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Samsung has developed the world’s first LCD panel using the next-generation video interface – DisplayPort.Sanctioned by VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association), DisplayPort will serve as a replacement for DVI, LVDS and eventually VGA. By using a transmission speed more than double that of today’s interfaces, Samsung’s new LCD only requires a single DisplayPort interface, instead of the two DVI (Digital Visual Interface) ports now used. For Samsung’s new 30-inch LCD, the DisplayPort interface transmits graphics data at a total data rate of 10.8Gbps. This speed enables 2560x1600 resolution without any color smear.In a joint undertaking with Genesis Microchip Inc. Samsung developed its 30” panel using a new four-lane, 2.7Gbps/lane interface chip.
The interface technology processes 2560x1600 pixels of graphics data at up to 10 bits of color depth or 1.07 billion colors, a feat that would normally require at least three DVI or four LVDS interface chips.Samsung’s new 30” LCD also offers the company’s proprietary Super Patterned Vertical Alignment (S-PVA) liquid crystal technology for 180° viewing angle, and 300nits brightness. Mass production of the Samsung 30-inch panel is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2008.
Power Supplies
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Samsung develops worlds first lcd panel using displayport
40GB optical chip
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Earlier this year, some researcher types over at MIT made a bold prediction: Namely, that optical chips--or chips that use light instead of an electrical current as a transmission medium--will hit the market within five years.
Timeframe aside, the prediction made sense for two reasons: 1). It was MIT's engineers and physicists that actually devised one of the first reliable methods for integrating this photonic circuitry onto a silicon chip and 2). Chip manufacturers are going to need to start figuring out alternate ways to squeeze out the needed performance from chips as electronic components (and the metal interconnects between them) continue to shrink in size.
Mouse Pad
Enter today's announcement on Intel's Research blog. The device Ansheng Liu is holding in the picture above is something called a laser modulator, a component that is capable of encoding optical data at 40 billion bits per second--a speed that conveniently matches the fastest devices deployed today using other materials, Liu said.
Mirroring MITs assertion, Liu said that chip makers have shown a keen interest in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) over the past few years because of their ability to provide a cost-effective solution for optical communication and future optical interconnects in the computing industry.
There are obstacles, though: One of the key components needed for silicon PICs is the very high-speed silicon optical modulator, which is used to encode data on optical beam. Unfortunately, most of today's commercially available optical modulators only achieve around 10 Gbps transmission speeds and tend to be based on "more exotic electro-optic materials" such as lithium niobate and III-V compound semiconductors, Liu said.
But with the successful demonstration of Intel's new silicon modulator along with the electrically pumped hybrid silicon laser, Liu says it will now be far easier to integrate multiple devices on a single chip that can transmit terabits of data per second in the near future.
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Save energy by changing your blog's template
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Apparently, an all white computer screen, such as an empty Word page, or the Google page, uses 74 watts to display, whereas a black screen consumes only 59 watts. So claimed Mark Ontkush in a post on the ecoIron blog in January. Doing a few back of the envelope calculations based on numbers of users per day and wattage for different coloured screen from EnergyStar, Ontkush figured that the energy saving would be 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google had a black screen.
And so, with the help of Heap Media, Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle.
The Wall Street Journal did some of their own calculations, which challenge the energy-saving claims of Blackle. In a blog post from May, they point out that the "savings are most likely to accrue from older CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors, rather than the more modern, energy-efficient LCD (liquid crystal display) screens that dominate the market (representing three quarters of all monitors world-wide as of last year, by some estimates)." They did some tests using Blackle, Google and the New York Times on a CTD and LCD monitor and found the difference "so slight as to be within the margin of error for the power meter".
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Hitachi's Visual Search Finds Similar Images from Millions of Targets in 1 Second
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Hitachi Ltd. has developed a search technology that can find images similar to a specified image from millions of images and video data in one second.
The technology assesses the similarity of images based on image characteristics presented as high-dimensional numeric information. The information is acquired by automatically detecting information regarding the images, such as color distribution and shapes. The technology can be applied to video search as well.
