The UK's Department for Work and Pensions has 100,000 Windows PCs disrupted
after an EDS upgrade goes haywire. This is the latest in a run of IT failures:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1360163,00.html
The UK government is to spend UKP10M on investigating ways to prevent
catastrophic failure in systems that are now too large to test:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996706
Microsoft's settlement with the US Computer and Communications Industry
Association (CCIA) includes a payment of US$9.75M to the CCIA's president:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/23517A55CA34EEA1CC256F57000A1462?OpenDocument&pub=Computerworld
PalmOne to hand out free 128MB SD cards to anyone inconvenicenced by the
increased memory consumption of the Treo 650. ROM upgrade to follow:
http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/494-1.htm
The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority warns people not to use IE
because of unpatched bugs. Real-world usage of IE drops further:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19881
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's call for the $100 PC to help emerging markets is
answered by SolarPC. But ironically they choose to put Linux on it:
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=F9B51937-4CD3-4910-8D67-18887FF5B090
Neil Gershenfeld of MIT develops a desktop fabrication system prototype that
can construct not just inanimate objects but computers and motorised devices:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.html?pg=4
Nanotube transistors now have a channel length of 18nm - 4x smaller than silicon
ones - and operate at lower voltages with higher current densities:
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/leaf/CID/onair/asabt/news/345732
And finally. A mass mailout of child pornography is sent to 1,800 Australian
state-run schools in NSW - by none other than the Australian Police:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041126/od_nm/australia_pornography_dc_1
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.