heatbasketball.org

The New York Times Co., Situation Publishing, Dow Jones, The Washington Post, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association joined forces to obtain access to “non-confidential public records which have been sealed unnecessarily and unjustly withheld from the public,” according to the motion filed in a federal court in Delaware.

Intel told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that it had offered to assist the news outlets in acquiring more access to the court records but that the groups didn’t respond to the offer. AMD told the Journal it wouldn’t oppose making more records public.

AMD filed briefs in May 2008 introducing specific evidence of Intel’s alleged misconduct– including, for instance, Intel’s dealings with Dell– but they were heavily redacted.

News outlets and advocacy groups are seeking access to sealed court records in Advanced Micro Devices’ antitrust case against Intel.

AMD filed suit in 2005, claiming Intel coerced PC and server vendors into shunning AMD’s chips with intimidation and predatory pricing. Intel denied the charges.

SSD Primer, Part 1: SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

SSD Primer, Part 2: Intel will be shipping in the second quarter a Multi-Level Cell or MLC solid-state drive. This is a more sophisticated technology than current Single-Level Cell or SLC. The advantage is larger capacity since MLC uses multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored. The disadvantage is more complexity which can result in lower performance. “Inherently, MLC is slower and inherently fewer write cycling endurance,” Winslow said. Intel, however, has technology that will get around these problems, he said.

But to be competitive with hard drives, SSD prices have to come down–a lot. In many cases, upgrading from a hard drive to an SSD in a notebook can mean paying an extra $1,000. Intel, like Samsung and Toshiba, sees steep declines in cost in the next two years. “Price declines are historically 40 percent per year,” Winslow said. “And in 2009, a 50 percent reduction, then again in 2010.”

(Credit:
Intel Corp.)

Intel doesn’t enter markets gently. Its new high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs) are expected to jolt a market currently dominated by Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk.

Intel Flash/SSD capacity: Intel and Micron have a joint venture called IM Flash Technologies. Both companies are currently making flash on a 50-nanometer process with plans to move to 40nm later this year. There are three NAND flash fabrication plants and one more currently being built in Singapore. The Intel-Micron venture provides funding for the development of silicon technology and the capacity to produce that silicon, according to Winslow. But marketing and end-product decisions are “absolutely separate,” he said.

Intel believes 2008 is the year of the SSD. (See SSD primer below.) “For the first time, flash is going into the compute environment. In the last nine years or so when it experienced all of its growth, this has been in digital cameras and USB keys,” Winslow said. But now flash memory, in the form of SSDs, will be used as the main storage device in PCs. “When you’re putting all your critical applications and data into notebook or server (SSDs), who knows those markets better than the manufacturer that’s supplying the world with CPUs,” Winslow added.

At the moment, Intel offers small-capacity chip-level (what are called Thin Small Outline Packages or TSOPs) technology that provides end-product sizes ranging up to 16GB. But this modest line of products will get a big boost in the second quarter when Intel offers 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs ranging from 80GB to 160GB in capacity, said Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel. Intel’s new SSDs will compete with Samsung, for example, which is slated to bring out a 128GB SSD in the third quarter.

Also, like Samsung, Intel sees SSDs playing a role in the server market as a “performance accelerator.” Winslow said that Intel recently did a video-on-demand demonstration where it streamed 4,000 videos simultaneously. Just to do the streaming (not to store the video), it took 62 15,000 RPM (very high-performance) hard drives, he said. “We were able to replace those 62 hard drives with 10 SATA (SSD) technology drives,” he said.

Finally, Winslow addressed the price collapse in the flash market in general–a topic that generated a lot of press after the Intel analyst meeting on Wednesday. “A majority of flash is being sold in very cyclical consumer electronics devices. Q1 and Q2 are soft quarters,” he said. On top of this, suppliers continue to shrink manufacturing process technologies, leading to more capacity at lower cost, he said.

“When Intel launches its…products, you’ll see that not all SSDs are created equal,” Winslow said. “The way the SSDs are architected, the way the controller and firmware operates makes a huge difference,” he said, referring to the chip (controller) that manages the SSD and software (firmware) that the controller uses.

“We will be supplementing our product line with a SATA offering,” he said. Serial ATA, or SATA, is an interface used in high-performance hard disk drives. Intel’s products will be based on the SATA II specification that offers speeds of 3 gigabits (Gb) per second. Samsung is now shipping 64GB SSDs to Dell using the same technology.

