By John Oates
26th November 2008 12:47 GMT

Intel says it is unable to respond to the European Commission investigation into its business practices unless the regulator gives it access to certain documents from AMD. Intel is seeking to extend the deadline it has to respond to a month after it gets its hands on documents from AMD - the complainant in the case.

Back in July Intel was handed a Statement of Objections by the Commission accusing it off giving rebates to retailers who promised not to stock computers from rival chip supplier AMD, and offering money to an Original Equipment Manufacturer to delay launching an AMD-based laptop and rebates if it switched to become an Intel-only shop. Last month Intel went to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg to accuse the Competition Commission of breaching proper procedure - which means the deadline is suspended.

According to the Official Journal of the European Union, Intel is claiming that the Commission decision contains errors of law and that the time limit for it to respond should only start once it has been given documents from AMD. Intel said the Commission investigation is "the contested decisions are manifestly illegal because they permit the Commission to continue with an investigation which is discriminatory and partial".

By Nick Farrell
26 November 2008, 10:40 AM

APPLE MESSIAH Steve Jobs does not like people breaking Apple's rules and right now he is mightily miffed at the search engine Google which seem to have broken one of his commandments which he set in stone. When Steve approved the rules of Apple's Iphone Software Development Kit he demanded developers use APIs that come from his elite team of Mac developers.

Innovation is not allowed other than from the font of all innovation, the amazing shrinking Messiah himself. However Google Mobile uses undocumented APIs in order to use the Iphone's proximity sensor to prompt a verbal search. Such software cleverness is deemed naughty in Steve's sight and the Apple press claims that it could break in the future as Apple updates its software. So far St Steve has taken no action to cast Google into outer darkness, there to gnash its teeth for standing against the mighty Steve.

But many believe it is coming. One of the problems for Steve is that too many people are writing cool code for his Iphone toy and Apple just can't keep up with them all. If it were not for the fact that it is an item of faith that Steve Jobs is omnipotent, many would think that he just missed the Google code. But that would make him fallible.

by Jason D. O'Grady
November 25th, 2008 @ 4:53 pm

In a surprising move for the consumer electronics turned retail heavyweight, Apple has internally announced that retail store employees can match prices of other authorized retailers. The key phrase here is “authorized retailers” which means that Apple isn’t going to price match some gray marketer selling Macs online or pretty much anyone that doesn’t adhere to Apple’s strict Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy, which states:

…Minimum Advertised Price (M.A.P.) Guidelines apply to reseller’s advertisement of products acquired through the Reseller BTO Apple Store. The M.A.P. price for all BTO product acquired through the Reseller BTO Apple Store is the reseller acquisition cost divided by .92. Any deviations from the Guidelines may result in a reduction in AppleFund and/or Apple Specialist Resource Fund payments.

Previously store managers had a little room to make deals on larger purchases but there has never been a formal policy on price matching. The people this will probably cheese off the most is Apple’s remaining network of independent retail Apple stores (we have a great one in Philly called Springboard Media). ifoAppleStore notes that Apple doesn’t traditionally discount its products except on Black Friday and that Last Sunday Best Buy announced US$50-$150 discounts on various Macs, while Amazon.com typically offers year-round discounts on Macintosh models.

by Stephen Shankland
November 26, 2008 4:00 AM PST

Is Google's Chrome browser mainstream? Certainly not. But I've been curious how widespread its use is, in particular because I'm curious if I have any company in my choice to set Chrome as my default browser. So I persuaded CNET's tech guys to give a window on what's going on here at CNET News.

The result surprised me: 3.6 percent of those visiting the site in October used Chrome, up from 1 percent in September, when Google launched Chrome. That's higher than I expected. It lagged Microsoft Internet Explorer, with 40.7 percent, Firefox with 37.4 percent, and Safari with 18.2 percent, but beat out Opera, with 1.2 percent in October. (Other browsers bring the total to 100 percent.) Of course, CNET News has a more adventurous and techno-savvy audience than the average Web site.

For comparison, I looked at data from Net Applications, which releases browser statistics based on the 160 million different people who visit a network of 40,000 sites using its Web analytics service. The company's data skews somewhat toward usage in North America and Europe, but it's still a more mainstream view of browser use than our site's. Net Applications gives Chrome's share at 0.74 percent, essentially tied with Opera at 0.75 percent for October.

Leading the pack is IE with 71.3 percent, followed by Firefox at 20 percent, and Safari at 6.6 percent. So it doesn't look like Chrome is crushing either of the major powers. But second-tier browser companies should certainly be paying attention, given how rapidly Chrome ascended to striking distance. Google has a strong brand and a lot of programmers, though even most folks still aren't convinced they need to switch.

