By Charlie Demerjian
31 July 2008, 7:46 PM

WE KNOW THAT HP, Dell and every other PC maker out there is having graphics chips fail at alarming rates due to defective Nvidia chips, but who pays in the end? The users in everything other than money, but the cash cost is evenly divided between HP and Nvidia.

According to people close to the agreement, Nvidia has agreed to shoulder half the costs that HP sees, and that is averaging about $150 per incident. Someone doesn't want this information out, and anyone close to it is being shut up. This brings up two questions, why are people not talking when it is in their best interest to talk, and how much could this cost in the end? Both have unpleasant answers.

The talking part is the most puzzling, if you look at HP and Dell, they are getting their posteriors reamed by their best customers. We will tip the hat to Dell for leaving the comments up there, they are taking quite a severe beating. HP is taking one as well, just not as publicly, and with far less direct control, as it is off their servers. It is costing them about as much in dollars as it is reputation.

If you recall, the initial NV hit on this was $150-200 million, and the OEMs pay half of that, depending on who they are. This means they take the same hit collectively, likely mostly shouldered by the big three (Dell, HP, Lenovo), meaning tens of millions per company. So, the companies are being bled to the tune of eight digits and getting kicked in the sensitive parts as a thank-you.

July 31, 2008
By Heather Havenstein

Ten months after launching a preview version of its overhaul, social bookmarking tool Delicious dropped the dots from its former del.icio.us moniker and released a faster and easier to learn Version 2.0. Delicious, which is owned by Yahoo Inc., said that the new site -- which went live today -- has been moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster.

"This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable," Delicious said. "You may not have noticed, but the old back end was getting creaky under the load of 5 million users." In addition, Delicious overhauled its search engine in an effort to make it faster and more powerful. The company noted that the engine "used to take ages to return results."

The new search engine allows users to search with one of their tags, another user's bookmarks or within their social network. Delicious also updated the site's user interface to improve usability, and added often-requested features like alphabetical sorting of bookmarks. "Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion," the company said.

"At the same time, we're hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn." The move to eliminate the dots in the URL aims to avoid the confusion and misspellings that came from the old moniker, according to the company. Although the old domain and URL will continue to work, users have to log in again to the new site because it requires a new log-in cookie.

by Mary Jo Foley
July 31st, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

A new whitepaper that Microsoft researchers are set to present at a conference next month sheds more light on Microsoft’s back-end cloud infrastructure. The paper, entitled, “SCOPE: Easy and Efficient Parallel Processing of Massive Data Sets,” details a new declarative scripting language that is optimized for storing and analyzing massive data sets (like search logs and click streams) that are key to cloud-scale service architectures.

SCOPE, or Structure Computations Optimized for Parallel Execution, is the name of the language. According to the paper — which Microsoft is on tap to present at the VLDB 2008 conference in late August — SCOPE doesn’t require explicit parallelism, but it will be “amenable to efficient parallel execution” across large clusters. SCOPE is like SQL, but with C# extensions, the paper says.

I found the new whitepaper via a blog link from Greg Linden, an employee of Microsoft’s Live Labs. Linden blogged: “Scope is similar to Yahoo’s Pig, which is a higher level language on top of Hadoop, or Google’s Sawzall, which is a higher level language on top of MapReduce. But, where Pig focuses on and advocates a more imperative programming style, Scope looks much more like SQL.”

Reading through the paper, I noticed an explanation of how SCOPE fits in with Cosmos, Microsoft’s back-end storage layer that currently powers Live Search and other Microsoft services. The SCOPE whitepaper sheds more light on what Cosmos is and how it works. From the paper: “Microsoft has developed a distributed computing platform, called Cosmos, for storing and analyzing massive data sets. Cosmos is designed to run on large clusters consisting of thousands of commodity servers. Disk storage is distributed with each server having one or more direct-attached disks.”

by Stephen Shankland
July 31, 2008 2:48 PM PDT

Carl Icahn may be ducking the spotlight at Yahoo's shareholder meeting Friday, but we'll probably hear who else shares his dissatisfaction with the Internet company's recent share price. Any shareholder disgruntled with how Jerry Yang and colleagues handled Microsoft's attempted acquisition may pipe up at the meeting.

