Monday, August 14, 2000		Latest in IT world

A security patch from Netscape

Netscape Communications, one of the most popular browser in the world and a unit of America Online, will make available a patch for the glitch that was found in its browser recently, to ward off hackers. This is a security hole in the browser's Java distribution and has been termed as "Brown Office". As per a report, 1000 persons were reported to have been affected, after this glitch was discovered. Though the company is going to announce a patch very soon, yet has advised its users to turn off Java. However, in the Netscape's next launch (Netscape 6), the company plans to take care of any such flaw.

The market for processors is hot these days. After the AMD's launch of 1 GHz Athelon and Intel's launch of 1 GHz processor in March, other processor manufacturers got busy planning their launch of high-speed processors. The Via technologies has announced its plan to launch 1 GHz processors early next year. It will be called Samuel 2 processor, which is a follow-up of the Samuel 1 launched earlier in June. Industry watchers are viewing this as a significant development as it will be a direct challenge to Intel and the AMD. Via is also planning to launch some low-end processor for the Internet application.

AOL taking down MP3

The ghost of Napster is still haunting the world wide web as the Internet major AOL - America Online has decided to take down its MP3 search engine. The company took the decision to call off the service after it determined that there is no means of finding out the difference between the legal and illegal MP3 files available on the Net. It is worth mentioning here that a majority of pirated songs are available on the Net, which can be searched conveniently. AOL's MP3 search engine is a powerful utility and has been used by Net surfers for downloading MP3 files from the Internet. AOL does not store MP3 songs on its server but hosts links to various sites that stores MP3 files.

AMD lures developers

Advanced Micro Devices has announced its 64-bit microprocessor, which will make its debut in 2001. The company has strategically placed its product, which is just 2 weeks before Intel's launch of 64-bit Itanium processor. AMD has named its product Sledgehammer or Hammer, for its x86-64 chip, for which the company has released the specifications. With the formal announcement of its specification, the company hopes to demystify the chip, by luring the third-party developers and designers to use the chip in the platform for hardware and software. The new chip will have backward compatibility and existing 32-bit software can be rewritten to take advantage of the chip's 64-bit address and data capabilities without a performance penalty.