With new competition, drive speeds will jump. Currently, the fastest SSDs from companies like Samsung approach 100MB/second for reading data. “What I can tell you is ours is much better than that,” Winslow said. Hard drives typically read data at about half this speed.

Intel's current offering: the Z-P140 PATA solid-state drive.

While the latter statement seems like typical marketing spin, it’s more than just spin in Intel’s case. The largest chipmaker in the world is in a competitive position because it already supplies many of a PC’s core components including the processor, chipset, communications silicon, and in some cases, the graphics processor. Add the main storage device to the mix, and–with the exception of an optical drive and screen–that’s all the core component in a notebook PC.

Some analysts think around 1 million of those iPhones have been purchased with the intention of unlocking them to run on other cell networks. If those numbers are true, that means iPhone unlocking exploded in the fourth quarter despite two steps taken by Apple to reduce the number of iPhones bought with unlocking in mind.

So how has Apple tried to curb unlocking? First of all, it imposed limits on the number of iPhones that could be sold per person to two units in late October, and required that buyers use a credit card. This was done to discourage unauthorized resale of the iPhone, especially among resellers who purchased iPhones for resale in countries that use GSM networks but where Apple has yet to launch.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Up until that point, it had been relatively easy to unlock the iPhone by just downloading software and buying new SIM cards from any number of different outlets. But the release of those new iPhones created a roadblock for the hacking community that it still hasn’t managed to solve through software. iPhones purchased prior to November 9 with older bootloaders can still be unlocked, even after they have upgraded to the 1.1.2 firmware that was released on the same day as the iPhones with the new version of the bootloader.

And it will also make it harder for Apple to roll out the iPhone with exclusive carrier partners around the world. Apple is said to have a five-year exclusive deal with AT&T for iPhone distribution in the U.S., and if unlocking is rampant, AT&T’s going to start wondering why they are giving Apple so much money on the revenue earned from locked phones when so many are going unlocked.

But if only 250,000 to 300,000 iPhones were bought with the intention of unlocking during the third quarter, that means 700,000 to 750,000 were bought during the fourth quarter if the estimate of 1 million unlocked iPhones is correct, despite Apple’s attempts to make life harder for the unlocking community. Put another way, overall iPhone sales doubled from the third quarter to the fourth, and iPhones destined for resale and/or unlocking almost tripled.

The pace of iPhone unlocking exploded in the fourth quarter, if recent estimates are to be believed.

There’s one easy explanation this time around for part of the gap: The fourth quarter marked the first time the iPhone was available through other carriers, namely Europe’s O2, Orange, and T-Mobile. Still, that accounts for only 350,000 iPhones, according to various estimates, leaving 1.35 million missing iPhones to explain.

It’s pretty easy to find an unlocked iPhone on eBay, and they are selling for between $450 and $700, well above the locked iPhone price of $399. And given these numbers, it’s not hard to imagine finding plenty of unlocked iPhones in above-board and underground shops around the world.

There’s no doubt that Apple has taken iPhone unlocking very seriously in the first six months of its life on the planet. Even so, it appears despite significant roadblocks, the unlockers are winning.

This was an extremely frustrating development for the unlockers, although work continues on finding a software fix. Post-November 9 iPhones can be unlocked using a couple of hardware methods that involve disassembling and tweaking the iPhone itself, or cutting away a little piece of your SIM card and taping it to another SIM card. As you might have guessed, those aren’t exactly foolproof, and anyone who tries runs a serious risk of inflicting permanent damage.

Each of the three times Apple and AT&T have reported their
iPhone numbers since July, there has been a gap between the number of iPhones sold by Apple and the number of iPhones activated for AT&T’s network. During the first weekend of iPhone sales, the gap was 124,000 units. At the end of the third quarter of the calendar year, it had grown to 300,000 iPhones. And last week, Apple and AT&T revealed that gap had increased five times over in the fourth quarter, to 1.7 million units.

More important, as Apple got ready for the launch of the iPhone in the U.K. and Germany in early November, the company changed the way the iPhone loads software from flash memory to only permit only certain kinds of software from loading into the main memory. This is called the bootloader, and moving to a new version of the bootloader automatically caused problems for the iPhone unlocking community.

Unlocked iPhones don’t hurt Apple in the short term, as the company still gets the hardware revenue and the walking advertisement for Apple that is an iPhone user. It’s the opportunity cost of the unlocked iPhone that really hurts Apple; the sweetheart deal it signed with AT&T entitles the company to a portion of the revenue taken in by AT&T for data use over its network.

