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The impact of a combined AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)-ATI Technologies has begun to be felt in Taiwan, with motherboard makers likely to reduce or even suspend their efforts to develop Intel-based motherboards built utilizing chipsets from ATI, while switching more resources to manufacturing models with ATI's AMD-based chipsets, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers.
Local motherboard makers are increasingly concerned that the AMD-ATI merger would cause a discontinuation or shortage in supply of ATI chipsets supporting Intel's platform, with the makers citing as a precedent the shortage of ATI's southbridge chips early this year when Nvidia completed its takeover of Taiwan-based ULi Electronics, which previously bundled its southbridge chips with ATI's northbridge parts.
Motherboard maker Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is now re-assessing its plan to launch Intel-based motherboards based on the ATI RD600 northbridge and ATI RS600 IGP product, according to the sources.
Motherboard maker Gigabyte Technology, which had long discontinued using chips from ATI, has rekindled a project to develop motherboards utilizing ATI's RS690 IGP for the AMD platform, the sources indicated.
Taiwan motherboard makers also anticipate that AMD will soon bundle its CPUs with ATI chipsets to compete with Intel in the OEM PC segment, the sources contended.

sa: http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20060821A5023.html

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The Center for Democracy and Technology has created the Operation Opt-Opt web site to help consumers retake control of their personal information. We have attempted to do this by making it easier for you to opt-out of information sharing that goes on with different companies and organizations. This includes credit reporting agencies, post office junk mailers, and online profiling companies. We DO NOT provide links to or endorse any form of unsolicited email...
Click with Confidence

sa: http://opt-out.cdt.org/spam.shtml

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Find out the best technique to use for pre-standard high power applications.

The IEEE 802.3af standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE) introduced a new facet to Ethernet networking, delivering DC power in tandem with 10/100/1000 Mbps data. PoE brought with it a unique set of problems and new ways of thinking that were unfamiliar to many engineers with experience designing Ethernet equipment. PoE is now commonly used for VoIP phones, wireless access points and security cameras. As PoE evolves, there is a need for enhancements to the standard to enable emerging applications.

By way of review, the PoE link allows a Powered Device (PD) to draw up to 12.95W from the Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE). The PoE link or port is controlled by the PSE, which identifies PDs via detection and classification before powering and monitoring the port (ICUT, ILIM and disconnect). Much of the burden of PoE rests on the PSE, which must perform detection and disconnect flawlessly to avoid damaging legacy devices. If the PSE does not adequately perform classification, power delivery and monitoring, intermittent failures and instabilities may result. The PSE cannot control everything; when it applies power, it trusts the PD to follow the standard, turn on without oscillating and avoid drawing more power than requested. Because both types of devices must cooperate, PD and PSE designers should consider issues from the perspective of both devices.
Higher power for emerging applications
13 watts is adequate for basic IP phones, but motorized cameras, multi-radio access points, and devices with large color screens are seriously constrained. The IEEE is currently working a higher power standard, dubbed PoE+ (officially IEEE 802.3at) that will coexist with 802.3af devices available today. The ultimate power levels defined by the new standard have not been established, but as of today, it is likely we will see 30-watt 2-pair systems and 60-watt 4-pair systems. The IEEE 802.3at committee has taken on a daunting task to define a world standard that will define a safe, higher-power standard that is backward compatible and interoperable with currently deployed 802.3af equipment. Because of the complexities of writing this specification, we are not likely to see a final specification for 1 ½ to 2 years from now.
Although typical CAT 5 cabling includes four twisted pairs, the 802.3af standard only allows two pairs to carry current at any given time. One option is to allow additional current down the third and fourth pairs, doubling the available power. A second option is to raise the current limit, allowing more power down the same two pairs. Each of these techniques has appeared in proprietary PoE systems. However, each has drawbacks, complicating the choice between them.
Implementing pre-standard high power PSEs
In the interim, some applications require high power and cannot wait for the new standard. There are several ways to do this. The following circuits build on the basic 802.3af-complaint PSE circuit using the LTC4258, shown in Figure 1a, and the basic PD circuit using the LTC4257 shown in Figure 1b. The LTC4259 can be substituted in the PSE circuit if the application requires AC disconnect; the LTC4267 can be substituted in the PD circuit if the application requires an integrated switching regulator.

Figure 1a. Basic 802.3af-compliant PSE circuit using LTC4258

Figure 1b. Basic 802.3af-compliant PD circuit using LTC4257

High power operations

The following circuit examples demonstrate several ways that high power operation can be achieved. Note that in some of the following PSE circuits, Channel 4 is used to illustrate the circuit changes, but any channel can be used.
Two-pair, high current
The power level can be increased in the PSE simply by changing the value of the sense resistor (RS1 " RS4 in Figure 2a). RSn is set to 0.5Ω for 802.3af compliance (375mA ICUT, 425mA ILIM). Cutting the value of RSn to 0.25Ω, for example, doubles all the current limits (750mA ICUT, 850mA ILIM). This doubles the power to the PD when a short cable is used; increased losses in longer cables limit the power delivered to the PD to somewhat less than 2x.