By Ryan Paul
November 26, 2008 - 07:34AM CT

The IPv6 Workgroup of the Linux Foundation has announced that all major Linux distributions are now in compliance with Department of Defense certification policies, several months after the DoD began enforcing the requirements in its procurement practices.

The compliance effort was driven by a collaboration involving IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Nokia, and several other major Linux stakeholders. IPv6, which stands for Internet Protocol Version 6, boosts the size of IP addresses to 128 bits. This simplifies routing by dramatically expanding the number of available addresses. IPv6 adoption will be necessitated by the eventual exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses, but the transition has been slow and challenging.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) accelerated its own move to IPv6-enabled technology and set 2008 as the target year for completion of the process. Major software vendors have had to fulfill specific requirements and validate their products against the Defense Information System Agency's IPv6 Special Interoperability Certification in order to avoid being excluded from DoD procurements. The DoD made certification mandatory in June.

According to the Linux Foundation, the most popular enterprise Linux distributions now meet the DoD's standards. The foundation's IPv6 workgroup was led by Venkata Jagana, IBM's chief architect of linux networking. IBM was an early participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force's efforts to devise IPv6 and implemented the protocol in its own AIX UNIX operating system in 1997. They began contributing to Linux's IPv6 development efforts a few years later.

by Matthew Miller
November 25th, 2008 @ 11:49 am

There has been a few rants posted over the last week or so about the statement that was made on a Microsoft Windows Mobile blog pertaining to the apparent lack of support for existing devices to support the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6 web browser. James is one person not happy about it and echoes many of the comments made on the MSDN blog post.

Brett is not happy either and made it a point to show how there are third party browsers that exceed anything Microsoft currently has with Internet Explorer Mobile and what it looks like Internet Explorer Mobile 6 may also support. Microsoft revealed Windows Mobile 6.1 and Internet Explorer Mobile 6 at CTIA in April and most of us thought we would see this latest version of the browser in WM 6.1 devices. That hasn’t happened and now it appears it will be in the recently revealed WM 6.5 update or available as a stand-alone download (highly doubtful IMHO).

I had no doubt that IE Mobile 6 would run on these latest WM 6.1 devices and frankly I am quite surprised by the statement in the MSDN blog that existing hardware will not run the browser and people will have to buy new devices to use the browser. For people that pay US$200 to US$800 for their latest and greatest Windows Mobile devices and sign long term wireless carrier contracts that is just unacceptable to me and many others. I imagine if it is possible then the good folks over at XDA Developers will get it running on existing hardware.

Then again, maybe it really isn’t possible, which is hard to believe with devices running 500 to 600 MHz processors and 250+MB of RAM and 500+MB of ROM. Now let’s take a look from Microsoft’s side in regards to providing updates on Windows Mobile devices. It is fairly easy for Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Google to provide updates to customers across the board because all of these companies have their own devices.

by Brooke Crothers
November 24, 2008 8:20 PM PST

Rumors of an iPhone-style Microsoft phone running on Nvidia silicon add heft, in part, to what Nvidia has been talking about since early this year. In the spring, Nvidia demonstrated its Tegra chip-based mobile phone prototype to me and pretty much anyone in the media who made a visit to its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.

Nvidia has made it clear that the chip platform was targeted at Windows Mobile--a point that an Nvidia representative reiterated Monday. Though the prototype phone (actually a development platform) is quite a bit thicker than a real "thin" phone that a handset provider would bring out at some point, the prototype runs on top of Windows Mobile, as it would presumably in a commercial device.

And what does Nvidia bring to the table? The master of faster graphics processors wants to apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile Internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface. After a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile Internet devices, or MIDs.

iPhone-style devices with Nvdia's Tegra APX (or Tegra 600) incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. And Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile Internet device, not just the graphics component. (This Nvidia Mobile Device page shows the Tegra 600 series and Tegra APX.)

By Jacqui Cheng
November 25, 2008 - 11:32AM CT

I have a confession to make: I'm pretty sure I have cancer (multiple kinds), heart palpitations, hypoglycemia, and skin tumors. I haven't talked to a real doctor about it, but Dr. Internet has helped me diagnose all of my symptoms over the last few years. (And if you think I'm trying to be funny in the first sentence, you should find out the truth from some of my friends.)

This is a condition described as "cyberchondria," which Microsoft has spent time researching while trying to improve its search engine results for Live Search. Neurotic self-diagnosis is nothing new; it was put to great comic effect in the opening pages of Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), for instance, in which the narrator concludes he has every disease from gout to zymosis (but not "housemaid's knee") after reading medical textbooks at the British Library.