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Affiliates Reviews
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Draft N is all the buzz around the WiFi circles, and manufacturers are pushing their early products onto store shelves despite the constant technical changes to the new unapproved draft. Although early product releases incorporating the 802.11n draft 1.0 were first seen in 2006, they did not seem to win over critics' opinion because of poor performance. The D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router is a draft 802.11n compliant device which claims to be up to 14x faster and have 6x the range of 802.11g while staying backward compatible with 802.11g and 802.11b devices.
D-Link's Xtreme N router was rigorously tested and verified for compatibility with Intel's Next-Generation Wireless N, utilizing intensive real-world testing conducted in typical home and enterprise environment scenarios. In Intel's testing process, which was conducted over the period of several months, D-Link's Xtreme N router met or exceeded Intel's requirements for performance, extended range, co-existence with other 802.11b/g clients and access points, and the ability to eliminate WiFi dead spots. The upcoming approval for 802.11n draft 2.0 will include 2.4 GHz legacy networks, but it is really intended for 5 GHz.
By connecting the Xtreme N Gigabit Router to a cable or DSL modem, you expand your Internet reach and provide high-speed Internet access to multiple computers, game consoles, and media players. Use the web interface to create a secure wireless network, and share photos, files, music, videos, printers, and network storage without compromising security.
Powered by Xtreme N technology and equipped with three external antennas, this router provides superior wireless coverage for larger homes and offices, or for users running bandwidth-intensive applications. The DIR-655 also includes a 4-port 10/100/1000 Gigabit switch that connects Gigabit wired devices for enjoying lag-free network gaming and faster file transfers.
About the company: D-Link
D-Link is an award-winning designer, developer and manufacturer of networking, broadband, digital electronics, voice, data and video communications solutions for the digital home, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Small to Medium Business (SMB), and Workgroup to Enterprise environments.
Visit the D-Link tv site for video footage of the D-Link company. Phone: 800-326-1688 Address: 17595 Mt. Herrmann, Fountain Valley, CA 92708
Read more at http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=47 Surf the web faster with Mozilla FireFox
Monday, July 30, 2007
Mozilla Thunderbird no longer under Mozilla foundation
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On her weblog, Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird is to move to a "new, separate organizational setting" as the Mozilla Foundation continues to focus ever more closely on Mozilla Firefox.
While the Mozilla Foundation supports a number of projects, its taxable subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation is responsible for only Firefox and Thunderbird. However, it has become increasingly clear that Firefox is the priority. The resources allocated to Firefox dwarf those allocated to Thunderbird and recent projects such as the initiative to improve Mozilla support exclude Thunderbird.
Mitchell outlines three possible options for a new organisational structure for Thunderbird. One is to create a entirely new non-profit, which would offer maximum independence for Thunderbird but is organisationally complex. A second option is to create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird, which would keep the Mozilla Foundation involved but may mean that Thunderbird continues to be neglected in favour of Firefox. A final option is to recast Thunderbird as community project, similar to SeaMonkey, and set up a small independent services and consulting company to continue development. However, there are concerns over how the Thunderbird product, project and company would interact.
On his new weblog, lead Thunderbird developer Scott MacGregor has posted his thoughts on the finding a new home for Thunderbird. He states that he favours the third option. Scott explains that this means that Thunderbird would continue to use Mozilla Foundation infrastructure, such as the CVS repository and Bugzilla, and the new company would perform a similar role for Thunderbird as the Mozilla Corporation does for Firefox, developing, releasing and supporting the application.
Observers of the Mozilla community may have seen Thunderbird's new home coming. In April, former Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger wrote a weblog post discussing autonomy for non-Firefox projects. He suggested renaming the Mozilla Corporation to the Firefox Corporation and pointed to a newsgroup message in which Mozilla Corporation CTO Brendan Eich declared "Thunderbird will have to fly free". Ten days later, Mitchell Baker wrote a weblog post on the Mozilla Foundation's focus on Firefox, stating that the Foundation's resources would be used to "assist other Mozilla participants and projects, but not equally with Firefox and not at significant cost to Firefox".
