Articles by Jay Lyman

As it has been suing thousands of computer users accused of illegallytrading copyrighted music online with peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, theRecording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has also been pollutingP2P networks with bogus and corrupted media files to discourage P2P use Now the industry group is the one being sued for alleged patentin...

In an expected move following his arrest and confession earlier this year, an 18-year-old German student has been indicted on computer crimes for his work writing and releasing the Sasser and Netsky worms Sven Jaschan, who was turned in by a peer who sought a US$250,000 reward from Microsoft, was arrested last May when he admitted to making Sasser ...

Hitachi Data Systems hopes its new universal data storage platform (USP) and software will lure customers from main competitors EMC and IBM. However, analysts indicated that the Hitachi approach might be hindered by apprehension over the company's massive, monolithic storage array HDS announced a "new enterprise storage lineup," which consists of t...

UK dialers will now be able to access a new set of Internet phone numbers designed to allow even greater growth of broadband voice communications. The move is likely to pump up competition with prominent providers there U.S. growth of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has caught on with improvements in both technology and strategy, but the develo...

In a move that might be repeated by other game makers struggling with the same issues of limited markets and console-centric development, Acclaim Entertainment announced it is filing for bankruptcy The announcement from Acclaim comes as little surprise because the company has warned of its financial troubles and suffered both from licensee lawsuits...

In a bid to boost the credibility of the blade-server paradigm, which provide storage, networking and other functions in a small form factor, IBM and Intel jointly announced that the design specifications for the eServer BladeCenter platform would be made widely available to other vendors to encourage hardware support IBM and Intel have already cod...

A new report from Canadian researcher AssetMetrix indicates that one in 10 corporate PCs will have applications adversely impacted by the new Windows XP Service Pack 2 update. However, the report also indicates that few corporate computer users might be feeling the effects because relatively few appear to be updating right away AssetMetrix said it ...

AMD announced this week that with the help of server market leaderHP, it would be demonstrating the industry's first x86 dual-core processor inan HP ProLiant DL585 server powered by four dual-core Opteron processors foran eight-way server A day after Intel announced a march to more efficient, 65-nanometer (nm)technology, AMD executive vice presiden...

Pushing the number of transistors it can cram onto silicon, chip giant Intel announced a step forward in its advance to the 65-nanometer manufacturing process, a move toward further miniaturization to boost chip efficiency and performance In a sign it is on course to begin manufacturing computer chips with the new process -- and maintain the Moore'...

A mandated price cut in so-called local loop unbundling in the UK, a requirement for UK providers to offer broadband service, and an allowed price increase for wholesale broadband products has two sides arguing the move will either boost broadband adoption and competition, or kill off all but the biggest service providers Ofcom, the UK's regulatory...

U.S. officials announced a multistate, peer-to-peer (P2P) network user bust, calling it "the first federal enforcement action taken against criminal copyright piracy on peer-to-peer networks," and announcing the execution of search warrants at five homes and an ISP The effort of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's office -- which this week brough...

Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo and U.S.-based Motorola are teaming to develop a multimodal handset targeted at Japanese business users who must use the mobile phones in other parts of the world The move highlights the realization by many large mobile carriers and handset makers, including Verizon and Qualcomm, that to compete on the global scale,...

UK security firm Sophos is warning computer users of a new worm with the ability to take over computers and view and capture images of victims through their own Web cameras. The worm, known as W32 Rbot-GR, spreads through network shares as opposed to e-mail, and installs what is known as a backdoor Trojan horse While the worm was not widespread, it...

A few technologies to fight the unsolicited and sometimes unsafe e-mail known as spam have emerged since the volume of the junk mail has increased beyond annoyance, but a Microsoft-backed effort to identify the senders of spam appears to be moving fastest of all the contenders Joined by other spam fighters including Sendmail, Symantec, IronPort, Cl...

Microsoft and everyone else in the PC world knew that hackers would be working hard to find the cracks in the latest Windows XP software upgrade, intended mostly to bolster security. But it is security researchers and their work that has caused the greatest headache for Microsoft so far as it rolls out Service Pack 2 (SP2) to consumers and corporate users...

The battle for processor speed supremacy is only part of the equation in a successful computer chip, but the Alpha line -- passed on from Digital Equipment to Compaq to HP -- was built on the premise that speed was the key Now, after a dozen years, the Alpha line -- which many credit for sparking a speed war among today's giants Intel and AMD -- is...

Viruses and spam -- and the techniques used to create, disguise and distribute both -- are converging into a single threat in which the two computer disruptions depend on one another in a sort of symbiotic manner, according to security experts Security firm MessageLabs highlighted the convergence in its monthly intelligence report released this wee...

Some people are anxious to download and install the Service Pack 2 (SP2) update to the Microsoft XP operating system, but just as many others seem wary of the 80-MB security-focused package and foresee possible problems with it For its part, after repeatedly warning of the potential for application conflicts, Microsoft this week published a list of...

A Minnesota teenager accused of downloading the Blaster computer worm code, modifying it and releasing the damaging and debilitating variant on the Internet last year pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court this week to infecting computers. If convicted, Parson faces about three years and several hundred thousand dollars in penalties. When asked in ...

A Web services specification moved closer to World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) standard status this week as Microsoft, IBM, BEA, SAP and SunMicrosystems submitted the latest version of the WS-Addressing spec The companies said the spec will allow organizations to buildWeb services applications by defining a standard mechanism forexchanging Web service...