Dell recalls 4.1 million batteries ... Google test Blogger upgrade ... CA lays off 1,700 as net income sinks

Today's IT news audio update
Dell recalls 4.1 million batteries ... Google test Blogger upgrade ... CA lays off 1,700 as net income sinks

HIGHLIGHTS

News: Sun inches closer to open-source Java
News: Google displays coupons on maps
News: Dell to recall batteries, cites fire hazard
News: Convera releases beta of gov't search engine
News: Google tests Blogger upgrade
News: CA to lay off about 1,700, as earnings plunge in Q1
LinuxWorld SF: Startup launches SMB Linux package in US
LinuxWorld SF: AMD launches 'Rev F' Opteron server chip
LinuxWorld SF: Lenovo debuts Linux ThinkPads
Podcast: Today's IT news audio update
ITwhirled: The real Internet
TopCoder Challenge: Try this week's coding problem ... MultiRead


NEWS UPDATES

Sun inches closer to open-source Java
Sun Microsystems Inc. launched a portal site for its Java programming language on Tuesday as the company inches closer to making the Java code open source, a company executive said Tuesday.

Google displays coupons on maps
Google Inc. enhanced its Google Maps application to include coupons that businesses can create and display free of charge.

Dell to recall batteries, cites fire hazard
Computer maker Dell Inc. is recalling 4.1 million laptop computer batteries because of a potential fire hazard, the company said Monday.

Convera releases beta of gov't search engine
Convera Corp. has released a beta version of a new search engine designed to help U.S. government workers find relevant information within the glut of data on the Internet.

Google tests Blogger upgrade
Google Inc. has started testing an enhanced version of its popular Blogger blog publishing service, adding long-awaited features such as the ability to categorize entries with labels, to control access to blogs and to make layout changes by dragging and dropping.

CA to lay off about 1,700, as earnings plunge in Q1
CA Inc. will cut about 1,700 jobs as it attempts to cut costs, after its net income fell 64 percent in its 2007 first quarter, ended June 30.

LINUXWORLD SF - SMB: Startup launches SMB Linux package in US
Startup Linux vendor Collax launched its flagship product in the U.S. at LinuxWorld Tuesday, aiming the turnkey business software package at small and medium-size business (SMB) customers that don't have much experience with the open-source OS.

LINUXWORLD SF: AMD launches 'Rev F' Opteron server chip
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) on Tuesday released a new version of its Opteron processor, the popular server chip that has made AMD a serious competitor of rival Intel Corp.

LINUXWORLD SF: Lenovo debuts Linux ThinkPads
Lenovo Group Ltd. announced on Tuesday the availability of the ThinkPad T60p, its first laptop computer preloaded with the Linux operating system.


ITWHIRLED

The real Internet
There have been a lot of attempts to visualize or schematize what the Internet "looks" like as a whole, but not many people have seen the real physical components that make the Internet work. This picture set reveals that they look not unlike the infrastructure of the industrial age: huge pipes, low-slung building, and rooms full of ducts.


TOPCODER

This week's problem: MultiRead (Level 1)
In many computer systems, multiple processes can read from the same resource during the same clock cycle, but only a single process can write to the resource during a clock cycle. Reads and writes cannot be mixed during the same clock cycle. Given a history of the reads and writes that occurred during a particular computation as a String trace, and an int procs representing the number of processes used by the computation, calculate the minimum duration of the computation in clock cycles. The trace represents each read as an 'R' and each write as a 'W'.