DirectCD Wizard, No supported CD-R/CD-RW drive!". It seems to be there is a conflict between the WMP7 CD-burning plugin and DirectCD 3.01c/Easy CD Creator 4.02c. Uninstalling the WMP7 reinstalling it without the CD burning plugin solves the problem. The real funny part is that Adaptec has a press release on their site plugging how good it works with Windows Media Player 7. 3D
Video card comparison. While visiting the VR-Zone I saw this table depicting all the upcoming 3D video cards and with one quick glance you can compare the features. Since we are on the topic of 3D video cards you may want to read all the reviews that are floating around the web on ATI's new Radeon accelerator. ATI has actually delivered a GeForce2 killer with very robust drivers. In the past ATI has been plagued with unstable drivers and months of delayed shipping dates. Not so with the new Radeon.
MP3Board
Countersues Recording Industry Group. Not sure this one is going to hold up in court but we will see. MP3Board, which provides links to music-related websites and files, Tuesday said it filed a countersuit against the Recording Industry Association of America for the group's role in temporarily shutting down the Los Angeles firm's sites. The countersuit responds to a suit against MP3Board filed in June by RIAA members. The companies sued MP3Board to prevent its site from linking users to "pirated" MP3s of their copyright-protected music on the Web. MP3Board's countersuit seeks a declaration from the court that linking to other Web sites and files does not constitute copyright infringement, even if the destination has infringing content. Sun
To Push StarOffice By Making Code Free. Sun Microsystems plans to make public the source code for StarOffice in an effort to give the fledgling applications suite a boost with software developers. StarOffice -- which was developed by Marco Boerries and his Star Division company that was later bought by Sun (stock: SUNW) for $74 million in stock -- includes word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, Web publishing, e-mail scheduling and other functions that can work on various operating systems, including Windows. CNET
to acquire Ziff-Davis. CNET Networks Inc. has agreed to acquire Ziff-Davis Inc. for $1.6 billion in stock, adding a global reach to the technology information company. Tech News for Tuesday July 18th 2000.Intel
815 Chipset Review. The story of Intel chipsets for P6 CPUs is extremely instructive. Starting from i440FX, the first chipset announced simultaneously with Pentium Pro, and up to the victorious i440BX, Intel had never had any problems with the public acknowledgement of its new products and the market welcomed each of them with arms wide stretched. AGP, 100MHz FSB, PC100 SDRAM - Intel kept adding new stuff to its products little by little. However, one of Intel's last chipsets for high performance systems suffered a total fiasco. Trying to influence the market and to make the users turn to RDRAM for their desktop PCs, Intel stumbled. Neither the manufacturers, nor the users were ready for drastic changes like that, which were moreover connected with quite tangible spendings, because SDRAM and RDRAM cost differed by nearly 3-5 times. Besides, Intel failed to launch its i820 in time and the supplies of this notorious chipset were postponed now and then. Intel/RAMBUS
pact prohibits developing DDR DRAM chipsets. Industry sources said the little-known prohibition might explain why Intel last month struck licensing deals with Taiwan's Via Technologies Inc. and Silicon Integrated Systems Inc. (SIS) authorizing the companies to make DDR-enabled chipsets for PCs using Pentium III and Celeron microprocessors. An Intel spokesman agreed that the deal brokered with the independent chip houses could fill the void caused by the company's decision not to make a DDR-equipped chipset of its own, but denied the move was related to the clause--specifically, 9.2(b)(iv and v)--contained in Intel's contract with Rambus. The agreement, first signed April 29, 1997, allows Rambus to terminate its license with Intel should the chip maker introduce a chipset that supports double-data-rate capabilities in any memory interface other than Direct Rambus DRAM in the 2000-2002 time period. New
Multipalm PDA announced. Every once in a while something impressive hits the market (or at least will be sometime soon) - ZDTV has posted a page detailing a new PDA from a Korean company called Aromasoft. Read this and stand at awe: The Multipalm has a 199mhz StrongARM CPU, 32MB of RAM, can be used as a MP3 Player, fully Bluetooth compatible and bundled with a full VGA touch-pad display. PCI-X
Challenges Intel's AGP In Workstations. Intel is getting their monopoly power trimmed by consumers who are tired of having to conform to the chip maker. An industry group is quietly beginning to lobby makers of workstations and graphics chips to reconsider the Accelerated Graphics Port, a standard designed by Intel. The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) believes that PCI-X, the next-generation successor to the PCI bus found in virtually all desktop computing devices, should replace AGP for reasons of performance and ease of use. Representatives of both the PCI-X and Infiniband working groups will promote their respective I/O standards. As they did six months ago, both groups will jointly present details of their technologies and attempt to educate chip designers and OEMs alike that their products are not designed to be competitive, but in many cases cooperative or at least complementary. Intel
