ShadowRAM: February 28, 2005

The star of television and bootleg Internet videoswho had the phone numbers for Vin Diesel, Twiggy and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsomhad all her data thrown open for public consumption. The U.S. Secret Service was all over the case and had its agents contacting one off-shore Web host after another to have the personal information of the rich and semi-famous taken offline.

What the agents didn't take into account, though, was that even though Web hosts were quick to take down the hacked phone numbers from various Web sites, Ms. Hilton's hacked data remained in plain view on the Web for most of last week through the magic of Google cache. Oops.

Sun pink-slipped a number of employees in its software group last week, an extension of the 3,500 layoffs the vendor announced last March. The current tally of layoffs at Sun in the past year is now 3,600. Insider sources told CRN that those who lost their jobs were the entire U.K. Solaris team, as well as the U.S. Solaris testing team and other people in the software organization, which is run by Sun Executive Vice President of Software John Loiacono. Insiders said the U.K. team was working on the Linux compatibility project that makes Solaris 10 binary compatible with Linux, a much-touted feature of Solaris 10.

Solution providers were not wowed by Microsoft's SQL Server news last week. One partner, frustrated by repeated delays to the promised Yukon version of SQL Server, laughed out loud when told that last week's news centered on a new version of the current SQL Server 2000 lineup.

"That's like Ford announcing a 'new' 2000 Taurus this year," he scoffed. In fairness, Microsoft also announced pricing and packaging for the still-upcoming SQL Server 2005 lineup, which will comprise four SKUs: a freebie Express version for embedding, a new Workgroup version of the database only, and new Standard and Enterprise editions that will add business intelligence/analytics/mirroring and other perks.

Word's gotten out that Lenovo is already looking to hire employees for the "new" company once the IBM deal closes. But Taiwan-based publication DigiTimes reports that Lenovo has tapped contract manufacturer Foxconn to build a series of Lenovo-branded, Sonoma-based notebooks.

Meanwhile, no word on whether the Bush administration would accept reported "concessions" IBM offered last week to ease national security concerns that a major U.S. technology organization would be sold to a Chinese-government-owned company.