But despite these hurdles, somehow many more iPhones were unlocked during the fourth quarter as were unlocked during the third, if the estimates are accurate. Analysts accepted Apple and AT&T’s explanation for the gap during the initial weekend that a significant amount of iPhones were in transit as the weekend (and the quarter) came to a close on Saturday night, and the widespread activation problems experienced that weekend certainly could account for some of that gap.

Last week Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford C. Bernstein thought a demand issue was to blame, believing that unlocking couldn’t be much more widespread than Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook had estimated back in October, somewhere around 20 percent of all iPhones sold. That would mean AT&T stores were starting to pile up an inventory of unsold iPhones.

But his fellow analysts jumped all over that presumption on Friday and Monday, declaring that unlocking is a much more prevalent practice than it seems, which would mean iPhone inventory is within normal levels. Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets estimated that unlocked iPhones account for as many as 30 percent of all iPhones sold in the world last year, and Sacconaghi later upped his estimate to 27 percent, or sales of 1 million unlocked iPhones in 2007.

commentary

Ah! Finally some intelligence on the GNU General Public License (GPL). John Mark Walker says something that few seem to understand, yet it’s so simple (and true):

No, the GPL does not cede your intellectual property to the public domain - as a matter of fact, it does a pretty good job of protecting it. In fact, the GPL is a pretty good compromise between granting rights to all parties and protecting IP.

The GPL is probably the best license ever devised for protecting one’s intellectual property. The GPL simply protects through transparency and openness, not opacity and closed doors. Many of the industry’s most successful open-source vendors use the GPL for this very reason.

Richard Stallman. A capitalist for the 21st Century.

To see our Archos 705 WiFi photo gallery, click the photo.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Our review of the super-size Archos 705 WiFi portable video player is now up on CNET. If you’ve been squinting at your puny PVP and want to upgrade, you owe it to yourself to witness the screen size and features of the Archos 705 WiFi. You can also check out our Archos 705 WiFi slide show to see all its aluminum nooks and crannies.

(Credit:
Google)

Google’s new Google Voice has a few rough edges but for many users, it could be a life-changing experience.

The service, a relaunch of GrandCentral, which Google bought in 2007, allows you to choose a local number, which will simultaneously ring up to six phones such as your cell phone, home phone, office phone, and the phone at that vacation home that most of us can only dream about.

In addition to forwarding your calls, it also takes voice messages that you can listen to on the Web, from a phone, or read, thanks to a new feature that transcribes voice messages and sends them as e-mail and text messages.

If you have multiple phones, having a single number to reach them all can make you and your callers’ lives a bit easier, and it can save space on your business card by not having to list separate numbers. The concept is simple: people are trying to reach you–not one of your phones–and Google Voice lets you decide how to route the calls.

The simultaneous ring feature can also be used by groups. Team HOPE, a support network for families of missing children, gives callers a GrandCentral number that rings the phones of several staff members to ensure that calls are always answered.

I’ve been using a very similar “simulring” feature on Vonage for several years and like the fact that I get to control where my calls are forwarded. Both Google and Vonage let you configure forwarding from the Web, but Google also allows you to assign a temporary forwarding number directly from the phone. That could come in handy, if you suddenly find your cell phone out of range but have access to another number where you can be reached.

The call-recording feature is very cool. At any time during an incoming call, you can press 4 to start the recorder and 4 again to stop it. That can be handy if you’re driving and someone is about to give you a phone number, address, or something else that you can’t write down.

The recording feature can also be used by podcasters to record phone calls that can be exported as MP3 files. And yes, there is an announcement to inform the other party that you’re recording the call.

You also get free conference calls. Up to four people can dial your phone number and can be patched into the call.

Cheap international calls
People who make occasional international calls from a cell phone will get incredible savings, compared to what the carriers charge. Using Google Voice to call a landline in London, for example, costs 2 cents a minute, compared to the whopping $1.49 that Verizon Wireless and AT&T charge, if you don’t purchase an international calling plan.

Even with a calling plan, the carrier rates, though much cheaper, are still higher than what Google charges. Making calls could be easier. You dial your Google number, press 2, and then punch in 011 plus the country code and phone number.

Bugs and rough edges
I have encountered a few annoying bugs in my day 1 experience with the service. For one, I’m not able to delete voice mail from my cell phone, despite following the instructions to press 7 to “archive” messages. Every time I call my voice mail, those messages are still there, as if they were new. Although the voice mail transcription service works, the message isn’t always delivered promptly. Sometimes it arrives in a few minutes, but at other times, it’s taken up to 20 minutes.

