Europe to cut IT energy use

The European Commission (EC) has started a major consultation on how IT can help cut EU energy use by 20% by 2020, says Computing.co.uk.

The EC is consulting industry, governments and academia, prior to a report next year outlining action needed and detailing possible regulation.

"Research and rapid take-up of innovative, energy-efficient ICT solutions will be crucial to lowering emissions across the whole economy," said Viviane Reding, commissioner for information society and media, who launched the consultation.

EarthLink next month will shut down its Philadelphia WiFi network, the flagship of its now-dashed municipal wireless initiative, and then remove it from the city's streetlights, says IT World.

The ailing service provider made the announcement on Tuesday, saying it is proceeding with that plan after months of negotiations with the city and a non-profit that had planned to offer free WiFi on the network.

The deal fell apart because of a disagreement among the city, the non-profit and the group Wireless Philadelphia, EarthLink said. The carrier will provide a 30-day transition period, finally shutting down the network on 12 June, and offer its WiFi subscribers discounts on other EarthLink services.

A shrinking dollar has forced technology workers to accept positions at lower salaries than they did just a month ago, says eWeek.

With news of hiring freezes and budget cutbacks popping up everywhere, the job market is looking increasingly stormy for new graduates. Starting salaries for software developers and network and systems administrators have dipped by as much as $10 000 in May, according to JobFox, an employment firm.

Software designers and developers reported that though they had been requesting a median salary range of $95 000 to $105 000 in April, this range had fallen to between $85 000 and $95 000 in May. Networking professionals and systems administrators reported the same $10 000 drop, but with a bigger impact on their now $65 000 asking salary.

On its path back into the black, AMD is going green. The company is putting a lot of weight on the new Opteron line in hopes of it revitalising AMD's server business, and these new quad-cores promise 43% lower energy consumption, says BetaNews.

Called the Opteron HE (for high efficiency), these x86 Quad Core server processors have an integrated memory controller and a 55-watt ACP thermal envelope instead of the standard 95-watt profile.

These HE processors are available in both the 2300 and 8300 series for two-, four- and eight-way rack and blade servers. What makes rational comparison a little difficult is that AMD uses a different metric for measuring power consumption than its competitors - and even different from itself not long ago, so a fair judgment of the Opteron HE's efficiency is not so cut-and-dry.