"A Merry Fitzmas to us all my dears!"
COMPETITION
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Oracle-Siebel antitrust review gets extension
Extension comes as Department of Justice requests
additional information in connection with the deal.
Oracle goes for girth
Oracle takes a dual approach to fight the competition:
Fusion Middleware and industry-specific, niche applications.
MARKETS
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P2P network pushes play on paid service
iMesh relaunches Tuesday as the first formerly
unregulated peer-to-peer network to turn itself into a paid music service.
iPorn:
Adult sites offer iPod 'featurettes'
Independently produced content made for Apple's new
video iPod is beginning to appear online - and as with any new technology, it
may be sex that sells first. Pinup site Suicide Girls has launched a new, free
feature: downloadable videos of interviews and photo shots with its models, all
configured for the video-capable iPod. At least one unambiguously adult site,
Povpod.com, has also released content for the device. Apple unveiled the
video-enabled iPod last week, along with a new version of the iTunes music store
that sells music videos, some short films and episodes from five TV shows, for
$1.99 each.
Microsoft to
Enter Market for Business Intelligence
Microsoft Office, the familiar toolbox of desktop
computing, is a huge and lucrative business, but demand has slowed. In a new bid
for growth, the Microsoft Corporation plans to announce today that it is making
an ambitious push into the $13 billion-a-year market for business intelligence
software. The company is trying to lure new business by extending Office well
beyond its well-known programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and
presentations. Business intelligence software is used to help workers quickly
find and analyze information inside their corporations. The programs offered by
a variety of suppliers range from software used to automatically retrieve hourly
or daily sales results to sophisticated analytics programs used to detect fraud
and money-laundering.
Bill Gates to
Buy Mars!
He'll use his new version of Windows 'Microsoft
Wormhole' to get him there fast! Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the history
of planet Earth -- if we discount the massive collection of beads recently found
in the cave of Kromaguez, a prehistoric man who lived in the North of Spain, and
also had a summer cave in the South of France. One would think the founder of
Microsoft has no more mountains to climb. That's far from true, and those
mountains are not on this planet.
AMD
nabs market share from Intel
Saw higher shipments growth rates in Q3 too. Get
breaking Enterprise news straight to your desktop - click here to find out how.
AMD's share of the x86 chip market reached 17.8 per cent during Q3 as the chip
vendor grabbed market share from arch-rival Intel and lesser competitor
Transmeta. The latter's share will soon barely trouble the scorer - in this case
Mercury Research - now that it's down to a tenth of a percentage point from
two-tenths of a percentage point in Q2. Intel, by contrast, holds 80.8 per cent
of the market, down from 82.2 per cent in the previous quarter.
NBC, Time Warner strike new cable deal
Agreement includes video-on-demand rights and
interactive feature that lets viewers restart shows already in progress.
Sweden
champions the cow-powered train Bovine biogas
Those readers who have ever wondered, like you do, how
many miles to the cow you'd get from a bovine biogas-powered train need look no
further than the Swedish cities of Linkoping and Vastervik for the answer: 2.5.
That we are able to reveal this astounding fact is thanks to the aforementioned
centres of population which are linked by a methane-driven rail service which
gets its fuel from a local biogas factory dedicated to turning cows into
combustibles. And, although the boss of Svensk Biogas, Carl Lilliehook, admits
to BBC that the cost of running the train is 20 per cent higher than with
conventional diesel, the inexorable rise in oil prices will ultimately vindicate
the initiative.
THE INTERNET
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VeriSign
and ICANN strike monster net deal
VeriSign has dropped all its lawsuits against internet
overseeing organisation ICANN, agreed to hand over ownership of the root zone,
and in return been awarded control of all dotcoms until 2012. The agreement is a
huge boost to ICANN, dragged down by the lawsuits and fighting for autonomy
against both the US government and the United Nations. But it also represents a
significant victory for VeriSign's obstructive tactics as ICANN sought to
establish its sway over the net.
DER REICH 2.0
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Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems
The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an
11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications
companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it
easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online
communications. Larry D. Conrad of Florida State University calls the order to
upgrade Internet systems "overkill." Related Site: Communications Assistance for
Law Enforcement Act (fcc.gov) The action, which the government says is intended
to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the
threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at
least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the
government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the
universities are not raising civil liberties issues. The order, issued by the
Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal
Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to
universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and
commercial Internet access providers.
ZUT ALORS
==========
War game incenses Iranians
Cyberspace troops who blow up nuclear sites spark bitter
comment in Iran and a petition asking that the game be shelved.
20 fined for using letters W and Q
A Turkish court has fined 20 people for using the
letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law that
bans use of characters not in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said. The
court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira
($75.53) for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, at the event last
year. The letters Q and W do not exist in the Turkish alphabet.
Hungry Horse News
Bill Dean isn't sure who tried to burn down his hotel
early last Wednesday morning. But he does know this: They sure are brazen. Fire
broke out in three separate locations in the Glacier Mountain Shadows/Western
Inn about 2 a.m. Fortunately no one was hurt and damage was kept to a minimum.
That was due to the quick response of guests - who just happened to be police
officers and expert trackers from Everson, Wash.