Figure 2a. Dual current High Power/802.3af PSE

Note that the LTC4258 also uses the sense resistor to detect DC disconnect. Cutting the resistor value to 0.25Ω will double the DC disconnect threshold, rendering it technically non-compliant. Other 802.3af parameters are not affected: detection and classification will remain compliant, and the AC disconnect threshold (LTC4259 only) is not affected by the sense resistor change. Because the raised DC threshold runs a small risk of disconnecting a very low power 802.3af PD, AC disconnect is recommended for interoperability with 802.3af PDs.
Two other components (per channel) need to be modified to handle the extra current. MOSFET Q4 will typically need to be replaced with a larger device to tolerate the higher power during current limit. In this application, IRF530-type devices in D2PAK packaging are adequate. The PoE data magnetics also need to be specified to carry higher current. Several magnetics vendors have newly released parts with adequate current capability.
By adding two new components, we can switch between 802.3af-compliant operation and high power. In this case, RS4 is set to the original 0.5Ω value and RS4B is chosen so that RS4 II RS4B gives the desired higher current level. Setting RS4B to 0.5Ω (the same value as RS4) sets the high power mode to twice the power level of 802.3af.
When Q4B is off, the port operates in 802.3af-compliant mode. Turning on Q4B switches the port to high current mode. This transition can be made at any time: before detection/classification; after detection/classification, but before port power-up; or after power is applied. Note that Q4B can be a low-voltage MOSFET, since only the drain of Q4 sees the high port voltage. Q4B should be selected for very low on-resistance to prevent inaccuracies in the higher current limit. The IRLML2502 is an example of a suitable device in a SOT-23 package.
The PD modification (Figure 2b) is slightly more complicated since the internal MOSFET is pre-configured for 375mA current limit operation. However, adding an external pass device controlled by the PWRGD pin allows high current operation while maintaining full 802.3af detection and classification signatures and inrush current limiting.

Figure 2b. Two-pair high power PD

Four-pair, low current
An alternate technique to increase the power delivered to the PD is to power all four pairs in the CAT-5 cable. Figure 4a shows a four-pair PSE circuit with standard 802.3af power available on each pair. No changes are required to the sense resistor values.

Figure 3a. Four-pair 802.3af Power

The bigger change is to the four-pair PD circuit (Figure 4b). Two LTC4257 devices are now required, and the power supply circuitry must be smart enough to limit the current draw from each channel to stay under the 802.3af limits. It can do this by balancing the current drawn from each pair set, or by drawing power from one pair set until it approaches (but does not exceed) the ICUT limit, then beginning to draw from the other set. This circuitry can be fairly complex, and will vary from design to design.

Figure 3b. Four-pair low-current PD

The four-pair technique has the advantage of using all the conductors in the cable, minimizing the total cable resistance and the resulting power lost with long cables. Using standard current levels also comes closest to full 802.3af compliance of any of the high power techniques, since either the signal pairs or the spare pairs used alone will be fully compliant. The primary drawbacks are complexity and expense. The PSE requires two channels of the controller chip per port, halving the effective port density, while the PD requires two controller channels and additional current balancing circuitry to ensure that the current drawn from either pair set does not exceed the maximum level. In addition, four-pair techniques will not work if only the signal pairs have continuity, as in some CAT-3 building installations.
Because of the cost and complexity penalties of the four pair scheme, two-pair high current is the preferred technique at medium power levels. Four-pair systems are most applicable when the PD power rises above the 35W level.
Continued...

sa: http://www.planetanalog.com/showArti...1902289&pgno=1

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Introduction
As many of you might know, AMD has recently taped out its Quad-Core Opteron. This upcoming Opteron has of course tipped AMD's hat when it comes to the next generation AMD Athlon 64 FX processor. AMD has shared with us that we can certainly count on the next-gen Athlon 64 mirroring the Quad-Core Opteron design less a few HyperTransport bus connects. Let's take a look at some of the AMD Quad-Core basics and changes.
AMD Next Generation Quad-Core Processor
As expected, AMD's next-gen desktop technology will first be showcased with in the yet-to-be announced Quad-Core Athlon 64 FX. At recent demonstrations of the AMD 4x4, Quad-Core has certainly been referenced as a desktop part. The slide below shows you the map of the upcoming Quad-Core Opteron as well as the Athlon 64 FX.

Certainly the highlights here are 65nm SOI which should bring power usage down even further, "enhanced" Instructions per Clock, and a totally redesigned cache system that introduces a shared L3 cache. And most importantly the Quad-Core design.
Shared L3 Cache
One of the most drastic changes that will be recognized by the enthusiast is that we have an additional caching unit identified as "L3 cache."

This L3 cache is shared by each of the four cores and allows for some latency issues to be addressed in a four core environment. It has been noted to the L3 can be expanded in size as well.
Clock and Power Planes
Behind the power of four cores we have some very intelligent power and clock scaling systems as well.

Each core will carry its own PLL or "clock-gen." This will allow the Quad-Core Opteron and Athlon 64 FX processors to scale down their power consumption very intelligently from being fully loaded.





sa: AMD Next Generation Processor Technology Slides

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A Texas federal judge has upheld a patent verdict against Microsoft and AutoDesk for their use of product activation software to stymie piracy.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis rejected Microsoft's and AutoDesk's request for a new trial and upped the amount that Microsoft must pay z4 Technologies by $25 million. Previously, a jury had awarded the Michigan-based z4 $115 million in damages from Microsoft and $18 million from AutoDesk.
However, Davis has refused to grant z4 an injunction against both Microsoft and AutoDesk from using the disputed technologies.
z4 sued the two companies in 2004, saying that Microsoft used its patented product activation technologies to prevent casual copying of Microsoft's Office and Windows XP, and Autodesk's AutoCAD. The companies claimed that they had developed their activation software from scratch. Microsoft will challenge the decision at the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The $142 million Microsoft owes z4 is the Redmond, Wash. developer's second-largest patent infringement judgment, bested only by the 2003 decision in favor of Eolas Technologies and the University of California over browser technologies. In that decision, which is currently on appeal, Microsoft was told to hand over $520 million.
Microsoft was not immediately available for comment on whether the decision will affect whether Windows Vista and Office 2007 use product activation when they release later this year and in early 2007, or if the anti-piracy practice and technologies will be modified.


