Unlikely file-sharers

Sarah Ward, a 66-year-old sculptor and retired schoolteacher, is one of the latest to receive notice by the Recording Industry Association of America that she was "engaging in millions of dollars` worth of copyright infringement, downloading thousands of songs and sharing them with the world" through KaZaA. This comes after a recent suit against a 12-year-old.

Ward was "deeply confused by the accusations", reports the New York Times, and denies trading music, having younger music-loving relatives living with her, or using her PC for much more than e-mail and checking the tides. On Friday, the industry group dropped its suit against Ward, but reserved the right to sue again. An industry spokesperson denied that any mistake had been made.

Hewlett-Packard plans to announce today that Dutch chipmaker Philips Semiconductor is among the first companies to buy and set up HP`s "utility data centre", which will allow Philips to aggregate and shift around storage, server and software capacity as required by changing business conditions. Neither company would say how much Philips spent on the deal, reports ZDNet.

A day after it was released, Apple pulled its Mac OS X v10.2.8 update, both from its Web site and through the Software Update system preferences pane, reports Mac Central.

Some Mac users complained that their Ethernet networking connectivity was deactivated following the software update`s installation. The problem seems mainly isolated to certain Power Mac G4 models. Apple "confirmed the news", the site reports.

While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon`s plans for a database to combat terrorism, a similar project is "quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states and $12 million in federal funds", reports crn.com.

The database project, dubbed Matrix, aims to help track would-be terrorists and criminal fugitives. It is being built and housed in the offices of a private company, but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even US intelligence agencies.

Privacy advocates, officials in two US states and a data vendor have branded Matrix a privacy threat. They complain that Matrix houses restricted police and government files on colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint, a Florida company founded by a millionaire whom police say flew planeloads of drugs into the US in the early 1980s.

IBM plans to make the technology it acquired to automatically provision applications across multiple servers generally available tomorrow, reports crn.com. Earlier this year, IBM acquired Think Dynamics to gain technology that will be at the heart of its E-business On Demand (on-demand computing) strategy.

Sun Microsystems will make its Java Desktop System (JDS) available for AMD`s Athlon 64-based desktops, the companies said on Tuesday.

Crn.com reports that John Fowler, Sun`s CTO for software, acknowledged, though, that the JDS would initially only exploit the Athlon 64`s 32-bit capabilities, while the company worked to scale it to 64-bit capability.

Meanwhile, Taiwan`s motherboard vendors are ready with products for AMD`s new processor, officially released Tuesday, the site reports.

Intel has announced an investment of $450 million in DRAM maker Micron Technology, in a bid to boost the production of next-generation double data rate memory modules, reports eWeek.

"The availability of high-performance memory is critical as we continue to develop advanced microprocessors and communications components," said Intel CEO Craig Barrett in a statement.

Seagate Technology entered the external hard drive market yesterday, announcing 160GB and 200GB models that have already begun to ship to retailers, reports Extreme Tech.

Seagate follows both Maxtor and Western Digital into the external drive market, which consumers are beginning to use as a convenient means of backing up data, replacing CD-RWs or even tape drives. Seagate`s entry is known simply as the External Hard Drive.

IBM and Red Hat`s Linux customers will want the same legal protection that HP is offering clients, SCO, the company demanding Linux-related royalties, has said.

Hewlett-Packard is reported as saying it will help clients fight any claims. IBM and Red Hat reiterated they have no plans to indemnify customers, reports Bloomberg.