CNET News plans live-blog reporting and video coverage for the shareholder meeting in San Jose, Calif.. Most expect Yang to come in for the latest in a long series of serious criticisms. The company's stock closed at $19.18 the day before Microsoft launched its attempt to acquire Yahoo, soared immediately afterward to near $30, but since then has dropped back down below $20.

Don't expect to hear about Yahoo's new board at the meeting, though. Icahn, whose proxy battle won him and two allies seats on it, won't be joining the board until after the meeting, and his two allies won't be announced until August 15. For a preview of tomorrow's attractions, this piece by my fellow reporter Dawn Kawamoto provides good background.

By Jacqui Cheng
July 31, 2008 - 02:32PM CT

Social media sites, and those that host user-generated content, need to do more to screen the content on their sites and protect users—particularly children—from videos that could be considered harmful, according to a UK government agency.

The House of Commons' Culture Media and Sport Committee released its tenth report today, titled "Harmful content on the Internet and in video games," which examines "the Internet’s dark side" and what should be done to keep users safe. The Committee feels that social media sites need to implement stricter policies, implement more content filtering, and make it easier to report abuse.

The Committee starts off by describing the Internet as a place "where hardcore pornography and videos of fights, bullying or alleged rape can be found, as can websites promoting extreme diets, self-harm, and even suicide." Because of this, websites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube need to take a more active stance against offensive or illegal content than they do currently.

The Committee expressed distress that there appeared to be an industry standard of 24 hours to remove content that contains child abuse, for example, and strongly recommended making such important issues higher-priority. Another area of concern was over the apparent realization that videos uploaded to YouTube go through no filtering (human or computer) before being posted to the site.

By Gregg Keizer
July 31, 2008

Mozilla Corp. has released the first preview of Firefox 3.1, the fast-track update that the open-source company has pegged with a late 2008 or early 2009 ship date. Code-named "Shiretoko," named for a national park on Japan's northern-most island of Hokkaido, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 was delayed several days because of a last-minute bug found in the Mac OS X version.

Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 includes some, but not all, of the features Mozilla hopes to add to the update as work continues. Among the noticeable changes: several improvements to the address bar, which Mozilla dubs the "Smart Location Bar" in recognition of the search enhancements it received in Firefox 3.0; and changes to tab-switching.

Pressing Ctrl-Tab in Alpha 1 switches between current and last-viewed tabs rather than simply moving to the next tab to the right. Thumbnails of each page are also now displayed for easier recognition. Like many of the features slated for Firefox 3.1, the revised tab-switching was originally meant to be included with Firefox 3.0, but had been dropped during development to keep that June version on schedule.

Current Firefox users can add the same switching behavior to their browsers by installing the Ctrl-Tab add-on. Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 is the first version of the browser built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.1 engine, which is also in development. According to Mozilla, some of the changes in the preview will affect Web page compatibility; a "For Developers" page has been set up to describe those changes.

By Dean Pullen
31 July 2008, 10:45 AM

AFTER PREVIOUS rumours of Apple including different, and possibly proprietary, chipsets in its next round of Macbooks, comes additional speculation regarding the future internals of Apple hardware. A report on PC Perspective has identified that Nvidia's chipsets may be the perfect fit for Apple's new range of laptops, expected in September.

Ryan Shrout certainly provides a compelling argument. He believes that Apple would have refreshed products at the same time as the Centrino 2 product release if Apple was to provide a 'standard Centrino 2' product base, otherwise the announcements would appear stale. Nvidia is to produce a a chipset compatible with the platform, that incorporates much superior graphics - ideal for the alleged nativeGPU support of OS X 10.6 - on only one chip. Intel provides two.

The chip has the ability to scale from ultra-low power versions to SFF machines fitting in with Apple's wide-range of current products. Nvidia has also gone quiet on its future chipset developments - which Shrout believes is due to development for the notoriously shrewd Apple. There's also a definite wind of change regarding Apple hardware, flowing through the rumour mill. It all fits together quite nicely.

But while we agree that the fit seems almost perfect, we can't imagine Intel would allow this to happen. Firstly, Intel has been affording a lot of special attention into Apple in relation to delivering products early and en-masse, and even going as far as to developer a unique processor for the company under the hood of the Macbook Air.

by Ryan Paul
July 30, 2008 - 10:40PM CT

The government of Portugal has announced plans to launch a new education technology program called the Magellan Initiative, which aims to bring low-cost mobile computers to half a million young students.

