IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 29/01/2009

Apacer to roll out the Handy Steno AH522 flash drives
Stealthy as a ninja carrying a lit torch, Apacer has introduced a new family of flash drives that are part of its Handy Steno series. Codenamed AH522 and confirmed as coming in at least 8 and 16GB capacities, the flash drive features a retractable USB connector, a shiny black casing with zinc inserts, and a blue activity LED.

Yet unpriced, the Handy Steno AH522 drives are Plug & Play compatible and will deliver read and write speeds of up to 30 MB/s and 12 MB/s respectively.

Nvidia names Bill Dally Chief Scientist and VP of Research
Seeking some 'outside' guidance to face the tough road ahead, Nvidia has revealed that Bill Dally, the chairman of Stanford Universityأ¢آ€آ™s computer science department, will soon join its ranks as Chief Scientist and Vice President of Nvidia Research, taking the role of now 'Nvidia Fellow' and David Kirk. Taking the place of someone who's been with Nvidia since before the GeForce era is certainly no easy task so Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang went on to praise Dally for his work. More specifically Huang said - "His pioneering work in stream processors at Stanford greatly influenced the work we are doing at Nvidia today. As one of the world's founding visionaries in parallel computing, he shares our passion for the GPU's evolution into a general purpose parallel processor and how it is increasingly becoming the soul of the new PC. His reputation as an innovator in our industry is unrivaled. It is truly an honor to have a legend like Bill in our company."

With Dally on board, Nvidia seems to be ready to shift more focus towards GPGPU (general purpose computing on graphics processing units), as a domain with great potential that has only been slightly tackled by the tech industry. Hopefully for the Santa Clara-based company, this will be a winning card.

US ISP Cox to monitor traffic
Cox Communications one of the United States' largest Internet Service Providers announced recently that it was putting into testing an internet management platform that allows them to have much stricter bandwidth and monitoring capabilities.

The testing will be in place in Kansas and Arkansas, and will have the new system monitor and manage the bandwidth used on Cox's networks and control how much bandwidth is being utilized under certain categories of which the ISP has outlined two, time-sensitive, and nontime-sensitive.

The time sensitive category includes:
- Web (Web surfing, including web-based e-mail and chat embedded in Web pages)
- VoIP (Voice over IP, telephone calls made over the Internet)
- E-mail
- IM (Instant messages, including related voice and Webcam traffic)
- Streaming (Web-based audio and video programs)
- Games (Online interactive games)
- Tunneling & Remote Connectivity (VPN-type services for telecommuting)
- Other (Any service not categorized into another area)

The nontime-sensitive category includes:
- File Access (Bulk transfers of data such as FTP)
- Network Storage (Bulk transfers of data for storage)
- P2P (Peer to peer protocols)
- Software Updates (Managed updates, such as operating system updates)
- Usenet (Newsgroup related)

This essentially means that Cox will be limiting bandwidth more on the nontime-sensitive category than on the time-sensitive category, as well as monitoring them. This actually comes as a bad thing for net neutrality advocates as they feel the net should not be monitored by private companies or even the government.

More information on Cox's changes are at its web site.

EC tells MS not just IE
Not long ago the European Commission (EC) started a new investigation of Microsoft's business practices, also providing a list of changes it feels the company should undergo for it to be considered a respectable corporation.

One thing Microsoft has actually outlined in its second-quarter 10Q filing was that it may bundle Windows with the option to install alternative web browsers.

This is part of a long history of legal litigation against Microsoft that has happened and occurred worldwide, a few years ago the US Supreme Court pointed out to Microsoft they had a monopoly and were required to split, which was seemingly ignored by the corporation and they were also told that IE should not be a required part of Windows to which Microsoft responded it could not be removed because of how intertwined the browser was with the operating system.

The most recent European based battle came from Opera Software, based in Oslo, Norway, as Opera felt that Microsoft blocked the expansion of Opera's product due to IE's intertwining into the Windows operating system.

Now, not only may Microsoft be required to bundle other browsers they may also be required to allow users to disable parts of the IE code.