But thinking you're about to die isn't all fun and games. Microsoft's work on cyberchondria shows how easy Internet access to medical information can really affect people. The company has just published a report on its large-scale, longitudinal, log-based study of how people search for medical information based on a 40 million page anonymized sample, combined with a survey of over 500 Microsoft employees about their own health-search experiences.

The results are much as you might expect. People like to use the Internet to better understand their symptoms, but they often find themselves digging deep into WebMD or Wikipedia before discovering—to their horror—that the tiny rash they thought they had is actually a rare skin disease that could (and likely will) kill them tomorrow.

By Heather Havenstein
November 25, 2008

Google Inc. yesterday acknowledged plans to "significantly" reduce the number of contractors it uses, according to a report on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal. The report noted that the company has no plans to cut its permanent workforce.

"We have been thinking for some time, before the acute phase of the economic crisis, about significantly reducing the number of contract workers," spokeswoman Jane Penner, told the newspaper. Google did not immediately respond to Computerworld's request for comment on the Journal report. Penner declined to detail how many contract workers -- Google has approximately 10,000 -- would be cut or when they might be let go.

Google has 20,213 company employees, the article noted. November has been unusually rife with bad news for Google. Just last week, Google announced plans to shutter its Lively virtual world. And the unveiling last week of its new SearchWiki interface for reranking and commenting on search results immediately came under fire from some in the blogosphere for its lack of an opt-out option.

Meanwhile the price of Google stock sunk to multiyear lows this month as the tech sector was dragged down as part of Wall Street's meltdown.

By Scott Gilbertson
25th November 2008 15:02 GMT

Review - Fedora might not be getting a complete makeover or flashy new features in version 10, out today, but some welcome enhancements under-the-hood make this a worthwhile upgrade. If you've never given Fedora a try, now is a great time.

The tenth revision slick and stable and it has a rock solid feel to it that, for our money, trumps even Ubuntu's latest release. Fedora 10 has many of the features we loved in Ubuntu - the latest version of GNOME and the new NetworkManager utility, for instance. As a bonus you also get the always excellent RPM package system, the new Empathy instant messenger framework, PackageKit and host of other Fedora-specific tools.

Something for everyone - For long-time Fedora fans, two noteworthy changes in this releaseshould be welcome news. The first is the new "glitch-free" version of PulseAudio, the underlying audio system in Fedora. So what is this glitch-free version of PulseAudio? The details are quite complex, but essentially what you'll notice is better, smoother sound output.

PulseAudio itself is not new and offers a number of advantages over other audio subsystems. Unfortunately, the version that shipped with Fedora 9, which we a reviewed earlier this year, had some performance and reliability issues. The new version is designed to solve those problems and also improves PulseAudio's integration with other system tools and applications.

By Kelly Fiveash
25th November 2008 11:57 GMT

Apple has pumped Safari with yet another update less than two weeks after version 3.2 of the browser was released. The Cupertino-based company has been scurrying to fix a host of bugs in Safari that left many Mac fanboys in a spin, with the revamped browser consistently crashing on launch. Safari 3.2.1 was shoved out the door yesterday by Apple, which offered a vague maxim about “stability improvements” being added to the browser.

Version 3.2 landed on 13 November and immediately got a frosty reception from Safari users who complained that the update, which came loaded with improved anti-phishing protection and the latest security fixes, caused frequent crashes. Yesterday's stealth patch, which had no Apple fanfare whatsoever, is now available for download both for Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista.

Apple closed a number of security holes with the release of Safari 3.2 including an update to the framework that underpins the browser – Webkit, and a bug in its autocomplete feature. However, many have grumbled that Safari 3.2 had not been scrutinised and tested enough prior to release. Whether Safari 3.2.1 will right those wrongs remains to be seen.

By Gregg Keizer
November 22, 2008

A federal judge on Friday ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in the "Vista Capable" class-action lawsuit, rejecting the company's contention that Ballmer knew nothing about loosening hardware requirements for the marketing program.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman said that Ballmer must meet with the plaintiffs' lawyers within 30 days, and limited the deposition to three hours. "We will, of course, comply with the court's order," company spokesman David Bowermaster said in an e-mail Friday night. Last month, Microsoft Corp. tried to block Ballmer's deposition by arguing that he had no unique knowledge of the Vista Capable program, which the company ran in 2006 to tout then-current PCs as being able to run the operating system when it was later released.

In a declaration, Ballmer echoed that stance. "I was not involved in any of the operational decisions about the Windows Vista Capable program," he said. "I was not involved in establishing the requirements computers must satisfy to qualify for the Windows Vista Capable program. I was not involved in formulating any marketing strategy or any public messaging surrounding the Windows Vista Capable program."

