Michael Singer

Sun Microsystems Tuesday said it has acquired Afara Websystems, Inc., for an undisclosed amount of stock and options. The San Jose, Calif.-based startup develops next-generation, SPARC-based microprocessor technology, which the Palo Alto, Calif.-based networking giant said would fit nicely in its UltraSPARC development. Sun’s workstations based on the SPARC chips include the SPARCstation, SPARCserver, Ultra1, […]

In a move reminiscent of Unisys’ attempts to assert its rights over the GIF image compression standard, battle lines are being drawn in the fight over the JPEG file format. Late last week, Austin, Texas-based Forgent Networks flexed its legal muscle saying that it wants to begin collecting royalties for the widely-used lossy compression technique […]

Two government-sponsored supercomputers are getting a boost from the best-known names in Silicon Valley. NASA Wednesday said has installed the Hewlett-Packard AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer for climate research studies into environmental issues such as global warming. Information technology services firm Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) installed the HP system at NASA’s Center for Computational Sciences at the […]

Norton anti-virus maker Symantec Corp. Wednesday said it will plunk down upwards of $355 million in cash to acquire three separate companies for its security product lineup. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said it has signed an agreement to acquire Riptech, Inc. for an estimated $145 million; Recourse Technologies for about $135 million; and SecurityFocus for […]

In 1991, enough people complained about annoying phone calls from telemarketers that Congress passed an Act that lets consumers defend themselves. The legislation gave birth to the “Do-Not-Call” list movement. More than a decade later, the calls are still coming from an increasing amount of faceless Internet-based call centers. Hoping to help telecom companies win […]

Imagine you are a geologist on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean, when you need to access the company’s supercomputer. So you flip down your wearable computer eyepiece interface and instantly access petabytes of data and teraflops of computing at gigabytes per second. It’s not science fiction, it’s “Visual Area Networking” – […]

The Ethernet standard got a shot in the arm Tuesday towards its goal of becoming a Universal Broadband Access technology. The Fremont, Calif.-based Ethernet in the First Mile Alliance (EFMA) said the IEEE 802.3ah EFM Task Force has reached consensus on a complete set of baseline technical proposals that will provide the foundation of the […]

In the soap opera that is Network Associates’ unsolicited bid to buyback McAfee.com , there is only one certainty. Committee members Rick Shell and Frank Gill are not giving up control of the company at a discount. “This deal is tremendously undervalued,” said McAfee.com CEO Srivats Sampath. “We are basically saying that either NAI can […]

SAN FRANCISCO — The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Monday demonstrated version 1.0 of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), pushing the technology further to being adopted as a Web standard. Pronounced “Sam-el,” its XML-based framework helps secure transmitted communications over the Internet. SAML is also important because it defines mechanisms to […]

SAN FRANCISCO — A gathering of companies looking to control the Web services sector outlined its plan to fight its two biggest foes: security and Microsoft Passport. The Liberty Alliance, which is backed by major players like Sun Microsystems , AOL and Hewlett-Packard unveiled version 1.0 of its long-awaited technical specifications for online “identity management” […]

Despite holding a grip on only 8.2 percent of the online population in the U.S., Macintosh users reign supreme, according to a new report released Friday. According to the survey from Internet metrics provider Nielsen//NetRatings , Mac users are more educated, live in higher income households and are more Web savvy than their PC-compatible counterparts […]

Oracle Wednesday announced a new a package of software aimed at pulling all of a company’s data together. The new Oracle Collaboration Suite lets companies store and search for e-mails, voice mail, appointments, documents and PowerPoint presentations on a single database. Speaking to financial analysts, chairman and CEO Larry Ellison Wednesday said Oracle Collaboration Suite […]