Update: In the text above, the sentence "While the Mozilla Foundation supports a number of projects, its taxable subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation is responsible for only Firefox and Thunderbird" was potentially misleading. The Corporation provides significant support to projects other than Firefox and Thunderbird in terms of hardware, services and personnel.
It would be more accurate to say that Firefox and Thunderbird are Mozilla products, which means that they get released, distributed and supported as end-user applications by the Corporation. Other applications, such as SeaMonkey and Camino, are Mozilla projects, which are made into products by volunteers or other organisations, if at all.
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Seagate not longer selling IDE HD
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Seagate plans to cease manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year and will focus exclusively on SATA-based products. Seagate is the first major hard drive manufacturer to announce such plans, though others will likely follow suit as SATA continues to sap PATA's market share. According to a report published at Australian-based ITNews last January, SATA now accounts for 66.7 percent of desktop hard drive sales, 44 percent of laptop sales, and an unspecified (but increasing) amount of enterprise storage connectivity.
Not only has SATA overtaken PATA as the interface of choice for hard drive connectivity, but it's become the main interface for primary hard drive connectivity as well—meaning that a majority of OEM system shipments now contain a SATA-based hard drive rather than the older PATA standard. Accomplishing all of this in less than a decade is impressive, particularly when compared to the slow pace at which floppies or the original USB interface have been supplanted by newer technologies. Unlike the slow pace of adoption that characterized other standards, SATA has virtually sprinted across the finish line.
That's not to say support for the 21-year-old PATA standard is going to vanish overnight; 34 percent of global hard drives is still an awful lot of hardware, and quite a few CD/DVD drives still rely on PATA. This means that most motherboard manufacturers will probably keep at least one PATA slot around for awhile longer, similar to how ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals. Add in the PCI/PCIe-based expansion slot market, and its unlikely that PATA support is going anywhere any time soon—a fact which should reassure anyone who is afraid Seagate's SATA-only policy could leave us all with mountains of PATA drives and no way to access them.
For the moment, Seagate appears to be maintaining price parity across both product lines, with the 400GB, 16MB of cache, 7200.10 Barracuda selling for $99 at Newegg in both IDE and SATA form factors. The Inquirer (via various channel sources) first reported the move, and a Seagate spokesperson told Ars that the report was "probably" true.
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Baller says that Microsoft is succeeding in the ad industry
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Hefty investments in online services and consumer electronics will let Microsoft maintain its historically rapid growth rate, CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts on Thursday.
The largest software company is hosting its Financial Analysts Day at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters, where Ballmer described Microsoft's strategy as making several big bets on emerging businesses while drawing more revenue from its mature desktop and server software franchises.
Microsoft is transforming its product development and business models around "software plus services," or software complemented with online services, he said. The company has been criticized by financial analysts for being slow to capitalize on advertising revenue as search giant Google has done.
Company founder Bill Gates, who made a presentation before Ballmer, announced that Microsoft is opening a dedicated center to research online advertising and search called the Internet Services Research Center. Headed by Harry Shum, the center's research will focus on search relevance, spam prevention and searching scanned images, such as book pages.
Ballmer said that the company is tackling disruptive technology changes head-on, namely the shift to advertising-supported Web services. Its commitment to online services and consumer devices are necessary because they provide avenues for the company's software.
He defended continued investments in two unprofitable divisions: Online Services and its Entertainment and Devices division. Microsoft's multiyear commitment in server software for corporate data centers diversified the company and created a multibillion dollar revenue engine.
"We're bringing the same kind of vision and tenacity that is in our DNA that drove us into the enterprise business into consumer devices and online services," Ballmer said. "We are going to be an advertising company, and we are going to be a devices company."
Even coming off a strong fiscal 2007 performance, Ballmer said he has "never been more optimistic" about Microsoft's prospects, outlining areas for more revenue. Those included stepped-up sales of Windows through PC manufacturers, Xbox game consoles, Windows Mobile phone software, increased market share of server software, office worker productivity software for small and medium-size businesses and advertising from online services.
Giving some upbeat reports on its mature business, Microsoft said it has sold 60 million copies of Windows Vista since its launch earlier this year and that its SharePoint Web portal business has grown to $800 million. Ballmer said that by the end of its fiscal year 2008, there will be over 1 billion copies of Windows installed on PCs.