Does this mean IE may just be "another browser"? Or, will Microsoft just weasel their way out of it again as they have so many times in the past? Only time will tell.

IBM to keep an eye on new Apple Senior Vice President
Recently we reported former IBM executive Mark Papermaster was going to be starting his position at Apple though according to a report at Apple Insider the new Senior Vice President at Apple was required to sign a court-sanctioned document.

The document, signed by Papermaster as well as attorneys representing both IBM and Apple, states that Papermaster does not intend to, or will not disclose any IBM secrets to Apple, while working for Apple under risk of perjury.

Along with the agreement if Papermaster needs confirmation as to whether a certain piece of information is secret he must confirm it with current IBM Vice President and Assistant General Counsel Ron Lauderdale first. Also under the agreement the IBM Vice President has agreed to respond promptly, reasonably, and in good faith.

The document expires one (1) year after Papermaster left IBM, October 24th. On October 24th the lawsuit concerning the security of IBM and Apple's subsequent countersuit will be dropped. If either or both parties violate the consent order, they could be held in contempt.

Net neutrality tools from Google and friends
A Google Partner site called Measurement Lab released a set of internet measurement tools to allow users administrators to measure their internet connection in a multitude of ways.

The tools are all open source and released under open source license ranging from Creative Commons to forms of GPL. Most of the tools are built on or for Linux based operating systems but they could still provide benefits to users on Windows as well if the developers decide to support the platform.

You may wonder how this is a "net neutrality matter" well, currently most diagnostic and testing software meant for internet users is managed and maintained by ISPs, while these tools, being released not only under an open source platform but for free, provide an alternative source for users to find out this information without the potential of being "slighted" from their internet service provider.

More information about the measurement systems are at MeasurementLab.net.

XFX readies low profile Fatal1ty-branded GeForce 9400 GT
While not doing much gaming anymore (or at least, nothing high profile), Johnathan Wendel is still making money off the 'Fatal1ty' brand with XFX being just one of the companies using it on certain products, including a soon-to-be-available GeForce 9400 GT card. Pictured below, the new low profile card features a 128-bit memory interface, 512MB of DDR2 memory clocked at a standard 800 MHz, a GPU set to 550 MHz, and 16 Stream Processors @ about 1400 MHz.

Equipped with an active cooling system, the Fatal1ty 9400 GT has D-Sub and DVI connectivity, has DirectX 10 and PhysX support, and can be found on pre-order for 69 Euro.

Samsung 1.5TB EcoGreen F2 drive pictured and priced
Catching up to at least one of its rivals, Samsung is almost ready to start shipping its first 1.5TB hard drives which are part of the EcoGreen F2 family and aim to combine low power consumption with high capacity, good performance and an attractive price. Seen below, the HD153UI is a 3.5-inch hard drive that features a working speed of 5400 RPM, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a 32MB buffer and an average seek time of 8.9 ms.

Also boasting NoiseGuard and SilentSeek, the 1.5TB drive is said to go on sale in Japan this weekend and cost just about $130.

Photos courtesy of watch.impress.co.jp.

Symantec ascends and battles into cloud computing
Symantec Corp. have now announced that they will be the next company to take off with cloud networking. The new service that it plans to introduce, GoEverywhere, is intended to host a user's whole workspace in one web-accessible environment.

Productivity suites like this have been coming out all over the place in the last 18 months, so with Google Docs and Microsoft Shared Spaces, will this newly puffed out cloud be able to compete? The system will allow users access to applications for document editing, creating slide shows, spread sheets, as well as web mail and others. It will all be stored as encrypted media surrounded by a single sign-on service.

"As the use of Web-based applications increase, there is a need for our desktop or computing environment to also adjust and become web-based,"said Don Kleinschnitz, vice president and general manager for GoEverywhere. "The GoEverywhere beta is incorporating next-generation cloud computing and web 2.0 concepts in innovative ways to enhance customersأ¢آ€آ™ choice of how and when they want to access information."

The service is currently being trailed as a beta in the United States, and you can sign up here for free at this time.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 29/01/2009

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