Andy Patrizio

Google is adding Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice suite to Google Pack, its freely downloadable collection of productivity software. The software is available immediately. Google Pack is quite a collection that includes Google Earth, Norton Security Scan, Google Desktop, Firefox with Google Toolbar, Adobe Reader, Skype, RealPlayer and other Google  products. StarOffice is Sun’s  commercial version of […]

It won’t clear the polluted air around Beijing, but the new IBM supercomputer purchased by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau (BMB) will go a long way to help forecast the weather and air-quality control in next year’s Olympic games. The System p575 is an 80-node machine with IBM’s POWER5+ microprocessors, capable of delivering 9.8 teraflops per […]

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new method of semiconductor cooling that could improve the cooling rate inside computers by as much as 250 percent. The method, called Ionic Wind technology, almost sounds like a Sharper Image commercial. But the Ionic Wind won’t clean the air; it will be integrated onto fan-cooled heat sinks. […]

Fujitsu Computer Systems has introduced two new notebooks, one an update to its popular convertible tablet/notebook and the other an ultramobile PC the size of a day-timer, which has only been available in Japan till now. The Lifebook U810 weighs a little more than 1.5 pounds and offers a 5.6-inch LCD with touch screen functionality […]

Sun is in the process of extending its multithreading support to protect applications and data alike from accidentally stepping on each other and potentially corrupting memory or data. The solution is hardly unique. It’s the same issue relational database vendors went through 30 years ago. When you have multiple people accessing and modifying the same […]

Microsoft’s monthly patch cycle was unusually large this month, with nine Security Bulletins addressing a total of 14 vulnerabilities. Eight of the fixes are listed as critical, the most important and severe issues. Four of the fixes are rated important and the final two are listed as moderate. A particularly serious Bulletin is MS07-046, which […]

Intel today upped its Xeon offerings with a faster low-power processor and finally made its fastest chip usable by major OEMs. The company introduced the 50-watt Xeon X5335, a 2.0GHz chip with a 1333MHz front-side bus. It replaces the 1.6GHz part that Intel  had been shipping. Also, the 3.0GHz X5365 is now viable to OEMs […]

AMD today introduced a new specification for improving the performance of software parallelism. As it is, many developers have to learn the complex art of parallel processing for the two- and four-core world we now live in, and that only gets harder in an eight-core-and-beyond world. The specification is designed to aid in improving performance […]

Oh, to have Nvidia’s problems… The graphics chip vendor reported another outstanding quarter, but due to a warning concerning supply it took a hit from investors. Revenue for the quarter ended July 29 climbed 36 percent to $935.3 million from last year’s $687.5 million. The company reported a profit of $172.7 million, or 43 cents […]

A group of researchers from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) offered up what they felt was a new and unique way to target spammers at the recent USENIX Security 2007 conference in Boston. As it turns out, their idea isn’t so new. Spam most often takes the form of a sales pitch, […]

Microsoft has a big batch of fixes in store for next week’s Patch Tuesday, more so than last month’s haul. In an alert sent out to customers and systems administrators, the company reported it would issue nine security bulletins, a bump over the six issued last month. Of the nine fixes, six are labeled as […]

AMD has sent out invitations with a decidedly Hollywood flavor to them to journalists for a Sept. 10 event that sounds like a movie premiere. Given that the Barcelona family of Opteron chips is due to ship to OEMs this month and be on sale in September, chances seem likely the premiere will be silicon-based […]