Furthering its strategy to court Web developers and designers, Microsoft said that by the end of the week it will release Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate. Silverlight is a download for displaying media and interactive content in Web pages. It competes with Flash and other plug-ins that add interactivity to Web sites.
During Gates' presentation, he described Microsoft's vision for improving users' computing experience with online services; better user interface technology, such as speech and cameras; and a smooth transition among handheld devices, PCs and other devices.
He said that broadband is allowing Microsoft engineers to reconsider the computing paradigm, where resources typically confined to a single machine, like storage, can be done in the Internet "cloud."
Microsoft is building a platform for that new computing paradigm with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie "driving the revolutionary new platform that is service centric," Gates said.
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Boeing Flies Blended Wing Body Research Aircraft
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The innovative Boeing Blended Wing Body (BWB) research aircraft -- designated the X-48B -- flew for the first time last week at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The 21-foot wingspan, 500-pound unmanned test vehicle took off for the first time at 8:42 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on July 20 and climbed to an altitude of 7,500 feet before landing 31 minutes later.
"We've successfully passed another milestone in our work to explore and validate the structural, aerodynamic and operational efficiencies of the BWB concept," said Bob Liebeck, BWB program manager for Boeing Phantom Works, the company's advanced R&D unit. "We already have begun to compare actual flight-test data with the data generated earlier by our computer models and in the wind tunnel."
The X-48B flight test vehicle was developed by Boeing Phantom Works in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to gather detailed information about the stability and flight-control characteristics of the BWB design, especially during takeoffs and landings. Up to 25 flights are planned to gather data in these low-speed flight regimes. Following completion of low-speed flight testing, the X-48B likely will be used to test the BWB's low-noise characteristics, as well as BWB handling characteristics at transonic speeds.
Two X-48B research vehicles have been built. The vehicle that flew on July 20 is Ship 2, which also was used for ground and taxi testing. Ship 1, a duplicate of Ship 2, completed extensive wind tunnel testing in 2006 at the Old Dominion University NASA Langley Full-Scale Tunnel in Virginia. Ship 1 will be available for use as a backup during the flight test program.
Three turbojet engines enable the composite-skinned research vehicle to fly up to 10,000 feet and 120 knots in its low-speed configuration. Modifications would need to be made to the vehicle to enable it to fly at higher speeds. The unmanned aircraft is remotely piloted from a ground control station in which the pilot uses conventional aircraft controls and instrumentation while looking at a monitor fed by a forward-looking camera on the aircraft.
The Boeing BWB design resembles a flying wing, but differs in that the wing blends smoothly into a wide, flat, tailless fuselage. This fuselage blending helps to get additional lift with less drag compared to a circular fuselage. This translates to reduced fuel use at cruise conditions. And because the engines mount high on the back of the aircraft, there is less noise inside and on the ground when it is in flight.
"While Boeing constantly explores and applies innovative technologies to enhance its current and next-generation products, the X-48B is a good example of how Boeing also looks much farther into the future at revolutionary concepts that promise even greater breakthroughs in flight," said Bob Krieger, Boeing chief technology officer and president of Phantom Works.
While a commercial passenger application for the BWB concept is not in Boeing's current 20-year market outlook, the Advanced Systems organization of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems' (IDS) is closely monitoring the research based on the BWB's potential as a flexible, long-range, high-capacity military aircraft.
"The BWB concept holds tremendous promise for the future of military aviation as a multi-purpose military platform in 15 to 20 years," said Darryl Davis, Boeing IDS Advanced Systems vice president and general manager of Advanced Precision Engagement and Mobility Systems. "Its unique design attributes will result in less fuel burn and a greatly reduced noise footprint, which are important capabilities to offer our Air Force and mobility customers."
NASA's participation in the project is focused on fundamental, edge-of-the-envelope flight dynamics and structural concepts of the BWB. Along with hosting the X-48B flight test and research activities, NASA Dryden provided engineering and technical support -- expertise garnered from years of operating cutting-edge unmanned air vehicles.
