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Wired News: Internet

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Intel Pays AMD $1.25 billion To Settle All Disputes
Publish Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:12:00 GMT
Chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices settle all outstanding legal disputes, including antitrust litigation and patent licensing issues. Intel pays AMD $1.25 billion as part of the settlement.

Intel to pay AMD $1.25 billion, settle all disputes
Publish Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:11:00 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chip makers Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc said they have settled all outstanding legal disputes, including antitrust litigation and patent licensing issues.

Intel said on Thursday it will pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of the settlement, sending shares of AMD up nearly 30 percent.

The two companies also sealed a five-year cross license deal and said they would give up any claims of breach from their previous license agreement.

Competition authorities in Asia, Europe and the United States have taken action against Intel in recent years because of persistent complaints by AMD about the behavior of Intel, which makes 80 percent of the central processing units at the heart of personal computers.

"While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development," AMD and Intel said in a joint statement.

AMD said it would drop all pending litigation including a case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan. AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide.

As a result of the settlement, Intel adjusted its fourth-quarter outlook. The chip maker raised its spending forecast to $4.2 billion from $2.9 billion, and said its effective tax rate would be about 20 percent, down from 26 percent. Other expectations are unchanged, Intel said.

Shares of AMD jumped 23 percent to $6.55 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Intel shares were halted.

(Reporting by David Lawsky and Tiffany Wu, Gerald E. McCormick, Dave Zimmerman)

NY Attorney General Sues Intel for Bribing PC Makers
Publish Date: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Intel, the world's dominant chip maker, is hit by New York's attorney general, who says the company illegally pays off computer makers to keep its rival's chips out of the world's computers.

Web Addresses Now Can Be All Greek to You, ICANN Rules
Publish Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:49:00 GMT
Move over ABC. The web's addresses will soon become as international as the net's users are -- ICANN, the web's naming authority, allows domain names to be entirely written in other languages and scripts like Hindi and Chinese.

Icahn to Yahoo's Board: My Work Here is Done
Publish Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:06:00 GMT
Carl Icahn has decided to resign from the Yahoo board, giving as big a vote of confidence in the leadership of CEO Carol Bartz as his assault on Yahoo was a battle cry against the ineptitude of former CEO Jerry Yang.

Nokia Sues Apple for Patent Infringement
Publish Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:21:00 GMT
The world's top cellphone maker sues Apple, saying the iPhone development infringes Nokia patents. The 10 patents in the lawsuit are for techn that's fundamental to devices using GSM, UMTS and local area network (LAN) standards, Nokia says.

YouTube's Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net
Publish Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:20:00 GMT
Many speculate that YouTube bleeds money paying for bandwidth, but a new report suggests that Google isn't paying anyone a single cent to serve billions of videos. Welcome to the new internet architecture.

Seafood Express: Getting Mediterranean Fish to Las Vegas — Fast
Publish Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Chef Paul Bartolotta wants you to eat like an Italian villager. Never mind that facilitating such a modest act will require speeding refrigerator trucks, thermal microchips, and an on-staff marine biologist. His Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel offers species that rarely make it onto US plates. Some menu regulars: three different kinds of lobster, Mediterranean snapper baked in a shell of its native sea salt, and grilled Sicilian amberjack, which is firm like swordfish but even moister. Here's how a typical shipment gets from pier to platter in just 53 hours.

Get Set, Go! A fisherman catches a particularly nice specimen—perhaps a blade fish (great for grilling)—and emails a pic to Bartolotta, who texts his buyer to add it to his order. » Hour 5 Cruising the market in Milan, the buyer spots other interesting species, like the strong-flavored Mediterranean horse mackerel, and Skypes his finds to the chef. » Hour 6 More than 45 species are packed up: Live crustaceans are wrapped in damp towels and straw, the swimmers in waxed paper. One fish in each container is microchipped.

Hour 10 The shipper books several flights to ensure the cargo gets on the first plane to take off. At the last second, he tells the racing driver which of Milan's three airports is optimal. » Hour 11 During the 14-hour flight, crabs, lobsters, and langoustines reach a semidormant state. The microchips take temperature readings every 20 minutes. » Hour 25 The flight lands at LAX. Handlers unload Bartolotta's coolers and place them in a waiting refrigerator truck, which zooms off through the desert to Las Vegas.

Hour 31 At the restaurant, kitchen staff review the chip data to make sure container temps stayed cold en route. Bartolotta checks the fish for odor and appearance. » Hour 33 A marine biologist tests the crustaceans for liveliness. Healthy specimens are transferred to a saltwater tank. Weaker ones might end up in sauce. » Dinnertime The next evening, waiters unveil the chef's specials: blade fish, turbot, spiny scorpion fish—all around $60 and all so fresh they're practically twitching.¹

Illustrations: Rafael Macho

Peer-to-Peer Passé, Report Finds
Publish Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:05:00 GMT
Once the bogeyman of the net, P2P services are losing favor as net users turn to streaming video and direct-download sites made possible by cheaper bandwidth. That's the surprising conclusion of a new report on the net's new structure from Arbor Networks. Why wait a day to download a movie, if you can stream it and watch it immediately?

Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive
Publish Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:00:00 GMT
Google has pulled its Google Groups development team out of the basement broom closet and begun patching up its long-broken Usenet library, in response to our post Wednesday highlighting the company's neglect of the 700 million post archive.