E-mail error upsets Harry Potter fans

Customers who pre-ordered the eagerly awaited sixth part of the Harry Potter saga on Amazon.com and Walmart.com were shocked when the retailers mistakenly e-mailed them to say their books might arrive later than expected, reports CNet.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is due for release early tomorrow, and both Web sites had promised customers that their books would arrive the day of release.

Wal-Mart Stores has rushed to calm shoppers` worries and put a recorded message on its toll-free customer service number assuring customers that the books would arrive on 16 July as promised.

The message explains that the e-mail saying the books would be received only on 20 July was sent in error. Amazon e-mailed customers to say its notice that books might be delayed was also "sent in error". However, the company claims not to know whether it was human error or computer error.

Cisco Systems has identified several vulnerabilities in its products that could lead to denial-of-service attacks, reports News.com.

Cisco warned that hackers could cripple its IP telephony networks by exploiting flaws in its CallManager software and has issued a patch for the vulnerability, which can be found on its Web site.

The report says once the CallManager server is compromised, an attacker could redirect calls and eavesdrop on calls, as well as gain unauthorised access to networks and machines running Cisco voice over Internet Protocol products.

Oracle has responded to industry outrage over its refusal to get in line with competitors IBM and Microsoft by updating its licensing policy to accommodate multi-core chips.

eWeek says licensing terms for the Oracle Store Web site now state that, for the purposes of counting how many processors need to be licensed, a multi-core chip with "n" cores will be multiplied by 0.75. Oracle will then round up fractions to the next whole number. For example, for a multi-core chip with 11 cores, multiply 11 by 0.75, which equals 8.25. Oracle will therefore charge for nine processors.

Oracle will count only one processor when licensing Oracle Standard Edition One or Standard Edition programs on servers with a maximum of one processor with one or two cores.

In October, Microsoft announced it wouldn`t consider multiple cores as individual processors, but rather that such technology will be treated, from a licensing perspective, as one processor, no matter how many cores are carved into a chip. IBM followed suit in April when it announced it would charge the same price for single-core and dual-core AMD systems.

Sharp has unveiled a new type of liquid crystal display (LCD) panel that if used in a TV would allow viewers sitting to the right and left of a screen to watch different channels, reports Reuters.

Sharp has acknowledged that sound could be an issue, but earphones could be used in the short-term, with directional speakers a possibility in future.

The breakthrough has been achieved by superimposing a "parallax barrier" onto the LCD to make the source light separate into right and left directions, creating a so-called dual-view display.

Sharp has not disclosed what products will use the new panel, but says it could eventually find uses in mobile phones, personal computers, car navigation systems and in various commercial applications.