24 Mission Statement
z4 DRM (Digital Rights Management)
z4's mission is clear. To develop DRM solutions, including Product Activation, and DRM platforms to assist Software/Digital Content Providers in protecting their Intellectual Property. Essentially, utilizing the strength and diversity of our Intellectual Property to protect our customers'/licensees' Intellectual Property.
Few concerns understand the importance of respecting Intellectual Property Rights more than Software/Digital Content Providers. Software/Digital Content piracy not only drains the resources and revenues of providers, it adversely affects our economy as a whole.
The following quotation from Autodesk puts the magnitude of software/digital content piracy in its proper perspective. "As the world's fifth-largest PC software company, Autodesk is reminded of this problem daily. If not for piracy, Autodesk's revenues would be at least twice what they are currently. The ripple effect goes far beyond the software industry, impacting jobs, tax revenues and the economy of every country that creates and markets software."
Proprietary technologies developed by z4 include product activation, software/digital content anti-piracy protection on both primary and ancillary devices, self-activating/self-authenticating software/digital content, user/publisher connectivity platforms, advanced internet advertising and marketing, network monitoring and metering, and quality assurance processes. Our almost decade long efforts have culminated in methods, processes, and practices which significantly optimize rights compliance.
z4's commitment to the procurement of intellectual property rights is paramount in our corporate strategy. z4 is firmly committed to maintaining its strategic and technological position by continuing its R & D efforts with concurrent patent portfolio updating, always keeping pace with changes in the IT sector. Currently, our DRM patent portfolio is comprised of 24 patents or patents pending, including approximately 1,800 claims.
Philosophically, any company in any industry must realize that technology as well as market conditions are always in a dynamic state of flux and never stagnant. Research and development efforts must always strive for new answers to old questions and the corresponding IP must at all times keep pace.

So whats the point?
DRM is not only screwing the little guy anymore...

sa: http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=192203157

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Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed and patented a nanobattery technology for fast charge/discharge batteries that they claim could provide an alternative source of power for mobile devices while eliminating fire hazards associated with current lithium-based batteries.
The university's technology transfer arm, Ramot, is actively seeking industrial partners to license and commercialize the nanobattery technology.
It was developed by research teams led by Menachem Nathan, a professor at the university's Fleischmann Faculty of Engineering and by professors Emanuel Peled and Dina Golodnitsky of the School of Chemistry. The device includes about 30,000 miniature batteries on an area as small as 1 cm2 connected in parallel.
This architecture is said to provide high electrical power output without the risk of overheating, a major cause of flammability in laptop computer and other mobile batteries.
The design combines low internal resistance characteristics of thin-film batteries with the high capacity of regular chargeable lithium-ion batteries. Using proprietary coating technologies, tens of thousands of miniature lithium batteries were laid out in parallel within a 0.5-mm-thick nonconducting substrate.
Substrate volume was used to increase charge capacity per footprint, as high as 10mAh/cm2, or more than 80 times higher than similar cathode thickness planar thin-film batteries. The assemblies were tested in the lab for hundreds of charge/discharge cycles without loss of capacity and stability, the researchers said.
Lithium-ion batteries operated at high temperatures can pose a fire hazard. The researchers suggested that nanobatteries can reduce fire hazards.
Dell Inc. recalled millions of its Sony-made lithium-ion batteries used in laptop PCs, saying they could overheat, posing a fire risk.