The laptops, which are being developed in collaboration with Intel, will be based on the company's Classmate PC reference design. "This new collaboration with Intel underscores Portugal's commitment to advance quickly toward a knowledge-based economy," said Portugal's Prime Minister, Jose Socrates.

"By equipping our schools with state-of-the-art computing technology and Internet connectivity, we hope to hasten the transition to economic models that benefit our citizens." The deal is a major victory for Intel's Classmate PC concept which has been battling for mindshare against the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group, a nonprofit organization that emerged from the MIT media labs.

OLPC has been afflicted with numerous setbacks and is presently mired in internal disputes that raise serious questions about the project's long-term viability. The Classmate PC, which doesn't suffer from OLPC's lack of proper distribution infrastructure or extreme dependence on scale, is beginning to look like a more viable long-term solution. OLPC has secured only 600,000 total orders worldwide.

By Nick Farrell
31 July 2008, 7:44 AM

ONE OF THE CARS being used by Google to film every road in Britain, has been stopped by the cops for driving in a bus lane in the picturesque hamlet of Bradford. Apparently the Google car complete with roof-mounted camera pole and Google logo on the door was chased down a bus lane by a copper with his blue lights on as it tried to film in Bradford at 12.40pm yesterday.

According to the Daily Torygraph the Googlemobile, which was driving in the bus lane, was 'chased' around the block in a busy Bradford city centre. Eventually both cars pulled into a car park. A West Yorkshire police spokesman confirmed that the Google car had been pulled over on Channing Way in the city but said that no further action had been taken. A spokesCop said that the Google car had permission to be in the area and the Copper just pulled him over to see what he was doing.

by Stephen Shankland
July 30, 2008 4:54 PM PDT

Google's search engine gives different responses depending on the location of a person and various other factors. On Wednesday, the company said, it will show searchers exactly what those differences are.

"Today, we're rolling out a new feature in Google Web Search that will help you better understand how your search results are already customized," said Rachel Garb, a Google product manager, in the blog post. A message will appear above the search results telling how searches were customized and offering a link to share more details. Specifically, the message will show how search changed from three customization possibilities:

• Location, as judged by an approximate real-world city based on a user's Internet Protocol address or by address information stored in a user's Google account.
• Recent searches. Google pays attention to previous search queries because they can provide context Google can use to interpret the search. "We keep the most recent query on your browser for a limited time. After that, the information is removed from your browser and disappears immediately if you close your browser," Garb said.
• Search history. For users who have Web History enabled (users must explicitly enable it), Google also factors in a longer history of searches. "One important note about Web History: it belongs to you and you have complete control over it," Garb said. "You can remove specific items or pause the service at any time. And if there's a particular search that you'd rather not have personalized based on your Web History, you can also just temporarily sign out of your Google Account."

By Jacqui Cheng
July 30, 2008 - 07:45PM CT

YouTube is once again being targeted for widespread copyright infringement, except this time the lawsuit is originating from Europe. Italian broadcaster Mediaset SpA announced today that it was going after Google for at least €500 million in damages, which translates to just over $750 million at today's exchange rates.

Combine this with the $1 billion sought by Viacom, and YouTube is looking at the possibility of some serious legal liability. Mediaset said that it found some 4,600 of its own videos and clips on the popular video sharing site, which the company equates to 315,672 (viewer) days of broadcasting, or more than 325 solid hours of transmission.

The €500 million is just the beginning, too—Mediaset said that further damages could be tacked on if the company determines that it lost advertising revenue thanks to the videos being put on YouTube. On cue, YouTube reiterated that it's not all about copyright infringement and that it respected the rights of content owners.

"YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously," Google said in an e-mailed statement to Dow Jones and a number of other media outlets. "There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs."

By Paul Murphy
July 31, 2008 12:15 AM PDT

Last Friday PC World carried a report by Nancy Gohring under the title Microsoft: Stodgy or Innovative? It’s All About Perception. In it Ms. Gohring, who no doubt felt a thrill going up her leg at the time, reports on a demonstration of new Windows Surface technologies given by Microsoft’s Craig Mundie:

At the meeting, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, showed off a futuristic application for Surface, Microsoft’s multitouch tabletop computer. He virtually entered an art gallery on a downtown Seattle street, browsing through items that he could pick up and spin around to look at them from all directions. In another demonstration, he took a photograph of a street and his handheld computer identified it in real time and began displaying information about shops on the street, including information about table availability in a restaurant.