The two X-48B research vehicles were built by Cranfield Aerospace Ltd., in the United Kingdom, in accordance with Boeing requirements.
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Windows cross the billion installation mark
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Microsoft Windows will run more PCs than there are cars in the world by the end of Microsoft's fiscal year 2008, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the company's analyst day.
The software giant announced it sold 60 million copies of Windows Vista this year, more than the entire installed base of Apple, and is well on the way to reaching 1 billion Windows users by the end of the fiscal year, Ballmer and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told analysts and reporters. The latest number includes 40 million copies sold in the first 100 days of the product's January release.
"The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion," Ballmer told the group. "If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept."
In an address at its annual financial analyst day at the campus here, Turner said that Vista was the most secure operating system Microsoft had ever shipped, adding that the numbers were there to back this up.
"There have been just 12 serious vulnerabilities reported with Vista over the first 180 days versus 25 for Windows XP over the same period. This number is also lower than for Apple and other operating systems. We have also seen 21 percent fewer support calls for Vista versus XP over the same period," he said.
There were also some 2,000 applications certified for Vista, which was up from 650 at launch, and more than 21 million devices were supported and more than 11,000 available devices logo'd.
Fiscal year 2007 was also the best year ever for Windows, with $14.97 billion in revenue and 14 percent year-on-year growth. Vista contributed $1.9 billion to this, Turner said.
More than 42 million PCs today are covered by volume licensing agreements as customers, such as Continental Airlines, plan their deployments. Continental is planning to deploy more than 10,000 seats by the end of the year, he said.
Microsoft expects between 9 and 11 percent growth in the PC market, while revenue growth in emerging markets has grown by 19 percent, 27 percent and 33 percent over the past three years, respectively, representing 13 percent of total field revenue in fiscal 2007, he said.
Some 57 percent of Microsoft's revenue was now generated outside of the United States, which has an average 18 percent non-U.S. growth rate, while more than 40 countries reported growth of more than 25 percent in fiscal 2007, Turner said.
During his address, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said there were five things that the company had to do well: get the best people, continue to innovate, embrace disruption as a characteristic of long-term success, promote multiple competencies, and take a long-term approach.
Some 90 percent of the battle was attracting, retaining and enabling the best people, he said, noting that the company had hired a total of 12,800 people over the past year, 4,022 of whom were recruited to its product development teams.
While there had been an 8 percent attrition in staff over the year, 3 percent of this was "good" attrition, where people who were not performing were let go, while the "bad attrition—those the company wanted to retain—came in at 4 percent.
Some 25 percent of its research and development staff worked in locations other than Redmond, and the company continued to expand those facilities worldwide, Ballmer said.
Microsoft wanted to deliver end-to-end customer experiences and develop sales and support models that supported that. The company also needed to become an advertising powerhouse and would do this by exploiting the breadth and depth it already had, he said, citing the 380 million Live identities as well as its page views and query growth.
On the consumer electronics side, Microsoft would sometimes provide the hardware, software and services while, at other times, doing software and services and partnering on the hardware, he said.
With regard to the competitive front, Ballmer said Microsoft was very confident about its competitive capabilities against other software companies. Open source was another competitor and this was not a business model Microsoft could embrace, he said, noting that the company had taken some share back from Linux on the server for the first time last quarter.
"We have more opportunity over the next 10 years to deliver more growth and innovation and superior financial returns than ever before," Ballmer concluded.
During his talk, Jeff Raikes, the president of Microsoft's business division, talked about the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
Microsoft had delivered 71 million Office licenses in the past year, while enterprise agreement renewals remained strong, he said.
The code for Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 had been finalized and would be released to manufacturing July 27, which marks a significant milestone in the company's strategy for delivering software-based unified communications and VOIP capabilities, Raikes said.
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Sunday, July 29, 2007
Cisco kills Linksys brand
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In a roundtable with the European press, John Chambers confirmed the "end of life" of the Linksys name, being replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding.