sa: http://www.embedded.com/showArticle....leID=192203405

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Earlier this month, Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveiled new hardware at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) -- and more importantly, offered an early look at Mac OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard. Although Jobs noted that some features of the company's next operating system, which is due out sometime early in 2007, would remain secret for now, he did take developers through a tour of some of the software's new features.
Last week, Apple officials offered guided tours of the company's new Xeon-based Mac Pro desktop computers, conveniently offering a closer look at Leopard for those lucky few on hand to check it out. The software has been released to select developers so they can begin working on making their applications compatible, but it has not been released for public use. Nor is that likely to happen -- Apple, unlike Microsoft, keeps its operating systems tightly veiled in secrecy until they are formally launched. That means real hands-on experiences are far and few between.
Lucky me: I got a chance to see it up close and personal. What I saw proved again that Apple has the most sophisticated user interface (UI) for an operating system out there -- and at the same time is always looking for ways to make computing even more practical, simple and fun. Technically, what Apple announced at WWDC is a core system with some incredibly useful application programming interface (API) hooks for developers to write to over the next six months so. That way, when Leopard is officially released in 2007, all of the major applications will be able to exploit these new features. It's a symbiotic relationship, and Apple is wise to care and feed for their developers in this fashion.
Geek stuff
With OS X 10.4, a.k.a. Tiger, the command-line interface applications are 64-bit, as is the core operating system. However, there are two versions of the current Mac OS: the PowerPC iteration for older Macintoshes, and a different version for newer Intel-based Macs. There is no universal installation for an IT pro to use.
In Leopard, the operating system, comand-line interface and even the application interface are 64-bit. This means all applications will have access to the full amount of installed RAM and will not be limited to 4GB. Imagine 16GB of RAM allocated to image rendering or genome sequencing. This should have the science, technology and creative folks salivating. Moreover, unlike some other operating systems, the 64-bit version is fully 32-bit compatible. So there is only a single flavor of Apple's next Mac OS, which is fully native on Intel and PowerPC machines and offers one master install.
In other words, all users experience the same applications and interface.
In addition to the Core Audio, Core Video and Core Image features that professional apps can leverage for incredible performance, Leopard introduces a fourth core framework, Core Animation. Core Animation is an API that enables developers to create stunning UIs with very little code. For example, the album art screen saver required more then 4,000 lines of code in open GL -- and only 400 lines when using Core Animation. Developers, rejoice.
One thing still notably missing from the Leopard -- Apple engineers, are you listening? -- is a way to assign an application to a particular processor and set the level of resource use that app can have. As a creative pro, ideally I'd like to be able to assign high processor usage to the processors and RAM for something like Final Cut Pro. This would allow end users to maximize their processor and RAM use depending on their needs.
Time Machine
The basic premise of this homegrown Apple application and API is that backup needs to be set and forget until needed -- and then simple-to-use and well integrated for restoration needs. While there are several relatively easy-to-use backup applications for Mac OS X, none compares with the context sensitive Time Machine at the file system integration level.
For example, let's say you have a folder that is set to back up incrementally as changes occur, and you need a file that was once there. You look in the original folder for the file that by just clicking in the folder (not the backup), launch Time Machine and then click the back-in-time arrow. Time Machine takes you back to the last change in the folder. Or in a folder where files are stored, you can type the name of the file in a search window, then launch Time Machine and click the back-in-time arrow. It will take you to the most recent instance of the file you are searching for and then restore it to the folder.
Another example shows the importance of the API and how any application written to it can take advantage of Time Machine's features. Let's say you're using Address Book to look for a person who was once in your listings. Search for his name, launch Time Machine, and the application will automatically take you back to the last instance of that user in the backup. When you restore, Time Machine puts the user's information back in Address Book -- no middle steps needed. No other backup application on the market now can do that, nor is any other backup app as well integrated.
Time Machine will back up to any external volume, be they direct-attached, networked or even Xsan volumes. And of course, you can directly browse the backup files and even search them with spotlight, if you are that kind of geek. But for the average user -- or even creative professional who does not care to learn the nuances of yet another system management application -- this is a very Mac approach to the backup issue.
Trading Spaces
This feature, known to many Linux users as a virtual desktop, has been available to Mac users in the form of a third-party utility for some time. Essentially, it allows a user to set up multiple "screen pages'" -- each with a collection of applications you'd want for a given task or environment. You can put Mail and Web apps on one "space" or a video application such as Final Cut Pro on another. It keeps the clutter down.
Apple has added some decidedly, well, Apple touches to this concept. You can put up all your spaces in one screen and drag and drop between them to rearrange as you like. Also if you have one space up or are viewing them all, operating system features such Expose still work. It's all very cool and very handy, and now built into Mac OS.
Mail
A nice addition to Apple's e-mail application Mail is the introduction of HTML-based templates that can used to send elegant-looking e-mails. Unlike those in Apple's iWeb application, the templates in the next version of Mail are easily accessible, so if a user wants to create his own stationery template, doing so is a snap. The new Mail app also has some nifty context-sensitive hooks into iCal.
iChat
Ahh, iChat, my favorite underappreciated application. In past Mac OS revisions, Apple added audio and video chat (Panther), 10-way audio conferencing and four-way videoconferencing (Tiger), and now the company has added an API called iChat theatre. It allows the application to be used as a professional presentation tool, meaning Keynote, iPhoto and Quicktime output can be piped directly into an iChat video stream. The quality was excellent, probably leveraging Core Animation and compressed in h.264 for high-quality video over low bandwidth. This allows iChat to be used in myriad ways, by film companies viewing dailies, for instance, or by anyone doing a sales presentation. It takes the application to a whole new level.
In addition, a sophisticated chroma key algorithm was added so that a user can do a snapshot of the background he is chatting in front of, and it will remove the background and key in a background image or video of the user's choice. For corporate presentations, podcasts or just plain having fun, this is a great feature.
With Leopard's release, iChat becomes a fully featured professional application.
The last word (for now)
The first close-up view I had of Leopard told me this is going to be a great release. As more features are announced (Apple hasn't said when it will offer more details), you'll hear about them as soon as we do. And when the operating system is released next Spring, we'll cover it in even more detail.

