MARCH:

Linux Unveils TextMaker Office Suite

The Internet's main oversight body, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has said that Internet domain names in languages beyond the English language will become available in the near future. Currently, the computers that handle on line addresses recognize only the 26 letters of the English alphabet, 10 numerals and a hyphen. The new standards will allow the world's computers to recognize other languages, including Japanese, Arabic and Chinese, among others. The new incoming executive of ICANN, Australian Paul Twomey, pledged that he would attempt to make the Internet less U.S.-oriented and more inclusive of the rest of the world.

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According to sources, Taiwan’s Quanta Computer has landed Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) first 17-inch wide-screen notebook and could start shipments as early as the third quarter.

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VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) are poised to support the new 400MHz FSB (front-side bus) Barton-core processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) with their respective KT600 and SiS748 chipsets.

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More Linux developers are coming from Windows backgrounds than from Unix, according to a recent study.

Evans Data Corp., of Santa Cruz, Calif., said the results of a recent survey the company conducted show that more than half of the new Linux developers surveyed said they used to be primarily Windows developers - to the tune of 52 percent, while only 30 percent said they came from a Unix background.



According to Evans Data, the 400 developers surveyed said Linux had three main characteristics that drew them to the platform: stability, its open-source nature and low cost compared to proprietary offerings.

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Security experts say that the new Windows vulnerability revealed Monday by Microsoft Corp. has been used by crackers to attack at least one machine belonging to the U.S. Army. And, it turns out, the flaw used to attack the Web server was discovered not by Microsoft or an independent researcher, but by the attacker himself.

Experts at TruSecure Corp., based in Herndon, Va., received word of the attack on the Army's Web server last week through contacts within the Army. A Web server was attacked using a URL that was 4KB in length, and the machine was subsequently compromised. The server then immediately began mapping the network around it, looking for other vulnerable machines and seeing what else of interest was within reach. It then started sending the results of its mapping to a remote machine through TCP port 3389 using terminal services, said Russ Cooper, surgeon general at TruSecure.

Once the Army security staff realized the server had been compromised, it took the machine off-line and rebuilt it. But as soon as it was re-connected to the Internet, the server was compromised again. At that point, the Army personnel realized they were dealing with something new and went to Microsoft's support site and filled out a Web form describing the issue. By the end of last week, Microsoft officials had produced a patch for the issue, which turned out to be a vulnerability in a Windows 2000 component used by IIS.

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Eyeing the sliding prices for standard memory products, DRAM makers worldwide have started to pursue the high-end DRAM market, the Korean-language Electronic Times reported.

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The Federal Communications Commission last month handed Regional Bell Operating Companies a regulatory windfall that Congress refused to confer, despite three years of aggressive and expensive RBOC lobbying. Having secured from appointed bureaucrats greater changes than the nation's elected representatives were willing to consider, logically the RBOCs should be pleased with their win. But they're not; they plan to sue the FCC.

In a jumbled vote dividing the five FCC commissioners in myriad ways, the agency decided Feb. 20 to let RBOCs effectively bar rivals from using new, broadband facilities deployed in the local telecommunications network.

In addition, in an unanticipated development for ISPs - one that commissioners themselves conceded was a trade-off for maintaining the status quo in voice competition - RBOCs in three years will no longer have to share the data delivery portion of their legacy copper wire with broadband carriers. The move came as a defeat for FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who opposed the decision.

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Microsoft takes its first steps toward delivering on its 'Connected Car' vision.



Microsoft is preparing to launch the next version of its Windows Automotive platform on March 26.

Microsoft will take the wraps off its new system at the Microsoft Automotive Executive Summit in Dearborn, Mich., company officials say. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will likely handle the unveiling honors.

Microsoft is expected to follow up with similar launches in Europe and Asia during the third week in April.

Windows Automotive is not designed to power cars. Instead, it controls less mission-critical functions, like navigation, on-board e-mail, audio/visual entertainment and the like.

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Redmond is beginning to lay the groundwork for self-configuration and - management of Windows-based applications.

Microsoft is readying two new technologies that it says will provide the company with the same kind of self-configuration and -management capabilities that IBM has been touting for the past several years.

Microsoft is branding its autonomic-computing strategy as "Dynamic Systems Initiative." The company plans to fill out the details of its strategy next week at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas.

"You need a very rapid infrastructure to bring system on line in real-time," explains Bob O'Brien, group product manager for Windows Server.

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Sony will come to Taiwan next month to hold talks on product and component purchases of up to US$4 billion, said an official at Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). The talks reportedly are for PlayStation 3 game console-related orders.

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S3 Graphics on March 13 unveiled its new desktop-use, DirectX 9-compatible graphics chip family, the DeltaChrome.

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Japanese notebook vendors Sony, NEC Electronics and Toshiba launched their versions of Centrino-based notebooks on Wednesday.

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Sun Microsystems Inc. will release the first beta of StarOffice 6.1 next week, further heating up the competitive war in the office desktop productivity market.

News of the upcoming StarOffice 6.1 beta, which is focused on the corporate and enterprise customer, follows that from Corel Corp., which on Wednesday unveiled the first beta of WordPerfect Office 11, expected to be available in North America late next month.

For its part, Microsoft Corp. next week is expected to release the second beta for Office 2003, formerly code-named Office 11, which is due for final release by mid-year.

Sun's product line manager for StarOffice, Iyer Venkatesan, told eWEEK in an interview Thursday that the first StarOffice 6.1 beta will be available as a free download for the general public, but will be limited to 50,000 participants. "We are screening participants in the first beta to make sure all the platforms and languages are fully represented.

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Microsoft Corp. on Thursday made available the long-awaited beta of its Greenwich real-time communication server along with a strategy designed to make Greenwich an emerging standard for embedding instant messaging and presence detection in other applications.

Greenwich is being positioned as a counterweight to Lotus Software's Sametime IM and presence server, the acknowledged leader in enterprise IM. But while Lotus, of Cambridge, Mass., is devolving Sametime into other applications as Java-based Web services, Microsoft is taking a somewhat different path. It is connecting Greenwich to other applications via APIs (application programming interfaces) rather than federating IM and presence as Web services.

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on March 6 announced that according to Gartner Dataquest AMD processor-based desktop and mobile computers increased their worldwide unit market share to 19% among buyers of Windows-based PCs in 2002.

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Toshiba, Accenture Tout Hot Spots

Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to join with Accenture Ltd. to offer wireless LAN "hot spot" services throughout North America.

By 2003 the companies hope to have launched up to 10,000 hot spots, which are public places where customers pay for wireless access to the Internet.

Toshiba is providing the hardware to potential operators, while Accenture will be handling the support functions, such as billing and help desk support, said officials at Toshiba, in Irvine, Calif.

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