Although not a bug and not Google’s fault, it’s unfortunate that you can’t use your Google number as your outgoing caller ID when you dial directly from a cell phone. Although there are ways to spoof that, for security reasons, phone companies don’t allow it.

The problem is that people are in the habit of you calling back on your caller ID, which makes it harder to train them to dial your Google number. Your Google caller ID will show up correctly, however, if you initiate the call from your Google Voice Web page or if you dial your own Google number and then press 2 to dial out and type in the number. This process, I suspect, is more of a hassle than it’s worth.

There also isn’t yet a way to transfer an existing phone number to Google, so you’re stuck having to give out the new Google number. The service works only with U.S. phone numbers; you can’t forward calls overseas.

Because it’s an incoming service only, you can’t record outbound calls, and you can’t use Google Voice to add people to a call. They have to call you.

The service is currently available only to people who had previously signed up for GrandCentral. Google hasn’t announced when others can sign up.

Still, despite some flaws and limitations, this could turn out to be one of Google’s most beloved services. Being able to read your voice mail and having one number that rings all your phones is terrific, especially at the amazingly low price of free.

(This post has been updated to note that your Google caller ID will display correctly if you dial via the service’s Web site or use the service’s dial-out feature.)

Listen to Larry’s interview with Craig Walker, Google Voice guru and co-founder of GrandCentral

Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

A still intact Johnny Knoxville recoups.

(Credit:
Naomi Nelson)

The more dangerous–and pointless–the dare, the happier Johnny Knoxville is. Whether it’s being gored by a bull or electrocuted by a taser, or starring in a remake of the Dukes of Hazzard, Knoxville is game.

Now the actor, comedian, and co-creator of the Jackass movies, known for wince-inducing stunts, will try his luck on the Web.

To promote the official launch of Jackassworld.com, the Internet site jointly run by Knoxville and MTV, the cable network is allowing Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, and the rest of the Jackass crew to take over programming for an entire day, starting Saturday.

The Web site, which will feature the same bet-you-wouldn’t-do-this spectacles as the movies, is an example of how MTV is banking on dozens of Web sites that target a separate demographic group or fan base for each of its shows. The idea is to make it easier for people to find and interact with shows and their casts.

Knoxville, who suffered a groin injury while filming a tribute to the late Evel Knievel for the February 23 MTV show, spoke with CNET News.com on Thursday.

Tell us about your injury. How did it happen?
We were doing a tribute to Evel Knievel for our takeover (of MTV) this Saturday. During the filming, I decided I could back-flip a motorcycle. They had to let out the clutch for me. No one thought I could even make it to the ramp. I didn’t the first time but I did it four other times.

The last time I hit the ramp and let go of the bike and it goes 15 to 20 feet above my head and comes down when I was laying spread eagle and it breaks the handle bar off between my legs.

It hit me right on the rim and tore my urethra. No long-term damage, though.

You going to be OK?
The prognosis is great. I’m a man again.

Why not just keep doing the movies? Why move to the Web?

On Jackassworld.com, it’s like an R-rated film. You can show whatever you want and it’s immediate. When you’re filming a TV show it takes a couple of weeks to get to air, and a movie takes months to get to air. I can film a bit last night and it can be up today. That’s pretty great because we’re all hot to film again.

But is the Internet ready for you guys on a regular basis? Is Viacom (MTV’s parent company) ready for you?
Viacom left us alone. They’ve been very supportive in all this. It’s fun, man, having this outlet, you don’t have to wait for months to have something come out. You can just shoot it and get it up and be on to something else…like productivity in the a**hole department is going to be up 73 percent, you know what I mean?

Microsoft on Tuesday offered up a few more details on its once-secretive project to use virtualization to offer an “XP Mode” for Windows 7.

As noted on Friday, Microsoft is using its Virtual PC technology to allow
Windows 7 users to run programs that work in Windows XP but not in Windows Vista. On Tuesday, it noted some more of the fine print regarding the product.

As far as technical requirements, XP Mode needs a beefier system than that required to just run Windows 7 or XP alone, including at least 2GB of memory and a system that has chip-level virtualization from either Intel or AMD. One of the challenges is that today it is often not that easy to tell whether one’s PC has such support.

A screenshot of Windows 7's XP Mode, which allows programs designed for Windows XP to run inside a virtual machine within Windows 7.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

“Some PCs have it and some don’t,” said Scott Woodgate, a director in the Windows unit. “It’s not as clear as it should be relative to which PCs have (hardware-based virtualization) support and which don’t.”