After the demo, one analyst commented to Mundie that the technology looked great but that the rest of the world doesn’t get to see such demonstrations, and he urged Mundie to spread the word so that people will perceive Microsoft as the innovative company that it is, rather than as a legacy software vendor. The whole article is part of an effort to spread the good news that Microsoft’s image should rightfully be that of the software innovator rather than that of the legacy exploiter - but, Microsoft’s history aside, I have problems with this demo.

Specifically, the processes through which a photograph of an unknown location taken from an uncharted perspective can be used to precisely identify the actual location are neither innovative nor within range for any of today’s handheld computers. Ingres, back in the 1970s, was designed to accommodate research on image management and automated content based indexing - but the processors of the day couldn’t begin to handle the load.

July 30, 2008
By Linda Rosencrance

If you thought the days before Yahoo Inc.'s annual meeting on Friday were going to be relatively uneventful, think again. In the past week or so, billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens sold his 10 million shares in Yahoo -- losing money in the process -- and lit into the company's management for not agreeing to be acquired by Microsoft Corp., according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Then reports surfaced indicating that Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL LLC, was in line for a seat on Yahoo's board of directors and could be named as the company's next CEO, leaving co-founder Jerry Yang to return to his pre-CEO role as "chief Yahoo." Yang took over from former CEO Terry Semel at the company's contentious shareholders' meeting last year. "The new board is going to decide on the company's future," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose.

Enderle said Yang's possible departure may be part of a deal worked out between Yahoo and activist investor Carl Icahn to avoid a proxy battle. The acrimony between Icahn and the board over his effort to replace the company's board with his own slate spilled out in a series of public statements. In those statements, Icahn called for, among other things, a new CEO to replace Yang.

"The speculation is that what Icahn negotiated with Yahoo that got him to back down was that Yang would step out and Miller would step in. So we'll see if that happens," Enderle said. "Yang apparently likes Miller, and Icahn clearly likes the guy. I'm willing to bet Yang is getting pretty tired of being a CEO right now.

By Fernando Cassia
30 July 2008, 6:07 PM

TWO AND A HALF years ago Microsoft discontinued its Internet Explorer for Mac and the firm recommended users migrate to Apple's Safari. Today, the MSN video page tells Mac users to use Firefox.

Microsoft killed its proprietary IE engine for Mac OS X and removed it from the firms' download pages in early 2006, suggesting at the time that "Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari." While testing the Flash plug-in for Linux and the very nice Preferences Toolbar we decided to switch to the IE 5.0 for Macintosh user-agent on Microsoft's MSN Video web page.

The result was a warning page telling that our browser and OS combination was unsupported - as a result of the browser user-agent sniffing by Microsoft's servers - but what really caught our attention was the recommended browsers: IE 6 or 7 - predictably- but Firefox 2.0 as the second option, both on Windows and on Mac OS X.

The message, verbatim, reads: "We recommend the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and FireFox 2.x on Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 2.x on Windows Vista, FireFox 2.x on Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger". So, we guess that Microsoft is still not aware of the Firefox 3.0 release, yet.

by Deb Perelman
July 30th, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

In theory, everyone wants to climb the corporate ladder. With promotions come steps up that eventually land an employee in the coveted management echelon, with the opportunity to increase both their pay grade and influence.

Yet in practice–as anyone who has ever had a lousy boss or manager can tell you–not everyone is actually cut out to be a manager. Perhaps they’re happiest buried in thick lines of code or have little patience for the schmoozing or interest in the visibility that come with more pivotal roles. Perhaps they’re better suited for other things.

Though the fault is rarely with the individuals–all too often companies reward employees they don’t want to lose with inflated titles and promotions, whether they’re ready for prime time visibility or not–many could save themselves headaches further down their career path by understanding their own limitations and finding more suitable paths. Here are eight telltale signs:

1. You hate bureaucracy - Fact is, managerial roles are rife with all the fixings of a bureaucracy–meetings and reports and reviews and pow-wows–and this will be what you spend the bulk of your time on.