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Of the two technologies, licensing on the 800MHz FSB standard is more crucial to board makers, Asustek Computer said, as it is closely related to companies’ marketing planning as well as product sales. Without the licensing, manufacturers will not be able to feature support for the new-generation P4 processors in their products. As a result, if Taiwanese chipset designers are unable to get the licensing, board makers will have to adopt more Intel chipsets. Judging from the current conditions, board makers predicted that the ratio of their Intel-based products is likely to continue rising next year.

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Bringing 3D viewing to the computing world has been a longtime goal. Although several companies have come out with Web browser software and other technology to make images appear to pop off the screen, the Web largely remains a two-dimensional world. To most people, 3D still means paper glasses with red and blue lenses or the hologram image of Princess Leia in "Star Wars."

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Equipment billings, a measure of the value of equipment accepted by customers and booked as revenue, was $991 billion in November. That was down 1 percent from the adjusted October level of $1 billion and up 21 percent from the $817 million posted a year earlier, the San Jose, Calif.-based industry group said.

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The music industry and Hollywood are eyeing such hacking tactics as a way to stop file swappers from trading copyrighted music in the future. A bill sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., and introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in July, would allow copyright owners limited rights to hack into peer-to-peer networks.

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The PCs don't have Windows preinstalled but rely on software from several companies, including Lindows, that use the open-source Linux operating system, which can be used as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows. Dropping Windows is part of the reason why manufacturers can sell the PCs so cheaply.

Wow...I want to break the rules

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The hacking project, which was sanctioned by the school, left administrators so impressed they gave him a perfect score. The school is now working on fixing the security holes.

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The companies will collaborate to create a version of Linux that boots quickly and offers snappy performance for use in digital video recorders and other audiovisual devices. Digital video recorders capture television programs and store them on a hard drive for later viewing. The operating system might also be used in portable devices, the companies said in a statement.
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Access to a fully developed operating system can save companies a significant amount of money by cutting the number of software engineers, the development time and the testing needed to put out new products.

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By repealing key portions of the DMCA, Boucher's bill would have prevented the Justice Department from prosecuting ElcomSoft, a Russian company that sold a program to remove the copy protection from Adobe's e-books. If the proposed Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, co-sponsored by John Doolittle, R-Calif., were to become law, ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor would become legal to sell.

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The patent (6449344), originally filed in 1997, and granted in September this year, gives AOL instant messaging subsidiary ICQ rights as the inventor of the popular IM Internet application. The patent covers anything resembling a network that lets multiple IM users see when other people are present and then communicate with them.

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Intergraph's revenue from legal activity now rivals its services and software business. In the first nine months of 2002, Intergraph's revenue from services and software came to $379.2 million, with a total of $532 million expected for the year, according to the company. By comparison, its court-mandated payments from Intel alone this year come to $450 million and could rise to $550 million.

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AOL has a long history of fighting junk e-mailers. The company has filed about 20 lawsuits with more than 100 defendants. It's also played up spam-filtering technology in its new Web access software, AOL 8.0, which launched in October. The software lets subscribers report spam with the click of a button. The process helps AOL bolster its filtering technology. Since the software's launch, the company said, AOL has been able to reduce the amount of incoming spam by 20 percent as a result of members' spam reports.

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A three-by-three-by-three stack has 27 bricks, but a six-by-six-by-six collection would have 216. With a collection of eight bricks on a side, there would be 512 bricks--6,144 hard drives--in a system a little wider than an adult's arm span.

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The chipset offers both 802.11a and 802.11b wireless connectivity at 54 Mbps and 11 Mbps, respectively. It is backward compatible with existing wireless local area networking (WLAN) infrastructure, provides access to corporate and home networks, and enables a growing number of wireless hot spots in airports, hotels, restaurants and other public sites.

Under the multiyear agreement, iPass and Intel will validate the interoperability between the future release of iPassConnect client software and Banias-based notebooks with the Intel WLAN Network Interface Card. PC manufacturers, IT departments and end users will have a single interface for dial-up, wired and public wireless access worldwide.

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According to the company, which measured results up to the end of the second week of December, the most active virus this year was Klez.H with 4.9 million copies stopped by MessageLabs. Yaha.E came second with 1.1 million copies, then it was Bugbear.A with 842,333, Klez.E with 380,937 and SirCam.A with 309,832. These figures only represent the numbers stopped by MessageLabs for its corporate customers. The actual numbers of these viruses are much higher.

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"Netscape's inclusion of a pop-up blocker reflects the changing nature that its parent company AOL has toward its customers," Gartenberg said. "As AOL recently announced that it would begin to remove pop-ups that are universally reviled by consumers, this addition to Netscape is a logical progression. While useful to the few Netscape users that are still out there, it's not likely to win many new converts."

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At least as significant as the numbers is the kind of audience "The Sims Online" is likely to attract. "The Sims" has drawn one of the most diverse audiences in gaming--more than 50 percent female, and broadly distributed across age groups--with a unique style of game play that emphasizes creativity and self-made narratives. Players control a single family of characters, guiding them in tasks ranging from career climbing to interior decorating to forming friendships with computer-controlled next-door neighbors.

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The Radeon 9500 PRO has been well-accepted by the high-end market due to its appealing price/performance ratio. Based on the company’s new-generation R300 core, the Radeon 9500 PRO is designed with the same eight-pipeline architecture as the Radeon 9700 PRO but cards sporting the chip are sold at much lower prices. According to an earlier ATI announcement, Radeon 9500 PRO cards retail for US$199 and Radeon 9700 PRO cards for US$399.

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Gantz sees the cyberthreat arising from a potential war with Iraq, which has been the object of intense international scrutiny. The United States government has charged the Middle Eastern country with harboring weapons of mass destruction and has made clear its displeasure with the country's ruler, Saddam Hussein.