Aug 2, 2010

HP settles with U.S. DOJ over 2007 fraud suit

Mark Hurd hands over his lunch money

After over 3 years of running around the legal jungle gym, the United Stated Department of Justice has finally caught up with Hewlett-Packard, the world’s current leading provider of technological stuff, and reached a settlement after rubbing HP’s face in the sand a couple of times [ DOJ -1 | HP -0 ].  The settlement lays to rest 2007 allegations of kickbacks and fraud related to government contracts negotiated by technology contractor Accenture over the past decade.
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Jul 24, 2010

Storage-n-Harddrives. Where are we and where are we going?

Grab a fifth or your favorite 70 proof or higher beverage and read on

Recently hard drives and the storage industry in general has been a tough thing to write about, because frankly, nobody really cares!  It’s much more fun and exciting to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest multi-core CPUs running at orgasmic clock speeds, or exotic video cards that need their own power reactors but have enough FLOPs under the hood to calculate the single precision meaning of life.  In fact the only time we give our trusty storage things a second thought (and exhaust our dictionaries of naughty words) is when they die and take our data along with them.  Well, to help remedy this journalistic conundrum, we’ve developed a drinking game to aid in your consumption of this article.  Every time you see a storage related suffix (MB, GB, TB, etc.) you take a shot.  Ready?  Good, because you’re up to three already.
UPDATED
 
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Jul 19, 2010

Intel drops a few CPU prices

And adds a few new CPUs to boot

ALTHOUGH IT’S ABOUT a month since we reported Intel’s price drop and new processor launch, it has finally happened. We’ve got a few new processors in the market and Intel has dropped the price on some of its models by as much as 47.6 percent. So if you’re looking for a bargain deal on a new CPU, then there might be something that’ll fit your needs.
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Jul 15, 2010
1

AMD releases Q2 financial results, and Ontario details galore

40nm supply problems persist

Another day, another quarterly earnings conference call.  AMD came in with their latest and greatest batch of numbers, tidbits of product information, and future guidance for the company.  While your man was unable to squeeze any questions in this time around, (and apparently vuvuzelas are frowned upon during these conference calls for some reason) there were still plenty of interesting nuggets of information dropped along the way, so let’s begin.
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Jul 14, 2010

Intel blames datacenter group for record quarterly profits

Increased Gibson hacking not a factor they claim

While listening in on hour-long industry financial conference calls should be the most fulfilling part of any geek’s day, for some reason people expect outfits like us to break it all down into nice bite-size chunks that they can assimilate over morning coffee. Whatever, who are we to judge?  Bottom line, Intel is on a tear this year and has just announced record quarterly; revenue ($10.8B), gross margin (67%), operating income ($4.0B), and earnings per share ($0.51).
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Jul 9, 2010

Super Talent Announces 4GB DDR3 DIMMs with 2000MHz Special Sauce

Beef patties, pickles, lettuce and seasame seed buns optional

The year was 2000.  Will Smith’s horrid “Will 2K” jam was finally fading from the radio waves and the scarred minds of millions across the globe.  In March, CPU underdog AMD dropped the gigahertz bomb on us, sending shockwaves throughout the tech community, and lighting a fire under Intel’s ass so intense, the heat wasn’t fully dissipated until the last Prescott chip rolled off the assembly lines.  AMD had (inadvertently or not) ignited what we all came to know as the GHz war, with Intel fighting for consumer mindshare by turning the GHz dial up to 11 (well, 3.8 anyway), while AMD desperately tried to keep up by ratcheting up their own clock speeds, and slapping on performance rating numbers to show the average Joe that they could still play with the big boys.
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Jul 7, 2010

Taiwan wants a piece of the cloud computing market

The Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium has its first meeting

TAIWANESE COMPANIES ARE always on the lookout for the next big thing and it seems like this time around they’re taking a stab at cloud computing. The Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium was established back in April, but only had its first meeting as of yesterday. The TCCC as it’s known as is a co-operation between the government funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and over 60 local Taiwanese technology companies.
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Jun 23, 2010

New SD card speed classification system arrives

For high-performance SDHC and SDXC cards

THE SD ASSOCIATION has announced new high-speed symbols for SDHC and SDXC cards which are once again meant to make our lives easier. The old Class 2, 4, 6 and 10 ratings will be kept for older memory cards that don’t meet the new UHS or Ultra High Speed SD card standard. The new UHS speed classifications as plenty of room to grow, especially as we’ve only hit the first generation of SDXC cards.
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