Diamond Age Solutions News for the IT Industry

Fri Jan 14 20:29:09 NZDT 2005

Today Index

The UK's National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) government advisory group concedes that cellphones may damage health and recommends children not use them:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6872

Oracle's PeopleSoft purchase starts to develop the expected job cuts. 4,500 to go now, ultimately as many as 6,000. Oracle's headcount is about 54,500:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/A373B8AAECB73D10CC256F88001C9E86?OpenDocument

Sony creates what must be the first PDA camera phone with features that are actually properly integrated with each other, the S710a. But no Symbian:
http://gigaom.com/2005/01/12/new-definition-of-cool-sony-ericsson-s710a/

Microsoft's Digital Restrictions/rights Management (DRM) technology in Windows Media Player is being used as a conduit for trojans, viruses and other malware:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1749993,00.asp

Microsoft to cease security support and pay-per-incident support for NT 4.0, though custom support plans will still be available from Microsoft salesdroids:
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/ProductInfo/Availability/Retiring.asp

University of Washington software tracks physical paper documents on the desktop and sorts photos without user-assigned tags:
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/011205/Video_organizes_paper_011205.html

Microchip Technology Inc. announces four new PIC microcontrollers offering 96 and 128 KiB of Flash memory with up to 10 MIPS performance at 2.0 to 5.5V:
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com.hk/dailynewsdetail/000151

And Finally. The Huygens probe prepares for a soft landing on Saturn's moon Titan. Expect lots of news over the next 24hrs, one way or another:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6878

News collated from various sources by Vik Olliver for Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. The views presented in this document are the personal opinion of the collator, and should not be taken as any more than that.