HP sues Acer for patent infringement ... Microsoft to launch higher-spec Xbox 360

HIGHLIGHTS
News: HP sues Acer for patent infringement
News: Microsoft to launch higher-spec Xbox 360
News: Report names Microsoft among DoubleClick suitors
News: Arrest deals blow to Siemens' IT services division
Unix Tip: The language of power
ITwhirled: Bad idea of the week: $38 billion gone in a keystroke
Podcast: HP sues Acer for patent infringement ... GPL license draft due today ... Yahoo offer unlimted e-mail capacity


NEWS UPDATES

HP sues Acer for patent infringement
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest PC vendor, filed suit against its fastest growing rival on Tuesday, alleging the infringement of five patents.

Microsoft to launch higher-spec Xbox 360
Microsoft Corp. will begin selling in April an upgraded version of its Xbox 360 console that packs a higher capacity disk drive and high-definition video interface not present on current models and is still cheaper than the rival PlayStation 3.

Report names Microsoft among DoubleClick suitors
Online advertising sales and hosting company DoubleClick Inc. is up for sale, and Microsoft Corp. could be a buyer, according to a report Wednesday.

Arrest deals blow to Siemens' IT services division
The arrest of a top-ranking Siemens AG official responsible for its IT services business will not affect daily operations at the unit, according to a company spokesman, but the publicity could hardly have come at a worse time.

Nortel, Microsoft lay ground for hosted services
Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. are extending their unified communications partnership to carrier networks, laying the groundwork for hosted services.

Cisco to acquire network processor company
Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to buy SpansLogic Inc., a privately held designer of network processing chips based in Mountain View, California, for an undisclosed sum.

TSMC making WiMax chips for Intel
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., the world's largest contract chip maker, is producing wireless and WiMax-related chips for Intel Corp., the companies said on Wednesday.

Google Apps' Gmail faces downtime problems
For at least the third time this month, Google Inc. is grappling with performance and availability problems in the Gmail service of Google Apps, the suite of hosted services that many consider a potential threat to Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite of desktop software.

Metasploit hacking tool now Windows friendly
Metasploit 3.0, released early Tuesday morning, has been rewritten in the Ruby programming language to make the software faster and less buggy for Windows users, who make up the great majority of the software's users.

VMware enters the Linux kernel
The next revision of the Linux kernel is to include a virtualization feature developed by VMware, called VMI. The stable update, version 2.6.21, will then allow para-virtualized operating systems -- Linux itself -- to run inside virtual machines on top of, and to some extent sharing, the Linux kernel.


UNIX TIP

The language of power
By Sandra Henry Stocker

If you have any role in dealing with the power provided to the systems you manage, it's useful to be familiar with the terminology used to describe power and power devices such as UPS systems. Let's examine some of the terminology that you are likely to hear when people are talking about power provided to computer systems.

Subscribe to Unix in the Enterprise - Tips and tricks for managing your Unix systems.


ITWHIRLED

Bad idea of the week: $38 billion gone in a keystroke
Imagine you're a computer tech working for the government of Alaska and you accidentally formatted a hard drive where information was kept about the $38 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays out shares of the state oil revenues to residents, is kept. No problem: you can always restore from the backup drive! Well, except that you formatted that too. OK, so there are always the tapes! Um, but those are unreadable. Now the real fun starts.

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HP sues Acer for patent infringement ... GPL license draft due today ... Yahoo offer unlimted e-mail capacity

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