At its core, XP mode consists of two things, the Windows Virtual PC engine and a licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 3 as a packaged virtual machine. Although neither piece will be included in the Windows 7 box, XP Mode will be a free download for those who have a license to Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate.

Microsoft is aiming XP Mode primarily at small businesses, Woodgate said.”That’s a class of customers that may have Windows XP apps that they may want to run on Windows 7,” he said.

Larger businesses may also have need to run older applications, but typically want control over things like who can install programs on their machines and other management issues. For them, he said, Microsoft has a product called MED-V that allows such control. An updated version of MED-V, due to be in beta within 90 days of the launch of Windows 7, will add support for Windows 7’s XP Mode, he said.

One of the benefits of XP Mode over Microsoft’s existing virtualization products is the fact that, after a setup process, the Windows XP virtual machine runs in the background so users don’t have to manage multiple desktops. XP Mode automatically installs shortcuts for XP programs in the Windows 7 start menu. The experience from that point on is similar to the one offered by VMware’s Fusion and Parallels in their virtualization products.

Woodgate noted that XP Mode isn’t a security solution. Indeed, to protect their systems, users will need antivirus software running both on their Windows 7 desktop as well as a copy running inside their Windows XP virtual machine.

The beta version of XP Mode is debuting alongside the Windows 7 Release Candidate that is going to developers this week and being made publicly available on May 5. Microsoft said a final release will depend on the feedback to the beta, but Woodgate said Microsoft hopes it can be ready for download at the same time Windows 7 is made broadly available.

Microsoft has been working on the XP Mode as long as it has been developing Windows 7, and Woodgate said even he is surprised it stayed secret for so long.

The existence of XP Mode emerged on an enthusiast site on Friday, later confirmed by CNET sources, and then through an official company blog post.

A network administrator for the city of San Francisco has been arrested on charges of taking control of the city’s computer network and locking administrators out, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Terry Childs, 43, was due to be arraigned on Tuesday after his arrest Sunday. He remains in jail on $5 million bail.

Childs, who has worked for the city for five years, is accused of tampering with the new Fiber Wide Area Network after allegedly being disciplined for poor performance. He is accused of electronically spying on his supervisors and their attempt to fire him, according to authorities.

Officials told the newspaper they were making some headway into regaining access to the system, but they fear that Childs has rigged a system to remotely destroy data.

Meanwhile, the network is up and running despite the fact that administrators have limited to no access.

At the SMX West conference today, Yahoo is making a big deal of its new open search initiative. This program, not yet live, will allow site publishers to influence the way the Yahoo search engine displays results for their sites.

The idea is to get structured data into search results. For example, if you search for product, and one of the results is a CNET review, open search will know that CNET reviews contain numerical ratings and will display that number in an easy-to-read format. Other data that could make it into search results include addresses, phone numbers, photos, related stories, or basically anything the publisher wants to display to people who see their results on Yahoo search.

This is no ordinary search hit.

The service does not, however, let publishers change the ranking of search results themselves.

It’s a great idea. Search engines do not do a universally good job of parsing search, and this initiative lets publishers regain some control over how their content is presented without allowing them to actually muck with search result ordering.

On the other hand, considering the “open” moniker Yahoo has put on the project, the company is being extremely cagey with the details of how it will actually work. I talked with Amit Kumar, Yahoo Search director of product management, who said that there is as of yet no open spec published for site managers to write to. Nor would he say if Yahoo will support Microformats for this platform–although the company has been using this open standard in some experiments (Yahoo Local, Yahoo Tech and Yahoo Movies UK).

Also, it’s not totally clear how users will get exposed to the “open”-powered results for all but the largest of sites. Big sites like Yelp and The New York Times will be blessed by Yahoo from the get-go, and users will see structured results instead of the straight text they do now, when the product launches. But newer and smaller sites will see their search results displayed in the old-fashioned way until either users vote the structured results into rotation or Yahoo manually approves their formats.

There’s more at play here than simply better search results (although that’s no small deal). As Google tried to do with Google Base, getting site publishers to submit structured data to a search engine gives the engines enormous new ammunition they can use to consolidate data, create new mashups of it, and display ever-more-targeted advertising. Publishers really can’t say no to this feature, since it will improve the display of their search results, but there may be a cost in the long run: why will Web users need to visit a site’s home page if a search site like Yahoo is able to parse and display its key content itself?