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HP is Tech's New Top Dog? 192

Posted by Zonk from the top-of-the-heap dept.
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek argues that HP is the new Big Blue: 'Now, tech is about to get a new biggest behemoth. It's HP. The Palo Alto, Calif., PC and printer giant had higher sales than IBM last quarter, and analysts project it will finish 2006 with greater annual sales than Big Blue for the first time ever: $91 billion for HP vs. $90.5 billion for IBM. The reason HP pulled ahead is simple: IBM last year sold off its $11 billion PC business to Lenovo Group Ltd. But, because the companies have chosen fundamentally different paths, with HP aggressively going after consumers while IBM focuses on corporations, HP is expected to grow faster than IBM in coming years. Since both use blue in their logos, you might say there's a new Big Blue in the house.'"

How Not to Steal a Sidekick 424

Posted by timothy from the quick-add-a-buddy dept.
timmit was one of many readers to point out the story of a stolen Sidekick, writing with this excerpt from the site: ""When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves." I can sympathize, after someone with the address Rmluckyguy@aol.com tried to sell me back the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car last year in Philadelphia. I hope Evan has better luck.

Ballmer Beaten by Spyware 501

Posted by Zonk from the don't-tell-anecdotes-at-a-public-event dept.
Devil's BSD writes "At a Windows Vista reviewers conference, Microsoft platform president Jim Allchin told a rather amusing story about Steve Ballmer. Apparently, a friend asked him to rid his computer of the spyware and malware that had accumulated over the years. As the story goes, neither Ballmer nor Microsoft's top engineers could fix the infested computer. The article goes on to discuss and compare Microsoft's new security offering, Windows Live OneCare."

AppleBerry Predicted? 181

Posted by Hemos from the the-fruits-get-together dept.
dr_fatty writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that analyst Peter Misek, who predicted a partnership between Research in Motion and IBM, is now predicting a partnership between Apple and Rim. The predicted result? The AppleBerry. 'Such a deal would have huge merit because each company lacks what the other provides. RIM wants a firm foothold in the consumer market and Apple doesn't have a presence in the booming wireless data sector, he said.'"

Not Your Daddy's IT Force Anymore 342

Posted by Hemos from the relearning-the-new-skills dept.
Quill345 writes "The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?"

Yahoo! Launches YouTube Competitor 120

Posted by Zonk from the glad-to-forget-realplayer dept.
prostoalex writes "Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Video last night, allowing users to upload, share and tag their videos. For Windows users the player uses the standard Yahoo! Player, while Mac and Linux users get video encoded in Flash. Yahoo! joins a highly competitive field of video services currently led by MSN Video, YouTube and Google Video. The Associated Press reports on the Yahoo! Video launch as well."

Morfik Defends IP Rights Against Google 99

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the set-course-for-deep-pockets dept.
ReadWriteWeb writes "Today Morfik came out fighting in defense of its product JST (Javascript Synthesis Technology). Morfik has implied that Google infringed its IP by releasing Google Web Toolkit (GWT) a couple of weeks ago. The reason? GWT bore more than a casual resemblance to Morfik's JST, which allows developers to use a high-level language of choice and have it compiled to JavaScript. GWT is similar, being a Java-to-Javascript translator. These Javascript compiler products are increasingly necessary for companies like Google, with the high use of Ajax on today's Web and the associated complexity of programming in Javascript."

Review of Seagate's 750Gb Hard Drive 414

Posted by Zonk from the raid-array-in-a-box dept.
Zoxed writes "The Tech Report have a comprehensive review of Seagate's Barracuda-7200.10 'perpendicular' drive, including a primer on the technology. They ran performance tests against 10 other drives, checking the noise and power consumption levels. The Seagate fared pretty well, even on cost (per Gigabyte)." From the article: "Perpendicular recording does wonders for storage capacity, and thanks to denser platters, it can also improve drive performance. Couple those benefits with support for 300 MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates, Native Command Queuing, and up to 16 MB of cache, and the Barracuda 7200.10 starts to look pretty appealing. Throw in an industry-leading five year warranty and a cost per gigabyte that's competitive with 500 GB drives, and you may quickly find yourself scrambling to justify a need for 750 GB of storage capacity."