CPU price cuts. Intel reduced prices in the desktop Pentium III market between 10 percent and 24 percent, as part of "Intel's typical pricing activity," the company said. The price of the 933-MHz processor was cut 10 percent, to $669. The 866-MHz and 850-MHz chips were reduced by 17 percent, to $465 and $455. Intel reserved its largest cuts for the 800- and 750-MHz Pentium IIIs, both slashed by 24 percent and 22 percent, to $294 and $262, respectively. The slowest 733- and 700-MHz chips were each trimmed 11 percent, to $219 and $214. Prices of the 667-, 650-, and 600-MHz Pentium IIIs were left unchanged at an even $193 for all three speeds, an indication that they will soon be dropped from Intel's product portfolio. New
PCI Specification : Hot Swap. Hot swap support is increasingly important in systems used for applications such as telecommunications, which require that the system be operational at some level continuously. Hot swap infrastructure software works with a CompactPCI platform's operating system (O/S) to manage the logistics of connecting newly inserted CompactPCI boards to the O/S and disconnecting them from the O/S before removal. The main body of the PICMG 2.12 specification defines a set of hardware- and O/S-independent porting interfaces, with OS-specific appendices for the Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 2000) and Linux. Each appendix also includes guidance for engineers porting a hot swap infrastructure to their platforms. There is guidance, for instance, on how to handle the different implementation approaches for the signal that notifies a host processor of configuration changes in the system. Windows
Media Player 7.0 released. Microsoft released Media Player 7.0 at midnight last night (or early this morning) for Windows 98 and Windows 2000 only. Users for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95 must still use the older 6.4 version. Download 7.0 here. Tech News for Monday July 17th 2000.News
industry unveils NewsML Net language. The world's news industry looks set to start using a new online computer language after it said on Monday it had agreed on a standard for formatting electronic content. The standard, called NewsML, is based on Extensible Markup Language, or XML, and structures multimedia news so it can be delivered to devices ranging from PCs to mobile phones. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) said in a statement it was launching the first test version of NewsML and planned officially to approve the new language in October. The Geneva-based IPTC has more than 50 members and associate members ranging from Japan's Kyodo News Agency to the New York Times Co. Chaintech
announced ATA100 controller. Chaintech
announced its new ATA66/100-RAID card. Based on High Point HPT368 or HPT370
Ultra DMA/RAID controller ATA100 cards feature two ATA-66/RAID channels (HPT368)
or two Ultra ATA-100/RAID channels(HPT370) and support RAID 0,1 RAID 0+1. ICANN
OK's new Internet names. The authority on Net nomenclature approves a handful of new suffixes -- including .shop, .tel and .news -- and sets the ground rules for future Web expansion. The first new
Web addresses should start to appear by this year's end or the beginning of
next, but no one will know what the new top-level domains will be until
November. ATI
Radeon 64MB DDR review. Here's what Anand has to say about ATI's new Radeon card. Visit the web site to read the full review. It is no question that ATI set out to produce a GeForce 2 GTS killer. At a suggested retail price of $399 for the 64MB version reviewed here and $279 for the 32MB DDR version, the Radeon cards are priced very competitively with NVIDIA's and 3dfx's latest offering. How does the Radeon hold up? More
3Dfx Rampage Details.
Umax
Announced First Firewire Scanner. UMAX also released today the Astra 6450, a companion to the 6400 that, in addition to the speedy FireWire connection, includes a built-in universal transparency cover (UTC) for scanning slides and positives and negatives of up to 4``x5'' in size. The Astra 6400 and 6450 scan images at 600x1200 dpi (dots per inch) and provide more than four trillion sharp, vibrant colors with true 42-bit internal color. They also provide image scalability, allowing the user to scan and enlarge a wide variety of media. The Astra 6400 and 6450 scanners are compatible with both Macintosh and PC platforms. PC users achieve connectivity through an IEEE-1394 PCI card, which is included with each scanner. The Astra 6400 and 6450 are ``plug and play'' devices on systems running Mac OS 9.0 or later, Windows 98SE and Windows 2000. They connect to the host machine through the hot-pluggable FireWire/IEEE-1394 interface. (A FireWire/1394 card is included for use on PCs.) Both models are single-pass, flatbed, color CCD scanners featuring 600x1200 dpi resolution, and a 14-bit/channel analog-to-digital converter for true 42 bit color output. The suggested retail price for the Astra 6400 is $249; the Astra 6450 with built-in UTC has an SRP of $299. An optional UTC is available for the Astra 6400 at an SRP of $69. Maxtor
unveils 80GB hard drive. DiamondMax 80 is a four platter, 20 GB per platter hard drive solution. At 5400 RPM and capable of transferring data at rates up to 100 MB per second. The DiamondMax 80 sets the hard drive capacity record with 80 GB of storage capacity, the largest capacity among all available IDE and SCSI drives. Maxtor also announced the DiamondMax Plus 45 is a 15 GB per platter solution offering the traditional award-winning DiamondMax Plus features including the high-performance Ultra ATA/100 interface. Maxtor also announced today its new DiamondMax VL 40 for entry-level PC systems. This new DiamondMax VL drive holds up to 40 GB capacity, has an impressive 2 MB buffer and is Ultra ATA/100 compatible for the highest performance possible in the value market segment. Major OEMs will be evaluating the DiamondMax 80 and DiamondMax VL 40 in late July. Evaluations of the DiamondMax Plus 45 are currently taking place with major OEMs. General availability for all three products will be in August 2000. |
|
