Articles by Jennifer LeClaire

Microsoft yesterday released its Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, providing system customers with security enhancements as well as reliability and performance improvements. Analysts said service pack releases are significant events for consumers under typical circumstances, but this Microsoft release offers more than the typical fixes and patches...

Toshiba and Elpida Memory both announced today high-performance DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips they say achieve the fastest data transfer rate yet attained by any memory device The second generation 512-megabit XDR (extreme data rate) DRAMs each have a peak operating speed of 3.2 Ghz, which provides a data transfer rate of 6.4 GB per sec...

Microsoft made two major advances this week including the launch of its MSN Video Downloads service and announcing plans to offer a new ID system designed to give users more control over personal information Microsoft said MSN Video Downloads will provide daily television programming, including video content from MSNBC.com, Food Network, FOX Sports...

After much ado last fall followed by a false start, the SCO Group has finally launched its legal information site to counter the popular Groklaw.net site SCO had originally said last October the site would use the domain name Prosco.net, but is instead located at SCO.com/scoip....

The recently formed Voice over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) announced this week that it has created a new committee to define security requirements for Internet telephony networks. Analysts said the outcome could be a significant boon for the industry "This is a significant step toward improving VoIP security standards," Aaron Nutt, Atlantic-ACM a...

"Beta release." These two words are attached to more and more software releases these days -- and not open-source products, either It seems almost everything Google releases, for example, is first introduced in beta version, and analysts said even Microsoft has now officially jumped on the beta bandwagon, aiming to create some early buzz for new ap...

Fabless semiconductor company Luxtera announced today that it has solved the longstanding problem of building advanced photonic interfaces into mass-produced silicon chips The company claimed that, for the first time, it is possible to integrate high-speed optical fiber interfaces in silicon devices produced in an industry-standard complementary me...

Imagine an automated medical treatment system that does not require onsite medical personnel on the front lines of battle, and is ready to receive, assess, and stabilize wounded soldiers during the critical hours following injury The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is moving toward that goal. DARPA an...

The Canadian government has proposed several copyright amendments that would serve to crack down on file sharing, preventing Internet users from freely swapping music, books and movies online "This is terrific news," said Canadian Recording Industry Association President Graham Henderson. "Canada is one step closer to having a copyright law that wi...

Motorola this week unveiled an all-new lineup of music-capable handsets -- but the long-awaited iTunes-compatible phone was nowhere to be found The Motorola E680i, with more than 2 GB of memory, allows users to transfer, store, catalog and enjoy their favorite tracks. The E725 model lets users wirelessly download their favorite music tracks and vid...

Computer Associates today named former Novell chief technology officer Alan Nugent to head its Unicenter business unit Effective April 8, Nugent will become senior vice president and general manager of Unicenter reporting to Russel Artzt, CA's executive vice president of products. CA's largest division, Unicenter is focused on infrastructure manag...

In a marriage between two hot server technologies, IBM announced at the Server Blade Summit yesterday that it will bundle evaluation copies of VMWare's virtual infrastructure into its eServer BladeCenter shipments Customers purchasing Big Blue's BladeCenter will receive six-month evaluation copies of VMware ESX Server, VMware Virtual SMP and VMware...

Novell made a slew of Linux announcements at this week's BrainShare gathering, but today all eyes are on its next major upgrade of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server and an acquisition that will expand its Zenworks systems management offering Dubbed Code 10, the new SuSE distribution is expected to move into beta testing in August and ship in early 2006....

In the latest development in an ongoing software soap opera, the European Union today rejected Microsoft's selection of a trustee whose duty would have been to make sure the company complies with EU antitrust laws "We have officially informed Microsoft that their proposal on the monitoring trustee is not acceptable," Commission spokesman Jonathan T...

High-tech heavy hitters such as IBM, Novell and Oracle are among those showing support for the Linux Standard Base (LSB), a set of standards designed to improve compatibility between Linux distributions The Free Standards Group (FSG) yesterday announced a long list of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) pledging support for the standard and added m...

Phishing is one of the fastest-growing security threats on the Internet, according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report from security vendor Symantec, with the number of phishing incidents rising to 33 million per week "Attackers are launching increasingly sophisticated attacks in an effort to compromise the integrity of corporate and pers...

In the face of a European Union threat to levy US$5 million in daily fines for allegedly failing to license selected software code, Microsoft today announced the expansion of its Shared Source Initiative to cover seven additional countries in the European Union Launched in May 2001 and now encompassing 17 unique code-sharing programs for various Mi...

Intrusion detection and prevention systems provider Internet Security Systems (ISS) issued a "protection advisory" targeting older versions of McAfee's anti-virus software engine last Thursday Attackers are able to trigger a stack overflow within the process importing the McAfee AntiVirus Library, according to ISS....

Opera Software this week released a beta version of the next Opera browser for the desktop. The new version includes scalable vector graphics (SVG), which automatically scales any Web page to fit a user's screen "We believe SVG will enter mainstream Web design in the future and we are very pleased to add native support in the Opera browser," said O...

Google launched a new site this week designed with open-source developers in mind. Dubbed Google Code, the site includes four open-source projects, APIs, and other tools to assist developers working on Google-related projects In their welcome letter, Chris DiBona, Google's open-source program manager, and engineering manager Greg Stein said they ho...