Spammers should pay you

Worn out by endless pitches to enhance his manhood, rescue Ugandan bank accounts and create money with his computer, an IBM researcher decided that spammers must pay.

ExtremeTech reports that IBM researcher Scott Fahlman concludes in a recent IBM research paper that time literally equals money, and that telemarketers, charities, businesses and even friends should be willing to pay for the privilege of bothering today`s wired human. Fahlman believes a system should be devised that allows recipients of e-mail to decide on whether the interruption was a waste of their time or not.

His system assumes that a person`s time is too valuable to be wasted on superfluous e-mail chatter or telephone calls. But since a third-party may wish to send a user a piece of information by phone or e-mail, Fahlman`s system would require them to pay what he calls an "interrupt fee", but which is more like an ante in a poker game. If the user deems the interruption to be worth his time, he could decline the fee. If it turned out to be unnecessary, he could keep the fee as a penalty.

"Only the recipient can determine if the message is unwelcome," Fahlman says. "The problem is that I can only do that after I`ve looked at the message and suffered the interruption." [ExtremeTech]

Microsoft yesterday announced it has delivered the second release candidate for Windows .Net Server 2003. Customers can register to obtain a trial version of RC2 through the customer preview programme at www.microsoft.com/windows.netserver/default.mspx.

"With RC2, Microsoft has completed final packaging for each of its four editions of Windows .Net Server 2003," says Bob O`Brien, group product manager for Windows .Net Server. "This includes activated support for 64-way large multiprocessing systems with support for 512GB of memory for the high-end Datacenter Edition, enabling greater performance capacity and making it suitable for the most demanding applications and systems."

The final product is scheduled for release in April and will also bring certain licensing changes. Among these is a move away from the per-server and per-seat client access licence option currently in place, to a model that allows per-user and per-server usage. [eWeek]

Klez is the most abundant virus for 2002, according to Sophos, the anti-virus software firm, reports TheRegister. The second-most common virus is the Bugbear worm, which made the number two slot even though it was only detected in October 2002. In third place comes Badtrans, the password-stealing worm which was first detected in November 2001.

The Sophos company says it detected 7 189 new viruses, worms and Trojan horses in 2002, bringing the total number of bugs on its books to more than 78 000. On average, the Sophos virus labs claim to produce detection routines for more than 25 new viruses each day.

Sophos has also published its list of top 10 virus hoaxes for November. The most prolific was an e-mail commonly called JDBGMGR, which accounted for 22% of all fake viruses in the month. As with many virus hoaxes, JDBGMGR tries to trick users into deleting a file on their computer to protect themselves from a real threat, typically the Bugbear worm. [TheRegister]

After sliding for more than a year, worldwide shipments of personal computers are supposed to swing back into a weak climbing mode in 2002 and increase by more than 8% next year, according to projections from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The technology research firm estimates global PC sales will rise to 136 million, 1.6% above last year`s total of 134 million, but still below the peak in 2000, when makers shipped almost 140 million machines.

Leading the growth is a surge in laptop purchases in the second half of 2002 that IDC estimates at almost 14% above last year`s levels.

By contrast, IDC predicts sales of desktop machines will climb by slightly more than 2% in the same period. [Reuters]

Researchers and design engineers from IBM and Intel will present papers at the international electron devices meeting next week that detail their work on "strained silicon", a manufacturing technique that promises to boost processor performance by up to 20%.

The San Francisco convention, one of the principal events for semiconductor designers, will feature a keynote speech by Intel chairman Andy Grove as well as presentations from Sony, Samsung, Pennsylvania State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others.

Strained silicon should allow chipmakers to maintain the performance curve established by Moore`s Law, the semiconductor industry principle stating that manufacturers will double the number of transistors on chips every two years.

Typically, increasing the number of transistors leads to higher performance and new capabilities for processors. But this approach also leads to escalating levels of energy consumption, among other problems.

The concept of strained silicon has been around for 30 years, but it only recently moved to the centre of concern for chip designers.

Strained silicon, which will appear in Intel`s Prescott chip next year, stretches the distances between the silicon atoms in transistors, the tiny on/off switches that form the basis of a chip. Moving these atoms slightly farther apart reduces the atomic forces that interfere with the movement of electrons through the transistors, leading to better performance and lower energy consumption for the chip. [More at ZDNet]

This week in TechNiche:
Unisys plans Linux on mainframes
Sun looks for StarOffice resellers
Intel releases compiler software
Security products struggle to reach new standards