sa: http://www.computerworld.com/action/...3&pageNumber=1

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"I fix people's computer problems for a living," says Jason Bradley, CEO of CCE Computer Solutions in Oxford, Miss., who estimates he handles about 400 computers. "For the last year, the scanning antivirus programs have been just about useless. They just can't keep up with the threats.
"I had a machine that had 132 pieces of malware on it and it had antivirus and antispyware running."
Worse, he recently discovered rootkits on network servers at the University of Georgia, which had downloaded several gigabytes of pornography through the alternative data stream (ADS). Norton Corporate Edition was on each of those servers, but it could not detect the rootkits because they boot on the zero ring, before the antivirus application loads and tell the operating system to report everything is normal. And "because nothing watches the ADS, it didn't catch the downloads," Bradley says. "I ran Do It Right Microsoft on them and found huge files that shouldn't be there. I went to the command line, and four levels down found these gigabyte files of anime porn."
The problem, he says, is that malware has morphed into something much more insidious in the last few years. He lists five important characteristics of today's threat that makes it much harder for the traditional antivirus/antispyware to keep up: The professional-level tools are not user-friendly and confuse users with questions like: Do you want to let this program to write to the registry? "How does grandma know what the registry is?" he asks.
1. Malware attacks are much more focused: Gone are the old shotgun nuisance attacks. Today's malware is focused on users with specific behavior patterns. "I have users who never have malware on their systems and others who are habitual offenders," Bradley says. It depends on what the user does, what sites he accesses online, whether he downloads material from risky sites, and how careful he is about downloading files attached to e-mails, and similar issues.
2. Malware changes its code constantly: "We had a virus that changed its signature once a day for a week," Bradley says. "Geobyte [Software] had 900 signatures. The antivirus programs can't keep up."
3. It's all about the money: Malware is no longer a preteen prank. It is a criminal business. The perpetrators either are or employ talented software engineers who are as good as those in antispyware companies, and they stay at least one step ahead of the good guys.
4. Some antispyware is actually malware: This is an insidious trap for users. Porn sites have made deals with malware providers, for instance. When someone accesses the site, it downloads a fake antivirus program along with the porn. The first the user knows of this is when a popup appears saying that as a "service" the site has scanned his hard drive and "found" several viruses. To eliminate them, all the user has to do is buy this program for $10. No virus programs are actually detected or removed, of course, and after he pays the money, all he gets is a fake reassurance that his computer is now clean. In fact, it now, at best, has a dummy program and, at worst, may have something much more insidious on it behind the firewall. And $10 multiplied by thousands of victims equals tens of thousands of dollars of income for the malware companies.
5. Standard antivirus programs are often ineffective: The malware designers constantly test their creations against Norton, McAfee, and other popular antivirus and antispyware systems, so they know those programs will not detect the malware when it goes out. By the time the good guys catch up, the damage is done, and the bad guys change their code to make it undetectable again.
"They are becoming more subtle," Bradley warns. "Spyware will get on a system and clean out all the rival adware, so the accumulation of malware won't bring the system to its knees." The user may know something is not right with his system, but he lives with it as long as it is just a nuisance.
What users need, Bradley says, is a new approach, and he thinks he has found it with Prevx. "I'm always looking for the next new thing, and Prevx takes a different approach to the problem," he says. "It doesn't decompile programs and check signatures. Instead, it watches for key behaviors."
Prevx installs an agent on the user's computer that loads early in the boot cycle and checks the activity of every piece of code that runs on the computer. It sends this data back to the Prevx server in England, where it's compared to readings from all other Prevx users running that software. If discrepancies are found, it sends a message back to the user's computer warning of a probable problem. The user can then decide whether to have Prevx remove the code.
"Basically, all malware has to do certain things," just as a con artist eventually has to convince the victim to hand over money, says Bradley. Prevx watches for code that does those things. For instance, malware often tries to shut down the built-in Windows firewall. Prevx can sense that, prevent it and quarantine the offender.
Because it gets reports from a large and growing population of users, it catches new malware soon after it appears, usually before the traditional antivirus suppliers can react. And in theory it can catch rootkits. Prevx Inc. is working with the Trusted Computing Group to build an interface with the TCG security chip that is being installed on most new laptops. This interface should provide the standard hash counts for the base computer software the chip needs to detect rootkits when they boot.
What Prevx cannot detect is inactive malware lurking on the hard drive. "But that really doesn't matter, since it doesn't do any harm as long as it is inactive," Bradley says. "Once it activates, Prevx will detect it."
Bradley has tested Prevx against his favorite professional tools and says it gets 80% to 90% of what his tools catch, a much higher percentage than from some popular user-friendly tools. And it is not an either/or choice. It's compatible with traditional antimalware programs, so users can keep what they have and add Prevx for an extra layer of protection.
"I've been installing Prevx on my customers' computers, including the machines at the university," Bradley says. "It has had some growing pains, but it is working well for my customers."

sa: http://www.computerworld.com/action/...rce=rss_news10

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On Thursday, Toshiba submitted requests to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for certifications on a new PMP player called the Zune, none other than Microsoft's much-anticipated iPod competition. As it turns out, Toshiba will manufacture the Zune for Microsoft.
"Toshiba has one of the better received portable media centers out there, so it makes sense that Microsoft would have chosen them," said Jon Erensen, an analyst with Gardner. "If you look at the GigaBeat F, one of the new portable media centers that was introduced at CES last year, it was one of the better designed pieces of hardware that was out there, so it's not too big of a surprise that Microsoft would try to work with Toshiba and take advantage of their expertise in that area."
The FCC documents specify that the Zune will have a 30GB hard drive, an FM tuner, and a three-inch low temperature polysilicone display screen.
"It will be interesting to see how they handle battery life," Erensen said. "When you start in putting wireless and a big screen, it tends to tax the power requirements."
Apparently "DJ" has become a verb, because the Zune will have wireless LAN so that users can "DJ" their songs, or beam them to each other's devices. Users can also "DJ" photos, album art, entire albums, and playlists. The network, called Plyxis, allows users to scan any available content around them or turn off their device so their content is private.
According to the user's manual submitted to the FCC, "Pyxis allows you to stream music to up to four other Pyxis devices. If you wish to 'DJ' content to other devices you need to go either to settings/music or press the center button in the 'now playing' screen. You will be presented with a DJ setting with three options: off, on, or friends. If you chose DJ: on, anyone (max four at one time) can listen in to the same music that you are currently listening to. If you chose DJ: friends, only people in your friends list can listen in. If you choose DJ: off, no one can listen to your music but you can still tune in to other people who have their DJ setting turned on." (Note: This excerpt was changed for grammatical editing.)
"I'm eager to see what these wireless features can do," Erensen said. "That's definitely going to be one of the big capabilities in that it allows for social networking. It seems that Microsoft really seems to be pushing that feature."
The FCC request from Toshiba also has photos of the device, which show a circular navigation wheel with two buttons on either side below the screen surrounded by a white body. Microsoft has not sent prototypes to analysts (or PC Magazine) yet, but stay tuned for news updates and a full review from PC Labs.

