Boffins go HPC crazy while America stands in the iQ

iPhone news in 20 words or less

You can only buy two. Some journalists quite liked it. Its going to cost a lot to run.

Channel Google

Google's "Spongebob" search hardware appliance found a distributor this week in Ingram Micro. Elsewhere, the advertising giant prepared for a push into medical information by appointing an advisory board.

Hopes that Google's iron grip on the world might be loosened slightly were raised when Blinkx, a transatlantic video search effort, became first to rollout contextual video ads.

Rumours swirled that Google will buy phone number aggragator Grand Central, while Desktop Search finally made it to Linux.

Desktop dustup

Google's hard drive trawler might need the dozen or so desktop Linux users that'll download it. Its legal SWAT team failed to convince the judge who made the landmark anti-trust ruling against Microsoft to extend its remit to Vista's desktop search. Google now has to decide whether to enter into the drawn-out process of a new case.

Some cheer for Microsoft staff, then. Perhaps not enough for its security engineers though, who were named as having one of the top [or should that be bottom?] ten worst jobs in science list.

One thousand holes

Experience dictates that Windows Live, Redmond's effort at applications over the web, will ensure those crappy jobs in its security bunker keep recruitment consultants busy. Photo-sharing and online storage space were added in beta this week.

In the meantime, top security flap of the week came via a fake MS Security Bulletin, purporting to patch a zero-day vuln. Instead, it loads a trojan.

Symantec's settlement offer over how a bug in its security software crippled Chinese PCs - more Symantec software - "lacks seriousness and sincerity", according to the Chinese E-commerce Association.

Intel had to patch the BIOS for its flagship Core 2 Duo line because of system failures. It denied its silicon is more like cheese, after the founder of OpenBSD alleged security holes aplenty.

Let's scrap it all and start again

Security is one reason why the technology sucks, say many.

IPv6 still hasn't come in, and DARPA, the influential US military tech agency, wants a complete rethink already.

ICANN's been meeting in the Caribbean to discuss how the internet runs on a policy, rather than technical level. As ever, lawyers want more control.

Big boys get FLOPpy

There was plenty for HPC types to chew over. IBM formally launched Blue Gene/P, the world most powerful chess player, and lower down on the HPC gave its Cluster 1350 a boost.

Sun announced a reentry into the fray with its new Constellation system.

At a supercomputing confab in Germany, the announcement of the top 500 list continued the battle for FLOPS between IBM, Cray, HP and the rest.

On a friendlier tip, HP got together with other vendors for the Multi-core Optimisation Program. It also said it would offer Microsoft's Compute Cluster Server 2003 on its high performance setups.

Cut the crap

For those of us with more modest computing requirements and budgets, thank Texas for Dell's grey boxes. The struggling bulider announced it would bring its Inspirion laptop brand to desktops for some reason.

In a nod to Apple-style out-of-the-box usablity, Dell and kindly promised to stop loading so much crap onto new PCs before they leave the factory.

Apple's share of the laptop retail market rose to 13 per cent in the US.

Now that just being cheap isn't cutting it in the PC market, Dell's storage tentacle took aim at pricey NetApp.

IPO means SEC

The broader storage market celebrated Data Domain's IPO, and looked forward to Netezza.

IBM coughed $7m to an SEC investigation in into the financial manoeuverings it did with Dollar General.

Red Hat tip

In the land of open sourcery, Red Hat showed traders its financial guns, which were loaded by JBoss and the channel. The firm is keeping mum on whether it will join the ranks of open source vendors who have bent over for Microsoft.

Back in the universe where open source is in competition with Redmond, we had an analysis of what's going on with Red Hat Exchange, its rival to Microsoft, er, Exchange.

Linux fans will soon have something else to complain about - the Windows-only BBC iPlayer, which the Corp said will launch in public beta on July 27.

Solaris, that other server and workstation OS, got a boost from Sun support, which said it'll cover other vendors' hardware.

IP networking for dummies

Support for Cisco networking kit is in short supply. The behemoth, which currently has more money than God, launched a new, entry-level scheme for engineers to cover small networks.

Visions of a globally connected Wi-Fi network inched closer with news that Boingo has passed the 100,000 hotspot mark, and launched monthly tariffs for travellers. Which is nice.

Make for high ground

That's your lot for this roundup.

With another soggy weekend calling, we look forward to more tales of IT-related flood bravery next week. We'll be doing our bit to lower the water table by ensuring the pumps at our local are in contant use.®