This decision follows Cisco's move last April to make it easier for Linksys resellers to add Cisco products to their offerings and vice versa. Also, just a few weeks ago, Cisco created a new division solely focused on the SMB market and headed by Rick Moran, formerly marketing chief of several Cisco communications applications like the unified communications portfolio, Cisco IPICS, Cisco Small Business Systems (Linksys One), TelePresence, Business Video and Physical security.
"It will all come overtime into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that", said Cisco's CEO.
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Judge Permits eBay’s ‘Buy It Now’ Feature
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A federal judge denied a request from a small Virginia company to stop the online auction powerhouse eBay from using its “Buy It Now” feature, which allows shoppers to purchase items at a fixed price.
Judge Jerome B. Friedman of Federal District Court denied a motion by the Virginia company, MercExchange, for a permanent injunction to stop eBay from using the feature. The Supreme Court ruled last year that, although eBay infringed upon MercExchange’s patent for the service, it was up to the lower court to decide whether eBay had to stop using it.
In his ruling, Judge Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them.
In his ruling, Judge Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them.
“MercExchange has utilized its patents as a sword to extract money rather than as a shield to protect its right to exclude or its market share, reputation, good will, or name recognition, as MercExchange appears to possess none of these,” he wrote.
A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed on MercExchange’s patent and awarded the company $35 million. The amount later was reduced to $25 million.
Greg Stillman, a lawyer for MercExchange, which is based in Great Falls., Va., called the opinion a double-edged sword.
“It was sort of good news, bad news for both sides,” Mr. Stillman said. He said he was sure that eBay was relieved not to be enjoined but that the judge “made it quite clear that they’re going to have to pay for that right.”
Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, said the company was “extremely pleased” in the decision to deny the injunction.
In the closely watched case, the high court ruled that judges had flexibility in deciding whether to issue court orders barring continued use of a technology after juries found a patent violation. The decision threw out a ruling by a federal appeals court that said injunctions should be automatic unless exceptional circumstances applied.
The case became a rallying point for critics who argue that the federal patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products.
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China busts large piracy syndicate with FBI's help
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A flurry of raids and arrests in China over the last two weeks have ended what is estimated to be the world's largest piracy syndicate in operation for more than six years.
The group, in Guangdong province in southern China, produced fraudulent copies of software from Microsoft and Symantec, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In China, some 290,000 discs were seized, worth $500 million, as well as $7 million in other assets, the FBI said. In the U.S., the agency's Los Angeles office confiscated $2 million in counterfeit software, plus $700,000 in other assets.
In one of the raids, an alleged counterfeiter named Ma Ke Pei was arrested along with 10 other people in connection with fake Symantec software, the FBI said. In 2003 Ma was indicted in the U.S. for copyright and trademark violations related to Microsoft software but fled to China.
Other raids centered around Shenzhen, where some 70 percent of the counterfeit products are shipped to the U.S. to distributors and retail customers, the FBI said. Six manufacturing lines and retail facilities were dismantled, and 47,000 counterfeit Microsoft CDs were confiscated.
The typical maximum sentence for piracy in China is around seven years, said David Finn, Microsoft's associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting.
Finn said the piracy bust is the largest ever, based on the number of production lines, length of operation and scope of distribution.
"We've really never seen a case this big," he said. "We think this will have an appreciable and noticeable impact on the volume of pirated software on the marketplace."
Western countries and companies have put increasing pressure on China and other developing countries to crack down on piracy.
But the sophisticated operations produce discs that are nearly indistinguishable for experts to discern from the real products, making it hard for resellers and consumers to tell if they are buying a legitimate product.
The syndicate was responsible for producing fraudulent copies of 13 Microsoft products that have been found in some 27 countries, Finn said.
Forensic investigators traced some counterfeit samples dating from May 2001 to the syndicate, using some 175 different characteristics that can indicate where a disc originated, Finn said.
Microsoft said it estimates the piracy operation over the course of six years conservatively cost the company $2 billion in revenue.
Microsoft also said key information came from the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications program, the anti-piracy tool that periodically checks with a Microsoft database if the copy of an OS is legitimate.
More than 1,000 of its customers who found out their OS was not legal later submitted physical copies of Windows XP to Microsoft for analysis. Those discs were later linked back to the syndicate, Microsoft said.
