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Microsoft is divesting from RealNetworks. One reason is that Real did not include the interoperability features Microsoft wanted. A more intersting reason was that Real and Microsoft did not see eye-to-eye on the future of streaming, and have been feuding over future standards. Chris le Tocq, an analyst at Dataquest in San Jose, Calif. said the rare move by Microsoft is Microsoft "saying that you are not one of us". Interestingly this move came after Microsoft offered to work with RealNetworks on an underwritten secondary offering of stock, but the two companies could not agree on terms... Although normally this would reduce investor confidence in RealNetworks, its stock bounced up while Microsoft's fell. In related news, Gartner reiterated its warning not to move to Windows 2000 until 2001 at the earliest.

The lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others against CDA 2 will begin on Thursday. CDA 2 itself becomes valid on Friday. Ironically even the DOJ has doubts as to its constitutionality... could this mean that Clinton signed it into law expecting it to be defeated?

DaBuzz wrote in to send us a link to a newsbytes story where you can read about the Netscape's web browser. This article talks a bit about Mozilla, and Netscape's next generation rendering engine. According to this story, things are progressing nicely. Good to hear it.

DaBuzz wrote in to send us a release about Samsung's credit card MP3 player. This one has 40megs of storage, and while we reported it once before, this link comments that it should make an appearance in America soon.

DaBuzz (Wes Salmon) writes " Looks like Sony has announced a nice new set of shades. Two 0.7" LCD panels cover your eyes to make it seem like a 30" monitor. They can also go transparent just in case you're walking while looking at por ... uhh I mean news on the internet."

Boomhauer writes "In a Newsbytes article Caldera's Ransom Love talks about how he is positioning Caldera and OpenLinux. In talking about how he plans to market to VAR's, Love says in the article "Caldera Systems, says he does not want to be a giant-killer, he just wants to take the giant's toe. " "

Hitachi and Mitsubishi have announced that they have jointly developed a new 256 mb flash memory chip. These will be primarily used in portable storage devices, but Hitachi has said that they will be rolling out samples of PC cards later on this year. Sample production will probably begun in December, according to sources.

As was expected, Intel is experiencing, some, ah, "heat regulation" issues with the new Xeon chip, as reported here. The problem is showing in quad-proc servers, and has been causing performance "glitches".
On the opposite end of the scale, Intel has said that they are experiencing "supply shortages" for their low-end chips. Analysts are saying it's because Intel isn't recognizing the changing consumer markets, but Intel claims that it is because of a change in the manufacturing process.

IBM will be annoucing today that their work in silicon-on-insulator has paid off. This will probably mean power requirements cut by a 1/3, and performance increases in the same area. It should be noted, however, that IBM is not the only to be working on this-they are just the only ones marketing it.

A chinese internet user has been charged with subversion for providing a list of 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to a US-based pro-democracy magazine and Web site called Big Reference. The law specifies that this "crime"'s penalty ranges from 10 years to execution. The globalisation of the internet will have some it seems further consequences on the way people will use it. I'm appalled by some of the comments I just deleted. Please THINK before you post. You are talking about someone's LIFE. If your life is not valuable to you then you have a problem. His life is valuable to him.

Linux had a good day today, with 2 gems brought to us by our collegues at Linux Weekly News. The first is of a journalist discovering Linux, much to her own surprise.... Another surprise is that NASA's Beowulf is now trying its hand at law-enforcement. It can trawl through logs that used to take 7 weeks to analyse in less than an hour. Now all we need to do is build HAL...

Korean publisher Hangul has rejected Microsoft's rescue plan. This included a requirement that Hangul gave up its 80 percent word processor market share and withdraw from the market, opening the way for Microsoft Word to take over. Instead local investors will back the company. Microsoft seems to have reacted with classic FUD: "Korean companies are not professional or business-oriented enough, but you should continue investing there if you understand they think differently".

Motorola, the Palm unit at 3Com and PageMart of Canada have announced an alliance to bring wireless messaging to the Palm later on this summer. Very cool stuff-looks like it will be in an seperate card. The service, which uses a paging card co-designed by Motorola's Flex Architecture Solutions Division and PageMart, will be launched Canada-wide in mid-August.

Newsbytes is reporting a new bug affecting Windows 98. This one gives people full access to your filesystem. On another front, is speculating that Windows 98 was shipped before it was finished to preempt the DOJ case judgement: a new service pack is already in beta.

Newsbytes is reporting a new bug affecting Windows 98. This one gives people full access to your filesystem. On another front, is speculating that Windows 98 was shipped before it was finished to preempt the DOJ case judgement: a new service pack is already in beta.

Promising a breakthrough in RAID technology, Mylex, a RAID vendor, is announcing their newest controller. Their new controller is hopefully going to solve many of the RAID I/O problems. The new controller is a RISC 233, with a 64 bit bus, and LVD Ultra 2 drives. The new system is capable of over 6000 I/O transactions per second, compared to 2000 on their old top of the line. However, this old top of the line has helped Fujitsu win 9 world records for server data storage since Decemeber.

Last night at the PC expo, Alpha Processor Inc. was launched. Its primary goal will be to drive down the cost of Alpha-based computing. Apparently Compaq will help by selling low cost servers, workstations, and perhaps even an Alpha-based notebook. Its secondary goal is to provide customizations and optimizations for specific applications, for instance to the memory subsystem. In a way, this all looks like Compaq trying to steal HP's lead in the Workstation market... but if the price of the Alpha comes down, I won't be complaining.

Officials at the Bhadha Atomic Research Center in India admitted today that a cracker penetrated their "security" No nukes were detonated, and it is claimed that only a 5 Mb email about advanced nuclear physics was copied from their site. (Equations usually don't take 5Mb, data from an explosion probably would...) Apparently BARC had not patched sendmail recently. Perhaps they should switch to qmail ?

UPDATE: Apparently the same group is now targetting Pakistan

UPDATE: Here is the title web-page the crackers added.

Officials at the Bhadha Atomic Research Center in India admitted today that a cracker penetrated their "security" No nukes were detonated, and it is claimed that only a 5 Mb email about advanced nuclear physics was copied from their site. (Equations usually don't take 5Mb, data from an explosion probably would...) Apparently BARC had not patched sendmail recently. Perhaps they should switch to qmail ?

UPDATE: Apparently the same group is now targetting Pakistan

UPDATE: Here is the title web-page the crackers added.

The Patriach of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee joined an exclusive list of people to win a genius award. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded him 270,000$US, of which he can spend on he pleases. The award was given in part for "a revolutionary communications system requiring minimal technical understanding." Pretty cool, and recognition (and cash!) for a guy who deserves it.

Frank sent us this link to a story about the ACLU's defense of spam. Truthfully, spammers have a right to exist, but there needs to be guidelines set in stone- put the word 'spam' in the subject or something. Maybe that should be Slashdot's next political issue.