SAP describes road ahead for PLM software ... Service-pack previews for Vista, XP released

HIGHLIGHTS
News: SAP describes road ahead for its PLM software
News: Nokia discontinues some chipset development
News: Former Brocade CEO guilty of backdating charges
News: Microsoft releases service-pack previews for Vista, XP
News: Sun to axe jobs by mid-2008
Unix Tip: A SCSI mystery: Come and gone
ITwhirled: Argentine doctors perform surgery by cell-phone light


NEWS UPDATES

SAP describes road ahead for its PLM software
Business applications vendor SAP AG on Wednesday laid out the future path for its product lifecycle management (PLM) software over the next three-plus years.

Nokia discontinues some chipset development
Mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. will halt some chipset development and instead rely on technology from other chipset manufacturers, the company said Wednesday.

Former Brocade CEO guilty of backdating charges
A jury has found former Brocade Communications Systems Inc. CEO Gregory Reyes guilty of charges related to the company's backdating of stock-option grants.

Microsoft releases service-pack previews for Vista, XP
Microsoft Corp. has quietly released pre-beta code to two forthcoming Windows service packs to testers in the past week, but the company continues to remain vague about when the final code for Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista SP1 will make it to end users.

Sun to axe jobs by mid-2008
Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to lay off an unspecified number of employees by the middle of 2008 as part of a corporate restructuring effort, according to a filing Tuesday with the SEC.

Cisco sees Web 2.0 boom after posting strong Q4
Cisco Systems Inc. expects Web 2.0 to drive a growth curve similar to the Internet expansion of the 1990s, accelerating the company's revenue growth, Chairman and CEO John Chambers said Tuesday as Cisco announced strong fourth-quarter numbers.

Vodafone decides to hang onto Verizon
Vodafone Group PLC has decided to keep a 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless Inc. in a move to retain a toehold in the important U.S. mobile phone market.


UNIX TIP

A SCSI mystery: Come and gone
By Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

On a late Friday evening, just as I was about to leave for home, one of the servers I manage suddenly started having what appeared to be serious disk problems. Its NFS clients were collecting "NFS server not responding still trying" errors. The system itself was unable to process share and unshare commands. My initial fear was that the system had suffered a disk crash and would have to be rebuilt from spare parts and backups before the staff's arrival on Monday morning.

The system was still running, but having serious problems running ordinary commands and the console was filling up with messages like these...


ITWHIRLED

Argentine doctors perform surgery by cell-phone light
If your surgeon whipped out his or her cell phone while removing your appendix, you'd probably be a little concerned. But when a hospital in Argentina lost power, doctors borrowed mobile phones from the patient's family so that they could see well enough to complete the operation.