sa: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2359485

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Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which recalled nearly 6 million notebook batteries between them this month, are among PC makers planning to meet next month to discuss setting design and safety standards for lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronic devices.
The batteries were blamed in rare fires that prompted this month's recalls, the largest electronic recalls involving federal product-safety officials.
Dell and Apple belong to an electronics-industry trade group that sets standards for many electronics components.
The group's critical-parts committee will meet Sept. 13 in San Jose, Calif. Sony Corp., which made the recalled batteries, has not indicated whether it will attend.
Kim Sterling, a spokeswoman for the trade group IPC, said Monday that the meeting had been scheduled before Dell's Aug. 14 recall of 4.1 million notebook batteries and Apple's recall 10 days later of 1.8 million batteries.
A Dell executive, John Grosso, leads the IPC's critical-components committee.
"Without a doubt, standardization can and will address the issue of operation and safety called into question by the use of lithium ion batteries," Grosso said in a statement issued by the organization. "While the committee had identified lithium ion batteries as the next product for standardization, we are going to accelerate our activities now."
During production of the Sony batteries, made by a unit in Japan, tiny metal shards got into cells and under some circumstances caused the batteries to short-circuit and even catch fire.


sa: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wir...C-RSSFeeds0312

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Digital Rights Management has been a hot-button issue for many years. With the current pervasiveness of high-speed Internet access, coupled with increasingly invasive attempts by content companies to strengthen their digital protection, the debate looks to be far from over.
Now, a new application has been released that will strip Windows Media 10 and 11 files of their DRM. In the online music world, the overwhelming market share winner is Apple's iTunes Music Store, whose protection has been bypassed several times already. Microsoft's Windows Media has been a perpetual also-ran, but it has too received attention from the hackers. In 2001, the version that came with Windows Media Player 7 was defeated by a hacker going by the pseudonym "Beale Screamer." Microsoft then updated their protection, and for years have been touting its invulnerability to hackers. However, this too has now come to an end.
The program, entitled FairUse4WM (Fair Use for Windows Media) requires that the user already owns media files that have been purchased from one of the many Windows Media online stores that exist today. It does not attempt to find encryption keys by brute force, as some other software (most notably DeCSS) has done in the past. Instead, it finds the encryption keys (at least one active key is necessary for the program to work) that have been installed on your computer by Media Player itself. Once these keys have been found, FairUse4WM modifies the .WMA files to remove all traces of encryption on them. The "converted" files can then be played on any player that supports the WMA format, regardless of whether or not it supports WMA DRM—in testing the application, we loaded the converted files on a Macintosh using Flip4Mac. The program does not appear to work with encrypted WMV (Windows Media Video) files.
That the WMA format would be cracked is not that much of a surprise—most DRM formats eventually are. However, in this case, the potential for misuse and lost revenue for WMA stores looms large. Unlike Apple, which has stuck to its 99 cents per song purchasing scheme, many online Windows Media stores have been promoting a subscription model, where the consumer pays a monthly access fee to download as many songs as they wish. Under this model, if the user stops paying the monthly fee their license keys are revoked and they can no longer listen to any of their songs. If the songs have been converted by FairUse4WM, however, they will still be able to be played on any platform.
Microsoft has made no comment so far on the issue, but look for an update to Windows Media Player to try and "patch" the issue, and possibly lawsuits against the creators of FairUse4WM.


sa: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060828-7607.html

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NEC Electronics is shipping image detection chips that can tell cars to hit the brakes, before hitting a person or another car. The chips will first go into Toyota's Lexus LS460 car this fall and NEC hopes other car companies will adopt the chip. The Imapcar, short for Integrated Memory Alley Processor-Car, has 128 parallel processing units and can detect objects at 30 frames per second.
NEC claims the chip can process 100 billion operations per second and will dissipate close to 2 watts of power. Toyota hopes the chip, along with forward-facing cameras, will be able to detect objects better than the company's current collision avoidance system that uses only radar.

sa: http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/28/nec_imapcar_chip/

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Autonomy has started to talk about itself as a provider of meaning-based computing [MBC].
As its chief executive, how do you define this concept?

Mike Lynch: Meaning-based computing is the ability for a machine to act on the basis of what something means – something being text like email and documents, but also PDFs, voice over IP and other types of content. The reason it is important is that information is broken into two distinct groups: structured stuff that goes in relational databases and all the unstructured stuff, which, while it is exploding in terms of usage, doesn’t fit into IT infrastructures very well.

Why is unstructured data important to organisations?

