Micron, Oracle settle memory price-fixing lawsuit
Micron Technology has reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by Oracle over an alleged conspiracy to increase DRAM prices, it said on Thursday.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged a conspiracy to increase DRAM prices and other violations of federal and state antitrust and unfair competition laws based on purported conduct for the period from Aug. 1, 1998 through at least June 15, 2002, Micron said. Read more...
Adobe auto-update eases Flash update chore – on Windows only
Adobe has introduced an auto-updater for its Flash software packages that reduces the chore of updating the widely-used application by automating the process for all supported browsers on Windows machines. Previously users had to apply individual updates to Chrome, Firefox and IE add-ons and plug-ins, a process that often went neglected, leaving systems open to attack. Read more...
Gnome 3.4 brings a bevy of big changes
Roughly a year after the launch of Gnome 3, the project's developers have unveiled Gnome 3.4, the second major update to the controversial desktop environment.
Newly added features in Gnome 3.4 include video calling, a new documents search facility, a new virtual machine and remote access application, smooth scrolling, new application menus, Windows Live online account integration, and a new animated background that adjusts its brightness over the course of the day. Read more...
How IBM manages 80,000 bring-your-own devices
IBM CIO Jeanette Horan has plenty of IT projects and systems to worry about, but perhaps one of the most pressing and timely is Big Blue's ongoing BYOD (bring your own device) rollout, which is aimed at including all of the company's 440,000 employees over time.
The IBM workforce is "hugely mobile," with many working at client sites, home offices, and other locations outside corporate buildings, Horan said in a recent interview at IBM's office in Cambridge, Mass. IBM has long had a corporate managed mobile phone plan that historically has focused on BlackBerrys, she said. Read more...
BlackBerry maker to focus on business customers
Struggling BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Thursday that it plans to return its focus to its corporate customers after failing to compete with flashier, consumer-oriented phones such as Apple's iPhone and models that run Google's Android software.
The shift in strategy came with a management shakeup that includes longtime executive Jim Balsillie leaving the board and severing ties with a company he helped build and later see decline.
RIM said it will focus its consumer efforts on targeted offerings that tap the company's strengths. That includes devices that employees will want to buy on their own and bring to the corporate environment. The company was exploring partnerships and other opportunities for consumer products that aren't deemed central. Those products could include software and features that are then incorporated into RIM's own offerings. Read more...
Apple pledge could lead to China wage hikes
A pledge by the manufacturer of Apple's iPhones and iPads to limit work hours at its factories in China could force other global corporations to hike pay for Chinese workers who produce the world's consumer electronics, toys and other goods.
Foxconn Technology's promise comes as Beijing is pushing foreign companies to share more of their revenues with Chinese employees. It follows a report by a labor auditor hired by Apple Inc. that found Foxconn was regularly violating legal limits on overtime, with factory employees working more than 60 hours per week. Read more...
School punishes Filipino boys for Facebook kissing
A Philippine Catholic school is withholding the diplomas of six high school boys who uploaded Facebook photos that appear to show them kissing one another, an education official said Friday.
A day earlier, a Philippine court rejected another Catholic school's decision to bar five girls from graduation ceremonies because they had posed in bikinis for photos posted on Facebook. The cases test the limits of privacy in a conservative Catholic nation that is also among the world's most prolific users of social networking sites.
Department of Education officer Samuel Mergenio said the six boys told him they had taken prank photos to make it appear that their lips touched. One of the boys uploaded the pictures on Facebook and mistakenly made them available to others, Mergenio said. Read more...
Wikipedia’s Next Big Thing: Wikidata, A Machine-Readable, User-Editable Database Funded By Google, Paul Allen And Others
Wikidata, the first new project to emerge from the Wikimedia Foundation since 2006, is now beginning development. The organization, known best for its user-edited encyclopedia of knowledge Wikipedia, recently announced the new project at February’s Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Berlin, describing Wikidata as new effort to provide a database of knowledge that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike.
There have been other attempts at creating a semantic database built from Wikipedia’s data before – for example, DBpedia, a community effort to extract structured content from Wikipedia and make it available online. The difference is that, with Wikidata, the data won’t just be made available, it will also be made editable by anyone. Read more...
Google ships Chrome 18, patches bugs and boosts hardware acceleration
Google yesterday patched nine vulnerabilities in Chrome and boosted the speed and reach of the browser's hardware acceleration with the launch of version 18.
According to the company, Chrome 18 enables accelerated Canvas 2D on Windows and Mac machines with compatible graphics processor units (GPUs), and expands support for the WebGL 3D standard to older systems.
Canvas 2D acceleration has been part of earlier builds of Chrome, but this is the first time that Google has turned it on in a "stable" version of the browser. Read more...