Microsoft Claims OpenDocument is Too Slow 553

Posted by Zonk from the compared-to-the-blazing-speed-of-.doc dept.
SirClicksalot writes "Microsoft claims that the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is too slow for easy use. They cite a study carried out by ZDNet.com that compared OpenOffice.org 2.0 with the XML formats in Microsoft Office 2003. This comes after the international standards body ISO approved ODF earlier this month." From the ZDNet article: "'The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory,' Alan Yates, the general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. 'The Open XML format is designed for performance. XML is fundamentally slower than binary formats so we have made sure that customers won't notice a big difference in performance.'"

Microsoft Employees May Lose Admin Rights 502

Posted by Zonk from the root-to-moot dept.
daria42 writes "As Microsoft moves its internal desktop systems to Windows Vista, the company is contemplating whether to change a long running tradition and take away admin rights from its employees in order to improve security." From the article: "'We haven't made that final determination yet. We would like to absolutely look at scenarios where we can look at elements of User Access Control -- that is the feature in Vista -- so that we can start moving in that direction ... It is a tough balance and every company has to decide what is right for them,' said Estberg. However, Estberg said that for the moment, the company will continue to leave the responsibility of installing software with its employees."

Ticketmaster to Start Online Ticket Auction 390

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the getting-scalped-from-your-couch dept.
Jason1729 writes "According to the NY Times, ticketmaster is going to begin auctioning off the best tickets to events online. They claim it's to eliminate scalping, but in truth it guarantees every seat will be scalped for the highest price with all the money going to ticketmaster. It also eliminates the possibility of getting a decent seat by waiting in line or being lucky."

Spam War Takes Out Blog Services 315

Posted by Zonk from the lj-writers-use-ddos'd-icon dept.
munchola writes "Following on from the story about spammers attacking Blue Security's anti-spam system, CBR is reporting that Six Apart, which runs the popular LiveJournal and TypePad blogging services, has become a collateral victim. Six Apart told its millions of bloggers it had experienced 'intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com', before resolving the issue in the early hours of Wednesday. '[The spammers are] trying to rip apart the internet just to make our community stop fighting back against spam,' Blue Security's chief executive Eran Reshef said, adding that he knows who's behind the attack."

Microsoft/Yahoo Merger to Take on Google? 183

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-probably-what-it-would-take dept.
Mz6 writes "One faction within Microsoft is promoting a bold strategy in the company's battle with Google: Join forces with Yahoo. That would be a major departure for Microsoft, the software maker that is legendary for toiling on its own until it captures a new market. However, people familiar with the situation say that Microsoft has considered the idea of acquiring a stake in Yahoo, and that the two companies have discussed possible options over the course of the past year. Currently, talks of an equity stake in Yahoo don't appear to be active, given that Microsoft is focusing on a reorganization that it hopes will re-energize its effort to compete with Google. Two wild cards remain: Steve Ballmer, who has historically shunned large acquisitions, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, whose support would be key to bringing the necessary Yahoo shareholders on board for a deal. Mr. Yang and others in Yahoo would be hard-pressed to sell to Microsoft, people close to the company say. However, people familiar with Microsoft say its top management remains open to a deal with Yahoo as pressure grows to perform better against Google. The increasing pressure on Microsoft -- not just from Google, but also from its own shareholders, as well as from advertisers that want an alternative to Google -- could help to justify the acquisition or some kind of business collaboration, these people say."

BlueSecurity Database Compromised? 375

Posted by Hemos from the bad-news dept.
EElyn writes "Numerous users of Blue Security's anti-spam system now report of a new form of aggressive spam. An unknown group of spammers claim to have derived a way to extract the member email addresses of Blue Security group's anti-spam system, called Blue Frog. Blue Frog, a small tool which once installed on the user's computer, enables Blue Security to systematically flood a known spammer's website with opt-out messages; much to the headache of the spammer. Tens of thousands of users have already signed up, so can it really be true that spammers now possess this database? Or is this yet another frail attempt by spammers to intimidate the user?" Another reader sent the text of the letter; read more to see.

Blue Ring Around Uranus 269

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the too-many-hours-looking-through-a-telescope dept.
ZedNaught writes "The BBC is reporting that 'astronomers have discovered that the planet Uranus has a blue ring - only the second found in the Solar System. Like the blue ring of Saturn, it probably owes its existence to an accompanying small moon.' According to the April issue of Science, the blue ring is one of two new outer rings recently discovered around Uranus using the infrared Keck adaptive optics system. The rings are blue and red like Saturn's E and G rings. The blue ring around Saturn hosts the moon Enceladus while the Uranus ring contains the moon Mab."

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