More and more of the information in companies – estimated to be 85 percent – is unstructured and it is often the most interesting information... [Accessing this information] gives you the opportunity to better leverage your information assets. But there is also a really big negative in the form of compliance problems caused by unstructured data and the need, in the case of litigation, to find all this data.

How can MBC systems help?

The problem with unstructured data is computers haven’t been able to do anything with it apart from move it around. The way we’ve got used to working with it is that we retrieve it, which is why people like search, then a human being looks at it and does the work. In contrast, with structured information the point of IT is to automate, so if you are a bank, the database with the account information spots if someone goes overdrawn and then sends them a letter, with no human being involved in the process at all. The aim of MBC is to enable companies to do a similar thing with unstructured information.

What types of technology fall under the banner of MBC?

It is a broad church. There are lots of methods that go into MBC, from sp eech recognition to text understanding, but the whole point is to produce platforms that can go that step further. This is a big change [in the way IT works] as it is really moving the data back to what humans want. We started with human data, then IT came along and we took all the rich information and boiled it down to database tables. Now we are going back and computers are catching up with what the humans can do. We are just at the beginning of this movement, but in a few years time you will see unstructured information used and processed all over the place.

How will this happen?

Obviously [MBC] is currently dominated by enterprise search, where [Autonomy is] very strong and the biggest and fastest growing company in the market. But the big story here is about doing more than search... A lot of it is about the core IT benefit of automating tasks that would have been done manually. For example, lots of companies employ hundreds of people who read emails sent in and work out where to forward them to be answered. With an MBC system that understands those emails you can get rid of 90 percent of those people and still get the same accuracy when routing those emails.

That is quite a specific example, but if MBC is to challenge keyword search as a means of accessing unstructured data it will need to reach a wider number of users. How will it do that?

One technology that is quite radical is implistic query. This means that rather than stopping your work, going to a search engine and making up a query, the system can read what is on your screen at any time, be it an email or a web page or whatever, and if you press one key it understands what is on the screen and brings you related information. That’s a nice example of how I think search will look very different as MBC evolves.

So you would have search available to users at any time?

Absolutely. A related technology is hyperlinking, where just as a newspaper web story will have links to similar stories, the system provides similar links to internal and external information based on what you are working on. So you call up an email and there are related links to everything the business has on the subject discussed in the email. Again that is not straight search, but it is one of the most useful ways of getting to information inside an enterprise. Another new technology that will change the way that users act are tools such as smart or active folders. They look like normal folders, but they do filing themselves. For example, if you set up a folder on Autonomy all documents on the company will be automatically filed there.

MBC systems can’t guarantee they will always understand the meaning of content. How do they cope with false positives and negatives?

Part of the secret is not to be too ambitious. Coming back to the email allocation example, you do not get rid of 100 percent of the people as there are some emails that are too difficult for the computer to understand because they have things like sarcasm in them.

But some people will still be concerned about false readings undermining the value of the system. How do you tackle that?

It is a perception issue. The thing is, people assume no email ever gets sent to the wrong department with people doing the task, which is not the case. The issue is to make sure [the MBC system] is as accurate as a human being… [Both MBC] technology and people are going to make mistakes, but the question is who will make the most mistakes. A human being using a keyword technology will often miss a lot more than MBC systems.

How can this technology help firms comply with regulations?

At the moment [compliance initiatives handling unstructured data] look for keywords. For example, if you are an investment bank handling Ford you set up a keyword tracker to pick up any documents with the word Ford, because no one except the approved analyst is allowed to say anything about the company for fear of an SEC investigation. The trouble is that if a secretary writes an em ail saying “come out of the airport and look for a blue Ford” that will fire off an alert and you’ve got a false positive. MBC systems understand that particular email is not relevant and that even though it mentioned a Ford it has nothing to do with stocks and shares, while one that says “our analyst is about to downgrade Ford, better sell” is highly relevant. That is one of the big differentiators MBC has against keyword search and it makes it a very powerful compliance tool.

About Mike Lynch
Dr Mike Lynch OBE is founder and chief executive of content management and enterprise search specialist Autonomy.
Since the company was founded in 1996 it has grown into a global company and last year completed the $500m acquisition of former competitor Verity.
Lynch has the Electrical Engineer’s medal for outstanding achievement and the Confederation of British Industry’s Entrepreneur of the Year award.

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ATI Technologies Inc. is delivering a new mark in excellence for integrated graphics performance on the Intel mobile and desktop computing platform with the introduction of the new Radeon® Xpress 1250 chipset. The Radeon Xpress 1250 serves up unparalleled graphics performance to the integrated graphics segment, providing more horsepower for the latest 3D games and the most sophisticated multimedia applications.
The Radeon Xpress 1250 will be available through leading notebook OEMs, including NEC who today launches the NEC LaVie L Advanced Type notebook for the Japanese market.
"NEC's LaVie L Advanced Type is powered by ATI's new Radeon Xpress 1250 to offer our customers a new standard in integrated graphics performance on the Intel platform," said Mr.Hiroyuki Masuda, Senior Vice President, NEC Personal Products, Ltd. "Together with ATI, NEC is delivering exceptional power for exciting multimedia applications and 3D games created for Windows Vista™. NEC and ATI continue to deliver leading-edge mobile solutions to customers everywhere."
Radeon Xpress 1250 is the first Intel-based chipset to support ATI's revolutionary Avivo™ display and video architecture. This technology produces vibrant images and smooth video playback, and true-to-life images for all types of multimedia, including high-definition content.
Radeon Xpress 1250 is Windows Vista-ready and is designed to handle Vista's Aero Glass features with ease while standing up to even the most demanding multitasking environments.
"With the new Radeon Xpress 1250, ATI is focused on optimizing graphics performance for the mobile and desktop world," said Philip G. Eisler, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Chipset and Notebook Business Unit, ATI Technologies. "ATI has worked hard to ensure that our graphics technologies are one step ahead and the new Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset delivers faster graphics, better multimedia and offers wide compatibility and broad connectivity options."
Radeon Xpress 1250 supports the latest memory and networking standards. In conjunction with ATI's SB600 South Bridge support is provided for up to 10 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports, 4 SATA II ports with RAID capability, and supports the fastest, most secure data management technologies.

