ShadowRAM: August 7, 2006

Jonas founded SRD, a Las Vegas-based company dedicated to finding patterns in disparate data sources. Casinos use SRD technology to suss out and prevent fraud-in-the-making.

Apparently, the same techniques bad guys use to infiltrate and defraud casinos are used by terrorists as well. Jonas, who joined IBM when it bought SRD, will talk about how to sniff them out before bad stuff happens.

AT&T chief Ed Whitacre is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. At a hearing before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, he appeared more than fed up with the whole Net neutrality proposition—the idea that the Internet cloud should do nothing but politely part when IP voice and data traffic flies through. "Some companies want us to be a big dumb pipe that gets bigger and bigger," Whitacre said. "No one gets a free ride. Those that want to use this will pay!" Well, woof!!

Best sight gag at the Black Hat Conference last week? The "Microsoft—See You Next Tuesday" T-shirt. You gotta love hacker humor.

Microsoft Services folks are touchy about channel relationships. One top dog said partners actually hissed at him at an event. This seems highly doubtful. Partners are totally ornery, but they're not hissers—they're more likely to throw something. A reporter mentioned this alleged hissing incident to a longtime Microsoft Business Solutions partner, with the addendum, "I don't think it ever happened." The partner paused before admitting: "No," she said, "I've hissed him. Definitely."

Know-it-all reporter stands corrected.

If AMD's buyout of ATI closes as planned, it will be able to integrate part of ATI's graphics technology into the CPU. Some graphics instructions could be offloaded onto the processors for better graphics performance, or a graphics processor could make up one core of a multicore processor.

At the recent launch of Intel's desktop processor, CEO Paul Otellini was asked if Intel also plans to integrate more graphics into its CPUs. The answer was yes. But he would say no more.

Google's Eric Schmidt continues his Greta Garbo schtick. He made a flack warn off fotogs from shooting him and the missus at a recent Nantucket charity event. The mind boggles that anyone might put Schmidt in the same category as paparazzi prey Paris Hilton. The truth is, who cares?

Folks sizzling during last week's heat wave might want to take notice: Solestrom has come up with a chip for bikinis that will measure exposure to those evil UV rays. Talk about hot new technology.