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AMD + ATI... Does This Change Everything?

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:10:55 -0700

Easily the biggest announcement of the week is the long-rumored but now-confirmed $5.4 billion merger between #2 CPU maker AMD (which is far behind Intel) and graphics chip maker ATI, which has held a narrow lead as the #1 GPU maker over arch-rival Nvidia for the last few years.

In broad strokes, this means that two of the most complicated parts of your PC might now be produced by a single company, and that could either be a disaster of epic proportions or a huge advance for computing as we know it.

In the short term, little is likely to change much. Drivers for ATI graphics boards may run a bit better on AMD hardware, but that's probably about all we'll see for a few years: Both the AMD and ATI sides of the company (and who knows if the ATI name will survive; I doubt it) will continue their death struggle with rivals Intel and Nvidia. Intel may try to snap up Nvidia for itself.

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Philippine company launches 406-dollar mini laptop (AFP)

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:55:58 -0700

MANILA (AFP) - Philippine PC manufacturer Neo and multinational computer processor maker Intel have jointly launched a new 16,999-peso (406-dollar) mini laptop, spokesmen said Saturday.

The Neo Explore is a "ruggedized and shock-proof" laptop with a keyboard that will not be damaged by spillages of liquids, said Neo spokeswoman Mariel Que.

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EBay's early backer to leave board of directors

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:12:57 -0700

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - EBay Inc (EBAY.O) said on Thursday that early venture capital backer and long-time board member Robert Kagle plans to stand down as a director of the company at its next annual shareholder meeting.

Kagle made one of his earliest investments in eBay of between $5 million and $7 million as a partner with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in eBay.

The value of this investment multiplied many times over during the dot-com era and was worth upward of $5 billion at its peak -- and is believed to be one of the most lucrative VC investments ever made, according to reports at the time.

He notified the company on Tuesday that he would not stand for reelection at the stockholders meeting in June, but will continue to serve as a director until the meeting.

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Apple's Safari browser likened to malware

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:04:05 -0700

San Francisco - Mozilla chief executive John Lilly has lambasted Apple for its use of iTunes to offer the Safari web browser to Windows users, saying the technique "borders on malware distribution practices" and undermines the security of the Internet.

"What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong," Lilly wrote on his personal blog. "It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that's bad - not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole web."

Mozilla makes the Firefox browser, currently the most popular alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer with about 15 percent of the market to IE's 78 percent, according to figures cited recently by Apple. Apple said Safari currently has about 5 percent of the market, a figure the company is setting out to increase.

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Supermarket data breach still unsolved

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:13:48 -0700

PORTLAND, Maine - It was during the card approval process that more than 4 million customer accounts at grocery stores in the Northeast and Florida were exposed to fraud, even though the company meets the latest standards for data security, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Hannaford Bros. Co. doesn't yet know how the breach — which began Dec. 7 and ended March 10 — occurred, said Carol Eleazer, vice president of marketing for Hannaford, based in Scarborough.

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Adobe executive leaves for equity firm (Macworld.com)

nobody@vox.com(bad boys computer) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:08:17 -0700

The head of Adobe's Platform Division, which oversees Flash Player, PDF (Portable Document Format) and other technologies, has left to join a Silicon Valley private equity firm.

John Brennan, who was senior vice president of the division, also was a driving force behind the acquisition of Macromedia in 2005. He is leaving to become a managing director of Silver Lake Sumeru, a new business of Silver Lake, a leading technology-focused private equity firm in Menlo Park, California.

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