Microsoft on Tuesday issued what is expected to be its last significant revision of Windows 2000.

The software maker released what it calls an Update Rollup for the 5-year-old operating system, which is due to shift at the end of this month from receiving mainstream support to extended support. Microsoft does not generally add features to a product under extended support, and the Update Rollup is largely a collection of previously released patches as opposed to a batch of new features.

In addition to already released fixes, the collection “may contain fixes for non-public low- and moderate-level security issues that did not warrant individual security bulletins,” a Microsoft representative said.

Source: News.com

The man who sold a CD containing the confidential details of 1,000 British bank accounts to an undercover reporter says he did not know what it contained. The Sun reported last week that the details were obtained by corrupt workers at call centres in India.

According to Reuters, Karan Bahree, 24, from New Dehli, admitted his guilt in a letter to his employers, web development company, Infinity eSearch.

A friend had given him the CD, he said, but he had no idea what was on it.

According to The Sun, the information, which includes addresses, passwords, phone numbers and driving license and passport details, was purchased for £3 per customer. Financial institutions such as Barclays, Lloyds TSB, the Nationwide and HSBC were affected.

Source: The Register

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has filed an antitrust lawsuit charging that Intel Corp., its chief competitor, used everything from threats to kickbacks in illegally building the world’s largest computer-chip business.

AMD’s 48-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, is the latest shot in a long battle between the two rivals and comes after a recent ruling by Japanese antitrust authorities that Intel had violated anti-monopoly laws and stifled competition with AMD.

The current lawsuit expands those charges, alleging that across three continents Intel coerced 38 companies, including such household names as Dell Inc., Sony Corp. and Gateway Inc. , to win business over a period of years.

In one instance, AMD charged, former Compaq Chief Executive Michael Capellas said in 2000 that “he had a gun to his head” and would have to stop buying from AMD. He said Intel was withholding delivery of critical server chips because of the volume of business he was doing with AMD, according to the lawsuit.

In another, Gateway executives told AMD that Intel had “beaten them into ‘guacamole”‘ in retaliation for doing business with AMD, according to the papers.

Source: Reuters

The Mozilla foundation calls for testers to help testing the next version of Firefox browser.

Announcing BFT QA Day - Tuesday at 10 AM PDT

As we approach the Firefox 1.1 release, we need your help with our basic functional testing. We’ve created a suite of tests and set up a tool where the community can record testing results, and on Tuesday June 28 at 10 AM PDT we’re asking you all to join us on IRC to help us run through these functional tests.

Here are the functional areas we will be testing on Tuesday:

Installation, Migration, Menu Bar, Help, Page Controls, Toolbar Customization, Location Bar and Autocomplete, Search, Printing, Tabbed Browsing, Options (Preferences), Popup and annoyance blocking, Find in Page, Bookmarks, History, Downloading, Extensions, Theme Manager, JavaScript Console, DOM Inspector, Page Info, Password Manager, Form Manager, Cookies, Top Sites, View Source, Software Update, Security and Certs, Import, Plug Ins, Security, Uninstall

For details click here

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - June 28, 2005 - Google Inc. today announced the launch of Google Earth, Google’s new satellite imagery-based mapping product that combines 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capability and Google search. Based on Keyhole technology, Google Earth enables users to fly from space to street level views to find geographic information and explore places around the world.

Key features of Google Earth include:

• Free software download available at http://earth.google.com
• 3D buildings in major cities across the United States
• 3D terrain showing mountains, valleys, and canyons around the world
• Integrated Google Local search to find local information such as hotels, restaurants, schools, parks, and transportation
• Fast, dynamic navigation
• Video playback of driving directions
• Tilt, rotate, and activate 3D terrain and buildings for a different perspective on a location
• Easy creation and sharing of annotations among users

“Google Earth utilizes broadband streaming technology and 3D graphics, much like a videogame, enabling users to interactively explore the world– either their own neighborhood or the far corners of the globe,” said John Hanke, general manager, Keyhole, Google Inc. “With many ways to access geographic information, Google provides a very rich local search experience for users worldwide.”

Google Earth is the latest innovation within Google’s local search product suite, which currently includes Google Local and Google Maps for web users and mobile phone users. With Google Earth, users have the tools to dive deeper into local information, whether they’re exploring a vacation destination or researching a new home or apartment. They can combine multiple layers of information, such as cross-referencing school districts with address look-ups of available homes, business listings and public transportation, and save their results for later use.

For users interested in more advanced mapping capabilities, Google Earth Plus ($20/year) offers additional features including GPS compatibility, data import, and annotation. Google Earth Pro ($400/year), for commercial use, offers high-resolution printing and GIS data import capabilities.

The iPod and iPod photo lines are merging, creating a single line of white iPods that all feature color displays with the ability to view album artwork, photos and play slideshows in color. The simplified iPod lineup features a 20GB model, holding up to 5,000 songs priced at just $299 and a 60GB model, holding up to 15,000 songs priced at $399.

iPod incorporates the same touch-sensitive Apple Click Wheel that debuted on iPod mini. Use it to navigate your music on the iPod’s 65,536-color, 220×176-pixel display. Spin the wheel to scroll effortlessly through dozens of playlists, hundreds of albums or thousands of songs and podcasts.

iPod displays 25 full-color thumbnails at a time, and you can scroll through them the same way you scroll through song titles. When you see a photo you’d like displayed all by its lonesome, just click the center button and voila.

Apple takes Podcasting mainstream by building everything users need to discover, subscribe, manage and listen to podcasts right into iTunes 4.9, the latest version of its award winning digital music software and online music store. iTunes users can now easily subscribe to over 3,000 free podcasts and have each new episode automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.

Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Chief Operating Officer and President Jonathan Schwartz announced at Sun’s JavaOne conference that the company was releasing the next generation of its Java enterprise application server as open source.

“Today, we are open-sourcing Sun’s server side implementation of Java,” Schwartz told an audience of about 10,000 software developers and Sun partners. “This is the first step in open-sourcing all of Sun’s Java software assets.”

Effective immediately, Sun’s Java System Application Server Platform Edition, code-named Glass Fish—the company’s implementation of the upcoming Java EE 5 (Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5) standard—has been opened up to community development under Sun’s

Source: eWeek

Intel released a 64-bit processor for mainstream PCs on Monday, putting the company a month ahead of rival AMD, which is expected to come out with a chip of the same capacity in July.

Intel’s new Celeron D 351 is the heir-apparent to the current Celeron D S775 processor series. The two chips are nearly identical, apart from the addition of 64-bit processing technology, which Intel calls EM64T.

Source: News.com