Instead, Microsoft said that former executives Jim Allchin and Will Poole, who left the company in January 2007 and September 2008, respectively, were the most involved in the decisions about Vista Capable. Microsoft's spokesman repeated that assertion Friday. "Mr. Ballmer's knowledge about the Windows Vista Capable program comes from the executives he empowered to run the program and make decisions, and two of those executives already testified in this case," said Bowermaster.

By Sylvie Barak
25 November 2008, 12:14 PM

REDUNDANCY IS A DIRTY word in Silicon Valley at the moment and Google, claiming immunity from recession, has been trying to hold off saying it with the help of a legal loophole. As a public company, Google would be forced to announce if any layoffs were on the cards, and reports have been popping up all over the place claiming that a cull is coming, with 10,000 jobs likely affected.

But what those sensationalist stories don’t take into account is that Google has a massive contractor workforce, which can be let go quietly without any fuss at all. It isn’t as if Google has invented the wheel where contractors are concerned. Companies have been hiring temporary contractors for less money and no benefits for yonks now, but Google has found it also now has a handy way of slashing its workforce, satisfying its shareholders and avoiding announcing layoffs of permanent staff.

A Google spokesperson admitted that, when it came to contractors, "We have 10,000, and we have had a plan in place for a while to significantly reduce that number," but she added "This is something we've been thinking about for a while – six or seven months. It predates the most acute phase of the [current economic] crisis." Googly contractors may find their contracts cancelled or simply not renewed.

At the moment, the search engine giant is not saying which. In the meanwhile, the firm has implemented a slowdown on hiring. So 'lay-offs' may be word Google is trying to avoid saying at all costs, but 'recession proof' may be two words the firm should definitely avoid from now on.

by Zack Whittaker
November 25th, 2008 @ 3:46 am

The last few days have been an eye-opener for me, because I’ve discovered there may in fact be little point in having Twitter. I see Twitter as a pain in the arse, something you have to go out of your way for and tell the world something you really shouldn’t have to. I’m not the sort of person who’ll want to keep the world updated about a) my bowel movements, b) where I’m heading to or c) some other crap which nobody else cares about.

There are two sides to every story (at least), of course. Twitter is what we call an “Enterprise 2.0″ application; not only a web application which tells the world what you’re doing, but is highly influential in the way businesses run, keeping customers and partners informed and gaining feedback on services. Facebook has just been declined a $500m offer for the Twitter brand, name and application, which as Steve Clayton rightly points out, “is a big chunk of cash for something that isn’t making money at the moment.”

However with the massive force behind Facebook, many simply update their status their instead. For those, and us indeed, who are at university, Twitter isn’t something that seems to be catching on. I’ve got many, many friends on Facebook which is used to interconnect the campuses, the counties and the continents, but Twitter just doesn’t seem to have taken off. And thinking about it, how are they making their money? Whether we like it or not, most web startup’s don’t survive the first 18 months; I dread to think what they have to do to keep themselves going.

Whilst it may be a next-generation application, I still struggle to see the point it makes, or the impact it has. With the API and development opportunities, it’s certainly made an impact in developing technologies such as Adobe AIR, but besides this I fail to see why I should continue to update mine; something I haven’t done in months. Whether you’re a Twitter user or not, let me know. I’d much rather find a viable answer to this question than be left in the dark any more.

by Stephen Shankland
November 25, 2008 4:00 AM PST

Sorry if it sounds like I'm drinking the Google Kool-Aid here, but I switched from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome as my default browser for the very reason Google's executives said we should: speed. Years ago, Firefox won me over chiefly with plug-ins, tabbed browsing, and some security advantages.

But using Chrome removed a bit of friction from Web I hadn't realized was there. It felt like discovering I'd been driving with the parking brake on just a bit. Here's what coaxed me away: Chrome starts way faster than Firefox. Web pages load faster when I type in an address or click a link. The Omnibox--Chrome's combination location bar and search box--often gets me where I want to go at least a keystroke faster, and I'm not terribly worried about sending Web navigation and search data to Google.

Individually, a few tenths of a second here or there doesn't make much difference. But it adds up fast. I spend hours a day using the Web--not just browsing, but also uploading photos, issuing instructions to my bank, editing documents online, and posting comments. As the Web gets more complex and more deeply embedded in my life, waiting for it gets more annoying. I hadn't set out to convert to Chrome.

I just wanted to see how well it worked, so I used it to run my personal e-mail while at work. Then I added in reading RSS feeds. After a few weeks, I noticed that I was manually copying Web addresses to Chrome and realized that my subconscious mind had made its decision. So last week, I set it as my default browser, despite a range of criticisms (see below).