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YSlow Release on YDN
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Yahoo! has released YSlow, their web performance tool, on YDN under an open source license. Steve Souders, Yahoo!'s Chief Performance Yahoo!, made the announcement during his session at OSCon.
YSlow measures web page performance based on the best practices evangelized by Yahoo!'s Exceptional Performance team. Since many of these best practices focus on the frontend, YSlow is integrated with Joe Hewitt's Firebug, the web development tool of choice for frontend developers.
YSlow has three main views: Performance, Stats, and Components. Performance view scores the page against each performance rule, generates an overall YSlow grade for the page, and lists specific recommendations for making the page faster. Stats view summarizes the total page weight, cookie size, and HTTP request count. Components view lists each component (image, stylesheet, script, Flash object, etc.) in the page along with HTTP information relevant to page load times. It also contains several tools including JSLint.
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Sony profit more than triples on digicam, yen
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Sony said its quarterly profit more than tripled after strong digital camera sales and a softer yen far outstripped losses at its game unit.
Sony, in the final year of a three-year turnaround plan led by Chief Executive Howard Stringer, has seen its PlayStation 3 game console outsold by Nintendo's Wii since the two machines were launched late last year.
But Sony's Cyber-shot digital cameras were in strong demand. The electronics and entertainment conglomerate also benefited from a weaker yen and a firmer stock market, which has boosted earnings at its financial division.
Sony, competing with Canon in the digital camera market and Samsung Electronics in the liquid crystal display (LCD) TV industry, earned an operating profit of $825.6 million in April-June, up from $224.4 million a year earlier.
This is a turnaround from an operating loss of $941 million in the previous three months, when Sony booked losses at its once high-flying game unit.
But Sony stuck to its operating profit forecast of $3.65 billion for the year to March 2008, up sharply from $595.38 million a year earlier, when it was hit by hefty costs for launching the PS3 and recalling laptop PC batteries.
The company forecast exceeds a consensus of $3.51 billion in a poll of 20 analysts by Reuters Estimates.
In contrast, Nintendo raised its annual operating profit outlook by 37 percent to $3.07 billion on Wednesday, beating market expectations and closing in on Sony's outlook.
Losing battle?
Sony, locked in a three-way battle with Nintendo and Microsoft in the $30 billion video game market, cut the U.S. price of the PS3 by $100 this month to ignite demand.
The new price is still twice as high as that for the Wii, and some industry executives said the price cut is unlikely to drive game console sales substantially.
Sony's chief financial officer, Nobuyuki Oneda, said the PS3's performance fell short of expectations in the first quarter but expressed hope that a cut to the price of its 60GB model and the upcoming launch of an 80GB model would boost demand.
Sony said it shipped 710,000 units of its PS3 game console in the April-June quarter, less than a fourth of 3.43 million Wii consoles sold by Nintendo in the same period.
Nintendo raised on Wednesday its sales target for the full year to March by 18 percent to 16.5 million units. Sony said in May it aims to double its PS3 shipments to 11 million units in the same period.
Underscoring sluggish PS3 demand, Nintendo overtook Sony in market capitalization and elbowed the maker of Vaio personal computers and Bravia LCD TVs off the list of Tokyo's 10 most valuable companies.
Sony's net profit more than doubled to $551.48 million on sales of $16.43 billion, up 13.3 percent.
Its bottom line was buoyed by the robust performance at Sony Ericsson, the world's fourth-largest mobile phone maker owned by Sony and Sweden's Ericsson.
Ahead of the announcement, shares in Sony closed up 1.11 percent at 6,350 yen ($52.69) on expectations of strong results, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index, which slid 1 percent.
Sony shares gained 6 percent in the three months to June 30, while the subindex rose 8 percent.
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Saturday, July 28, 2007
Boeing Reports Second-Quarter EPS of $1.35 and Raises 2007 Outlook
A New, Better Approach to RSS
Apple earnings soar as iPhone shipments revealed
Symantec's first-quarter income falls to $95.2 million
Digg chooses Microsoft as Ad partner
