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Tid-bits
12/8 - Email worm Sober is set to go off again on January 5, 2006. Happy New Year. Since first released in October of 2003, Sober has gone through nearly 30 variants. The last phase was around November 22, in which victims received emails purporting to be from the FBI and other organizations around the globe. The last Sober "has already infected millions of systems as a prelude to the January 5 attack".
Local search is hot. Microsoft is set to release today a beta of Windows Live Local that offers local search tools, driving directions, and yellow pages. You do not even need to know an address. The application presents bird's-eye views that allow you to point and click on places, "even if the user doesn’t know the address".
So what's all the fuss about SAS (serial attached SCSI)? SAS offers the performance and reliability of SCSI (small computer system interface) and the capacity and price points of SATA (serial ATA). That's what. Maxtor and Adaptec collaborate to manufacture SAS components that work together as a system. The SAS devices fit applications that need high storage capacity and are "throughput intensive".
Two-factor authentication consists of two of three things: something you know, something you are, or something that you have. It's like a bank ATM card in which you have a PIN number (something you know) and a card (something you have). Two out of three is considered very secure and much better than, say, passwords alone. Biometrics, taken by itself, can also be faked out. CipherPass Corporation has licensed USB and smart card tokens from Raak Technologies to provide strong two-factor authentication. User names and passwords give way to a new Windows logon interface, in which a person needs either a USB key or smart card and a PIN number. The new logon interface "replaces the typical username and password for logging onto the computer".
Nortel is to build the first commercial WiMAX broadband wireless network in Canada, in Alberta. This is just the situation that WiMAX was designed for. Rural areas in which conventional broadband is simply not practical. The network will be the fixed variety of WiMAX, as opposed to the mobile variety. However, Nortel's fixed WiMAX (802.16d) can be seamlessly upgraded to "the nomadic/portable WiMAX standard (802.16e)".
McDonald's intends to standardize on Windows XP Embedded "as the foundation for its new point-of-sale (POS)".
Intel intends to extend silicon for as long as possible. A new transistor has been developed using new material. The new material, however, is to complement silicon: not replace it. We're talking about a time frame beyond 2015. The substance offers a 50% improvement in performance "while reducing power consumption by roughly 10 times".
ATI's new Mobile Radeon X1600 graphics processing unit (GPU) may not yet be available everywhere, but then it was primarily designed for Intel's next generation Napa Centrino platform, which is not here yet. It is also designed for Microsoft's Windows Vista OS. "The ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 is aimed at supporting Intel’s next-generation Napa platform and Microsoft Windows Vista OS".
Lenovo is doing well because growth in the PC industry is largely being driven by China. It was a smart move to buy IBM's PC business at a time when the market was beginning to boom. "Industry leader Lenovo, bolstered by its recent purchase of IBM's PC-making assets this spring, saw its share of the market jump to 34.5 percent" (Reuters).