sa: http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?o...ticle&sid=6293

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From the outside, the building along Eisenhower Avenue in Alexandria, Va. seems like nothing out of the ordinary.
Apart from the company logo at the entrance, there's little indication that this low-rise structure is key facility in the global battleground of cyber warfare.
Symantec Canada recently hosted several Canadian journalists on a tour of its Security Operations Centre (SOC) some 20 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. The Virginia facility is one of five Symantec SOCs across the globe; others are located in Tokyo, Munich, Sydney in Australia and Twyford in England.
These SOCs comprise Symantec's Global Intelligence Network which provides, among other things, an insight into IT security vulnerabilities and attacks around the world.
The SOCs monitor security threats through 40,000 sensors installed in 180 countries and 150 million client, server and gateway anti-virus systems, according to Vincent Weafer, senior director for Symantec Security Response.
The Global Intelligence Network also draws reports from two million decoy e-mail accounts that generate between 30 and 40 million spam and virus-related e-mail messages per day, Weafer added. These reports become the basis for creating rules and definitions for viruses and spam.
The SOC room in Symantec's Alexandria office is located at ground level. Entry into the SOC is secured by two-factor authentication technology, consisting of an authorized employee badge and a biometric reader for fingerprint scanning.
The first entry point leads to what is called the "fishbowl," a lounge-like room enclosed by a wide glass window providing a view of the SOC on the other side of the room.
Entry to the actual SOC, which serves as the war room for Symantec's security analysts and engineers, is also secured by two-factor authentication.
In the centre of the room are three large LCD screens. The middle screen is the Deep Sight Threat Monitor showing a map of the world and the number of security threats in different parts of the globe, giving analysts a real time view of the threats and attacks that are happening on a global basis, explained Jonah Paransky, director of product management with Symantec Managed Security Services.
The second monitor shows operations queued for analysts to look into and the status of those operations. These are specific incidents detected from customers' monitored network devices that require further investigation.
The third displays a phone queuing system that monitors and reports details of various phone calls with customers related to security incidents, explained Paransky.
There are also smaller television sets around the centre of the room that are tuned in to different news channels, providing up-to-date news on global developments as they relate to IT and network security.
A large part of the SOC's function is monitoring various network security devices for Symantec's Managed Security Services enterprise customers. Analysts research and capture security threats and vulnerabilities for customers and provide comments and recommendations for remediation in case of an attack.
Analysts monitor network activities for customers, watching for unusual traffic such as known signatures for worms and viruses, external IP addresses attempting to access specific network ports, firewall or intrusion detection systems, as well as internal traffic for unusual activities within the network, explained Tracy Williams, a senior analyst at the SOC.
Each analyst's workstation consists of two LCD computer monitors that show log entries pertaining to a customer's network traffic. The logs are sorted by different categories, including timestamp, source IP address and company ID. The logs are also colour-coded, indicating to the analyst what type of attack or event is occurring, Williams explained.
Analysts primarily look for signatures for different types of traffic, including known vulnerabilities.
"There are certain signatures that are known as just normal traffic through firewalls, where you're going to see a lot of internal-to-internal traffic. But if I see external IP addresses that do not belong to the customer and then I see signatures firing that should only be firing for internal-to-internal, that raises a flag for me," explained the SOC analyst.
Another cause for concern, added Williams, would be aggressive outbound scanning by an external source IP address, particularly involving ports that are designed only for internal traffic.
The SOC is in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Analysts work on three rotating eight-hour shifts daily. An analyst on duty also has a backup person who steps in to staff the queuing monitors if the primary analyst on duty needs to go on break.
This practice is to ensure that monitoring continues consistently and security incidents are dealt with in real-time as they happen, said Williams.
There are four different levels of severity for any security event, according to Williams: informational, warning, critical and emergency.
For informational and warning level, an e-mail is generated for the customer containing details of the specific incident, as well as comments and recommendations from the analyst in charge of the account.
In critical- and emergency-tagged situations, an e-mail is still generated, but there is an added step of opening up a ticket for logging resolution and status of the incident.
If the situation is deemed as extremely urgent, the analyst would then call the customer and initiate ways to either stop the attack from happening or prevent the attack from spreading across the corporate network, Williams explained.
Every source IP address that goes through the customers' security devices that the SOC manages or monitors is stored in a database. This allows analysts to track and get details on certain IP addresses that are of interest to them.
In addition to monitoring and managing customer environments, the huge amounts of data that the SOC generates, including 200,000 malware submissions per month, is used by Symantec's engineering team for future technology development, said Symantec's Weafer.

sa: http://www.itworldcanada.com//Pages/...0-638d8a6eccad