Intel's on the Skulltrail of AMD's Quad FX

Intel has dropped a bombshell on AMD by announcing its own dual-socket PC platform aimed at the enthusiast market. As quickly as the detonation was delivered at the Intel Developer Forum, it was over: the company's senior vice president, Eric Kim, gave few details aside from showing a stock slide of two processors side-by-side and giving the codename of the new platform - Skulltrail. It's an appropriate name given that it looks likely to murder AMD's Quad FX dual-socket platform. ...more

Rivals Sun and Microsoft reach ?2bn settlement

Sun and Microsoft have decided to bury the hatchet. The two warring companies - who have clashed over anti-trust and Java issues - have decided to reach a settlement outside of the US courts and the EU anti-trust process. The surprising development involves entering 'into a broad technology collaboration arrangement to enable their products to work better together and to settle all pending litigation between the two companies'. ...more

Million Dollar Homepage facing extortion

It may have been that the criminal fraternity thought this was just too easy a way of making money - tantamount to robbery. But the boy with the million dollar homepage has been hit by extortion attempts and denial of service attacks. 21-year-old Alex Tew's money-spinning brainwave of selling adverts on a web page by the pixel, and at a dollar a dot, finally made the magic million earlier this month, earning him a lot a publicity. ...more

Eolas Web plug-ins patent annulled

The US Patent Office has rescinded the controversial patent granted to Eolas governing the execution of remote code on Web pages. Last year the company successfully sued Microsoft in an Illinois court for 'patent infringement' and won damages of $521mn. The Patent Office's invalidation of the claim will come as a welcome relief not only to Microsoft, but to millions of Internet Explorer users and website developers. ...more

Interview: Linux and the Open Source Development Lab

Set up at the start of 2001 as a 'centre of gravity' for Linux, the Open Source Development Lab has drawn in heavyweight computing giants from around the world, adding momentum to the adoption of Linux in the enterprise. We caught up with OSDL Marketing Director Nelson Pratt on a recent visit to the UK to talk all things Open Source. Building membership Currently the OSDL enjoys a wealth of support from chip and system vendors, as well as platform builders and operating systems, but Pratt said there were still names missing from the member list. ...more